The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries Book 4)

by Chris Dolley

  “You’re not intending to buy a house here then?”

  “No, this is but a fleeting visit.”

  “Seems an awfully long way to come for a fleeting visit,” said the doctor. “Why not stay for the summer?”

  “Capital idea!” said Henry. “You could star in your own movie. Journey to The Centre of The Diamond Quarry. I’m sure the station master at Grimdark would let us borrow a train for the concussion scene.”

  I didn’t like the sound of ‘concussion scene.’

  “You’d be in no danger,” said Dr Morrow. “We’d use a double for the actual impact.”

  “You haven’t seen the good doctor’s doubles, have you?” said Henry. “They are remarkably realistic.”

  “It’s what makes Quarrywood movies stand out from the rest,” said Sir Robert. “Other moving pictures look contrived and pedestrian compared to ours.”

  “It’s true,” said T. Everett. “The first time I saw a Quarrywood movie — The Quarry of the Apes, I think it was — I couldn’t believe my eyes. Apes were having sword fights — on horseback! — and guys were having their arms lopped off! I’ve never seen a theatre audience so enthralled. We sold more vials of smelling salts that evening than we did orange juice.”

  “Of course they weren’t real apes,” said Dr Morrow. “Or real people having their arms lopped off. They were automata and prometheans. Have you heard of prometheans, Roderick? Corpses sewn back together and reanimated?”

  “I’m on first name terms with several,” I said. “I’ve even exchanged words with Guy Fawkes.”

  “Wasn’t he reanimated in London?” said Dr Morrow. “And then incarcerated by the police. I thought this was your first visit to England, Roderick?”

  There was slight rise in the Worcester heart-rate, but a fleeting one. My little grey cells were fully lubricated by this time of the evening, steeped in fine Burgundy and the first flush of the Old Ruby.

  “Ah, you’re thinking of the gunpowder plot Guy Fawkes,” I said. “I’m talking about the Argentinean one. He has two Fs in his name. Two Gs as well, I think. Rum fellow. He was a pirate, you know? Grief-stricken when they couldn’t reanimate his parrot.”

  I think I got away with it. Dr Morrow gave me a strange look but, as a person who’d been collecting strange looks for most of his life, I found it little stranger than most.

  “They’re a lot cheaper than actors,” said Sir Robert, returning the conversation back to his beloved Quarrywood. “Prometheans. And less trouble. Tell an actor his part calls for an arm lopping and he’ll hand in his notice. Not so with these réanimé chappies.”

  “Of course, I do sew their arms back on,” said Dr Morrow. “After all, they’ve all been sewn together so many times, what’s one more?”

  “Quite,” I said. “I don’t suppose you need any real actors in your moving pictures, do you? You could use prometheans for every role.”

  “Not really,” said Henry. “They do have their limitations. If one wants someone to be stabbed, or have a tree fall on them, they have no equal. But they can’t act. One needs an expressive face for close-ups. Prometheans don’t have the range.”

  “Or the intellect,” said Dr Morrow, looking at me a little more closely than I was comfortable with. “I can’t see any scarring on your head, Roderick, from when that train struck you.”

  “It was a glancing blow,” I said. “The train hit the stagecoach I was travelling in, and I was thrown out. It was more a case of a dull thump as my head hit the ground than a whack from a charging train.”

  “I think we’ll lose the stagecoach for the movie,” said Henry. “It’ll look better if the train gives you a good whack and sends you flying high through the air. And we’ll have to give you a good reason for being on the tracks in the first place.”

  .

  “He could be tied to the tracks,” said T. Everett.

  “Capital!” said Henry. “The Lizard Man ties Roderick to the railway tracks then, just as Roderick frees himself — whack! — along comes the train.”

  I had to ask. “Did you say Lizard Man?”

  “Quarrywood is famous for its Lizard Men,” said T. Everett.

  “We try to use them in all our films,” said Henry. “They make excellent villains. They look like men, but they have these big dinosaur heads and tails.”

  “People don’t realise how hard it is to portray villainy,” said Sir Robert. “Or how long it takes. When one only has twenty minutes, one can’t afford to keep pausing the action for a close up of the actor so he can twirl his moustaches in a menacing fashion.”

  “In the States we use the hat,” said T. Everett. “If an actor’s wearing a white hat, he’s a good guy. If he’s wearing a black hat, he’s bad.”

  “What about tan hats?” I asked.

  “They’re for bystanders,” said T. Everett. “They’re only there to make up the numbers.”

  “We tried hats in The Quarry of the Apes,” said Sir Robert. “Didn’t look right.”

  “Especially on the Lizard Men,” said Henry. “Dashed difficult to feel threatened by a Lizard Man wearing a sombrero.”

  “Even a black one,” said Sir Robert. “We had to re-shoot every scene.”

  “But now we have the balance right,” said Henry. “One only needs a glimpse of a Lizard Man to know he’s up to no good. No need for hats or close-ups of twirling moustaches. It lets the action run much smoother.”

  ~

  The ladies returned just before midnight. I didn’t see Emmeline at first. Naturally my first thought was that she’d tied herself to a stout table — probably using a curtain she’d pulled from its rings — but, no, she was merely hanging back to increase the space between her and Lady Julia.

  Fortunately, Lady Julia favoured early nights, and only stayed long enough to glare at me twice before exiting stage left.

  I counted to five before ambling over to Emmeline, adding a nonchalant whistle to convey an aura of detached innocence in case anyone was watching.

  “She’s like a terrier,” said Emmeline, keeping her voice low. “She didn’t stop all evening. Questioning me about my family, friends, you.”

  “Me?”

  “She’s not sure if I’m an impressionable, silly girl or your partner in crime! And I can’t be beastly back to her because everyone thinks I’m Lily. I can’t get Lily into trouble, so I have to sit back and take it.”

  “She’ll relent,” I said, trying to sound a good deal more confident than I felt.

  “I hope so. I can’t sit through another evening like tonight. I’ll explode!”

  “I’ll have a word with Reeves. He’ll come up with a plan, I’m sure.”

  We couldn’t talk privately after that. Henry came over, swiftly followed by Ida, and from then on the conversation switched to all things Quarrywood.

  Until a woman’s scream stopped all conversation dead.

  Five

  all ran to the source of the scream, and found Lily standing in the hallway, staring up at the landing, one hand clasped to her mouth.

  I followed her gaze and started. Was it a ghost? It looked like a ghost. Its face was a glowing skull — a ghostly, shimmering, greenish glow — shining out from beneath a hood. She, or it, wore a long black dress and was oiling along the ill-lit landing.

  “It’s Theodosia!” said Henry. “She’s the image of her portrait.”

  Henry looked at his father, whose face had turned ashen. “It can’t be,” said Sir Robert.

  Henry set off up the stairs at a fair lick. I followed. The ghost had turned into the very corridor that Emmeline and I had had our earlier conversation.

  But when Henry and I reached the corridor, it was empty. Every door in the corridor was closed, save one: the nearest on the right, which was wide open.

  The Worcester heart was beating at a considerable rate. The room in front of us was dark, the only light coming from a single gas lamp on the landing behind us. If the ghost was inside the room, it was hiding its
glowing face.

  A footman arrived with a lamp. Henry took it and slowly entered the room, holding the lamp high in front of him. We all shuffled after him.

  Then there was a collective gasp. There was a message on the mirror over the chimney breast.

  Written in rouge, it said in large letters, ‘He dies tomorrow!’

  ~

  We searched the entire bedroom. There was no sign of the ghost, and nowhere anyone pretending to be a ghost could have gone. Both windows were locked, and Sir Robert was adamant there were no secret passages.

  “Our family have lived here for generations. If there was a secret passage, I’d know about it.”

  “I searched high and low for secret passages when I was a boy,” said Henry. “I measured the house inside and out. There are no spaces unaccounted for.”

  “You’re not saying it’s a real ghost?” asked Emmeline.

  “Of course not,” said Henry. “But... I can’t see how anyone could have run in here, written that message, then disappeared. There wasn’t time.”

  Reeves, for who else could it have been, coughed from the corridor.

  “This is my man Reeves,” I said. “Do you have an observation?”

  “I do, sir. Mister Henry is correct in his assertion that there was insufficient time to write that message and effect an escape, ergo the message was written earlier.”

  Words are insufficient to encapsulate the enormity of Reeves’ brain. Perhaps a hieroglyph could do it justice — an extra large one with an all-seeing eye and a couple of fish.

  “Go on, Reeves,” I said. “What else do you deduce?”

  “I suspect, sir, that the open door to this room, and the message inside, were what is commonly called a red herring, designed to detain his or her pursuers while the perpetrator made good their escape elsewhere.”

  “Then they’re still in this wing,” said Henry. “No one could have doubled back down this corridor. We’d have seen them. Come on. We’ll search every room.”

  Every room off the corridor was searched. Nothing was found. No ghost, no abandoned black dress, and no further missives written on mirrors.

  “Could the ghost have been a projection?” asked Sir Robert.

  “I don’t think so, Sir Robert,” said T. Everett. “There would have been a cone of light from the projector to the image. There wasn’t one. I looked.”

  “So how did they escape?” said Henry. “Every window is locked.”

  Cometh the locked room mystery, cometh the cough.

  “Not every window, sir,” said Reeves as a roomful of eyes swivelled his way. “I did notice that one, although closed, was unlatched.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one in the room opposite to the one with the message, sir.”

  I’m not sure how many there were of us, but by this time we were a sizeable party of guests and servants, and all of us followed Henry into the room with the unlatched window.

  Henry hoisted up the lower pane of the sash window and let in half a gale that lifted both curtains towards the ceiling.

  “I can’t see anything,” said Henry, leaning out into the night. “There’s no ladder or anything to climb down on.”

  “May I borrow your lamp?” I asked Henry. “I have some experience in this line of work.”

  I took the lamp, and leaned out of the window. Henry was right about the lack of anything nearby to climb down on. No drainpipe, no handy tree or climbing shrub. If someone had left by this window they’d have needed a ladder. And if our driver had been right about it having been a wet spring and winter, then a ladder would have left two distinctive marks in the lawn below.

  I led the house party outside and around the Hall to the East Wing. The weather was wild but, thankfully, the rain was holding off.

  “That’s the window,” said Henry. “The second one along from where the wing meets the old house.”

  I advanced cautiously towards the spot where any ladder would have been placed, checking the ground for those tell-tale signs much beloved by us consulting detectives — the imprint of an unusual boot, the hole left by a wooden leg — but found nothing.

  Neither did I find any marks left by the feet of a ladder. And yet, the ground was decidedly soft.

  “I can’t see any signs of a ladder,” said Henry. “Can you?”

  I extended the search area. What if the ladder had been exceedingly long and placed further away from the wall? I scrutinised the entire area, stooping low with the lamp to examine the minutest blade of grass.

  Nothing.

  “Would a woman’s weight on the ladder be sufficient to make a mark?” asked Sir Robert.

  “It would,” said Emmeline. “Look, my heels are sinking into the lawn.”

  “Mine aren’t,” said Ida. “But then ... I’m not as heavy as you.”

  “Yes, you are!” said Emmeline.

  “No, I’m not! Am I, Henry? Only yesterday you remarked how dainty I was.”

  For a good second or two Henry looked like a chap about to feign a heart attack. But he recovered. “Both of you are, of course, exceedingly dainty, but our ladders are not. And this ground is as soft as I’ve ever seen it. I can’t see even a cat being able to climb a ladder here without leaving a mark.”

  Ida wasn’t finished.

  “What about a ghost?” she said haughtily. “They don’t weigh anything at all. Couldn’t a ghost climb down the ladder without making a mark?”

  “A ghost wouldn’t need a ladder!” said Emmeline, a little more pointedly than is usual in polite society.

  “A ghost wouldn’t leave footprints in the lawn either!” said Ida. “Because they don’t plod like a carthorse.”

  “I don’t plod—”

  In the interest of preserving decorum — and the crime scene — I thought it wise to intervene.

  “Wait!” I said “There’s another place the ladder could have been erected.”

  Emmeline and Ida drew back from each other and turned my way.

  “Where?” said Henry.

  “If the ladder was long enough, it could have been propped up against the main house and angled such that it passed by the window in the East Wing.”

  “Running parallel to the wing, you mean?” said Henry.

  “Yes.”

  We searched along the base of the East Wing, but again found nothing. And then it began to pour down — a veritable cloud burst with accompanying thunder and lightning.

  “We’ll continue this investigation in the morning,” said Henry. “There’s nothing more we can do tonight.”

  Once inside the HalI, I drew Emmeline and Reeves aside.

  “I didn’t say anything earlier,” I said, keeping my voice low. “But have either of you seen Lupin this evening?”

  “I knew it!” whispered Emmeline. “The moment Henry said there was no ladder or anything to climb down, I knew you’d suspect Lupin. I haven’t seen him at all this evening.”

  “The figure purporting to be a ghost did not ambulate like Lupin, sir. It was also taller.”

  “I think you underestimate Lupin, Reeves. I expect he can walk like a deb if the mood takes him. And that glowing head was obviously false. Lupin was probably wearing it like a hat.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  Six

  had somewhat of a disturbed night what with the continual lightning flashes, thunder claps, and rain lashing against the windows. It was more like one of those wild storms one experiences in the south of France than the more genteel English variant. I half-expected Reeves to waken me for breakfast wearing a sou’wester.

  “Has it stopped raining, Reeves?” I asked as he drew back the curtains.

  “The weather appears most clement, sir. Mr Berrymore is of the opinion that the day will be a sunny one.”

  “Something of an expert is he, Reeves? The owner of one of those meteorological bunions, perhaps?”

  “I really couldn’t say, sir.”

  “Any sightings of Lupin this
morning?”

  “He is taking breakfast with the family, sir.”

  “Really? What about spectral sightings? Have there been any more overnight?”

  “None, sir, though opinion in the servants’ hall is that last night’s visitation was not a dissimulation. There is considerable concern for Sir Robert. Mr Berrymore remembers the last time the ghost appeared, and that was on the eve of Sir Robert’s father’s death.”

  “We don’t believe in ghosts though, do we, Reeves?”

  ”No, sir.”

  That was a relief.

  A little later I toddled down to breakfast. If the day were to be a sunny one, Emmeline and I could go for a walk. We’d have to set off at different times to avoid the gimlet-eye of Lady Julia, but we could soon meet up at some pre-arranged local landmark. And there was always the chance that, after last night’s ghostly manifestation, Lady Julia’s attention might be directed elsewhere.

  I breezed into the dining room.

  “What ho, what ho, what ho,” I said, waggling four welcoming fingers and a companionable thumb.

  “Are you responsible for that abomination last night?” snapped Lady Julia.

  “I told you, Aunt Julia,” said Henry. “Roderick never left my side all evening. It can’t have been him.”

  Lady Julia appeared unswayed.

  “Doesn’t anyone else find it strange that it happened within hours of his arrival?” she said.

  “Henry’s right, Julia,” said Sir Robert. “We were all there. We all saw Roderick follow Henry up the stairs in pursuit of the apparition. It wasn’t him.”

  “What about Lily?” said Lady Julia. “Where was she?”

  “Lily and I were talking in the dining room when the ghost appeared,” said Henry. “It wasn’t her either.”

  Every head at the table nodded in agreement with the exception of Lupin and Lady Julia. Emmeline gave me a reassuring smile. Lupin smirked.

  I noticed the line of serving domes on the breakfast sideboard and ankled over. I hoped there’d be a kipper or two left. I had the feeling that my little grey cells were going to need every assistance if I were to survive the day unscathed.

  I found the kippers and pondered over whether to take two or three. Three would give my brain a good fillip, but it would probably elicit a biting comment from Lady Julia concerning gluttony.