by Anna Lord
Shock, dismay and anger swirled through her as she hurried from the cellar, past rows and rows of grinning skulls that appeared to mock her naivety. Her hand shook as she locked the door and replaced the key on the hook. Clumsily she lurched up the stairs, gasping for air and as she surfaced into blinding daylight she came face to face with Mrs Mortimer, looking pale and frightened and not a little strange.
“You saw the room?”
The Countess, breathing hard, did not bother with a polite tone or a pleasant smile. “If you mean the room with the camera - I saw it.”
“Let’s go into my hobby room. We can talk without being overheard.”
The hobby room turned out to be small square pavilion set into a corner of the walled garden. It was sturdily constructed of red brick with a roof of wooden shingles. A large round window was set on each of its three sides and a door on the fourth. There was an easel by one window on which rested a pretty watercolour scene of an apple tree half finished, nearby was a stool and a small stand with some artist’s paints and brushes. Propped beneath another window was a writing desk and a bookshelf filled with Keats, Wordsworth, Byron, Donne, et al. Taking pride of place in the centre of the pavilion was a round table where flowers artfully arranged between layers of tissue paper were drying out, waiting to be pressed into yet another book of pressings. Paraffin lamps provided heat and light, though at this time of the morning light flooded in from all sides. The pavilion was a haven from the outside world, a cosy and creative nest, a world within a world tucked into a corner of the private domain of a woman who did not lack imagination after all.
“Please take a seat,” invited Mrs Mortimer as she quietly closed the door. “I will not prevaricate. Droite de seigneur did not die out with Hugo, though Sir Henry took care to be much more discreet than his predecessor.”
The Countess thought back to the pretty parlour-maid who had interrupted her in the private study when she was sifting through the soot. “He took the housemaids into his study?” she guessed. “While Antonio stood guard to make sure they were not interrupted.”
Mrs Mortimer shook her head emphatically. “No, never, he was very particular about cultivating an image of moral virtue in the eyes of his neighbours as well as the servants. You heard his eulogy. Noble! Philanthropic! I nearly vomited!”
“What about Mrs Stapleton? The servants would have known about his relationship with her?”
“Certainly! A baronet with a mistress is de rigeur. Servants would gossip if their master had no mistress rather than the other way around. He and Beryl Stapleton had a love nest at the top of the tower a droite. Everyone knew of it, even Lady Laura, though she turned a blind eye as long as her husband did not flaunt his foreign whore. You have probably seen the boudoir for yourself.”
The Countess nodded in the affirmative.
“Boudoir! A bon mot for a brothel in one’s own home! I venture to say it is full of garish red velvet and phallic bibelots!”
“It is surprisingly bloodless and sexless,” replied the Countess truthfully. “More like a large wardrobe with a bench. Even the sordid photographs lining the walls could hardly be called erotic.”
Mrs Mortimer went white and had to steady herself – she folded herself onto a stool to stop from collapsing. “Photographs?”
“Mementoes mori belonging to Jack Stapleton – another fine example of Baskerville virtue – from his time in Yorkshire. Girls who came to have dancing lessons with Mrs Stapleton were drugged and photographed naked. It was the memory of them that made me look twice at the camera in your husband’s surgery. It is a surgery, is it not?”
“Yes,” the other admitted with an anguished grimace. “Sir Henry chose girls from the poorest families of Grimpen hamlet – the daughters of impoverished widows or those whose fathers had been injured and could no longer work. He preferred them young.”
“Virgins,” she said with disgust.
“And those who had not yet started their menses – for obvious reasons. Though some of them had the misfortune to fall pregnant – hence the surgery and the buckets.”
“The twins, Edmund and Eglantine, were fathered by Sir Henry?” guessed the Countess.
“Yes - the mother was too far gone for an abortion. I oversaw the delivery – being a mid-wife. She managed the first one but the second was breach. She labored for nineteen hours. We got the second one out after she died. The good and noble Sir Henry took the babes in when he heard they were orphaned. I wanted to slap every person who ever said how kind-hearted he was.”
“What about the other girls? There must have been scores?”
“Oh, yes, I have lost count, but if you check the cemetery you will see numerous headstones with the names of girls - most of them dead at ten or twelve years of age.”
The Countess’s brows drew down in a puzzled frown. “I did not notice any graves with girls’ names in the little cemetery – Benbow, Yeth, Cayzer –”
“Oh, no, that is the old graveyard for dogs. It is set in a no man’s land between Foulmire Farm and the Baskerville estate. I don’t think Dogger is such a good kennel keeper as he makes out. A lot of the dogs he rears seem to have very short lives. I suspect he is a cruel brute who mistreats them - a bit like that horrid gypsy fellow who kicked his dog to death. Capital punishment should be introduced for men who abuse defenceless animals. I meant the cemetery on the other side of Grimpen hamlet. There used to be a Saxon church on the high ground but it burnt down – struck by lightning or some such thing. That was just before Sir Charles’s inherited the estate. His father forbade the church being rebuilt, probably because of his Norman roots. It is just a ruin now.”
The Countess toyed with a little blue glass vial on the desk that was catching the sunlight, but she had to bite the bullet if she was to forge ahead. She drew breath and braced herself for floods of tears and a hostile reaction.
“Your husband aided and abetted Sir Henry in his lechery.”
“Don’t you mean rape?”
“Er, yes, I suppose I do,” she muttered, taken aback by Mrs Mortimer’s unabashed candour.
“The girls would come here for some medical reason, a free health check and a free box of aspirin for their mothers, and while they were here, my husband would administer a bit of scopolamine to make them drowsy and forgetful. Sir Henry would then arrive and violate them in the room where the camera is. I don’t know what he did with the photographs but I imagine there would be hundreds and hundreds of them. I have never seen those belonging to Jack Stapleton but I presume they are naked poses of prepubescent girls – am I right?”
“Yes.”
“The photographs belonging to Jack Stapleton probably inspired Sir Henry. Once a Baskerville, always a Baskerville. Why do you think we married our daughters off at a young age and sent them away from this godless place? Everything here is obscene and vile and malignant and makes me sick to the stomach and the fact my husband was party to it makes me want to -”
Mrs Mortimer didn’t finish the sentence; she stopped suddenly when Molly began to growl low in her throat; but the Countess got the impression she was going to say: commit murder!
A moment later there was a knock on the door. It was one of the field hands. He was about to cut back the oak that overhung the dining room and he wanted to know how many branches to take off. Mrs Mortimer made an apology and said she would return in a few minutes. Molly followed her out.
The Countess was left with her own thoughts and what a maelstrom of thoughts they were. This was an unexpected turnaround. It placed Dr Mortimer in the thick of all the secrets and lies and deceit, not to mention the deaths of so many girls. How far would he go to cover his tracks? How far would he go to avoid exposure? Would he kill his own benefactor? Would he kill those who discovered what really went on in the cellar? She closed her eyes to block out the rush of horrible images – the grinning skulls, the line of buckets, the bottle of chloroform…her eyes flew open and she stared at the blue vial reflecting the sunlight
like a sapphire in a jeweler’s window…
What was hyoscine?
On the desk was a sheet of paper. Mrs Mortimer was composing a poem. There were lots of crossings out, but the handwriting was a lovely copperplate style. She was no Keats.
The worlde is my garden
Solitary, sweet and square…
Suddenly she noticed that the pavilion was a mecca of different media – crayons, pastels, pen and ink, charcoal, paints, and so on. The door creaked open and Mrs Mortimer returned with Molly. The Countess immediately stood up to leave.
“Thank you for being so honest,” she said – and meaning it.
Mrs Mortimer sighed forlornly. “I have bottled it up for so long. I think it was a relief to have another person discover for themselves what went on. I’m glad you suggested going down to the cellar. Will you stay to lunch?”
“No, thank you, I have some errands to complete. Does your husband suspect that you know what was happening in the cellar?”
She shook her head and her lips began to quiver. “I don’t believe so. He thinks I am shallow and so wrapped up in my own little world that I cannot see anything else. He thinks I have grown as dull as dishwater and past my womanly prime and he never comes to my bedchamber the way a husband should, but I am frightened of saying anything in case I blurt too much out - sometimes I feel I am going to explode with what I am holding inside.”
The Countess took Mrs Mortimer’s trembling hands. “Take heart,” she reassured, “Sir Henry is dead. This terrible business will soon be over.”
“Do you think my husband sent the notes to Sir Henry that…that…killed him?”
“I cannot say for certain who sent the notes.”
“Do you think my husband will go to prison?”
“That is not for me to say. Au revoir, dear lady.”
Fortunately, Fedir had had the foresight to bring more gasoline for the automobile because the Countess wanted to make a longer detour to the other side of Grimpen hamlet to inspect yet another cemetery. Fedir never questioned his mistress but secretly he thought her interest in gravestones unnatural and against the laws of God.
There were thirteen headstones with the names of girls who had died within the last five years – the time span after which the villagers of Grimpen hamlet had been relocated to Coombe Tracey and the worker’s from all over Devon had moved in. The Countess recorded the names and ages of the girls and the dates of their deaths in a small notepad.
Adjacent to the cemetery was the ruined Saxon church. Ecclesiastical ruins, such as those at Rievaulx or Fountains Abbey were stunningly beautiful and fiercely romantic with their glassless mullioned windows framing the sky, but Saxon churches were never grand to begin with so this burnt out wreck was now nothing more than a scatter of blackened stones. The lightning strike had reduced the ancient house of worship to rubble. No wonder it was never rebuilt.
Next stop – the dog cemetery - and who was there but the gypsy girl sitting on Benbow’s grave counting her luck over and over and over.
“Hello,” the Countess said softly.
Startled, the girl did not hear the lady’s cape sweeping the dry grass; her dark eyes flashed fire and her mouth formed a belligerent scowl as she slipped the little treasure inside a secret pocket of her grimy grey pinafore. “You cannot have it back! Finders keepers!”
“I don’t want it back. It’s yours to keep. I left it on Benbow’s grave for you to find. May I sit beside you and speak to you about something?”
The gypsy shrugged her boney shoulders. The Countess took that as a yes and moved with caution, opening with what she thought would be a safe topic.
“How is Jock, er, Snowy doing?”
The gypsy cursed and spat on the ground. “I hate Jago! Jago took Snowy! He says I am too stupid to look after a dog with a broken leg! One day I will kill Jago and steal Snowy back and my shawl too and run away!”
“Perhaps you could buy Snowy back with the money you just found,” suggested the Countess prudently.
The gypsy girl twisted a strand of matted hair round and round her index finger while she contemplated this fresh alternative. The Countess gave her a few moments to cogitate before broaching a new topic.
“Last time I was here we spoke about the headless horseman and I asked you what he looked like. Do you remember?”
The gypsy nodded and scratched her head.
“Can you tell me what he looked like?”
“Like the devil.”
“The devil?”
“He was all black like a devil and his devil horse was black too.”
“Did you see his face?”
The gypsy gave a scornful laugh. “Ha! How could I see his face if he were headless?”
“But if he had no face, how could he speak to you?”
The youthful brow puckered and her mouth twisted this way and that. “He had no face but his voice came through his hat and scarf!”
“If he had no head how could he have a hat?”
“You are trying to trick me the way Jago does!”
“No, no, I’m not trying to trick you. I’m just trying to understand what he looked like. I’m trying to build a picture in my head.”
The gypsy aimed a skeptical sideways glance. “The hat sat on his neck.”
“I see,” murmured the Countess. “Tell me if I have got the picture right. He had a black hat and a black scarf and a black coat and black boots and he was riding a black horse. Is that right?”
The girl nodded and scratched her neck.
“The scarf was wound around his neck and the hat sat low and he spoke though his scarf and hat. Is that right?”
Again she nodded.
“Did his voice sound clear or muffled?” she tested.
“Muffled.”
“Did you notice anything else about him or any special markings on his horse?”
“I kept my eyes closed most of the time. I was scared he was going to scoop me up and take me down to hell. I was hiding from the storm when he came. I heard hooves like thunder and crawled out from under Dog Hole Tor and looked up and almost wet myself. He threw down the shilling first and then he threw the letter. I snatched them both and crawled back under the rock because there was a crash of thunder and it started to rain.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said: Deliver this letter to the Master of Baskerville and there is a shilling for your trouble.”
“Can you read?” asked the Countess.
The gypsy leapt off the grave and landed with an awkward thud on her clubfoot and gave a little groan. “There’s fog coming. I better go. You should go too. It’s dangerous to be out in the fog.”
Dr Watson decided to take the weight off his weary legs for a few minutes. He sat down on a cushion of weeds and leaned back against a large rock, his back out of the wind, and feeling suddenly hungry, remembered the cold bacon sandwich and the apple he had purloined from the breakfast room. He had been walking for several hours now and the muscles in his legs felt stiff and sore. He ate hungrily then had a quick nip from his brandy flask and closed his eyes for a moment, but because he had not slept the previous night he soon nodded off.
In the midst of a comatose dream about sacks with wings and flying dogs his limp body slummocked sideways and he woke with a start, and like all dreamers who wake suddenly, for a few moments he did not know where he was. This was compounded by the fact that before he fell asleep the sky had been a cold hard blue with a fresh breeze blowing the cloudlets away, but was now like a woolly grey blanket. His clothes felt damp and he realized that mist had been falling for some time.
Drowsy, damp and dazed, he pushed unsteadily to his feet and squinted against the eerie grey light that cast a queer pall over the day while his eyes tracked miles and miles of bleak moor scattered with sinister tors like fantastic beasts from some nightmare world stranger than any dream. There was a Celtic cross in the distance and he decided to make for it before the fog thickened, recall
ing how quickly it had closed in the night Jack Stapleton unleashed his gigantic hound to run Sir Henry down.
By the time he reached the Celtic marker he was panting heavily and his chest felt tight. Tendrils of fog were creeping across the ground, curling around the tors and coiling themselves around the carved stone cross like ghostly white serpents. He wanted to light a cigarette to open his constricted airways and help him draw breath but he didn’t have the time – visibility was shrinking with every short, sharp, anxious inhalation. He pushed on valiantly, battling cramp, thirst, and a thumping headache.
A Peugeot was not like a pair of cantering horses you could whip into a frenzied gallop. It bumped along, following the broad white road that was becoming mantled in mist. The twin lamps projected just enough golden pools of light to stop from ending up in a ditch but even that was not enough when a dog cart appeared without warning from one of the narrow tracks that criss-crossed the moor, forcing Fedir to swerve abruptly to avoid collision.
He fought with the steering and managed to keep the four wheels on the road. The dog cart fared less well. The huge English mastiff reared up in fright and unbalanced the cart, which then jerked the poor beast backwards. Both dog and cart rolled back into a muddy ditch.
Jago leapt from the cart as it was wrenched out from under him but his passenger, the clubfoot gypsy girl perched on the backboard, was not so lucky. She tipped forward and landed in the ditch with a bone-crunching thud. Three shiny shillings fell out of her pocket and bounced into a patch of sphagnum. Frantically, she scrambled to pick them up before Jago spotted them.
The beast, still harnessed to the cart, began whining something fearful, writhing and thrashing about, trying desperately to lift its flailing head out of the mud before giving up and flopping back, its slavering jaws foaming white, its huge pink tongue lolling to one side as it panted with exhaustion. The girl took one look at the helpless animal and began bawling loudly. Jago glared at his injured dog, his broken cart, and the hysterical girl, before unleashing a tirade of abuse at the two occupants of the metallic monster.