The Redacted Sherlock Holmes - Volume 4 by Orlando Pearson

Author:Orlando Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sherlock holmes, mystery, crime, british crime, sherlock holmes fiction, sherlock holmes novel
ISBN: 9781787052109
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2017
Published: 2017-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Hounding of Peers Baskerville

I. Mr Peers Baskerville

After my second marriage in 1907, I continued to see Holmes and help him on his cases although relations between us inevitably became more distant, especially once I had the responsibilities of fatherhood. In late 1909, my wife’s mother fell ill and it was easier for my wife to take the children with her when she went to nurse her so I was rendered, briefly, a straw widower.

It so happened during that time that Holmes involved me in two cases which he solved in quick succession and he marked this achievement by asking me to join him at Covent Garden for a Saturday matinee performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani which was being put on as part of a festival of the Italian operatic master’s music.

I had no other engagement after the performance and we returned to Baker Street, walking up from the Metropolitan Line station to the quarters I had previously shared with him. As we arrived outside, Holmes stopped to look at some markings left by a carriage outside 221B.

“There’s money in our next client if nothing else!” he said as he turned to unlock the front door.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, as we stood on the doorstep.

“Did you fail to notice that those markings were of a very lightly laden four-wheeler. The coach had obviously waited there for a short time while its occupant was trying to see me. He or she had sat on the left facing forward before descending - that was clear by the slightly deeper indentation of the mark left by the rear on-side wheel. Anyone who chooses to travel around London unaccompanied in a four-wheeler has no need to practise economy.”

As Holmes opened the front-door, the buttons greeted us.

“There was a young man here, Sir. A Mr Peers Baskerville. He left when he heard you weren’t here, but he said he would be back this evening.”

Baskerville! I could not hear the name without shuddering. My reader will recall the events of 1889 where Holmes’s client, Sir Henry Baskerville, was chased almost to his death by the diabolical hound which had been set on him by his neighbour, the botanist Jack Stapleton. The South-American-born Stapleton was the next in line to the Baskerville lands and fortune. He had bought the hound and primed it to chase Sir Henry, having previously used it to kill Sir Charles Baskerville, Sir Henry’s uncle, and predecessor as the owner of the Baskerville estate. As Holmes shot the monstrous beast, Stapleton attempted to flee across Grimpen Mire, a moorland mire notorious for sucking to their deaths any man or beast that ventured off the narrow path that led across it. No trace of him was ever found.

Some readers may also recall that I did not publish my version of the events of that ghastly night until 1901. I did not say so at the time, but this

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