Death at Dartmoor

by Robin Paige

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The avenue opened onto a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us.... The whole front was draped In ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.

  The Hound of the Baskervilles

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  The mist had blown away, a full moon rode high over the frosty moor, and while the air was quite bracing, the ride to Chagford was pleasant. Charles and Dr. Doyle were chuckling at one of Patsy’s outrageous travel tales, while Mr. Fletcher Robinson, whom Doyle had introduced as Bertie, his “journalist friend,” rode beside the Robin-sons’ coachman, a man named Harry Baskerville. This left Kate to watch eagerly for the first sight of Thornworthy Castle, which Doyle said lay not far beyond Chagford, on a cliff overlooking the Little Teign. The house was very old, he added, and had been part of the Duncan family estate for nearly two centuries. Sir Edgar Duncan had inherited it, and he and his wife Rosalind had moved here some four years before from London.

  “A veritable Gothic castle,” Mr. Doyle called it, and Kate was not disappointed when they passed between a pair of imposing stone pillars and wrought-iron lodge gates and rattled down a long avenue toward the great house at the end, gleaming ghostlike in the silvery moonlight. As they drew closer, she gained a confused impression of ancient granite walls and steeply sloped roofs overgrown with ivy and decorated with chimneys and cornices and crenellations, the whole guarded by square stone turrets. And then they were alighting from their carriage before the house and the great double doors of the hall were thrown open, light spilling out, and they were greeted by their host and hostess and several other guests.

  Sir Edgar was a handsome, gray-haired gentleman with a pair of good-natured mustaches and a genial air of bonhomie. His wife, Rosalind, was a slender woman dressed in close-fitting blue velvet, her dark hair pulled sleekly back into a chignon, her face so pale that it seemed almost carved out of ivory. The rest of her looked almost carved, too, and Kate thought that she’d never seen anyone who held herself so perfectly straight. She did not smile until she introduced Nigel Westcott, the guest of honor, who was tall and fair, with a deep, compelling voice and a studied air of mystery, supremely conscious that he was the center of everyone’s attention. Dressed in a black velvet jacket and black trousers and boots, with a white silk cravat loosely tied, and ruffles at the cuffs, he looked exactly as a medium ought to look, Kate remarked to herself with satisfaction.

  The other guests included a neighbor, Mr. Jack Delany, of nearby Stapleton House, a distant cousin of the host; the amiable young vicar of Saint Michael’s, Mr. Thomas Garrett; an attractive but shy widow who lived in nearby Hexworthy; and—to Kate’s pleasure—the same Mr. William Crossing who had given the lecture at Yelverton the evening before, his graying hair combed smoothly back, his smile modestly reserved under a concealing mustache.

  Noisily, the party trooped up a palatial staircase with carved oak banisters and into a fine, large chamber warmed by a crackling fire in the great fireplace. The richly carpeted room was hung with heavy tapestries between tall windows inset with panels of stained glass, furnished with massive carved tables and chairs, and lit by iron chandeliers holding ranks of blazing candles. A round, damask-covered table ornamented with silk flowers stood opposite the fireplace, and guests were directed to help themselves to an impressive assortment of supper sandwiches of beef and ham and tongue, chicken rolls, puff pastries filled with lobster, cheeses, jam tartlets, fancy pastries, fresh fruit, and bonbons. A trio of uniformed servants moved among the crowd, pouring champagne.

  In spite of the gay congeniality of the other guests, Kate was not drawn into the party but stood on the fringes, observing the others as they ate and drank and chatted sociably. Moments like this frequently overtook her in crowds, especially when Beryl Bardwell had a writing project in mind and was on the lookout for promising ideas. (Some time ago, Kate had adopted the practice of referring to Beryl when she thought of her writing-self. It was useful when she was doing something that she wouldn’t ordinarily do in her own person, such as eavesdropping on a conversation or scanning the envelopes on someone’s hallway table. She was able to excuse herself for such inexcusable behavior only because it was Beryl who was doing the snooping, not she.)

  Just now, for instance, as she took mental notes of the room’s furnishings, Beryl’s gaze happened to alight on Mr. Delany, who was standing off by himself, his hands in his pockets, gazing up at the ranks of family portraits on one wall. The man—slim, clean-shaven, flaxen-haired, perhaps near forty years of age—was a relative of Sir Edgar, and lived nearby. Did he resent the chance that had bestowed Thornworthy and its wealth upon his elder kinsman, rather than upon himself?

  A gesture caught her eye, and Beryl turned in the direction of her hostess. Lady Duncan was replying absently to a question put to her by the vicar, but her attention was elsewhere. Her eyes were fastened intently on her husband, who was engaged in a serious conversation with the shy widow about a pair of lost ewes that had turned up in a neighbor’s enclosure and had to be fetched home. Some aspect of this seemed to strike the two of them as funny, and they leaned close together, laughing. Beryl saw that Lady Duncan’s luminous dark eyes held a flash of something—was it jealousy?—and that there was a masked tension in the line of the woman’s jaw. Surely there was the kernel of a plot here: a possessive wife whose emotions were obviously repressed; an attractive, exuberant husband; a pretty little widow who lived temptingly near; and a cousin who coveted his kinsman’s fortune. What if—

  “Well, Kate,” Patsy said in Kate’s ear, “what’s your impression of the castle?”

  Startled out of Beryl’s plottings, Kate pulled her attention back to the party. “I certainly do hope,” she replied, “that the private apartments are a little less ... daunting. It’s all well and good to put rooms such as this in a story, but I should not like to live in them.”

  “I must say I agree,” Patsy said. “Mr. Delany, who has lived in this neighborhood his whole life, says that this place is haunted. One of the family forebears—the second Marquis of Thorn, who was murdered in the 1840s—occasionally steps out of the fireplace and through those bookcases at the end of the room, where there used to be a door, and into the chapel where his body lay in state. Mr. Delany claims to have seen the apparition himself, when he was a boy.”

  “Marvelous!” Kate exclaimed. “Perhaps the marquis will put in an appearance tonight.”

  “I also talked to Mr. Crossing,” Patsy said. She nodded toward the table, where a gray-haired man was standing with Conan Doyle and Charles. “He’s compiling a guidebook to Dartmoor and seems to know quite a lot about the moor. He’s offered to guide me on a ramble down the Walkham River tomorrow, and I have agreed. What do you think?”

  Kate laughed. “Your mother wouldn’t approve of your going off with a married man, but I think you’ll enjoy every moment of it. Mr. Crossing lectured on Dartmoor folktales last night in Yelverton. I shouldn’t be surprised if he knew every inch of the moor and all its history besides.”

  “Then I’m sure I shall learn a great deal.” Patsy tilted her head curiously as she watched the three men, who had been joined by Mr. Robinson. “I wonder what Charles is finding so sardonically amusing,” she murmured. “And why Dr. Doyle looks so completely out of sorts.”

  Charles was trying to hide his smile, for he had just seen Conan Doyle put in his place by a man half his size and with a much softer voice. Doyle had remarked, as he had to Charles earlier that afternoon, that the moor’s “savage wildness” and the “foul slime of its huge morasses” made it the perfect setting for the story he was writing
.

  But while Doyle was going on in this manner, growing ever more enthusiastic about the terrible dangers of the moor, Mr. William Crossing was watching him with what seemed to be mounting alarm. Finally, as if he could contain himself no longer, Crossing burst out, “But sir, what you describe is not the real moor! It may make a fine fictional setting, but those of us who live here and love the moor know it very differently.”

  Doyle pulled his brows together. “Are you telling me that there is no danger in the treacherous mires out there?” he demanded. Holding his champagne glass in one hand, he flung the other wide around him, as if to take in all four directions. “Why, I have been touring this district in Mr. Robinson’s coach for several days. He has shown me landscapes where a misstep means death to man and beast, and has assured me that—”

  “One has to watch one’s step on the moor, of course,” Mr. Crossing interrupted quietly, “especially in wet weather, when the bogs are full and the old turf-tie tracts make for a treacherous crossing. But that should not deter visitors from leaving the beaten track and wandering freely, especially in the areas that have not been touched by the hand of man. I respectfully suggest, Dr. Doyle, that you abandon your friend’s coach and walk across the moor, acquainting yourself with its beauties. You will find it far more hospitable than you imagine.”

  Doyle frowned. “Leave the coach? But would that be safe?”

  “It would indeed, sir,” Crossing replied with assurance. “There is no place you should fear to go, except perhaps for the Army’s artillery range, directly to the west of Thornworthy. Between the months of May and October, you would very likely be shot at with live ammunition or stumble over an explosive shell that has failed to detonate.” He made a little moue of regret. “I am sorry to say that one is far more likely to blow oneself up on the moor than to drown in a mire.”

  “You can’t be serious, sir!” Doyle exclaimed.

  “Oh, but I am.” Crossing paused and added, rather more diffidently, “I am writing a guidebook to Dartmoor just now and should be glad to escort you wherever you wish to go.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I venture to extend this offer because I very much fear that a writer who employs such terms as ‘savage wildness’ and ‘foul slime’ without regard for their factuality would give much the wrong impression to his readers.”

  Fletcher Robinson had joined the group in time to hear this exchange. “Oh, I say, Crossing,” he objected, “don’t you think that some allowances ought to be made for the creative imagination?” He was speaking to Crossing, but his glance, an enigmatic one, was clearly meant for Doyle. “Our story is a fiction, after all, with elements of the supernatural. We are surely entitled to take a few liberties with the setting.”

  Charles could not read Robinson’s glance at Doyle, but the emphasis upon “our story” was unmistakable. It certainly had an impact on Doyle, who stiffened and looked uncomfortably away. Charles was intrigued. Was Robinson a collaborator in the story Doyle had mentioned to him, The Hound of Whatever-It-Was? But why would a successful writer like Doyle undertake a collaboration with a man of no reputation, who had very little to offer him?

  Tantalized by the possibilities of this exchange, Charles looked with greater attention at Robinson, a youngish man, not yet thirty, he guessed. Brown hair, eyeglasses, of medium build and weight, he was not the sort of man who called attention to himself in a crowd. A war correspondent for the Daily Express, Doyle had said. The two were on friendly terms, it seemed, for Doyle occasionally called Robinson “Bertie,” and he reciprocated by calling Doyle “Sherlock.” The two men had spent some time together recently, for there had been mention of a stay at Robinson’s house at Ipplepen, a village east of the moor.

  “I don’t mean to constrain creativity, of course,” Crossing was saying in a conciliatory tone. “The folklore of this place is fantastic enough to inspire the imagination of any writer. Pixies used to be seen often at Piskies’ Holt in Huccaby Cleave, where troops of them used to gather on moonlit nights.”

  “Pixies?” Doyle asked with some interest.

  Crossing nodded. “Any Dartmoor child would be delighted to show you their favorite haunts. And there is the doomed huntsman and his demon hounds, whose eyes glow like balls of fire. And the gigantic hound that chased poor Luke Rogers twelve miles across the moor, not a month ago.”

  Robinson leaned forward. “A gigantic hound?” he repeated eagerly. “D’you hear that, Doyle? That’s the creature I described to you. The very one!”

  “Indeed,” Crossing replied, his eyes twinkling. “There’s a story about that hound, you know. It seems that Luke’s wife was not amused when he arrived home much later than usual and told her about a great black dog who had waylaid him, whose very fur sparked fire. ‘Black doag afire!’ she exclaimed.” Here Crossing slipped into the lilting dialect of the moormen. ‘Doan’t ye tell me no such foolishness, Luke Rogers. Where wuz ye th’ fust part o’ th’ aivnin’?’ Luke explained that he had passed an hour or two at the pub at Newhouse. ‘Es, I thought so,’ said his wife. ‘An’ if ye go there agin, ye’ll find me after ye. Ye’ve got away from th’ houn’ to be sure, but ye woan’t get away from yer wife.’ ”

  “Y’ see there, Doyle!” Robinson crowed, elbowing his friend. “The hound, to the life. The moor is a wild, fantastical place, full of creatures yet unknown to science! Something like Darwin’s Galapagos, I imagine.”

  “Wild and fantastical it is, sir,” Crossing said, with a little smile. “Or so Luke Rogers learned, after an hour or two at the pub at Newhouse. Our moor brew is powerful enough to conjure up any number of spectral hounds.”

  Amid the general laughter, Charles turned to see the servants removing the food and then the cloth from the buffet table and then moving the table itself to the shadows at the dimmest end of the room. The somber clang of a gong shivered through the air, and their hostess called for their attention.

  “Mr. Westcott tells me that the spirits are near and it is time for the séance,” she announced. “If you will take your seats around the table, we will begin.”

  Several hours later, as Patsy undressed and climbed into the great oak bed in her room at the Duchy Hotel, she thought that the séance had been a massive disappointment. It wasn’t her first such event, of course. She had attended a perfectly marvelous séance in Paris, where the heavy oak table had risen nearly a foot off the floor and a gray shadow had materialized in the depths of a gilt mirror, to the accompaniment of a ghostly humming and a faint whiff of lilac, which was said by one of the participants to be the favorite perfume of her dead aunt. And there had been another in the home of the British consulate in Cairo, where a spirit had plucked the strings of a lyre and performed urgent alphabetical rappings on a tambourine, while the scent of sandalwood wafted through the air—the ghost, it was said afterward, of a melancholy foreign lady who was trying to send a message to the lover who had poisoned her.

  But there had been no such manifestations at the Thornworthy séance that night. The table had been placed at the darkened end of the room, the candles were extinguished, and a copper-backed screen shielded the fire, so that it was quite dark. They all sat silently around the table, their hands on it, as Nigel Westcott seemed to slip into a kind of trance, his breathing becoming slow and labored, and he uttered a few garbled words.

  At that point, it actually seemed as if something might be about to happen—perhaps the Marquis of Thorn might step out of the fireplace—for the widow from Hexworthy, sitting next to Kate, gave a stifled shriek and began to babble in a high-pitched, frantic voice. Patsy, across the table, couldn’t tell what she was saying. Something about someone being murdered, perhaps. But Lady Duncan warned the widow, quite sternly, to stop disturbing the spirits, and she subsided.

  Shortly after, Nigel Westcott recovered himself and asked huskily whether the messages he had been receiving from his spirit contact had come through to the others. There was a chorus of disappointed nos (the widow seemed to be quite overcome,
and was being comforted by Kate), while the vicar voiced his opinion that the presence of some skeptic at the table had prevented the spirits from manifesting themselves.

  “I am the skeptic,” Charles said as they climbed into Robinson’s coach for the drive back to the hotel. “No one has yet produced any evidence to demonstrate to me that table-tiltings and spirit-rappings are anything but the same out-and-out fakery that is used by magicians.”

  “The significant word is yet,” Mr. Doyle remarked thoughtfully. “I myself must reserve judgment until I have witnessed something I cannot detect to be fakery.”

  Charles arched an eyebrow. “And how will you be sure? Perhaps you will merely have been beguiled by a skillful fraud, whose ability to deceive surpasses your ability to detect.”

  Doyle had frowned, Patsy laughed, and Kate reached over to squeeze her husband’s hand. “You have failed once again to suspend your disbelief,” she said playfully. “I fear, my lord, that we shall have to leave you at the hotel tomorrow night. With you present, the spirits may never speak.”

  “Tomorrow night?” Patsy asked, thinking that she had missed something.

  “To be sure,” Doyle replied. “As we left, Lady Duncan mentioned that Mr. Westcott has agreed to give it another go, since everyone was disappointed tonight. No supper is planned, but we’re all invited. Perhaps the spirits will be more cooperative tomorrow night.”

  Patsy didn’t care much about tomorrow night’s spirits, she thought as she drowsily plumped her pillow and snuggled under the feather-filled comforter. But she was looking forward to tomorrow morning’s ramble with the knowledgeable Mr. Crossing, who had promised to show her any number of excellent subjects for her camera.