The Angel of the Crows

by Katherine Addison

  “Because they fly?”

  “Among other reasons. I only know about them what I have read in books, which say they circle their habitations like doves of peace, singing with unearthly beauty.”

  “That sounds lovely,” I said dubiously.

  “So I’m told,” said Crow. “But I don’t want to find out.”

  PART SEVEN

  THE SECRET OF THE MIRE

  23

  A Third Appeal for Help

  The stick was a good one, of the type called a Penang lawyer. The plate on it read: To James Mortimer M.R.C.S. from his friends of the C.C.H., 1884. The iron ferrule was much worn down, and the stick itself was quite banged about, with what looked like teeth marks below the plate.

  “As a carte de visite, this leaves a great deal to be desired,” I said to Crow.

  Crow said from his fortress of scrapbooks, “Assuming that it has not been stolen—or, I suppose, inherited—we at least know the fellow’s name.”

  “And profession,” I agreed. “And he has a dog which he allows to carry his stick.”

  “Between that and the remarkable amount of wear he’s put on it in four years, I think we can safely call him a country practitioner.”

  “CCH—Charing Cross Hospital or Coursers of something-something?”

  “Charing Cross, almost certainly. On the occasion of his leaving for his country practice with the great esteem of his colleagues.”

  “Not an iota of ambition, then.”

  “Or some other circumstance in his life that required him to leave London.” Crow sounded vaguely horrified at the thought.

  “Such as?”

  “An invalid wife. A nervous breakdown. Mostly, people move to the country for their health, don’t they?”

  “Some people,” I said dryly, “do not like the city.”

  He gave me the look that meant he thought I was making a joke that he did not understand. “Do you not … like London?”

  “It is a cesspit,” I said.

  He stared at me. “Well, yes, I suppose it is.… But why do you stay if you do not like it?”

  “The I.A.F. doctors are here,” I said, “and I have nowhere else to go. My family has disowned me, no hospital in the Empire would take me on, and I have not the faintest hope of being able to maintain a private practice, even if I could afford to buy one, which I cannot. London was invented for people like me: half-pay officers, loungers, idlers, wastrels.”

  “You are harsh,” said Crow. He had put aside his scrapbook and was watching me intently.

  “I am truthful,” I said. I turned away from his gaze and crossed to the bow window.

  “You haven’t been to an aetheric practitioner yet, have you?”

  “Well, you see,” I said wearily, “there’s a snag. Any aetheric practitioner I go to is going to recognize instantly that I’m a hell-hound and probably that I have a vampiric binding. Any respectable practitioner will refuse to treat me until I am registered, and any non-respectable practitioner will probably at once stoop to blackmail. And besides, I don’t want the aetheric equivalent of a backstreet abortionist.”

  “Have you spoken to Oksana Timofeyevna?” asked Crow. “There must be aetheric practitioners who are sympathetic to the plight of the unregistered.”

  I said nothing.

  “Doyle? We aren’t fighting again, are we?”

  He sounded so alarmed that I blurted out the truth: “I’m afraid that the practitioner will agree with the doctors that there’s nothing more to be done. Assuming they don’t turn me in to the police.”

  “I’m quite sure that there’s something the practitioner can do,” Crow said. “We will talk to Oksana Timofeyevna and see whom she recommends.”

  It was childish, but what made the difference was the word “we.”

  “You will come with me?” I said, knowing full well how pathetic I sounded.

  “Of course,” said Crow.

  The whole time I had been staring blindly out at Baker Street, and now my attention was caught by one of the pedestrians. “I say, Crow, I think I see the man who belongs to that stick.”

  “What makes you say that?” Crow said, getting up to come see.

  “The length of his stride. You see, there, how he keeps having to pull himself up short to keep from bumping into the people ahead of him?”

  “The tallish skinny fellow?”

  “Without a walking stick, yes.”

  “I see nothing to contradict your theory. And, yes, look! He’s ringing our bell. Well done, Doyle!”

  The approbation in his voice was perfectly sincere, and my face heated.

  “It’s nothing compared to—”

  Jennie tapped on the door. “Please, Mr. Crow, it’s that gentleman who was here last night.”

  “Show him up, Jennie,” Crow said, and I limped back to my chair to be out of the way.

  The gentleman who belonged to the stick suited it, being also clearly once high-quality, but now shabby and covered in dog hair. He was tall, rather lanky, and possessed of a pair of mild, myopic, rather dream-fogged eyes. I was not surprised that he had left his walking stick behind.

  “My stick!” were the first words out of his mouth. “Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been racking my brains to think where I left it. You would be horrified at how often that happens.” He blinked mildly at Crow. “You must be the Angel of London.”

  “I am,” said Crow, delighted. “And you must be James Mortimer.”

  “How did you—oh, yes, of course. My stick.”

  “Pray have a seat,” said Crow, “and let me know how Dr. Doyle and I can help you.”

  The mild eyes blinked at me. “Are you a medical doctor?”

  “I served with the I.A.F.M.C. in Afghanistan,” I said.

  “Good gracious,” said Dr. Mortimer. “Perhaps you can be of help to me. It would certainly benefit from someone whose physical courage is greater than my own.”

  “What would benefit?” said Crow.

  “It’s about the Hound.”

  I prayed I had not jumped visibly. Crow said, “The Hound?”

  “Of the Baskervilles,” said Dr. Mortimer.

  “Perhaps you had best start at the beginning,” said Crow.

  “I shall endeavor to do so,” said Dr. Mortimer, “although it is difficult to know where the beginning is.” He pondered for a moment and finally said, “I suppose it begins with Sir Hugo. The Baskervilles have preserved a transcript of the testimony at the inquest into the death of Sir Hugo Baskerville in 1656. The original manuscript is lost, but there is a clean copy that was made in 1742, and there is no reason to doubt its accuracy. I shall summarize it as best I can.” He cleared his throat. “Sir Hugo was a bad man, violent and profane and cruel as a cat is cruel, so much so that he was actually examined for possession in 1653 and pronounced clear of demons. He was simply one of those men who enjoy other people’s pain and fear. In 1656, he became enamored of a village girl, and the more she refused him, the more determined he grew to have her. Eventually, the inevitable happened, and one day when her father and brothers were gone, Sir Hugo carried the poor girl off to Baskerville Hall. He locked her in a first-floor bedroom, and then he and his friends proceeded to get vilely drunk, and the girl—who could hear them, of course—finally, in utmost desperation, climbed down the ivy and ran.

  “She was lucky in that no one saw her go, unlucky in that shortly thereafter Sir Hugo took it into his head to bring her some food—and God only knows what else he meant to do—and found that she had escaped.”

  Dr. Mortimer took off his glasses and fiddled with them nervously. “He was infuriated beyond anything any of his friends had ever seen. He leapt onto the table and shook his fist at the rafters and howled that he would give himself entire to the forces of darkness if he could but catch the girl that night.”

  “That seems a singularly reckless oath,” Crow said disapprovingly.

  “I believe it may fairly be said that Sir Hugo was a reckless sort of
person. Also, the local people all believe he had sold his soul to the Devil long before that. In any event, none of his friends seem to have been bothered, and one of them had the bright idea of putting the hounds on her scent. The Coursers of Baskerville were known then and are known now for their bravery and tenacity on a scent, and the poor girl had left behind a handkerchief in her flight. The hounds set off baying, with Sir Hugo right behind them, and his drunken friends following as best they could.

  “They quickly lost sight of Sir Hugo, but kept following the noise of the hounds. It was unfortunately a full moon and a clear night, so that no one was tempted to give up. They followed the baying of the hounds for some length of time that none of them could later agree upon, until quite suddenly the baying stopped. Moments later they heard a terrible scream, which cut off even more terribly. They drew close together, but kept going, there being both courage and foolishness in numbers. Very shortly, Sir Hugo’s black mare bolted past them, broken reins trailing, and then they came upon the hounds, who were clustered whimpering at the head of a deep dip in the moor. The local word is ‘goyal,’ and they can still show you Hugo’s Goyal with perfect certainty.

  “In the goyal were two dead bodies, and here I want to be as exact as I can. Sir Hugo was lying flat on his back with his throat torn out. Nearby was the girl with her throat cut and Sir Hugo’s hunting knife in her hand. She was naked.”

  “Naked?” Crow and I said in near unison.

  “Stark naked,” said Dr. Mortimer. “But her clothes, lying nearby, were not torn as a man would tear them off, but—still perfectly layered—torn as if from the inside. And all around Sir Hugo’s body were the footprints of a hound far larger than any in the Baskerville coursing pack.”

  “The girl was a hell-hound?” said Crow.

  “That was the conclusion of the inquest,” said Dr. Mortimer. “No human being could have made the wound in Sir Hugo’s throat, and with all of Sir Hugo’s friends accounted for, where else could the beast have come from?”

  “And it explains her suicide,” I said, cold despite the fire in the grate.

  “Her family swore she was not a hell-hound, but I think it’s rather an open question whether they’d been hiding her affliction—which was a capital crime during the Protectorate—or whether Sir Hugo’s oath had perhaps crossed some desperate prayer on the girl’s part. For he did indeed catch her.”

  “Indeed,” said Crow. “This is a most interesting piece of local history. But why has it brought you to my sitting room?”

  “Well,” said Dr. Mortimer with a deep breath, “when the next baronet, Sir Rodger, was dying, the servants reported seeing ‘giant glowing eyes’ outside the windows at night. And on the morning after his death, the footprints of a gigantic hound were discovered in the flower beds beneath his bedroom windows. There was then, and continues to be to this day, considerable argument over whether it was the ghost of the unfortunate girl—Constance Burry was her name—or an actual fetch. But it has faithfully appeared for the death of every baronet since. Which brings me to Sir Charles, who is the most recently deceased baronet, if you will forgive the infelicitous phrasing. Sir Charles was my patient, and I must tell you that he was a man with a serious heart condition. He was also a timid man, a hypochondriac, and a man with a morbid fear of dogs. When he assumed the baronetcy, it was the first time that anyone could remember someone other than a Baskerville being Master of Hounds for the Baskerville Course. They are quite hoping the new baronet will be a man of different mettle.”

  “They don’t know the new baronet?”

  “Sir Charles was unmarried and childless. The new baronet is a Colonial. His father, Sir Charles’s younger brother John, having quarreled with their father over his choice of a Colonial wife, followed his wife back to her home—in Virginia, I believe—and never returned to England, dying when Sir Henry—for that is the new baronet’s name—was still a small boy. Sir Henry, the estate solicitors found farming in Canada. But I have become sidetracked. My point was simply that Sir Charles dreaded dogs, even lapdogs. He believed wholeheartedly that the Hound is a fetch, and he dreaded meeting it. When he began to think he was catching glimpses of a spectral black dog on his evening walks—on the grounds of the Hall only, for he would never venture on the moor at night—I admit I did think it might be his imagination. True fetches are so rare, and the legend of the Hound is so dramatic, that it would be very easy for an overimaginative man like Sir Charles to talk himself into his own death. But when he did die, in the yew walk at Baskerville Hall, the footprints of a giant hound were found around his body; therefore, I decided that the Baskervilles did indeed have a fetch and it had been warning Sir Charles as best it could.”

  “But now you are not so sure,” said Crow.

  “Now I am beginning to wonder if there is not some other explanation. Sir Henry is only just reaching England today, but yesterday one of the gardeners came to me, white as a sheet, and said he’d found a dog’s footprints, too large to be natural, in the flower beds along the south wall of the house. Those rooms aren’t in use any longer, but one of them is the window Constance Burry climbed out of in making her escape. Another is the bedroom window of that Restoration Sir Rodger. And I do not know what to think.”

  “It can hardly be a death visitation for someone who isn’t there,” said Crow. “Are there any other Baskervilles—cousins or the like—at Baskerville Hall?”

  “No. Sir Charles’s father, another Hugo, was an only child, and of his three sons, Charles had no children, John had only the one and himself died in Virginia, and Rodger, the black sheep of the family in the good old-fashioned sense, made England too hot to hold him and went to South America, where he died of yellow fever in 1876. Sir Henry is the last of the Baskervilles.”

  “Then perhaps it is the ghost of Constance Burry,” I said.

  “But the footprints have never before shown up except when one of the baronets was dying. Certainly never when the baronet wasn’t even there.”

  “You think it is an actual living hell-hound,” said Crow.

  “I don’t know what to think,” said Dr. Mortimer. “But I am concerned for Sir Henry’s safety. For if there is a mortal hell-hound, the possibility exists that Sir Charles was deliberately frightened to death.”

  “Murder,” said Crow.

  “It is what I fear,” said Dr. Mortimer.

  Sir Henry Baskerville was arriving at Waterloo Station that morning, and the crux of Dr. Mortimer’s visit was what he ought to do with the new baronet.

  Crow was perplexed. “Why should he not go to the home of his fathers? Any evil which can befall him there can just as easily befall him in London—more easily, perhaps. After all, a fetch predicts death. It does not cause it.”

  “And if the footprints belong to a living being?”

  “Then Sir Henry can be defended with locked doors and a load of buckshot,” said Crow.

  “You are flippant, Mr. Crow.”

  “Not at all. A shotgun is an excellent defense against almost all mortal creatures, and I would suggest you purchase one, for peace of mind if for no other reason.”

  “But Sir Henry!” said Dr. Mortimer. “I am to meet his train in less than an hour!”

  “And you should certainly do so,” said Crow. “Give me twenty-four hours to consider your problem. At ten o’clock tomorrow morning, come back—bring Sir Henry with you—and I shall give you my best opinion on the matter.”

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Mortimer, scribbling a note of the appointment on his shirt cuff. “I shall do that.” And he hurried out—at the last moment remembering to take his stick with him.

  24

  Sir Henry Baskerville

  The next morning the doorbell rang at ten o’clock, so promptly that I was immediately sure it was not Dr. Mortimer’s doing. And indeed, when Jennie led our guests upstairs, it was Sir Henry Baskerville who came in first.

  He was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, with thic
k black eyebrows and a square jaw. He wore a tweed suit of Colonial cut and had the deep crow’s-feet of one who has spent the great majority of his time out of doors, but he most definitely had the bearing of a gentleman.

  “This is Sir Henry Baskerville,” said Dr. Mortimer unnecessarily.

  The baronet’s sharp eyes were taking in everything: the double-stacked and overflowing bookcases, the chemical apparatus, the bulging scrapbooks, Crow’s ink-black wings, my cane, finishing with a quick assessment of our faces. He said, “The odd thing, Mr. Crow, is that if Dr. Mortimer had not told me of his appointment, I might have suggested coming ’round myself. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I’ve had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I can give it.”

  He had a decided Colonial accent. I wondered how many Englishmen would hear the voice, not notice the watchful eyes, and take the new baronet for a rube. Anyone who did would be in for an ugly surprise.

  “Pray take a seat, Sir Henry,” said Crow. “Do I understand that you have had some adventure since you arrived in London?”

  “Nothing of much importance. Only a joke, as likely as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning.”

  He laid an envelope on the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, grayish in color. The address “SIR HENRY BASKERVILLE, NORTHUMBERLAND HOTEL” was printed in rough characters, the postmark Charing Cross, and the date of posting the preceding evening.

  “Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?” asked Crow.

  “No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer.”

  “But, of course, Dr. Mortimer was already stopping there?”

  “No, I had been staying with a friend,” said Dr. Mortimer. “There was no possible indication we meant to go to any hotel, never mind which one.”

  Crow cocked his head and regarded Sir Henry. “Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements.” Out of the envelope, he took a half sheet of foolscap paper folded into fourths. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran, “AS YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE OR YOUR REASON KEEP AWAY FROM THE MOOR.” The word “moor” only was printed in ink.