The Baskerville Curse (Watson & the Countess Book 1)

by Anna Lord

  “Since the day I came into the world, dearie. This room you see around you has been my all. I was born here on this floor the night my mother gasped her last. I started helping my granny as soon as I could poke kindling under the great cauldron you see behind you to keep the water bubbling. When I got bigger I filled the buckets and carried ‘em in and lined ‘em up along that wall there. When I were big enough to stand on the stool you are sitting upon I started stirring the clothes in the big cauldron with a chene stick. I still have it. You can see it there in the corner by my straw pallet. It’s crooked with age like me now. That’s when it happened.” She paused and broke off another piece of cake. “Pour the tea, dearie. The teapot and the two cups are here - I have had them standing ready since yesterday. The jug for the milk is on the placard above the sink. There’s no sugar. Sugar is for the folks in the big house.”

  The Countess poured the hot water into the teapot and waited for it to brew. “You were saying something happened?” she prompted. “What happened?”

  “I fell in the boiling cauldron, dearie.”

  It took a moment to register. There was no howling self-pity, no intention to shock, no dramatic turn of phrase. “How, er, how old were you?”

  “I were about seven. My granny pulled me out. The pain was so bad I passed out and she thought I had died but she had the wherewithal to dips me in the cold river and that saved my life. I lost some fingers and my ears and a couple of my toes stuck together. I’ve got bird feet now. My hair fell out and never grew back. I had lovely red hair. The scars never went away. Everyone took pity but none could bear to look at me. I had to stop going to school. Even the dogs took fright. I stayed here with my granny and kept up the laundering and turning the mangle until there was no more call for it. Pour the milk, dearie.”

  “You never married?”

  “Oh, no, dearie, what man would have me in his bed?”

  “But you have two sons.”

  She laughed out loud and spat some cake out then licked the end of a stumpy finger and picked up the wet crumbs with it. “Dan and Ned – my two boys are what they call change of life babies. I was forty years old when they were born and a virgin the night they were conceived. I was out on the moor collecting firewood when it started to storm. I expected to meet the headless horseman but I met a gypsy horse thief instead. He was blind drunk and had lost his way. He had his way with me on the heath with thunder and lightning splitting the heavens and it were glorious. The boys came early. I was only eight months gone. They was always small and sickly. One is wicked and the other is wickeder. I imagine they are just like their father. I never saw him again and I never knew his name.” She gulped some tea and gazed down at the kitchen table as if mesmerized by the gnarls and knots in the wood.

  “Was Sir Charles here at that time?”

  “Oh, no, he had been gone ten years by then and his parents had long drowned. It were a lonely place back then. There was only me here in the wash-house because no one else would have me in service, and old Samuel Selden who was the caretaker. Plus my two boys. They were always running wild out on the moor. They only came home to eat and sleep. And sometimes not even that.”

  “Sir Charles never married either - perhaps it had something to do with the scandal just before he went away on the Grand Tour,” she posed tactfully. “Do you know anything about what caused the scandal?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember it clear as day. It was the year my granny up and died and I had to do all the work myself. The young baronet had just celebrated his twentieth year. A grand birthday party it was with folk from all over Devon coming to stay. There was so much bed linen my poor hands turned red raw. He was handsome and headstrong and in love with a gypsy girl. Yanina, her name was. I saw her once and my breath caught at how beautiful she was.”

  There was no hurrying Queenie so the Countess sipped her tea while the old lady gazed wistfully at the gnarly wood. “Sir Charles’ parents didn’t approve?”

  Queenie gave a scornful laugh and spat out a few more crumbs then picked them up one by one until the table was spotless. “The old baronet was furious. He gathered his men and armed them. They were hell bent on going to the gypsy camp to lynch the girl and shoot any man who stood in their way but the younger one took off first. He rode to the camp and scooped his gypsy onto his horse and galloped to the little church the other side of Grimpen hamlet. But it weren’t long before the old baronet caught up to them. He torched the church with the parish records and the vicar in it. Some said that Yanina was locked inside too. Others said she got away on her lover’s horse and that it was he who told her to flee for her life across the great Grimpen Mire. She was never seen again.”

  “Perhaps she went back to her own people?”

  “Oh, no, she could never return to the gypsy camp because her father would have slit her throat for marrying outside their clan. It was a point of honour with them.”

  “What about Sir Charles?”

  “The young Charles came back to Baskerville Hall with his tail between his legs after his father threatened to shoot every last gypsy living hereabouts, including the women and children. Shortly afterwards he left to visit the great palaces of the world. For thirty-eight years Baskerville Hall stood empty and cursed.”

  “Was the old baronet ever brought to justice?”

  “A baronet was the justice. He could do as he pleased. He said the death of the vicar was an act of God and no one dared say different. But the good Lord had His vengeance when He sent down a storm to smite his ship in the English Channel. Pour some more tea in my cup, dearie.”

  The Countess complied and decided to follow a fresh thread. “Have you ever seen the headless horseman out on the moor?”

  “In eighty years - just the once, dearie. I saw him on the last night of last month.”

  Quickly, the Countess thought back to the last night of last month - the night of the dinner party. “There was no thunderstorm that night.”

  “That’s right, dearie. There was no thunder and no lightning. I was looking out for my gypsy as I have done every night for forty years, sitting on my bench under the eave, and there he was galloping across the Grimpen bog on a black steed. I looked up at the sky and thought maybe a storm was brewing. But the clouds were too high. It rained later but it was a soft rain.”

  “What direction was he riding?”

  “He was riding north and then he turned sudden-like and headed east.”

  “Not toward Dog Hole Gorge?”

  “No, dearie, east.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as you are sitting there and I am sitting here. That’s how I knew it was the headless horseman. He had the devil’s canny knowing. Had he kept north he would have gone straight into the feather beds.”

  The Countess thought about this snippet of information as she pushed to her feet and tried to recall where Xenia had tidied away Stanford’s Ordnance Map. “Thank you for speaking to me, Queenie. I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

  “I’m sorry too, dearie. There hasn’t been a day since that I have not been sorry. Some wise folk say that time heals but take my word for it - the pain never goes. It curls up inside and does not budge.”

  “Would you like me to send you some aspirin?”

  “I didn’t mean that sort of pain, dearie, but since you have offered I will not say no to some of them little pills for my creaky bones and crippled hands. Send some sugar too. Methinks the sugar will work a treat better than any new-fangled pill.”

  “Do you think you would recognize Yanina if you ever saw her again?”

  “My eyesight is faded but my mind’s eye is sharp. Let me see, Yanina would be coming up sixty-seven years now but age would not wither her. You are spring and summer, dearie, but autumn will follow and then winter. She was the sun and moon and stars. They never lose their shine.”

  The Countess was re-crossing the rickety wooden bridge when the dingoes began their howling and wailing and she looked ba
ck over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t about to give chase. The wash-house was not built on the same side of the brook as Baskerville Castle. It was built on the moorland side. From the wooden bench set under the thatched eave a person would have an uninterrupted view of the great Grimpen Mire as far as the eye could see. The old lady’s eyesight was probably poor but it would be clear even to a half-blind fool which direction a horseman was heading.

  Saint Ethelberga’s had not witnessed such a gathering since that memorable summer day of 1069 when Ethelberga the Fair, kneeling piously at the altar, had sliced off her comely nose to spite her comely face to avoid being given in marriage to Foulk the Bold.

  The front pew had been reserved for Lady Baskerville, eight months with child, and her noble entourage, including the foreign countess who shimmered in a dress that some claimed had been sewn together from mallow leaves dyed black and others swore had been made from the felt that fell from the horns of stags once they had finished growing just prior to the rutting season. The tight-fitting bodice had a sprinkling of pearls, and if anyone had whispered that the dress was rent from the midnight sky and sprinkled with stars and the lady was a sorceress they would have believed that too. What’s more, the black silk tophat made her seem supernaturally tall.

  A heavenly choir sang and it was an uplifting funeral, full of joy, celebrating the characterful life of Mr Algernon Frankland. Immediately following the funeral service Lady Laura departed via the vestry door and returned to Baskerville Castle but everyone else went out to the churchyard where the astrolabe was on show for all to see. Straight after the coffin was interred, the mourners beelined their way to the scones and tea. Sir Olwen, however, joined Dr Watson and his companion who were lingering to admire the astonishing detail in the design of the astrolabe.

  “An eccentric monument to an eccentric man,” screeched the squire before turning to the Countess, “and you dear lady are an enchantress in this dress. I cannot recall ever complimenting a lady at a funeral but you look like a dream…She walks in beauty like the night…A poem in fact.”

  Sir Olwen kissed her hand before turning to the doctor. “During a previous meeting,” said the squire, his scritchy tone tending to the formal and serious, “which I believe was also a funeral, you were asking about royal prerogative and such, well, I had a look into it to refresh myself of the different sorts of baronies in England. There are baronies by writ which does not concern us, baronies by patent, which the Baskerville baronetcy falls into as I had supposed, and baronies by tenure. The third type is quite rare so I looked into it a bit further. It is the case that where a man holds a castle and feudal estate for a period of time he then is able to petition a claim for title. The most famous case was Fitzalan of Arundel Castle in 1433 who successfully petitioned to become Earl of Arundel. However, just recently, 1861 in fact, the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords decided that baronies by tenure were no longer legal. I don’t know if this bears any relevance to what you were asking, but I thought it was an interesting point. Shall we decamp to the rectory?”

  “Yes, by all means,” said the doctor, fighting the urge to light a cigarette.

  In the meantime, the Countess had strolled ahead of the men and was observing the names on the newer graves and the dates of death. There was no common thread.

  “You are standing beside the most famous grave in the churchyard,” screeched the squire, catching up to her.

  She whirled round and read the name carved into the verdigris’d headstone frilled with ivy. She thought he might be referring to Ethelberga but the name was Vervaine.

  “You can barely make out the date. It is a bit neglected.” The squire tore away some tenacious tendrils of ivy and there it was: 1631-1647.

  “The maiden kidnapped by Hugo Baskerville?” she guessed at once.

  “Yes, the daughter of a yeoman farmer, Olwyn of Dounhollow, a forebear of mine. His farm became the Drogo estate centuries ago except for Doune Quarry and the Scarvil Tin Mine which went to the Baskervilles in a card game. It made them immensely wealthy. The card sharp was Hugo’s bastard son and cheating was suspected, but might is right.”

  The Countess had just completed her bedtime toilette and was about to tuck herself into her chintzy bower when Xenia appeared to let her know Fedir had returned from Coombe Tracey with reams of telegrams. An hour later, the Countess discovered a curious pearl buried among all the dross and went to sleep with a satisfied smile on her face and dreamed of velvet mermaids swimming through the starry climes and stormy seas.

  “Well,” she beamed at her breakfast companion after revealing her pearl. “It is a thread worth pursuing, n’est-ce pas?”

  Dr Watson wiped his chin with his napkin, tried not to burp, and teacup in hand, leaned back in his chair. “Pursuing where – to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?”

  “You cannot dismiss it out of hand,” she argued, feeling momentarily deflated. “Sir Henry shares a cabin with a man who falls overboard on the first night of the voyage and whose body is never recovered – it is far too interesting.”

  “It happens more often than you know,” he returned prosaically.

  “I am not disagreeing with that but what I find fascinating is that Sir Henry never mentioned that a man he shared his cabin with drowned at sea.”

  “Why should he mention it? He might have preferred to forget it. He might hardly have known the fellow. Young men travelling alone are often paired up in cabins to save space. And once he arrived in London his boot was purloined, he received a threatening letter and he had just inherited a substantial fortune, a baronetcy, and an estate with a curse hanging over it. Something that happened on the first night his ship sailed from Canada would be pushed quick smart to the back of his mind as his life changed irrevocably.”

  The Countess decided not to argue further and went to her bedroom to think in silence and make her plans. Half an hour later she summoned her two servants.

  “How would you like to have a little holiday at the seaside?”

  Fedir and Xenia looked at each other and then at their mistress; their heads nodded.

  “Good,” she said. “You will take the gig to Coombe Tracey and stable it at the inn. You will send this telegram and check for any letters or messages which may have arrived. You will then take the train to Plymouth, check into the best hotel and introduce yourselves to the chief constable. He will be expecting you and eager to help because the telegram you send will be signed by Dr John Watson and Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. Work swiftly. Time is of the essence. Find out all you can. The task is this: Who was Sebastian Weyland?”

  As soon as her servants departed, the Countess located the ordnance map and spread it out on her bed. If the headless horseman was travelling north to Dog Hole Gorge and then turned east he would have ended up in Drogo – the very night James Desmond died. If he knew where to turn to avoid the quakes there must have been some sort of marker. She checked the map and there were no stone crosses or tors - that suggested the possibility he put in place his own marker. The marker might give a clue as to the man. She changed into her walking clothes and slipped out via the servants’ stairs to avoid being seen by her partner in detecting.

  Dr Watson tried to track Antonio down to deliver that ticking-off but the wily manservant was nowhere to be seen. He had filled the wood baskets at the crack of dawn and then disappeared. Servants were dispatched to find him but returned to say they had seen neither hide nor hair of him. The doctor decided to position himself in the great hall where he had the best chance of catching the rogue. Most of the corridors and stairways that bisected the castle crossed the great hall or the upper gallery at some stage and eventually so would Antonio. As the doctor settled into a heraldic bench in a niche, revolver at the ready, he felt as if he was back on safari in Rhodesia where he had crouched behind a log at a waterhole and waited for the animals to arrive at dusk.

  Fortunately, he didn’t need to wait that long - a faint scraping sound r
eached his ears from the direction of the study. He traced the sound to the folio room and poked his head around the corner just as the door was about to close. Moving fast, he wedged his foot in the gap.

  “Come out, you slippery devil! I have my revolver and if you choose to disobey I will not hesitate to use it.”

  The door scraped back and Antonio shuffled out looking scared out of his wits. He was shaking like an autumn leaf about to be swept from the bough by an unforgiving wind. The doctor regretted his threat and was about to soften his tone when he noted the manservant’s beady eyes darting about the same way that Lady Laura’s had that day she swooned on the stairs – wild and demented as if some monster was about to jump out of the woodwork.

  “What is it, man?” he demanded. “What are you frightened of?”

  Antonio swallowed dry and licked his lips. “Come in and lock the door,” he lisped in a quavering undertone, “and lower you voice.”

  When the two men were locked inside the little folio room Antonio leaned bonelessly against the shelves and began his story. “The night Beryl died she said she saw the headless horseman out on the moor. She was not one for ghost stories so I knew she meant it. She also said that the headless horseman would be our ticket out of Devon.”

  “What did you make of that statement?”

  “She smiled and flicked her hair with her hand the way she did when she was scheming something. I think she meant to blackmail whoever it was she saw.”

  “That means it was someone she recognized. Who do you think it was?”

  “I have wracked my brains, but I am sure of one thing, it was the same person who killed her.”

  “I think we can safely conclude that it is the same person who also killed Mr Frankland.”

  “Yes,” agreed Antonio.

  “And you have been going about in fear and hiding away because you think this murderer might do the same to you,” guessed the doctor.

  “Yes.”