I ignored his boasting. “But why should you wish to?”
“Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands, cut off on all sides by the impassable Mire, which has crawled round them in the course of centuries. That is where the rare plants and butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.”
Really, a most unconscionable braggart, even though I quite believed he was telling the truth. I remembered Mrs. Mortimer saying he was reckless, and definitely agreed with her. Before I could say that—or any other tactless remark—there came a sound I barely know how to describe, whether to call it a moan or a howl or a roar. It came from nowhere and everywhere, rising from a murmur to a sound as air-filling as the tolling of a bell when you stand directly beneath the belfry, and then sinking back to a murmur and slowly dying away.
I stared at Stapleton, who had the oddest expression on his face: anxiety, curiosity, almost pain—I have been wrestling ever since with the question of what it was I saw on Stapleton’s face.
“Queer place, the moor,” said he.
“What in the name of God was that?” I said.
He smirked. “The locals claim it’s the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for Sir Hugo’s soul.”
“Fetches don’t do that,” I said, which was an idiotic thing to say, but the noise had unnerved me.
“I don’t think the Hound is a fetch,” said Stapleton. “I’ve had too many people tell me they’ve seen it or that their grandfather saw it. But I don’t think this is the Hound.”
“No?”
“Bogs make queer noises,” said Stapleton with a shrug. “It’s the mud settling or the water rising, or something.”
“No,” I said. “That was a voice.”
Perhaps I was imagining it, but I thought he looked a little taken aback. “Have you ever heard a bittern booming?”
“No, I don’t believe I have.”
“It’s a very rare bird—practically extinct—in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes,” he said, warming to his own theme, “I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns, somewhere out in the Great Grimpen Mire.”
“It is by far the strangest noise I have ever heard,” I said.
“That would be the moor,” said Stapleton. “Look at the hillside over there. What do you make of those?”
The whole steep slope was covered with gray circles of stone, a score of them at least.
“What are they? Sheep pens?”
“No, they are the homes of our ancestors—or at least the homes of the ancestors of those of us native to Devon. Prehistoric man lived densely on the moor and no one in particular has lived there since. The ghosts are as thick out there as gnats in summer, for prehistoric man was no less bloodthirsty than his modern descendants. Probably they fought over the tin mines.” He pointed to a great trench in the opposite hill, then said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, but it is surely Cyclopides.”
A small butterfly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was darting in pursuit of it with extraordinary energy. The creature flew straight for the Mire, but Stapleton never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing, watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration, however reluctant, for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous Mire, when I heard the sound of steps, and turning round, found a woman near me upon the path.
She had to be Miss Stapleton, since there were very few ladies to be found upon the moor, and I had already met the Misses Tenby and Mrs. Mortimer. Moreover, I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. That she most certainly was, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral-tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I had seen in England—slender, tall, and regal. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it was almost like a statue’s, save for the sensitivity of her mouth and her vividly dark eyes. With her perfect figure and fashionable dress, she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path, and I admit I thought for a second of the lamia and the Lorelei. But she was clearly human from the heaving of her chest and the sound of pebbles shifting beneath her feet as she walked.
Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace toward me. I had raised my hat and was trying to think of some explanatory remark that did not include the question: Is your brother a madman? But she did not wait; she said at once, “Go back! Go straight back to London immediately!”
She caught me wrong-footed, and I stared at her in sheeplike blankness.
Her eyes were blazing with urgency. “You must leave,” she said, and I noticed that she had a very faint lisp.
“But why?” I finally managed.
“I cannot explain,” she said, “but you must leave.”
“I won’t abandon Sir Henry,” I said.
It was her turn to stare at me stupidly. “But aren’t you … Oh God, here comes my brother. Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare’s-tails yonder? You wouldn’t think orchids would grow in such a desolate place, would you?”
Stapleton had abandoned the chase and come back to us, breathing hard and flushed with exertion.
“Hello, Beryl,” said he, and it did not seem to me that his greeting was entirely cordial. “I see you have met Dr. Doyle.”
“Yes,” she said with a brilliant, flashing smile that looked as fake as a papier-mâché mask. “I was just telling Dr. Doyle that it is rather late in the season for the true beauties of the moor. Did you catch your prey?”
“No,” Stapleton said, “he eluded me. It is a great pity, for it cannot have been Cyclopides, but I could not get close enough for a proper identification.”
“My brother is a great hunter,” Miss Stapleton said, lightly but with a glance full of meaning. “You should come see his collection and lunch with us.”
“I would be delighted,” I said, mostly truthfully.
A short walk brought us to Merripit House, which was as bleak as the moorland surrounding it.
“Pray ignore the ghost,” Miss Stapleton said as we walked through the stunted orchard toward the house. “She is some eighteenth-century farmwife who died in childbirth. Why she haunts the orchard, I do not know.”
The indifference in her voice was unexpected and repellant, especially given the blood-soaked, sobbing apparition that stood beside the path, her bloody hands outstretched beseechingly.
“As ever, my sister’s command of the facts is rather treacherous,” said Stapleton with some asperity. “She wasn’t a farmwife, she was a hired girl, unmarried. There used to be a barn here, and she gave birth out here alone and bled to death because she was trying to conceal her pregnancy from the farmwife. Also, she’s not eighteenth-century. She died in 1832.”
“Poor girl,” I said. “What happened to the baby?”
“Stillbirth,” said Stapleton with a sigh. “But come in, please. Anthony, we have a guest for lunch!”
We were admitted to the house by a wizened old manservant, dressed in rusty black, who seemed much of a piece with the moor and the stunted orchard and the ghost. But inside Merripit House, there were large rooms, furnished with an elegance in which I thought I detected Miss Stapleton’s hand. I looked out at the moor and could not help wondering how a highly educated man and a lady with taste, assurance, and beauty had ended up here.
“Queer spot to choose, is it not?” said Stapleton, with quite your trick of answering one’s thoughts.
“Have you been here long?” I said.
“Only two years. The residents still consider us newcomers. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. And we contrive to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, B
eryl?”
“Quite happy,” she said with another of her fake, flashing smiles and no conviction at all.
“I had a school,” said Stapleton. “It was in the North country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mold those young minds and of impressing them with one’s own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school, and three of the boys died. My school never recovered from the blow and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am.” He coughed. “I beg your pardon. I did not mean to say all that, just to answer the expression on your face when you looked out at the moor.”
“I’m afraid the moor has not won me over yet,” I said.
“You’ve hardly been here long enough,” said Stapleton with a peculiar sort of gaiety. “Come look at my treasures, Dr. Doyle. Lunch will be ready soon.”
I am not a squeamish person, but Stapleton’s “treasures” nearly made me one, case after case of creatures—moths, butterflies, beetles, other things I wasn’t sure how to classify—each neatly pinned and labeled. Here and there two specimens of the same species were pinned side by side to show both sides of the wings. Other pairs showed male and female. In places, there were neatly labeled gaps where he had yet to acquire his sacrificial victim.
Stapleton darted among the cases much as he had darted after the butterfly that might or might not have been Cyclopides, pointing out particularly rare finds, telling little scraps of stories about tripping full length in ponds or almost falling off cliffs; balancing on fence posts; being chased by angry dogs; finding—very nearly disastrously—a wasp nest the size of his head. He seemed especially proud of the specimens he had collected from that adventure and looking at their sleek and deadly shapes, I supposed he had every right to be.
I was staring in horror at a case of enormous South American beetles when Miss Stapleton appeared in the doorway and said, “Anthony is serving lunch.”
The food was better than I had expected—Anthony’s unprepossessing exterior concealed quite a talent—and the company was … I decided as I walked home that the right word for Stapleton was “overbearing.” He certainly ruled his sister; I had been conscious of her glances at him throughout the meal, watching for disapprobation with no small degree of anxiety. As a schoolmaster, he had probably been a petty tyrant; men who talk about “molding” youth usually are. All those butterflies on pins!
I was just out of sight of Merripit House when I rounded an outcropping and found Miss Stapleton sitting on a rock beside the path. She was flushed and panting and had one hand pressed to her side.
“I did not think to see you again so soon, Miss Stapleton,” I said.
“I have run all this way in order to cut you off, Dr. Doyle,” said she. “I had not even time to put on my hat, and I must not stop or my brother may miss me. I wanted to apologize for my foolish mistake in thinking you were Sir Henry. Please forget what I said, for it has no application to you.”
“But I cannot forget, Miss Stapleton,” said I. “I am Sir Henry’s friend, and his welfare concerns me deeply. Tell me why you were so anxious for Sir Henry to return to London. Please.”
“A woman’s whim, Dr. Doyle,” said she. “When you know me—”
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe that for an instant. You were entirely serious. Please be frank with me—ever since I have been here, life has become like the Great Grimpen Mire, with treacherous ground everywhere and no guide to point the track. Tell me what it was you meant, and I promise I shall convey your warning to Sir Henry.”
For an instant, an expression of indecision passed over her face, but then her eyes hardened again. “You make too much of it, Dr. Doyle. Sir Charles had a morbid fancy that the fetch of the Baskervilles was actually a curse tied to the house and perhaps I have become infected by the idea. That is all.”
“But that is a very serious matter,” I said. “Did Sir Charles ever have a practitioner in for an assessment?”
She looked surprised by the idea, which made no sense. Surely it is the obvious step if you believe yourself or your family or your residence to be cursed? She said hesitantly after some considerable pause, “I believe Sir Charles was more afraid of being proved right than of living with the uncertainty.”
“But if it preyed on his mind—”
“I don’t know!” she said, almost angrily. “But if you are truly Sir Henry’s friend, tell him to leave Dartmoor at once. I must go.” I got the distinct impression, perhaps unfair, that she was fleeing from my questions.
I watched her go—very fleet of foot is Miss Stapleton for a woman who dresses with such elegance—and then I walked thoughtfully back to Baskerville Hall, where I found Sir Henry in the mood for escape. His meetings with Holland, aside from being long, must be unutterably tedious, for they leave him restless and frequently looking like he wants to give it all up and go back to Canada.
I suggested a ride; he was out the door almost before I finished speaking, Wiggins all but bounding at his heels. Later, as we ate, I told him about my encounter with the Stapletons and Miss Stapleton’s strange warning.
“She certainly seems to know something,” said Sir Henry. “I just wish we had some guess as to what.”
“She seems to feel you will be safe away from the moor,” I said, “but experience suggests that that is probably not true.”
“He can steal my boots,” Sir Henry agreed. “Stands to reason he could do worse.”
“Which I suppose begs the question of why he didn’t.”
“The fetch,” Sir Henry said promptly—which I think indicates he had asked himself that question more than once already. “It’s the perfect blind for murder, when you think about it. Once I see a giant dog, I’ll be expecting to die, and from there a fellow this clever will have no trouble in orchestrating the actual event.”
“I shouldn’t have let you go out alone,” I said.
Sir Henry snorted. “One, you most certainly should. Two, you couldn’t have stopped me. Three, I had Wiggins with me, and what’s the point of hiring a cerberus if you’re going to insist on doing his job?”
I shoved aside my most dreadful imaginings and said, “All right. But for God’s sake keep Wiggins with you.”
And this brings me finally to my second peculiar incident.
I had been aware that all was not still and peaceful in Baskerville Hall of a night. I do not often sleep soundly, as I suppose you are aware, and even in my “human phase,” if I have that term correctly, my hearing seems more sensitive than it was before. Thus I was aware of someone pacing in the servants’ quarters, aware of a woman sobbing—and the only woman who lives here, as opposed to coming in by the day, is the stolid and stone-faced Mrs. Barrymore, whom I would judge about as sensitive as a turnip. In the middle of the night I tend to convince myself the weeper is Constance Burry; during the day I consider that I am doing Mrs. Barrymore an injustice. Thus far I have not wanted to confront her. Relations with the Barrymores are awkward, with both sides aware that the Barrymores are leaving and that they do not want to. And Sir Henry is up to his ears in estate matters, trying to learn how to manage his inheritance responsibly. He has no time for staffing concerns—and I think is inclined to drag his feet a little, in hopes that the Barrymores change their minds. I have said nothing. But about this, I really shall have to speak.
For the past several nights, I have heard footsteps. The first time, I thought nothing of it. The second time, I was puzzled, but at that point too sleepy to be concerned. Last night, well past midnight, I heard footsteps come up the servants’ stair beside my room. Barrymore’s tread, but neither of us had rung for him, and his footsteps turned away
from our rooms. I listened as they paced softly and steadily down our hall to the balustraded gallery, and then I opened my door and slunk out after them.
Barrymore was quite right, by the way, not to use the main staircase, which is magnificent but noisy as sin, and I thought I remembered a conversation, overheard and only half listened to, about the servants’ stair in the south wing being unsafe. But it made for a dreadfully long walk through the dark and deserted corridors.
I was fortunate, being no paragon of stealth, that Barrymore is rather deaf, so that I did not need to worry that he would hear me. I followed him down the length of the south wing, becoming more and more perplexed. Finally, at the very end of the hall, he opened the door on the west side and entered the analogue of my room at the other end of the house. I think it almost certain that this was the room from which Constance Burry had escaped.
I crept closer, as close as I dared.
Barrymore was standing at the western window with his unshielded lantern, staring out across the moors. His profile was toward me, and I could read tense expectation in his face and what looked to me like deeply bitter resolve. For some minutes he stood, watching intently. Then he gave a groan (of impatience? of relief?) and shielded the lantern again. I did not wait, but slunk back to my own room, and a few moments later I heard Barrymore’s stealthy footsteps going back down the stairs.
I lay awake for some time puzzling over Barrymore’s behavior, and this morning Sir Henry and I made a plan of action. We both feel strongly that we want answers to some part of the mysteries surrounding us, and I believe my next letter to you will make for interesting reading.
Yours sincerely,
J. H. Doyle
* * *
From Dr. J. H. Doyle to Mr. Crow
Baskerville Hall, October 15th
The Angel of the Crows Page 32