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, Mrs 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.’
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 terrible 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.’