Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons

by James Lovegrove

  She made an ushering gesture towards the doorway behind her, and out stepped a boy. I had not seen him myself before, but this could only be Harry Baskerville. His dark hair matched his father’s, as did his forthright eyebrows. His eyes were big and round, registering bewilderment.

  He hesitated. Mrs Stapleton beckoned to him again, and timidly he went to her side, joining her at the top of the short flight of wooden steps that descended from the verandah to the rankly verdant garden.

  “There’s a good boy,” she said, stroking his hair. The verandah roof, which projected partway over the steps, afforded some shelter from the storm. Whereas the rest of us were wet through, both Mrs Stapleton and Harry remained more or less dry.

  By now, the steamboat was at a standstill and Mortimer was directing Suarez to disembark. No sooner was the Costa Rican on the jetty than Mortimer leapt down to join him. Suarez stiffened as the scalpel resumed its place at his throat. He craned his head as far away from its blade as he dared. I wondered whether Mortimer would have the mettle to inflict a fatal wound if required to. I rather suspected he might.

  “Harry!”

  This shout came from the far side of the mansion. Sir Henry burst from the forest. He raced towards the verandah, forging a wayward path through the tangle of weeds that choked the garden. Grier followed close behind.

  “Daddy!” said Harry. All at once his worried little face became rapturous. He was beaming all over. He made to run towards his father, but Mrs Stapleton stayed him with a firm hand.

  “Do not move, Harry.”

  “But that’s my daddy.”

  “And I said do not move. You too, Henry. Stop right there.”

  A brief flash of lightning, and the concomitant roll of thunder, served to punctuate her command.

  Sir Henry slowed his pace but did not halt. “Or what, you witch? Give me back my son. Hand him over to me right now.”

  “I shall not warn you again.”

  So saying, Mrs Stapleton reached into a pocket of her dress and produced a glass specimen jar. Something squat, bristly and many-legged was contained within.

  Swiftly she unscrewed the specimen jar’s lid, leaving it loose but still in place. Clutching Harry to her side with one hand, she poised the jar next to him with the other.

  “What is that?” Sir Henry said. He and Grier were now level with the verandah steps.

  “It is something I will unleash on Harry,” said Mrs Stapleton, “if you force me to.”

  “Daddy…” Harry moaned, quailing.

  The thing in the jar wriggled and writhed, as if it sensed the child’s fear and was eager to be released.

  “Do as she says, Sir Henry,” Holmes cautioned. “And you, Grier. You should avoid antagonising her too.”

  Grier had his hand around the haft of the machete and was poised to draw it. At Holmes’s instruction, but with a show of great reluctance, he relinquished his grip on the weapon.

  “Unless I miss my guess,” Holmes continued, “what Mrs Stapleton is holding is a Brazilian wandering spider. Genus Phoneutria, family Ctenidae. It is perhaps the most dangerous spider in the world.”

  “You are right, Mr Holmes,” said Mrs Stapleton. “A Brazilian wandering spider. Its bite can kill a child, or even a grown man. This one here, it is very sensitive to disturbance. It does not like to be shaken around in this jar and is showing clear signs of distress. That being so, it will attack any creature it sees as a threat. I do not need to tell you how easily it might think that a three-year-old, squirming the way Harry is now, is a danger to it.”

  “For the love of God, Beryl,” said Sir Henry, “what has Harry ever done to you? He is just a child. Give him to me, and then let us talk about this.”

  “Just a child,” she echoed. “True. It is not what Harry is that matters. It is what he represents.”

  “And what is that?”

  Before she could answer, Harry tried to break away from her. Mrs Stapleton pulled him even closer to her.

  “Now, now, Harry, we had an agreement,” she said in a parody of the soft croon of a loving mother. “What did we say when we were leaving England? We said you must behave yourself at all times, or…?”

  “Or,” Harry finished, “I would never see my daddy again.”

  “Quite right. You promised your Mama Beryl, didn’t you? It was a very solemn promise. You even crossed your heart.”

  “But Daddy is here now. I’ve behaved myself. Can I go to him? I don’t like that spider. I don’t want it to bite me.”

  Mrs Stapleton was having none of it. “Look how the lid sits on this jar, Harry. So lightly. How easy it would be for it to fall off. If you nudge me, even the tiniest little bit, it will fall off. The spider will be out in a flash. You do not want that, do you?”

  “No, Mama Beryl. No, I don’t.”

  “Then you have to keep still, like I said. As still as you can.”

  “Yes, Mama Beryl.”

  By now, Mortimer and Suarez were halfway up the steps from the river, the one pushing the other ahead of him. It was a dire predicament. Our villainous duo had a hostage each and could kill either with just the slightest of gestures. Holmes, Sir Henry and Grier, for all their combined physical prowess, were rendered powerless. Nor could Ramón be counted on to become involved.

  There was, however, one factor which our antagonists had so far neglected.

  Me.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  ARCHITECTS OF MISERY

  I was still lurking in the forest, as yet unnoticed by Mrs Stapleton. There had to be some way of using this to our advantage. I just could not think how.

  I could try to shoot Mrs Stapleton, but Harry stood between her and me. There was no guarantee I would not hit him by mistake.

  Much the same was true of Dr Mortimer and Suarez. The only way I could shorten the range between me and either of my targets would be to come out into the open, and not only would that lose me the element of surprise, it would diminish only slightly the risk of the bullet finding the wrong mark.

  For that matter, once I fired the first shot – and assuming it incapacitated whomever I was aiming at, be it Mrs Stapleton or Dr Mortimer – I might not get the chance to fire the second before the other of the twain was able to kill his or her hostage. In other words, I would have to choose which out of Harry and Suarez to save and which to sacrifice. That was the sort of choice no man should ever have to make.

  Even as I inwardly debated my options – and found them unenticing – the whole question was rendered moot by Mortimer.

  “I see Holmes, I see Sir Henry, I see Grier,” he said, nodding at each man in turn. “I do not see Watson. I can only assume he is loitering nearby, perhaps thinking how he might save the day. Watson! I know you’re out there. I know you can hear me. I know, too, that you have a revolver. Show yourself. And when you do, make sure that you have your hands above your head and the revolver is in one of them. I want to see the gun held by the barrel between thumb and forefinger. If you fail to meet these conditions, you will live to regret it. By which I mean, Señor Suarez will not.”

  “Do not be concerned for me, Dr Watson,” Suarez said gamely. “I would die rather than let these canallas win.” From the way he spat out the Spanish word, I had no doubt that it meant something highly uncomplimentary.

  “Even if the old man cares nothing for himself, Dr Watson,” said Mrs Stapleton, “I have Harry. Do as James says, or the boy will die.”

  That left me with no alternative. I raised my hands, revolver held as instructed, and stepped out from the forest, into the full force of the cascading rain.

  “There he is, the last of our players,” said Mortimer. Rainwater plastered his hair to his scalp, bedewed the lenses of his glasses, and poured down his gloating face. “Put the gun down now, Watson. On the ground. There’s a good man.”

  I bent and laid the revolver at my feet. “You worthless wretch, Mortimer,” I said as I straightened up. “What do you hope to gain from this?”r />
  “He gains what I gain,” said Mrs Stapleton. “Revenge.” Again, lightning flashed. Again, thunder rumbled. Both phenomena, however, were markedly less intense now than before. The storm was starting to relent.

  “Revenge for what?” I said. “Unless I am misremembering things badly, you were a woman living in terror of a domineering husband. You were even willing to pretend to be his sister in order to protect your and his assumed identities. That way, nobody in Devon would associate the siblings Jack and Beryl Stapleton with the married couple Jack and Beryl Vandeleur, a Yorkshire schoolmaster of ill renown and his wife.”

  “I also did it so that Jack could romance Laura Lyons without any questions being raised.”

  “While you, likewise, were seemingly free to be courted by Sir Henry, which would encourage him to come to Merripit House and thus afford greater opportunity for your husband to kill him with that terrible hound of his. Stapleton made you an accomplice to all his crimes, until the time came when you rebelled, whereupon he tied you up and locked you away in an upstairs room. If it had not been for Holmes, Sir Henry and myself, he would certainly have killed you. Instead, through our combined efforts, you were liberated from his tyranny and are alive today. You owe us a debt of gratitude. Where on earth does this desire for revenge stem from?”

  “From here.” Beryl Stapleton nodded in the direction of her belly, near which she held the specimen jar with its crawling, agitated occupant. “From the womb which held a child who never lived.”

  “A child?” I said. “But whose?”

  My eye strayed to Sir Henry.

  He shook his head adamantly. “Not mine. It cannot have been.”

  “No,” said Mrs Stapleton. “My husband was the father. I fell pregnant around the time he began his campaign to claim his Baskerville birthright. I did not even know I was with child, not with any certainty, until two months after he died. It was during those same two months that Sir Henry and I became close.”

  “You never told me, Beryl,” said Sir Henry. “You could have said something. I’m sure I would have understood.”

  “Would you?” she retorted. “Or would you have seen a woman with a bad reputation? One whose ‘condition’ would only make life more complicated for you?”

  “We could have come to some kind of accommodation.”

  “Fine words, but hollow, as all men’s words are. Once I realised I was carrying Jack’s baby, I knew I had no choice. To protect myself – and also you, Henry, for I still had favourable feelings towards you – I decided I must leave Devon. I fled to my homeland, with my manservant Antonio. Here in Costa Rica I was still Beryl Garcia, of the well-respected Garcias of San José. I was a woman of good breeding and good standing. I would be able to distance myself from Jack’s crimes. I would have my baby, and in time I would find myself a new husband. This was my plan.”

  “But it did not come to pass,” said Holmes.

  “It did not.” All at once, Mrs Stapleton looked forlorn. “While I was away in England, my family’s fortunes fell. My father’s business collapsed. My mother took ill. My brother, my only sibling, was killed in a knife fight after a drunken argument at a gambling den. My father sold our house in San José to help pay off his debts and moved with my mother to this place, our country residence, which was all he had left. I came to join them here, and together the three of us lived like poor people. It was hard, so hard. We could not afford servants other than Antonio – good old Antonio, loyal come what may – and we had no friends nearby to turn to. For weeks Papa and I tended to my sick mother, even as my belly grew. Then Mama died, but after all that, still we had hope. My child would bring joy. That was what we thought. But the child…”

  She hesitated, then continued.

  “It was not born as it should have been. It was a child conceived in anger and fear, and its body had all the signs of that. It lived for five minutes only. The midwife, a local wise woman, said it was a mercy when it stopped breathing. No child like that child could ever have had a happy, healthy life.”

  Her face had taken on a tragic cast as she recalled this profound sadness. I found myself almost feeling sorry for her, in spite of everything.

  “That was the end for my father,” she said. “The final heartbreak. We buried him over there, Antonio and I, near the river, beside my mother. I was lost. I had nothing any more. A year passed, two, three. And then Antonio was gone, too. My last link to my old life, dead. I was truly alone. Everything was ashes. There seemed little point in living, yet still I lived. I had time to think. I thought about what had happened in England. I thought about Jack, and I thought about you, Henry, and you, Mr Holmes and Dr Watson.”

  Her spine straightened, and the fierce glow of imperiousness returned to her eyes.

  “And the more I thought about the three of you, the more I understood who was responsible for my misery. Jack was a cruel man, yes, and he should not have tried to seize the Baskerville legacy from Sir Charles and Henry in the way he did. But the title and the land should have been his nonetheless. Should have been ours. You three were the ones who denied us our due. You were the ones who ruined my future and left me with nothing – nothing but a mouldering mansion in the depths of the forest.”

  “And we were the ones,” said Holmes, “who must be made to pay.”

  “Yes! Exactly!”

  As Mrs Stapleton exclaimed these words, the specimen jar shook in her hand. The lid slipped a little to one side, leaving a narrow gap. The spider lifted an exploratory leg. The tip of its leg fitted through the gap but the spider could not seem to push the lid fully off. I estimated that the creature’s body was five inches long from its head to the end of its abdomen, and its legs might span a good twelve inches from one side to the other when it was not bounded by the confines of the jar. It was a truly hideous-looking beast, one of nature’s great aberrations.

  “I scraped together what money I could,” said Mrs Stapleton. “I sold my few remaining possessions. I did things that I am not proud of and that I will not talk about. Whatever I had to, in order to earn enough to buy passage back to England. I travelled with nothing but the clothes on my back and a thirst for vengeance. I made my way to Devon, and there I began laying my plans. By chance, one of the first people I encountered in Dartmoor was Dr Mortimer. He too, as it turned out, was nursing a grudge. We had much in common, and decided to join forces.”

  “What was it?” I said. “What shared cause can possibly have united the two of you?”

  Before either she or Mortimer could answer, Holmes said, “This mansion of yours is a rather ramshackle place, isn’t it, Mrs Stapleton?”

  The remark seemed something of a non sequitur, and I was puzzled. Why was Holmes bothered about the state of the house when lives hung in the balance?

  “You characterise it as ‘mouldering’,” he continued. “I would go further and call it ‘crumbling’. There are parts that look ready to collapse at any moment. The pillars which support the verandah you are standing on, to take an example at random. A bird might land on one and it would give way. Not even a large bird, for that matter. Something as small and light as a whippoorwill, for instance.”

  “A whippoorwill?” said Beryl Stapleton contemptuously. “What are you talking about, Mr Holmes? That is a North American bird. There are no whippoorwills in Costa Rica. Have you gone mad?”

  Dr Mortimer was as perplexed as she, and wary, too. “Watch out, Beryl, my dear. Holmes is a slippery one. He may seem to be talking in riddles, but he is up to something.”

  “I was merely making an observation,” Holmes said, with every appearance of nonchalance. “I do not genuinely think that a whippoorwill, or any bird, could bring one of those pillars down. It would take an entity much larger. A chimneysweep, perhaps.”

  I realised then what he meant by these insinuating comments.

  More importantly, so did Benjamin Grier.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  HOIST WITH HER OWN PETARD

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p; Grier moved with a speed that belied his enormous bulk. He bent his knees, then rammed his shoulder into the pillar beside which he and Sir Henry were standing. He hit it with every ounce of strength in his body.

  The old, half-rotten length of timber gave way. With an almighty, splintering crack that was almost as loud as the thunderclap which coincided with it, the pillar split in two.

  The floorboards of the verandah, suddenly deprived of one of their props, sagged. They did not give way entirely, but they dropped just enough to throw Mrs Stapleton off-balance. The specimen jar fell from her hand, landing with a loud clunk.

  Little Harry staggered too. Having been released from his captor’s grasp, he tumbled forward to the stairs. Sir Henry was off like a champion sprinter from the starting blocks. He darted up the verandah steps, grabbed his son and scooped him up into his arms, before backing hurriedly away.

  Mrs Stapleton let out a hoarse, terrible shriek and crumpled, as though in a swoon. This galvanised Dr Mortimer, who for several seconds had been left dumbfounded by the turn of events. He thrust Suarez aside and hastened towards the house. Concern was etched on his features. It seemed that he could think only of his Beryl, his confederate and paramour. He was oblivious to all else.

  And “all else” included me. I snatched up my revolver. I thumbed back the hammer. I was no great marksman, but Mortimer was less than five yards away. I had a clear shot. Blinking the rain out of my eyes, I took aim. I squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked and roared in my hand, and Mortimer plunged headlong to the ground. He did not get up.

  Sherlock Holmes nodded to me in approval. Grier had performed as he had hoped, and so had I. Holmes crossed over to Mortimer’s side, stooped to examine him, then mounted the steps. Swiftly he scanned the floorboards until he found what he was looking for. Raising one leg, he brought his foot down hard, once, twice, three times, with an expression of disgust and loathing etched on his face. Each impact, loud enough to be audible above the rain, was as much a squelch as a thump. He studied the results and seemed satisfied.