He stilled, cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“All this undisturbed flora and fauna for you to study.” I gave him a bland smile. “Does your family enjoy living out in the wilds, also?”
“Of course.”
I caught the flash of a frown pass across Watson’s features, then it was gone.
“Yes,” Stapleton went on. “I’ve been here long enough to know these moors like the back of my hand. But I would not advise you to wander too far from the marked trails, if you value your health.”
I tried not to bristle. “Meaning?”
Watson turned to point. “My dear, do you see the patches of bright green scattered across this great plain? Stapleton was just telling me that’s the Grimpen Mire.” He suppressed a shudder. “I’ve just seen for myself what happens to even large animals that find themselves stuck in it.”
“Certain death.” Stapleton’s pale eyes were fixed on mine for a second. Then they shifted to a point over my shoulder and he darted to the side, unslinging the camera as he went. “Excuse me an instant,” he called over his shoulder. “It is another Cyclopides.”
Watson and I stood and watched him pursue the butterfly, leaping from tuft to tuft with camera poised.
Not knowing how long he would be occupied, I turned to Watson and said bluntly, “Something about meeting Stapleton’s family that worried you, Doctor?”
He looked surprised, then shook his head, and frowned again. “A misunderstanding, I think, between myself and his sister,” he said. “She lives at Merripit House with Stapleton. At first, she mistook me for Sir Henry and was most insistent that I—or, rather, he—should leave the moor and never return.”
His sister? Ah . . .
“Did she say why?”
“No. But afterwards she definitely did not want her brother to know she had said such a thing . . . It was most strange. Perhaps she, too, is worried about strangers becoming engulfed in the Mire.”
“Or it could be that living here was more his choice than hers,” I ventured. “And she’s giving every newcomer the benefit of her unfortunate experience.”
“Indeed. She claimed to be happy, but her voice didn’t quite match her words.”
And there’s a damn good reason for that . . .
Stapleton was returning, eyes fixed on the view screen on the back of the Nikon as he checked his shots.
“I think I have him that time,” he told us, gaze flicking from one to the other. “Ah, yes.” He turned the camera around and showed us a sharp close-up of a fairly ordinary-looking brown-and-yellow butterfly. “Really quite beautiful, isn’t he?”
The gentleness in his voice almost made me shiver. I left it to Watson to make the right noises.
“I must be getting on, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen?”
“Of course,” Watson said. “Oh, just one last thing before you go, Miss Fox. A few minutes before we met, you didn’t happen to hear a loud, well, howling sound, did you?”
“A howling?” I repeated. “As in a wolf, or a dog?”
“Yes.” Watson seemed almost embarrassed to ask. “It was the weirdest, strangest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
I shook my head.
“I told you, Dr. Watson, I should not be surprised to learn that what we heard was the cry of a bittern,” Stapleton said. “At one time they were practically extinct in England, but the population has boomed in recent years.”
I had never knowingly heard the sound made by a bittern, but I was not convinced. And if the look on his face was anything to go by, neither was Dr. Watson.
Stapleton invited me to join the pair of them for lunch at Merripit, but I declined—much, I suspect, to his relief. Instead, I continued on the track leading me towards the holiday cottages, not breaking stride until I was out of their sight.
Then I ducked off the trail and left the rucksack marked by a small pile of stones, turning back without it. I employed every stealth technique I’d ever been taught to cover the ground between me and the Stapletons’ without being seen. That telephoto lens of his was a hazard I could have done without. I had no choice but to work around it.
I managed to creep into position nearby, and lay waiting while Watson no doubt enjoyed a pleasant lunch with Jack Stapleton. I’d been told he could be charming company when he set his mind to it.
And downright bloody nasty when he was thwarted.
Watson left Merripit House sooner than I expected and started out in the direction of Baskerville Hall. I debated going after him, hesitating long enough over the decision for it to be taken out of my hands.
A slim, dark-haired woman slipped out of a doorway at the side of the house and hurried across the moor on an intercept course with the doctor. Knowing I wouldn’t reach her beforehand—not without risk of exposing us both—I stayed put.
It wasn’t long before I saw her returning, and this time was able to slip out of my hiding place and stop her before she got back to the house. Her stride faltered when she saw me waiting for her by the path, glancing sideways at Merripit as if to satisfy herself that we were not going to be seen.
“Beryl Stapleton?”
I hardly needed her tentative nod of reply. She wore a pair of jeans with a polo-necked sweater, and hugged thin arms around her body, though it was hardly cold.
“When?” she asked.
“As soon as you’re ready,” I said. “Pack a bag and I’ll have you out of here this afternoon.”
A cloud passed across her face, stricken with indecision. She glanced behind her again, over towards the house. Or it might have been cast further, in the direction Watson had taken.
“I–I need another day,” she said, her voice broken but still with the lilting South American accent of her birthplace. “Two at the most. I—”
She broke off as I stepped forwards, took her wrist and pushed back her sleeve. The bruises on her forearm were livid, and fresh.
“Why, when he does this to you?”
She wrenched her arm loose with more force than it needed. “I cannot explain. I know only that he plans a great wrong, and I must stop him—”
“If you tell me, I’ll stop him for you,” I said. I thought of Holmes hiding on the moor, and of Watson staying close by. “Help may be closer to hand than you realise.”
“It would be my word against his, and what’s the use in that?” she cried. “He has doctors lined up to swear I am incapable of knowing my own mind, that I am delusional. All you will succeed in doing is making him more devious and more cruel than he is already.”
I sighed, pulling together a patience I didn’t feel. “Beryl, you asked for help to get away from this man. That’s why I’m here. Why risk your safety any more than you have to—any more than you have already?”
She hunched down into herself, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Because this is partly my fault,” she whispered. “And because it is not only my safety that is at stake.”
And with that she whirled away and ran back towards the house, her dark hair streaming out behind her like a pennant.
“Come in, Mr. Holmes,” I said, answering a quiet knock on the cottage door. “My turn to cook for you, I think.”
I’d spent another soggy day keeping obs on the comings and goings of Merripit House, returning to the cottage tired, wet, cold, and irritable. A hot shower and a change of clothes, though, had improved my mood no end, as did getting the wood-burning stove lit and a stew bubbling away on top in a cast-iron pot.
Sherlock Holmes made himself at home in one of the dining chairs while I dished up the stew into bowls. We ate in companionable silence. It wasn’t until he’d set aside his cutlery that the intensity of his gaze turned on me in full.
“Well, Charlie, it would seem that our purposes do indeed intersect.”
“Oh?”
“You have been keeping an eye on Sir Henry, I believe.”
“Not as such,” I said. “I’m keeping an eye on the Stapletons. It just so happens that Sir Henry is spending
more and more time there.”
“Ah. I allow the distinction.” He lifted his coffee mug in salute. “He seems much enamoured of Miss Stapleton, from what I can gather.”
“Yes, he does rather, doesn’t he? You may want to nip that in the bud.”
He made no comment other than to raise one eyebrow. “Is there some reason a wealthy baronet would not make the lady a most suitable husband?”
“None at all . . . if she weren’t already married,” I said. “Jack and Beryl Stapleton are not brother and sister—they’re husband and wife.”
Holmes absorbed this news in silence for a moment. “You have proof?”
“Check the records. He used to run a school somewhere up north. The pair were pictured in the news reports when it closed.”
He nodded slowly, spoke almost to himself. “Ah, yes, of course. And no doubt he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.” His gaze turned sharp. “But she has tried to warn off Sir Henry several times—first the note, and then mistaking Watson for Sir Henry here.”
“Note?”
“In London, before Sir Henry came down here.”
I nodded. “I don’t know about that, but I believe Stapleton coerced her into falling in with his plans. He certainly physically and psychologically abuses her.”
“And what is your role in this, if you are now prepared to tell me?”
“I’m here to get her out.”
“So, why haven’t you?”
I sighed. “Not for want of trying. I don’t do kidnapping. She asked for help and she has to want to leave. The arrangements were all in place before I came down here, but since Sir Henry’s arrival she’s turned . . . reluctant, shall we say. She believes he’s in danger.”
“From Stapleton? Indeed, he is,” Holmes said, his gaunt face grave in the firelight. “Stapleton is a Baskerville. He knows if he can rid himself of Sir Henry, he’s next in line for both title and fortune. I very much doubt he will let the lady—be she wife or sister—stand in his way.”
I woke in the night and found myself grabbing instinctively for the SIG Sauer, which I’d left covered by a shirt on the chair next to the bed. Heart pounding, I sat upright with senses straining against the darkness for whatever had startled me from sleep.
A second later it came again, the thud of a heavy shoulder to the door of the cottage, followed by muttered curses as the sturdy oak held fast.
I reached toward the lamp, mind flipping through scenarios. Someone was clearly trying to break in. Were they doing so because they knew I was in here? Or because they thought the place was empty?
Could be Jack Stapleton, come to put a stop to his wife’s escape plan . . .
Putting on a light would either warn the intruder I was awake and prepared, or warn him I was here at all. Neither option was bad.
I flicked on the light.
The thudding ceased, then a fist began to bang against the wooden planks more desperately than before. I heard a man’s voice, high with alarm, his words incoherent.
Throwing back the duvet, I slid my feet into the boots I’d left by the bedside and scooped up a flashlight and the pistol. I was still otherwise fully dressed, so it was only a moment before I was by the door, watching the latch jump and rattle with the force of the assault from the outside.
“Back up!” I shouted. “Move away from the door.”
“Let me in!” roared the man’s voice. It was not one I’d heard before, but so twisted by terror, I’m not sure I would have recognised it anyway. “For the love of God, let me in!”
“I’m not opening the door until you move away from it,” I shouted back.
The hammering stopped, and I thought he was complying with my order, but the next thing I heard was a muffled cry of fear, then his running footsteps, retreating.
I yanked open the bolt and came out of the cottage in a fast crouch, with the gun extended in my right hand, supported by the flashlight in my left. I caught a glimpse of a bolting figure disappearing between two of the cottages. He ran wildly, arms flailing for balance on the rough ground.
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an animal, big and muscular, streak after him in the light from a clear moon. All I gleaned from that fractional view was an impression of a dark outline moving with speed and aggression, its head and jaws flecked with something like the phosphorescence I’d once seen trailing behind a night ferry.
“What the—?”
I took an involuntary step back. The solid reality of the cottage wall grounded me. I remembered Sir Henry’s talk of the family legend that stalked the moor—the hell hound that might very well have frightened his uncle to death.
Squaring my shoulders, I clicked off my flashlight and stepped away from the cottage into a bright patch of moonlight, telling myself firmly that I did not believe in ghosts, and ghouls, and things that went bump in the night.
However, I did believe in the exorcistic powers of twelve 9mm hollow point rounds, and in my ability to place every one of them into the centre of a moving target, even in half-light.
I’d hardly taken half a dozen paces when there was a shriek in the middle distance, mingled with the rumbling bellow of a chase hound in full pursuit of prey.
The door to the cottage Sherlock Holmes had been using swung open, and two men burst out, causing me to duck behind the corner of another of the buildings, out of sight.
“The hound!” cried Holmes. “Come, Watson! Great heavens, if we are too late!”
The pair ran past my position without pause and were soon swallowed up by the gloom. I considered my options.
Stapleton wished to get rid of Sir Henry Baskerville, that much I knew. If this weird apparition was all part of that plan, then it was not my business. Besides, I’d noted the old army Browning in Watson’s hand as he passed. They were at least as well equipped to deal with whatever the strange animal might be.
And there were two of them . . .
I only had it confirmed who the stranger was a day or so later, when I called in to Grimpen again to pick up my email, and buy milk and bread. I happened to meet Dr. Mortimer just leaving his surgery, bag in hand.
“You will no doubt be pleased to hear you need not worry about the escaped prisoner, Selden, any longer, Miss Fox.”
“Oh? Has he been captured?” I asked, although it hadn’t taken much working out what was the likely fate of the man. Who else might have been loose on the moor?
“In a way,” Mortimer replied. “The poor man was no doubt stumbling around in the dark when he seems to have fallen and broken his neck—the night before last, it would be.”
“Poor man?” I queried. “If half of what he was supposed to have done to his victims was true, it’s hard to feel much real sympathy for him.”
Mortimer blinked a couple of times. Not the response he’d been expecting, clearly. But I’d never subscribed to the tradition of not speaking ill of the dead.
To cover his confusion, he asked, “And have you otherwise been enjoying your stay so far?”
“I think I’m starting to get to know the moors a little,” I said, thinking of the GPS in my rucksack. “How is Sir Henry?”
If anything, Mortimer’s frown deepened.
“I am on my way to see him now.”
“He’s not ill, I trust?”
“Oh no, but he is . . . concerned. Dr. Watson promised to stay with him until this business was over, and now I understand he has gone back to London on some urgent business, leaving Sir Henry to his own devices.”
“Well, I’m sure he will appreciate your company.”
“Indeed. Although he has been at Baskerville Hall only a short time, already he has made many friends in the area. The Stapletons have invited him to dine this evening.”
I left the doctor climbing into his old BMW and hurried back across the moor path to the cottage. Sure enough, the one Sherlock Holmes had been using was empty, the door locked, and no sign of his occupation visi
ble through the windows.
Had he really gone to London with Watson, and left Sir Henry so vulnerable? Something about that just didn’t sit right. I could only hope that his actions were somehow for the sake of the game in which Sherlock Holmes—if Watson’s blog was anything to go by—seemed to take such delight.
It was not only in the hope of finally convincing Beryl Stapleton to put her escape plan into action that I took up station watching Merripit House as afternoon slid into evening. If Holmes had indeed gone to London with Watson, I felt I owed it to him to keep an eye on his charge while I was here.
The lights in the house came on, shining like navigation lights across the moor. The Stapletons’ housekeeper could be seen bustling in the kitchen, preparing food for their guest, and setting the table in the dining room.
But of Beryl Stapleton, I failed to catch even a glimpse.
Even when Sir Henry arrived, and the two men sat down to eat, she didn’t put in an appearance. Stapleton had hospitalised her several times in the past, although he’d always managed to talk or threaten her out of pressing charges. For a few moments I wondered if he’d done so again, or even if Holmes had taken my words to heart and had somehow whisked her off to safety in London with him, but dismissed the idea as soon as it formed. To do so would mean abandoning his duty to Sir Henry, and I remained unconvinced that he would act that way, even to rescue an abused spouse.
So, where was she?
I circled the house, staying out of range of the lights. Still, I didn’t see her, but I hesitated over going in to find out. Suppose Jack Stapleton had realised what she was planning, had locked her up somewhere, and was now waiting for me to reveal myself?
The soft scrape of boots behind me on the path had me scuttling into cover. Against the darkening sky I could just make out three figures approaching, and my pulse began to pound. So, Stapleton did suspect something was amiss, and he’d called in reinforcements.
For the Sake of the Game Page 27