I lowered my glass. “She fell asleep almost at once. She was exhausted.”
Constance shook her head. “I wish I knew what ailed her! Well, it is a blessing that she is asleep at last. I suppose Meg can come down now.”
Holmes turned his glass, sloshing the liquid gently. “Meg is asleep and, tiny as she is, quite comfortable on the sofa. I think she should remain there. I also find it difficult to sleep, and I will be checking on your niece throughout the night.”
“How kind you are, Mr. Holmes! But don’t you need your rest?”
“I require very little sleep, madam.” He took a swallow of whisky.
It was quieter in the hall, the wind muted and more distant. “Well, I rarely have trouble sleeping,” I said. “And I am going to bed straight away.”
Constance gave her head another shake. “How good of you to stay up so late and take such an interest in Rose! I am so happy to have a competent physician under our roof. I did so like old Doctor Herbert, but this young doctor now... I wish Victor had gone to see the heart specialist on Harley Street. I begged him to, but he would not listen. He could be very stubborn—just like Rose. Anyway, now that you are here, doctor, Rose may at last be cured.”
Holmes finished his drink and set down the glass. George raised the bottle. “Another, sir?”
“No, thank you. Tell me, Miss Grimswell...”
“Constance, Mr. Holmes—remember?” The corners of her mouth stayed fixed in the smile even as she spoke.
“Tell me, do you recall...? Lady Rupert mentioned something about your niece wandering about in her sleep, a condition known as somnambulism. Has she ever...?”
Constance set down her glass (she had finished the drink very quickly) and nodded. “I do remember that. As a child she used to walk in her sleep all the time. Victor often found her before his bed in the middle of the night. He said it scared him half to death, this small pale girl in her white nightgown standing silently before his bed. I thought she had outgrown it.”
“She...” I began, then noticed Holmes staring intently at me. “She probably has. It is more common among children.” I finished my drink and glanced at George. “Thank you for the drink.”
Holmes picked up the candle. “It was gracious of you to oblige us so late at night. Constance, how long have you been at Grimswell Hall? You did not live here before Victor’s death, I believe.”
“No, I did not. I have been here since Victor’s tragic end. I told Rose it would not do for a young lady to be alone and unchaperoned. Of course, she has spent the whole time away from my watchful eye in London, but then, Lady Rupert is certainly to be trusted. You have met her, Mr. Holmes. Don’t you think she is to be trusted with a young lady’s well-being?”
“Absolutely. And now we must say goodnight. Henry will fall asleep on the spot at any moment, and I too am fatigued.”
Constance raised her large puffy hand and smoothed a gray curl back over her ear. “I shall be going to bed soon, too. I hope you find the beds comfortable. There are extra blankets and pillows in the wardrobes.”
“We shall be most comfortable, madam. Thank you, George.”
The footman nodded, still grinning. We left them and walked into the black gloom. When we reached the stairs, I turned. The flickering candle was visible, but not their faces. Neither Holmes nor I spoke until we had reached the top of the stairs. Beneath us, we heard footsteps, mumbled words, and a burst of female laughter.
“It is cold,” I said. “The great hall is an icy cave.”
“Heating such a vast space would be an impossibility.”
Holmes stepped into my room, and lit a candle by the bedside table. There was no fireplace or fire here, and it was even colder than in the hall.
“Are you really going to stay up most of the night?” I asked.
“I doubt it, but I shall check on Miss Grimswell frequently.” His mouth formed a brief ironic smile. “And if she appears in my room again, I shall come fetch you. You certainly handled her better than I.”
I laughed. “I can understand how you must have felt. I was surprised, but she did not actually embrace me. All the same, you were not so disturbed as I by her behavior. Until you spoke, I was convinced she was mad. Well, if it happens again, at least we shall be prepared.”
He gave a short, soft laugh. “Yes, we shall be prepared. Goodnight, Henry. Sleep well.”
I undressed as quickly as I could in the freezing room, put on my nightshirt, then slipped between the icy sheets and wrapped the blankets and quilts about me. I closed my eyes, but although I was tired out, I could not sleep. My mind would not rest.
Sleeping in a strange bed was always difficult the first night, and sleeping alone had also become difficult. I missed the warmth of Michelle. I liked to reach out with my hand or foot and touch her. I especially liked running my hand down the long curve of her back and her flank. My feet were cold and would not seem to warm up, and now I was conscious of that dull moan of the wind. It probably never did stop. Periodically the window rattled, as if some large moor creature were blowing at the panes.
I remembered suddenly the opening of Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, where the narrator is sleeping in a musty old room on a stormy night. In a dream, a young girl’s ghost appears at the window and begs him to let her in. He refuses, and then, for some reason, he viciously rubs her arm back and forth against some broken glass. It was only a novel, I told myself, only a story. Gradually I managed to relax.
Rose Grimswell’s face appeared in the darkness, white with black hair billowing about her in the wind. I started, then realized I had begun to dream. The room was quiet and dim with only the flickering candle. What if she appeared in my room? What would I do?
I recalled her bare white legs as she lay in the bed before I covered her. Her foot was so large, the toes long like her fingers. I wondered what she would look like under the gown—quite beautiful, certainly—then caught myself and felt guilty at such thoughts. I knew quite well what Michelle looked like under her gown, all those hidden curves and lovely places. A wave of restless longing washed over me, and I turned onto my other side. Such thoughts will not help you get to sleep, I reflected.
The window rattled again. “I wish I had never come to Dartmoor,” I muttered softly. I stretched out my legs, then curled and uncurled my toes. My feet were still cold.
Six
My dreams were troubled that night, haunted by a tall woman in a white nightgown lurking in the darkness. Sometimes the woman was Michelle, then she was Rose Grimswell; sometimes she was in deadly peril, pursued by some black creature with a white face; sometimes she smiled and beckoned to me with her long, shapely arms. Toward morning, the dreams became embarrassingly vivid. At last I opened my eyes.
The dim sound of the wind was still present, but through a gap in the curtains shone a long, thin line of dazzling yellow light. I fumbled about for my watch on the bedside table. Half-past eight—later than I usually slept. The room seemed cold and bleak, but the light at the window promised a better day.
I rose, shivered at the shock of the cold air, then clasped my arms about me and went to the window. The front of the house had many trees, but this was the rear side where one saw only the weathered brown moor stretching off for about fifty yards, until it began the rise to the jumble of black granite set against a brilliant blue sky—Demon Tor. Even the sinister name could not mute the desolate beauty of the scene under golden autumnal light. Man could assign names to the works of nature, but they were only that, only names, mere words. The tor had existed in wild splendor before men had walked the moors, and it would probably exist after our cities and empire had collapsed and crumbled, even as those of Egypt or Rome.
I shaved, and dressed quickly, putting on a heavy tweed suit and walking boots, then descended to the hall. Fitzwilliams seemed to be waiting for me. His thin, aged face was clean and pink, the scab of a slight nick showing at the side of his jaw where he must have cut himself shaving. “
Mr. Holmes is in the breakfast room—this way, sir.”
The hall seemed less forbidding in the daytime. Huge windows let the bright morning light spill upon its granite floor and the dark wooden furniture. Fitzwilliams opened a door. “Here we are, sir.”
I blinked my eyes in astonishment. This was a bright, cheerful room which belonged in a London townhouse. There was none of the primordial black granite or massiveness of the great hall. Above the wainscoting was a yellow wallpaper with a bronze and red pattern. The colors in the room were all yellow, gold, cream, brown or red, and delicate lace curtains hung on either side of the many windows. Outside were trees, their reddish-brown leaves moving in the breeze. The odor of an armada of food set upon the sideboard assailed my nostrils, the typical overabundance of an English country breakfast.
Holmes sat at the table, his cup and saucer on the fine linen tablecloth. Beside him was a tiny woman in a black dress, her white hair in a bun. She turned upon me a pair of piercing black eyes. They might be faintly cloudy—cataracts, no doubt—and age might have dulled their fire, but they were remarkable, all the same. In the days of Greece or Rome, she would have been an oracle or sibyl, one of those women through whom the gods spoke.
“Ah, Henry, do join us. This is Mrs. Prudence Fitzwilliams, the housekeeper and another devoted servant of the Grimswells for over fifty years. We have been discussing the family. Madam, this is my cousin and friend, Doctor Henry Vernier, a physician from London.”
I nodded. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Fitzwilliams.”
She stared closely at me, her eyes struggling to focus upon my face. Besides cataracts, she might be near-sighted. The corners of her mouth slowly rose. “He’s handsome enough, anyway.”
Holmes laughed, and the old woman released a single sharp hiss of breath. I smiled. “You flatter me, madam.”
“I like a man with a big mustache. William had a black mustache when I first met him.”
Holmes took a sip of coffee. “There is plenty of food to fill a plate. Do so and join us.”
The smells made me realize how hungry I was. All the same, enough food for ten men was set out. I raised several silver lids, took some scrambled eggs, bacon and toast, and shuddered slightly at the kippers. I cannot abide fish for breakfast. Pulling out a chair, I sat across from Mrs. Fitzwilliams.
She seized a cane, then slowly started to rise. “You’ll want coffee, I suppose.”
Holmes stood. “Allow me.” He took a cup and saucer from the sideboard, then poured from a silver pot which had been sitting upon a flickering flame.
With a sigh, Mrs. Fitzwilliams had collapsed back into her seat. “I am the servant here, not you, sir, but thank you. I don’t get around so well any longer, as you can see.” She shook her head, a flash of anger showing in her eyes. “I have not been upstairs in two years now. All those steps. They are too much for an old woman.”
Holmes set the cup and saucer before me. “I too thank you,” I said.
He nodded, then sat down. “You should let the blond servant carry you upstairs, madam. He looks strong enough.”
“I’ll not let him touch me.”
Holmes’s gray eyes watched her. “You do not care for George?”
“Not I. He’s an idle fellow, and one that cannot keep his hands off the girls. Perhaps it would serve him right to have to hoist up an old crone like me.” She laughed, a dry brittle sound. “I’m happy enough down here. Nothing up there but beds to be made and rooms to be cleaned. All the same...” Her eyes shifted upward. “I’d like to see the Tower of Babel again someday.”
Holmes’s forehead creased. “The Tower of Babel?”
“Lord Grimswell’s tower—the one he had built about fifteen years ago. You can see for miles and miles around on a sunny day like this. Of course, even ten years ago it wore a body out getting up there. All those steps! How is the bacon?”
Her black eyes were peering at me. Even her eyebrows were absolutely white. “Very good,” I said.
“One of our tenant’s pigs. His hams are wonderful, too. Lord Grimswell used to say he had never tasted better in any of his travels. That and the whortleberries were his favorites. He loved whortleberries even as a little boy.” Another dry laugh. “Although he was never really little—six and a half feet tall he grew to be, with black hair and eyes. But he loved whortleberries, especially in a pie or tart.” Her mouth slowly opened into a smile; she still had all her teeth. “I had cook make him a pie, the summer before last. When he was a boy, he’d get the juice all over his face and hands, but if he got his clothes dirty he was punished. Nasty bluish-purplish stains they make, a mess especially on white cloth.”
Holmes had set one hand upon the table and leaned back in the chair. “From what you told me earlier, I take it he was a good master.”
“He was...” Her voice had a tentative note. She stared down at her gnarled hands, the skin covered with kidney-colored spots. “He left every servant a generous gift. For William and me, a thousand pounds apiece. Can you imagine such a fortune? Not a servant went without something. Even George got his hundred pounds. And he said in his will William and me was always to have a home here at the hall, even should we no longer be able to work.” She blinked several times, her eyes glistening, but even tears seemed an effort. “A kind man always, but a troubled man, a man that could not or would not control his thoughts. And we know where that leads.”
“Where is that, madam?” Holmes asked.
“To the Devil, of course. One should not sit about all day thinking. It’s true what they say about an idle mind being the Devil’s workshop. All sorts of strange things will pop into your mind if you let them. That’s one benefit to being one of the working folk rather than a master. We be so busy, we don’t have time to worry and fret.”
I swallowed a mouthful of eggs and set down my fork. “Do you truly believe the Devil can influence men for worse?”
Her eyes opened wide. “Surely. Only a fool doesn’t believe in the Devil. His handiwork is everywhere.”
Holmes’s laugh was gruff, nearly mute. “It is indeed. One can argue that his presence is much more clearly manifest than that of the deity.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “I know what I’ve seen. Only last week the groom Ned had a fury come upon him. He would have beat the old brown cob to death had George not pulled him away. A madness came on him. He beats his wife, too. It was the Devil—anyone could see that. I had William let him go. We all have to fight the Devil, but Ned seemed to welcome him. And Lord Grimswell, sitting up late at night in his tower, his mind melancholy and desperate to start with. Might as well hang out a signboard welcoming Old Scratch.” She shook her head. “Oh, he fought the Devil—he wrestled with him, but in the end...” Her voice faded away, but her eyes still burned.
I pushed my plate away, my appetite suddenly gone. Holmes watched her closely. “You think the Devil won?”
She hesitated, then sighed wearily. “I hope not, but it was Demon Tor, after all, a cursed place if ever there was one. Many’s the time I tried to tell him ’ware of the cursed place, but he would only laugh at me. I pray he did not jump.”
“In the end, I’m not sure it matters much either way,” I said.
“Do you know nothing, young man? Are you some pagan heathen?”
I shook my head, reflecting that an agnostic was probably a pagan heathen in her book.
“If he jumped, he is damned for sure. Even now the eternal fires’d burn his flesh, while all about the wretches howl and writhe. Hell has a deadly stench, icy winds and fiery ones, and the understanding that you must suffer forever—that it will never end—makes the pain and fear even worse.” Her voice shook slightly, and I felt something like dread coalescing about my heart. Her eyes glistened and her head sank. “I pray it is not so.”
“The man who drove us here yesterday was reluctant to be caught on the moor after dark,” Holmes said. Mrs. Fitzwilliams raised her head but said nothing. “I suspect there are tales about a
man in black wandering...”
“There are always such tales! I heard them as a girl. Spirits... spirits have always wandered at night on the moors, ghosts and... worse. There are the damned, of course, and minor devils who wish to ensnare others, and also those poor souls trapped between Heaven and Hell. They must wander for many a year to atone for their sins, but at least they are not truly damned. They will have peace at last.” Her brown eyes gazed out the window at the trees, but she seemed to see some other place. “They are not... hungry.”
“Hungry?” I said.
“Sometimes the dead feast on the living, but though they may eat flesh or drink blood, it is souls they desire.” Her eyes had not moved. “Then the victims become wanderers themselves, though good people be not truly cursed. They will be saved in the end.”
A smile played about Holmes’s lips—a humorless one. “Sometimes the living feast on the dead. They would steal from the dead—or from the living.”
The old woman stared at him, her face grim. “That’s true enough.”
“Miss Grimswell—Rose Grimswell—does not seem to think her father jumped.”
Mrs. Fitzwilliams’s mouth twisted about. “The girl is a fool—but it’s not her fault. Why should she have gone to all those schools and been encouraged to...? Her father should have found the girl a husband. He seemed to want her to end up like him. Too much thinking isn’t good for a body. It’s not natural. We wasn’t meant to sit about all day thinking strange thoughts and writing scandalous books. Lord Grimswell could have interested himself in farming and sport, like his father, but he had to be different. Look where it got him?—dead and buried. At least he didn’t end up in a madhouse. I hope...” Her eyes were glistening again, and her tiny hand fumbled at a pocket for a handkerchief.
“Calm yourself, madam,” Holmes said gently.
She sniffled once, then wiped feebly at her nose. “I don’t want Rose to end up that way. I told her to go back to London and marry her young man. He’s a marquess’s son. He must amount to something. Why did she want to come back here where there’s only old half-dead folks and all those memories of her poor sad father? She should go back, Mr. Holmes—before something bad happens—before... This is not a good place for her. I know it, Mr. Holmes, I know it. Please...”
The Grimswell Curse Page 10