“He curved his right arm over the broad hat, and round the long ringlets.”
Richard Gutschmidt, Der Hund von Baskerville (Stuttgart: Robert Lutz Verlag, 1903)
He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter193 as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.
I was up betimes194 in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed coming up the drive.
“Yes, we should have a full day today,” he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. “The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We’ll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, lean-jawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes.”
“Have you been on the moor already?”
“I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut as a dog does at his master’s grave if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety.”
“ ‘Good heavens!’ I cried, in amazement.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902
“What is the next move?”
“To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!”
“Good morning, Holmes,” said the baronet. “You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff.”
“That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders.”
“And so do I.”
“Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Stapletons tonight.”
“I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you.”
“I fear that Watson and I must go to London.”
“To London?”
“Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture.”
The baronet’s face perceptibly lengthened. “I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone.”
“My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?”
“If you insist upon it.”
“There is no alternative, I assure you.”
I saw by the baronet’s clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion.
“When do you desire to go?” he asked, coldly.
“Immediately after breakfast. We will drive into Coombe Tracey, but Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret that you cannot come.”
“I have a good mind to go to London with you,” said the baronet. “Why should I stay here alone?”
“Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay.”
“All right, then, I’ll stay.”
“One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home.”
“To walk across the moor?”
“Yes.”
“But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do.”
“This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it.”
“Then I will do it.”
“And as you value your life, do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home.”
“I will do just what you say.”
“Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon.”
I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind, however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform.
“Any orders, sir?”
“You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocket-book which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And ask at the station office if there is a message for me.”
The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran—
Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant.195 Arrive five-forty.
Lestrade.
“That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons.”
His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer round that lean-jawed pike.
Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her.
“I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville,” said he. “My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter.”
“What have I withheld?” she asked defiantly.
“You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o’clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events.”
“There is no connection.”
“In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend, Mr. Stapleton, but his wife as well.”
The lady sprang from her chair. “His wife!” she cried.
“The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife.”
Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip.
“His wife!” she said again. “His wife! He was not a married man.”
Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders.
“Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so—!” The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words.
“I have come prepared to do so,” said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. “Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed ‘Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,’ but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver’s private school. Read them, and see if you can doubt the identity of these people.”
“The lady sprang from her chair.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine,
1902
She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman.
“Mr. Holmes,” she said, “this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why—why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is, that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend.”
“I entirely believe you, madam,” said Sherlock Holmes. “The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Stapleton?”
“He dictated it.”
“I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?”
“Exactly.”
“And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?”
“He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us.”
“He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?”
“No.”
“And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Charles?”
“He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent.”
“Quite so. But you had your suspicions?”
She hesitated and looked down. “I knew him,” she said. “But if he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him.”
“I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape,” said Sherlock Holmes. “You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again.”
“Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us,” said Holmes, as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. “I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Grodno, in Little Russia,196 in the year ’66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina,197 but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night.”
The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man.
“Anything good?” he asked.
“The biggest thing for years,” said Holmes. “We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner, and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night-air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don’t suppose you will forget your first visit.”
“We all three shook hands.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1902
184 Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648–1723) was a painter of British portraits, including those of Charles II, William III, and George I, each of whom he served as court artist. Born in Lübeck, Germany, he came to England in his late twenties and was renowned almost equally for the superb quality of his pictures—he was unsurpassed until Sir Joshua Reynolds—and for his personal vanity. One of his painterly trademarks was the elongation of the oval of all his heads. Among his most well-known surviving work is the collection of portraits of the Kit-cat Club celebrities, influential Whigs who supported a Protestant monarchy and helped put William III on the throne.
185 Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), English portrait painter and aesthetician, who was elected the first president of the Royal Academy at its founding in 1768. Before his election, one of his signal contributions to the art world was to arrange for the exhibition of the work of contemporary artists, under the Society of Artists, which he also founded; prior to 1760, there had been no such shows. Among persistent criticisms of his work are that his colours were not permanent and that he compromised his paint surface by adding bitumen and coal materials to his pigments. The oft-repeated rebuttal by his patron Sir George Beaumont: “Never mind, a faded portrait by Reynolds is better than a fresh one by anybody else.” While Sir Joshua’s early portraits were celebrated for their spontaneity and the freshness of their backgrounds (he posed at least one subject in front of the seashore), by the time he had reached his late thirties he inclined more to self-consciousness, formality, and the antique. In keeping with this shift in his thinking, from 1769 to 1791 he wrote and delivered an important series of lectures on grandeur in art and the study of the old masters.
The Duchess of Devonshire and her daughter. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1786)
186 George Brydges Rodney, first Baron Rodney (1719–1792). While his highest naval rank was rear-admiral of Great Britain, and his fame is far less, nineteenth-century scholars rated him second only to the near-legendary Lord Nelson. Among his accomplishments was the capture of Martinique, in 1762, during the Seven Years’ War. He also suffered lifelong debt after being sued by British merchants whose goods he looted during his capture, the previous year, of St. Eustatius. The fact that the merchants had been trading illegally with American revolutionary forces did not take away the sting, or cost, of their lawsuits. Rodney was also the victim, throughout his life, of his own greed and self-serving impulses, including charges of nepotism for awarding his son a highly questionable post-captaincy at the age of only fifteen.
187 The member appointed to preside over a house of Parliament whenever it resolves itself into a committee of the whole, similar to the President pro tempore of the U. S. Senate or the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives.
188 William Pitt (also known as Pitt the Younger, 1759–1806), who became prime minister of England at twenty-four and served for eighteen years; his father had served as prime minister, off and on, from 1756 to 1768. Pitt the Younger presided over the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars but was, ironically, a pacifist by nature. Like many great statesmen, he was a mass of contradictions, failing to champion adequately the civil rights of his own countrymen, for instance, while simultaneously bringing Great Britain back from near-financial ruin following the American Revolution. Public finance was perhaps his area of greatest expertise: He levied new taxes, virtually put an end to smuggling and fraud, and overhauled customs and excise duties. One of his actions with ongoing repercussions was the abolishment of the Irish parliament.
189 In the English Civil Wars (1642–1651), the name was adopted by Charles I’s supporters, who contemptuously called their opponents Roundheads; at the Restoration, the court party preserved the name “Cavalier,” which survived until the rise of the term “Tory.”
190 “It is not known for certain who painted the portrait of Hugo Baskerville,” the Marquis of Donegall states, in “Who Painted Hugo Baskerville?” “It is, however, fairly saf
e to deduce that, as the family portraits at Baskerville Hall included a Reynolds and a Kneller, it was the tradition of the Baskerville family to be painted by the best-known artist of the time.” The Marquis speculates that Hugo Baskerville’s portrait, likely painted in the 1640s, was by the Dutchman Franz Hals (1582/3–1666), leading portraitist of the day.
191 The description corresponds to that of a Cavalier; Roundheads were far less flamboyant, even severe, in their dress. Love-locks, whether affixed (by hairdresser’s glue) to the temple or the space in front of the ear, were curled hairpieces positioned so that they would rest on the shoulder and, ideally, hang in front of it. Usually, they were festooned with bows and ribbons.
192 Why did this escape the notice of Dr. Mortimer? “If he knew enough about atavism to write a book on the subject, he must have been well-versed in it indeed,” Charles M. Pickard writes in “The Reticence of Doctor Mortimer.” Mortimer must have seen the portrait on his many visits to the Hall and surely would have noticed the resemblance between Stapleton and Hugo. Indeed, he even tells Holmes that Rodger “was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo.” Pickard argues that Mortimer must have reasoned that Stapleton was most likely Rodger’s son and observed that none of the trouble had arisen until Stapleton moved in. He shared this conclusion with Holmes, but Holmes admonished him to remain silent, to permit Holmes to trap Stapleton.
193 See A Study in Scarlet, note 48, above, for a detailed discussion of Holmes’s expressions of humour.
194 Timely or seasonably; usually, early.
195 Ian McQueen ponders why, as must be assumed, Holmes requested an unsigned warrant. “Presumably Lestrade meant a warrant for the arrest of Stapleton, but no such authority would be required for an arrest on a serious charge such as murder, and a warrant without signature would have no validity in any case.”
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes Page 68