by Mrs Hudson
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.’
Mr Verity, who showed every sign of keeping a very good table, shook his head sadly before going on.
‘He kept no company and received no visitors. Indeed I think I was his only confidant, and I found the role a taxing one. He would call on me frequently in the evenings and would talk at great length about his reputation as an archaeologist, about how one day he would be famous. He told me of the many pamphlets he had published and urged copies of them upon me. And then at other times he would appear pale and distraught, and would ask me my views about sin and punishment, and about the inevitability of God’s vengeance on those who had transgressed. Well, of course, that isn’t really my subject and I urged him to speak to the rector, but I don’t believe he ever did.
‘It was when word of Mr Baldwick’s irrational behaviour became more widespread that I began to question whether he was a fit and proper tenant. First there were tales of him lurking in the ruined chapel at dusk, and then came reports of him digging: in the grounds of the Hall, out on the moors, even in the ruins of cottages on the fells, well beyond Alston. Like a ghoul, the local poachers said, all shrouded in that cape of his. Or like some sort of devilish beast, pawing at the ground with his shovel.
‘Well, I made some further inquiries,’ Mr Verity went on, ‘and found that everything he’d told me about himself seemed to be lies or exaggeration. His father had made his money through railway speculation and had died when Baldwick was a child. The son had spent his whole life in an obsessive pursuit of fame. A pamphlet about folk tales that he published early in his career had proved popular, and for the rest of his life he endeavoured to repeat this triumph, inundating the public with an apparently endless torrent of pamphlets and papers, none of which ever achieved any success whatsoever. Far from being pre-eminent in the field, as he claimed, I discovered he had only turned his attention to archaeology a couple of years before arriving in Alston.’
Mr Verity swallowed nervously as he recalled the situation he had found himself in.
‘Perhaps what I did next was injudicious. But I confess I felt angry and deceived. It appeared his references were forgeries and his word without value. So I rode out to Broomheath to confront him. It was a stormy day and there was thunder in the air when I arrived. I will never forget that interview, Mrs Hudson. I found him pale, shrunken and shivering, whining and raging in turns. He wept, and spoke of demons pursuing him and a messenger from God sent to drive him to the grave. He claimed he was a new Jonah, attempting to hide from his creator’s wrath. He raved that eternal torment awaited him and that even if he lived forever he could not escape the clutches of hell, as hell would find him out in life or death. Well, of course, I recognised the ramblings of a lunatic and I tried to calm him, but so aberrant was his behaviour, so desperate his manner, that I decided to ride for medical assistance. And of course I was too late. That night, before I returned, he had died by his own hand.’
It was clear that Mr Verity was deeply affected by the anguish of that evening; clear too that the memory of it still filled him with horror. Perhaps the discovery that the dead man had named him as the executor of his will had made his guilt even worse, for he had performed his legal duties with exaggerated punctiliousness. Acting upon a scribbled note found near the body, Mr Verity had arranged for the dead man’s remains to be interred in the grounds of the old chapel. As for his estate, it emerged that what was left of Mr Baldwick’s fortune had largely been exhausted by his rental of Broomheath Hall. His will required that the remainder should be spent on establishing a public reading room for the display of his papers and pamphlets.
‘I think he imagined a grand establishment on the Strand, I’m afraid, but with so little to spend, my hands were tied. In the end I was able to secure the lease on a cottage in the village and moved his papers there. As far as I’m aware, its only visitor is the woman I pay to keep it clean.’
‘And when you went through his things you found only papers? No artefacts of any kind?’
‘No, Mrs Hudson, nothing of that sort at all, I’m afraid.’
Before our arrival in Alston, I had not given much thought to the previous tenant of Broomheath Hall, but it was clear from the concentration on her face as she listened to all this that Mrs Hudson took a great deal of interest in the late Anthony Baldwick and his career. Unfortunately Mr Verity had been able to discover very little about the man’s activities in the months immediately before he arrived at Alston. The only information he had been able to garner had come from Mr Baldwick himself, and Verity considered him an unreliable witness.
‘Even so, sir, I would be interested in hearing what he told you.’
‘Very little, Mrs Hudson, and all of it the same boastful stuff. He claimed he had been leading archaeological expeditions in the Near East and in Palestine, and with great success.’
Mrs Hudson showed no emotion on hearing this. She merely nodded. ‘Thank you, sir. That is very interesting. Now, since Mr Baldwick’s death…?’
‘That is when things began to take a sinister turn, Mrs Hudson, although at first everything seemed to go smoothly. I was delighted to find new tenants almost immediately, the young American couple who are there now. They considered the property ideally situated for Mr Summersby’s archaeological pursuits. The Summersbys engaged a London agency to find a suitably qualified butler, someone who would open up the house before their arrival, and an appropriate individual was sent up almost by return. I myself found two young girls from the outlying farms to act as cook and maid, two sensible young things who weren’t in the least disturbed by the wild rumours that were beginning to circulate. And the following month the Summersbys arrived from the south of France, where they had been spending part of the winter.’
Mr Verity broke off and sighed, and when he continued his face was troubled. It seemed that the first reports of strange events at Broomheath Hall had reached his ears shortly before the Summersbys arrived. Those early stories had mostly concerned lights moving in the grounds at night, but as the Summersbys attempted to settle in, the reports became more frequent and extended from the Hall grounds to the moors beyond. Next came the discoveries of freshly turned earth: on the moors, near the ruined chapel, sometimes near the Hall itself; in fact, in all the places where the suicide had been wont to dig. Then, as rumour spread, the first sightings were reported – the caped figure of Anthony Baldwick, it was said, digging in the ground by night, just has he had done when he was alive.
‘And then there was Crummoch.’ Mr Verity’s frown had deepened. ‘It’s hard to describe Archie Crummoch. Hard even to say how old he was. But he’d lived in a ramshackle cottage half a mile from Broomheath Hall for as long as anyone could remember. I think he worked on the estate once and had been allowed to stay on in the cottage, but that must have been a great many years ago, for Crummoch is eighty if he’s a day, and no one round here can remember him working. He just keeps himself to himself in that cottage of his, and haunts the moors like some north-country Caliban, all long hair and beard and staring eyes. We don’t see him down here in town very often, and people here tend to forget about him. But that changed when we buried Mr Baldwick.
‘It was the rector who alerted me. The night after the interment at the old chapel there was a terr
ible storm. The rain lashed down all night. And in the morning, the rector found old Crummoch curled up on his doorstep, soaked to the skin. It seems he’d spent the night there. Of course by the time the rector found him he was chilled and feverish, but we managed to get a little bit out of him. He told us that he’d come to seek sanctuary because he knew Baldwick’s ghost would be coming for him, that he would be dragged down to hell like old Squire Venterton. He begged us to let him sleep by the church altar – seemed to think that was the only place he’d be safe.
‘In the end we brought him here. My cook is a distant relation of his, apparently, and Crummoch seemed to feel safe with her. Though not very safe. We put him to bed and she tended him with the doctor’s help. At first it seemed certain we would lose him, for the fever had taken hold with a vengeance. For a week or more he was delirious, and for a month after that too weak even to lift his head. Not many men would have survived such affliction, but for all his years Crummoch was still strong. Gradually, as the weeks passed, he began to regain his old vigour.
‘By then, of course, the stories of strange lights up on the moors were becoming frequent, but we took great care to keep them from Crummoch. We feared they would excite him and set back his recovery. He was calm and sane, and making good progress, when the unfortunate incident occurred. That was the day before I sent my second telegram, Mrs Hudson, the one begging for urgent assistance. It was the day when an old poacher, a strange and superstitious fellow, called here to tell me that he had seen a light moving around the ruined chapel, moving around the grave of Mr Baldwick. The grave was undisturbed, he told me, but he felt sure the curse was at work, that any day the dead man would force himself to the surface and come looking for a companion to lie with him in his grave. This conversation took place in the garden, within earshot of Crummoch’s window, and by ill chance it seems the old man was awake and listening.
‘Well, I tell you, Mrs Hudson, all the good work of the previous weeks was undone at a stroke. That afternoon, Crummoch was wild-eyed and raving again, convinced that Baldwick’s ghost was coming for him. I assured him that the grave was undisturbed, that he had nothing to fear, but he wouldn’t listen. So great was his hysteria that I confess I turned the key in his bedroom door that night, afraid that he intended to set out for the moors to reassure himself that the grave had not been opened. But I had not reckoned on the old man’s strength. While the household slept, he forced the lock on the window and was gone, taking with him nothing but an overcoat and the Bible from his bedside.’
Mrs Hudson leaned forward intently.
‘But you searched for him, sir?’
‘We did. I roused the village and a good many honest folk came out to hunt for him. But we never found him, Mrs Hudson. Instead, when we reached the ruined chapel, we found that Baldwick’s grave had been newly turned over, as though opened and refilled. And beside it, Mrs Hudson… I know this is hard to credit, but I saw it with my own eyes, I promise you. Beside it, Mrs Hudson, we found my missing Bible. And beside that, battered and worn, we found the blood-stained boots of Archibald Crummoch.’
Chapter XI
A Salute by Night
A short silence followed Mr Verity’s narrative. Mrs Hudson, I saw, was rubbing her chin, apparently deep in thought, while our host dabbed at his brow with his crisp linen handkerchief. Dr Watson shivered, then poured himself another sherry. Outside, the dark clouds had thickened, and the flanks of the moor that rose above the town seemed to brood in their shadow.
‘I confess, Mrs Hudson,’ Mr Verity went on, ‘that my immediate thought was to open the grave. A man was missing, the grave had been turned – I’d have set about it with a shovel there and then had the rector not restrained me. But the rector, I fear, is a very upright fellow of rigid views, who sees it as his mission to stamp out the old superstitions that linger in this place. He insisted that no action should be taken without the proper permissions, and certainly not until the matter had been placed in the hands of the police.
‘I daresay he was right, of course, but I confess such restraint went against the grain. I felt certain something dreadful had occurred, and that no time was to be lost. It took more than a day for an inspector of police to make his way from Hexham, and although we continued the search for Crummoch throughout that time, no further traces were found. And the inspector, when he came, was a most unprepossessing individual, a rather weasel-ish man named Robinson who clearly thought himself a bit cleverer than we were. I urged him to pursue the search by exhuming Baldwick’s remains, but this suggestion was greeted with the most supercilious disdain. I was made to feel little better than a superstitious old crank, the victim of pranksters who knew the old stories and were having a bit of fun at my expense.
‘And I’m afraid Inspector Robinson also made the mistake of pursuing his investigations in the public bar of the Grapes. That’s the rather rough tavern at the foot of the hill. It’s barely respectable, not at all like the Angel, and the fellows who drink there don’t usually care for outsiders. They want to be left to their own devices, and they were quick to persuade Inspector Robinson that Archie Crummoch was simply a crazed old man given to sudden disappearances, someone who thought nothing of taking himself off over the moors for days, even weeks, at a time.
‘I’m sorry to say, Mrs Hudson, that the inspector seemed more than happy to take their opinion above mine, and after a couple of days he announced his investigation was at an end and that he was returning to Hexham. Needless to say, there has been no sign of Crummoch since then, and unless we pursue our own inquiries I feel certain the whole incident will remain a mystery.’
He straightened and I saw his eyes drift to the window.
‘Old Crummoch was an honest fellow and he never hurt a fly. He loved it up on the fells. But the moors are treacherous and unforgiving at this time of year,’ he added, his voice growing quiet with sadness, ‘and I’m afraid, Mrs Hudson, that they tend to keep their secrets.’
*
‘So what do you think of all that?’ Dr Watson asked as we stepped out again onto the Alston cobbles. Quite suddenly the dark clouds had parted, and a shaft of pale sunlight touched our faces. Above the town the open moor had turned to amber.
‘Very interesting, sir. Very interesting indeed. Mr Baldwick’s behaviour is intriguing, is it not?’
‘Sounds like the fellow was simply a lunatic, Mrs Hudson. But what about those boots? That’s the part of the story that worries me. A chap’s gone missing and there’s blood in his boots. Sounds like foul play to me.’
‘Indeed, sir. But I have a suspicion that Mr Baldwick and the boots are not unconnected. What do you think he was up to, Flotsam?’
‘Well, ma’am, we know Mr Baldwick travelled to the Holy Land. It seems to me that he might have discovered where the Lazarus Testament was hidden. Might he not have stumbled upon the same information as Lord Beaumaris? And I think he came here looking for it, ma’am. That would explain all the digging, you see. Perhaps it was not finding it that drove him mad.’
‘Thank you, Flotsam.’ She considered for a moment. ‘Now, tell me, sir, what steps do you intend to take next?’
The question seemed to disconcert the good doctor.
‘Well, I daresay we should talk to this Inspector Robinson… Dash it, Mrs Hudson, it’s too bad of Holmes, disappearing like this! It was the same with that Baskerville business, if you remember. Barely a sniff of him for weeks. A bit thoughtless, I call it. Never seems to occur to him that it’s confoundedly hard for a fellow to write up his cases in an interesting way when he takes himself off for weeks at a time!’
‘Indeed, sir. Now, I think you’re right to say you’ll need to have a word with the police inspector at some point, but from what we’ve been told it would seem his investigations have been cursory at best. In the meantime, sir, it occurs to me that the answer to all this mystery lies at Broomheath Hall. And Flotsam here has already met Mrs Summersby. Perhaps if the two of you were to call on her toget
her, sir, you might find her more inclined to speak freely of the latest events on her doorstep?’
‘Why, yes, of course, Mrs Hudson. Broomheath! An excellent idea. And always delighted to have Flotsam along, as you know…’
And with that, our plan was formed. It was decided that Dr Watson and I should call that very afternoon.
*
The old hall stood alone, over a mile from Alston, and proved a striking building, its foundations laid in the days when prosperous landowners built for security, fearful of the lawlessness of the times and of the gangs of Border reivers who would raid for cattle and captives and any sort of portable plunder. In those days, farmhouses were fortified like castles, with thick walls and small windows, and much of that original character could still be perceived in the fine old dwelling that greeted us as our trap skirted a flank of barren moorland to reveal the hall below us. As we drew closer, however, we began to notice the later additions and improvements that had followed and which had turned Broomheath Hall into a comfortable modern dwelling. By the time Dr Watson pulled to a halt on the gravel sweep, it was clear to us both we were in the grounds of a neat but attractive country residence that wore with comfort its great antiquity.
The door was opened to us by a young girl in a rather grubby cook’s apron, who ushered us into a drawing room with hunting trophies on the walls and a fire blazing in the grate. Mrs Summersby joined us a few minutes later and laughed with delight on recognising me.
‘Why, Flotsam! Imagine seeing you here! Mr Verity told us that Sherlock Holmes was sending someone, but I must say I never expected it to be you!’