‘Terrible scandal,’ the earl added. ‘My father always swore The Colonel won by a short head that afternoon, but the judge’s nerve failed him and he called a dead-heat. Of course, under the rules of the race, a dead-heat meant a run-off the same afternoon, and The Colonel was beaten that time. My father said he lost a fortune because of it. Old Lord Dunwich too, by the sound of it.’
‘And so, Flotsam …’ Mr Spencer grinned. ‘The code is broken.’
‘Yes, sir, and now … Well, Mrs Hudson, ma’am, should we not be telling Mr Holmes about all this? Quickly, before he leaves London?’
But Mrs Hudson waved her hand in a way that suggested my concern for the great detective was unnecessary.
‘Mr Holmes set off this afternoon, Flottie. Before he went he scribbled a hasty message to Dr Watson on that blackboard of his. I saw it when I went up to clean the hearth, and took the liberty of jotting it down …’
Mrs Hudson fished another piece of paper from the depths of her bag. Beneath the Viscount’s familiar note, Mr Holmes had added another – crisp and urgent, if somewhat cryptic.
Horses, Watson! Horses!
Dates in stud book
Follow where they lead you
I had just opened my mouth to respond to this curious message when the doors of the library were flung open and a whirlwind of pink silk flounced into the room.
‘You beasts!’ Miss Peters exclaimed indignantly. ‘Reynolds says you’ve solved the mystery without me! How could you? I was only gone for a few minutes, just to pick up a few essentials, and this is what happens!’ She paused in her advance to make a hasty adjustment to her bonnet, then returned to the offensive. ‘You know, it will jolly well serve you all right if I solve some baffling mystery for myself one of these days. And when I do, you can be quite sure that I shall take all the credit for myself! So there!’
And with that she came to a halt and smiled radiantly at each of us in turn, the sky once again unclouded.
‘Now, tell me, Rupert, don’t you think this bonnet is simply the most divine creation ever? I think it’s so beautiful that I may just have to go back and try on the one they had in blue…’
Chapter X
Alston
On the high moors that rise bleak and magnificent across England’s northern border, spring comes late. Travellers from the south who leave behind them budding leaves and nascent blossom quickly put aside all thoughts of milder days as their train edges northwards and shows them with every new mile the barer branches, desolate fields and, finally, the empty majesty of the moors.
Amid the great sweep of these uplands lies Alston, a town shaped by rain and rock, and by the wind that sweeps from the north across the fells; an outpost of warmth and human welcome in the wilderness. My first sight of it came from the window of a third class railway carriage where Mrs Hudson and I, with blankets tucked around our legs, were the only passengers. Ours was the last train of the day and Alston, at the end of its own branch line, the final stop. A local farmer and his wife had left the train two stops before, and after that we’d been alone.
As we pulled into the little station, we found a town still in the grip of winter. Even in the fading light I could make out the church tower stark against the moors and snow still lying on the high fells beyond. My entire life had been lived in or near the streets of London. Here, the unforgiving emptiness of the landscape made me gasp. In all my life, I had never seen anything more beautiful.
‘Alston!’ the station master cried from one end of the platform. ‘Last stop! Last stop!’ and Mrs Hudson placed a reassuring hand on my knee.
‘Come, Flotsam,’ she smiled. ‘We are finally here. Let us hope the porter has lingered long enough to help us with our bags. Otherwise we will face a rather strenuous walk to the inn.’
But to our great delight, someone was waiting for us at the station. Dr Watson, who had made the journey three days earlier, had taken the trouble to meet us in person and had borrowed Mr Verity’s pony and trap for the purpose.
‘Ah, Mrs Hudson! Flotsam! How good to see you! Pleased you could get here so soon!’ he exclaimed with genuine warmth, and ushered us to his vehicle while a solitary porter hurried to see to our bags. ‘There are rooms reserved for you at the Angel,’ he reassured us, ‘which Verity tells me is a very passable inn. I will take you there directly so you can rest after your journey. Mrs Garth, the landlady, is sending someone for your luggage. And with your permission I shall call first thing tomorrow and bring you back with me to Verity’s house. I have explained to him that Holmes would not want me toiling here without assistance, and he is very much looking forward to meeting you. It seems the Duke of Buccleuch once mentioned your name to him in connection with the affair at Crailing Castle. As for me, it’s jolly good to see two familiar faces. There’s something about this place when the mist comes down in the evenings. You can almost feel…’
He broke off, and I thought his face looked troubled.
‘No, it’s not the time to be going into it just now. Much better to let Verity tell you the full tale tomorrow. But to be honest, Mrs H, to be perfectly honest, it would seem things up here have taken a nasty turn.’
Alston’s railway station sits a short drive from the village, on the floor of the valley where a little river tumbles northwards, seeking passage through the hills. The town itself is built higher up and its main street climbs steeply towards the top of the fell. About halfway up, the street broadens into a pretty cobbled marketplace flanked by handsome buildings, and it was here we found the Angel Inn, where Dr Watson passed us into the care of Mrs Garth.
Our hostess seemed to take to Mrs Hudson at once and did her utmost to make us comfortable. We were shown to two small rooms at the back of the house and pressed to join her in the kitchen of the inn for our evening meal. Here she evinced a certain curiosity about our visit and Mrs Hudson, anxious not to attract attention to the Lazarus affair, told her a little uncomfortably that we had come to Alston to see her second cousin, a footman on the other side of Allendale, who was hoping to join us shortly. In the meantime, she was hoping for word of her cousin’s friend, a man called Robert Pauncefoot, who Mrs Hudson thought might once have been in service somewhere nearby.
‘Are you familiar with that name at all, Mrs Garth?’ she inquired.
‘Pauncefoot?’ She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Hudson. It doesn’t sound like a local name. But we get a lot of visitors here in the summer months, and some of the inns take on extra helpers. I daresay he might have passed through here one summer.’
‘He’s a gentleman of striking appearance, so I’m sure you would remember him, Mrs Garth. How did Mr Trelawney describe him, Flotsam?’
‘Mr Pauncefoot is a very tall man, ma’am, with a bald head and a very bushy beard.’
‘Who may have been calling himself Smith,’ Mrs Hudson added, without explaining why.
But Mrs Garth simply shook her head.
‘There’s plenty of farmers in town on market day who are thinning a bit on top, of course, but I can’t say as any of them has beards, Mrs Hudson. Not so as you’d notice, at any rate.’
‘We’ve heard Broomheath Hall is a very distinguished property,’ Mrs Hudson went on, changing the subject. ‘I imagine you know it well. The staff must be mainly local people?’
Again Mrs Garth shook her head, but this time I thought she looked a little wary.
‘That used to be the case, when the old squire was still here. But now that the place is rented out things aren’t the same. It was empty for months, and then the last tenant went mad and blew his brains out. A Mr Baldwick, it was. A southerner,’ she concluded, as though that explained everything. ‘He didn’t keep any staff at all, I’m sorry to say, just a woman from one of the farms who would go in once a week and do some cleaning.’
‘But there are new tenants now, are there not? We heard the place had been taken by an American couple.’
‘American, are they? I really wouldn’t know, Mr
s Hudson. They haven’t been seen in town since they arrived. As for their staff, the butler came from London and never shows his face down here at the Angel. Too superior, I suppose. And the cook and the maid are both girls from the outlying farms who sleep out, so nowadays we don’t hear much about the Hall.’
Mrs Hudson’s voice suddenly became jocular. ‘And what about the ghosts, Mrs Garth? On the train here we were told all sorts of stories about ghosts!’
But Mrs Garth did not laugh. She looked at us both a little cautiously. ‘That’s just tales, Mrs Hudson. Stupid folk with a pot of ale too many inside ’em.’
She hesitated, then lowered her voice. ‘I don’t hold with that sort of talk, you see. This village needs its visitors, and it does the place no good to put them off with wild tales. But there’s certain folk who aren’t above snaring a hare or two in the grounds of the Hall who talk a sight too freely. Lanterns in the night, they say, and fresh graves dug in the woods between one night and the next. There’s some who say it’s the ghost of Mr Baldwick, him what killed himself, trying to find himself a peaceful place to rest. But I don’t hold with any of that. Not when Mr Verity says the new tenant is one of them archaeologists. Stands to reason he’d be digging things up all the time.’
We learned little more from her that night about events at Broomheath Hall, but later, as I lay in my little bed and listened to the incredible silence of the moors, it was not as hard as it should have been to imagine a lantern waving in a spectral hand and a lost soul roaming the heath in search of sanctuary…
*
Mrs Hudson and I were up promptly the next morning, and long before Dr Watson called for us we had explored the town from one end to the other. It proved to be a thriving and friendly place with a lively market, a fine church and a teashop that displayed a very promising array of cakes. Broomheath Hall, we learned, was a mile or so out of the town, not far from the line of the railway that had brought us to Alston. Of those we spoke to, only the verger had met the Summersbys in person, when he called on them at Broomheath in the hope of raising funds for font repairs. No one seemed to have heard the name Pauncefoot and, as we expected, an inspection of the churchyard showed no grave marked with any such name.
It was when we came to a row of cottages at the foot of the town that Mrs Hudson paused and pointed at something that clearly surprised her. Above the door of the end cottage was a neat little sign which read in small letters:
The Anthony Baldwick Archive
If Locked, Key Available From Rectory
It was hard to know what to make of such a thing and, although my companion felt it worth her while to cross the road and peer through the windows, she restricted her comments to one eloquently raised eyebrow.
Our interview with Mr Verity followed later that morning. Dr Watson collected us from the Angel and escorted us to the smart Georgian house where the solicitor resided. There we finally met the individual who had first brought the town of Alston to our attention, and he received us in his elegant drawing room with great warmth. At first, I confess, I found it difficult to reconcile the figure before me with the panic-stricken telegram Mr Rumbelow had shown us in Baker Street. Mr Verity appeared on the surface to be every bit as phlegmatic as Mr Rumbelow had suggested, a short, rather fleshy man with fine whiskers and eyes that bulged slightly when he spoke. He greeted us very cordially and said a few words about the Duke of Buccleuch. Then, having first made sure that both Mrs Hudson and I were comfortably seated, he planted himself firmly on the hearthrug and began to tell us the full story behind his urgent telegram.
‘I should start, Mrs Hudson, by telling you a little more about Broomheath Hall and the legends associated with it. I beg you to bear with me, for although these tales might strike you as fanciful, I assure you that they are not without relevance to recent events. Broomheath, you see, although a fine dwelling, is not without stains upon its history. Indeed this whole area, until comparatively recent times, has been a lawless place, a region of feuding families and murderous cattle raids, of bloodshed and killings and kidnaps.
‘In the middle of the last century,’ Mr Verity continued, ‘Broomheath Hall fell into the hands of a well-bred rogue who established a certain bloody peace in Alston and the surrounding fells. Squire Venterton was a handsome fellow, and in his middle years by the time he had established his fortune. Having achieved both wealth and security, he decided it was time to find himself a wife. And he didn’t settle upon some local girl as was the custom, but found his bride in London on one of his rare visits there. Some say the squire won her at a game of cards. Whatever the truth, Lady Sylvia was never happy in these rougher climes of ours. They say her beauty and her youth faded quickly, and as time passed and her misery grew, she became subject to uncontrollable fits of weeping and explosions of great anger.’
Mr Verity cleared his throat, apparently uneasy about the direction his tale was taking.
‘It is said in the end she descended into madness, Mrs Hudson, confined to her rooms at Broomheath, tormented by her solitude and by her husband’s affairs. For Squire Venterton was still a good-looking man, and the acquisition of a bride in no way curtailed the wanton indulgence of his manly appetites. Furthermore, he made no attempt to hide his conquests, and with his wife confined to her sick quarters he would – quite blatantly – entertain his new paramours at Broomheath. It is said that on one such night, when the squire lay in bed with the daughter of a local farmer, Lady Sylvia burst into his bedchamber with a gleaming dagger in her hand, a weapon which she used, not to exact revenge upon her husband or his lover, but to end her own sorry existence. In short, she cut her wrists, there, in the bedchamber, and she died raving, vowing that no grave would hold her until the squire shared it with her, swearing that she would never rest until she had returned from the grave and dragged her husband with her back to hell.’
A slight warmth had coloured the solicitor’s cheeks during parts of this story, but Mrs Hudson remained commendably unembarrassed.
‘Do please go on, sir,’ she prompted.
‘Well, the story does not end there, I’m afraid, Mrs Hudson. Lady Sylvia was laid to rest in the grounds of the chapel, now a ruin, which stands on the fells above Broomheath Hall. But it’s said that her ravings proved prophetic, because seven nights after her death her grave was discovered opened and empty, apparently desecrated by some unknown hand. It was a great scandal, and the squire’s men rode out at once to seek the culprit, certain the outrage must have been perpetrated by one of his enemies. But that same night Squire Venterton thought he heard a voice calling him from below his window. He slipped from the bed he was sharing with a serving girl, telling her that he would be gone for no longer than a few moments. But the squire was never seen again. Only his blood-stained boots were found, out on the moors, not far from the old chapel. And to the amazement of everyone who saw it, Lady Sylvia’s grave, which had been open and empty the previous day, was now seen to be filled in again, as though it had never been disturbed.’
Mr Verity paused to clear his throat again, apparently torn between enjoyment of the ancient tale and embarrassment at its supernatural nature.
‘It is still widely believed in these parts, Mrs Hudson, that were the grave ever to be opened again, the remains of Squire Venterton would be found there, clasped in the arms of his wife. And a rumour has persisted to this day that no suicide will ever be able to sleep easily on Broomheath Moor. Like Lady Sylvia, they must return and claim a companion to lie with them for eternity.’
‘Sinister stuff, eh, Mrs H?’ Dr Watson, who had listened to this tale from a position very close to the sherry decanter, clearly felt the need to raise our spirits. ‘But a long time ago, wasn’t it, Verity? I like these old tales, but I don’t think we should take them too seriously, eh?’
‘And yet, sir,’ Mrs Hudson replied evenly, ‘Mr Verity assured us before he began that he is telling us this story for a reason.’
‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Hudson,’ the solicitor
confirmed. ‘Perhaps, though, I should now jump to more recent times, to my first dealings with Mr Anthony Baldwick, until recently the tenant of Broomheath Hall. You see, the current owner of Broomheath is a well-to-do farmer who, upon reaching the age of seventy, decided to follow both his sons to Canada, leaving responsibility for the hall – for its upkeep and for finding tenants – in my hands. And I should tell you, Broomheath is not an easy property to let. Its remote location is against it, and I daresay the tales told about it do not help its cause. When I first heard from Mr Baldwick, the property had been without a tenant for more than a year.
‘I was at first overjoyed to receive Mr Baldwick’s letter, for he told me that he was an archaeologist looking for a property within easy reach of the Wall and that a solitary location, where he could work undisturbed, was essential. We get many gentlemen of archaeological leanings here, Mrs Hudson, with the Wall being so close and because of the Roman Camp just across the river. They are quite frequently a little eccentric. But Mr Baldwick was different.’
As Mr Verity continued his tale, I found my eyes wandering from his honest face to the window beyond, and to the dark flanks of the moor that seemed to defy all the certainties of his neat Georgian drawing room. A dark cloud was passing, and the wind was whipping over the heather. To seek out such a place to hide, to reject all the comforts of cheerful company… It was hard not to wonder what could have driven Mr Anthony Baldwick to seek refuge in so bleak a place.
It had been the strange behaviour of the new tenant which had first begun to unsettle Mr Verity.
‘He purported to be a gentleman, Mrs Hudson, but his bearing and manners were most erratic. He struck me as anxious for approval, very eager to please a person to his face, but behind a man’s back he was a different person altogether. And there were other things, too. His luggage, for instance. He had brought with him to Alston a number of large crates and a profusion of smaller boxes which he said contained his papers, yet he appeared to have no other personal effects at all. On his first day here he purchased tweeds and an old-fashioned cape and from that day on was never seen to wear anything else. He required no staff. Indeed it seemed he lived on little more than bread and cheese.’
Mrs Hudson and the Lazarus Testament Page 13