The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4

by Laurie R. King

  I assured her that I was familiar with the tale and with Sir Hugo’s place in it (although I might have used the word infamous instead), all the while aware of how very peculiar it was for Richard Ketteridge to have so generously parted with what, to a man lusting after the Baskerville story, had to be the single most compelling object in the collection.

  “When did you move here?” I asked. Her pretty face clouded somewhat.

  “A little more than two years ago. My father died before the war, my elder brother in 1916, my younger brother disappeared at sea in 1918, and my mother was so devastated after that, she had no energy to fight off the effects of the influenza. She died in the winter of 1919. I am the last Baskerville.”

  “How very sad,” I said, meaning it.

  “I tried to keep the house up, but it was hopeless. I was there more or less by myself, as it was so difficult to find capable men, and I know nothing about the running of an estate. After two years I had to admit defeat, and when Mr Ketteridge offered to buy it, at what my solicitor agreed was a very fair price, I sold it and moved here.”

  We had made our way through the tea and the biscuits, and when the maid bobbed her way into the room and suggested that luncheon was ready, we adjourned to the next room.

  “I hope you don’t object to a light luncheon, Miss Russell,” she said. “I know that most people like a substantial dinner after church, but I can never seem to face it, somehow.”

  I told her I was quite content with sharing her standard fare, and prepared to make merry with the consommé and tinned asparagus in aspic.

  “Do you miss the moor?” I asked after a while.

  “Oh, I don’t know. At first I thought I never would, it was so bright and cheerful and … lively here. But now, well, I sometimes think about when the furze would blossom, and the drifts when the ponies are driven down from the moor, and the dramatic smoke and fires when they swale the heather. I even miss those dreary tors that I used to find so gloomy, staring down at the Hall.”

  I laughed. “Gloomy it is, but oddly beautiful.” I could well imagine, for a conventional girl only a bit older than I, that the huge old building miles from anything that might be termed society might well be a burden to be shed rather than an inheritance to be valued. I also remembered that her mother had not been born here, but had come obedient to her husband’s criminous plans, later to be transferred to the protecting arm of Sir Henry and kept on the moor for the rest of her life.

  I judged it time to return delicately to my main area of interest. “How did Mr Ketteridge come to hear about the Hall? An advertisement?”

  “Oh no, I couldn’t have done that. No, I wasn’t actually even thinking about selling, really. After all, the land has been in the family for six hundred years—that’s hardly something to be broken lightly. Although I know there’s a lot of that sort of thing happening now, with the war and the change in the tax laws. Still, I probably would have held out for a while longer, but he came to me. He’d heard I was interested in letting it, but he wanted to buy it outright. He was passionate about it, seemed to know more than I did about its history, and just … loved it. I thought about it for a few weeks, during which time I had a huge bill for the coal and another for repairing some frozen pipes, and an estimate on woodworm and roof work—it all came at once.

  “And I thought, Why should I be burdened with six centuries of Baskervilles? The house was built at a time when there was a huge estate of rich agricultural land, which various ancestors had whittled off over the years, leaving me with no means of keeping the roof standing. To me it was a burden—becoming a prison. To Mr Ketteridge it was a prize. I sold it.”

  I wondered how she would feel when news reached her that he had already tired of his prize. I was not about to be the one to tell her; rather, I looked at her with a degree of admiration, both for her sense of history’s injustices and her self-respect. There was one question to be asked, though, particularly considering the attractive face and deferential manner that nature had wedded to her monetary inheritance.

  “Have you ever considered marriage?”

  She blushed, very prettily. “I had thought not to be granted that happiness, Miss Russell. I was once engaged, during the war, but six months later my fiancé was killed in France. Afterwards, well, it isn’t quite so simple, is it?” She let her voice drift off as she considered me, Miss Russell, a woman five or six years her junior who wore, incongruously, a gold band on the ring finger of the right hand, where it could either be taken for a wedding band in the style of certain European communities, or for a memento. I did not enlighten her, letting her think that perhaps I, too, was one of England’s many spinsters. Whole, eligible men in those postwar years were a rare species.

  “However,” she resumed, studying the spoon in her hand, “recently I have … come to an agreement.”

  I wished her congratulations and felicitations, and turned back to the all important question of time.

  “As I mentioned, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould is writing his memoirs.”

  “I believe I read something about a volume being published recently,” she said, sounding none too definite about it.

  “Well, as you can imagine, he is becoming a bit hazy when it comes to remembering specific details, particularly when it comes to the more recent events. You know how forgetful old people become in that way,” I said, sending up a plea for forgiveness to the mentally acute if physically deteriorating old man in Lew Trenchard.

  “I do,” she agreed, sounding more sure of herself. Her charitable work with the aged retainers caused my generalisation to strike a familiar note.

  “One of the things that was vexing him the other day was trying to remember when he first met Mr Ketteridge, so to put his mind at rest I told him that I would try to find out, while I was in Plymouth. Would you happen to know?”

  “I should have thought very soon after Mr Ketteridge bought the Hall. Thank you, Mary,” she said, which startled me for a moment until I saw she was speaking to the servant, who was clearing the plates preparatory to bringing the coffee.

  “Do you know when—” I began to say, but she had only paused to recollect her dates.

  “He first came to the Hall in April,” she said finally. “Yes, it must have been early April, because the pipes burst in the first week of March and we were without water for three weeks altogether, and that’s when I decided to see if I could find a tenant and move into town. He happened to arrive the day the plumbers were setting to work. I remember,” she said with a smile, “because at first I thought he was one of them, and I was astonished that a plumber could make enough money to buy a car like that.”

  Her joke and the laugh that followed were wasted on me, because I was alert, almost quivering, like a bird dog at the first scent of the warm, feathered object it was bred to seek.

  “The first part of April,” I repeated. “And you decided to sell it to him fairly soon after that?”

  “Oh, perhaps not all that soon. Just before the summer equinox, I believe it was. The moor is at its loveliest then, and the nights so short—I walked up after dinner to the nearest tor and sat watching the sun set, and when I went back down it was nearly midnight and the decision had been made.”

  And yet Ketteridge had told us he first heard about the Hall in Scotland shooting—something one did not do in the spring or midsummer. A coorius sarcumstance, indeed.

  “So he first came to Baskerville Hall in April of 1921, and suggested that you sell to him, and you decided to do so two months later in June. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” she said, and then the frown line was back as it occurred to her that it was odd I should be interested.

  “Mr Baring-Gould,” I hastily reminded her. “He gets so upset when he can’t recall precise details.” That she did not object to this statement told me how little she knew him.

  “Of course, the poor old man.”

  “Ketteridge would then have taken possession in the autumn?�
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  “I believe we signed the final documents on the first day of September. He moved in just after that.”

  “So he probably would have met Baring-Gould around that time, August or September,” I said, as if an important question had been decided.

  “I suppose so. If it matters, why don’t you ask Mr Ketteridge himself?”

  “I hate to bother him, and I was coming to Plymouth anyway. Besides, Mr Baring-Gould wanted to see how you were doing in your new home. It was nice of Mr Ketteridge to bring you the painting of Sir Hugo so soon after you had moved in,” I added negligently. “A sort of house-warming present, I suppose he considered it.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, offering me more coffee, which I refused. “He and David—Mr Scheiman—showed up at my door before the furniture was in place, to hang Sir Hugo for me.”

  I froze in the very act of bracing myself to begin the leave-taking process, seized by an awful premonition.

  “Mr Scheiman,” I repeated slowly. “Tell me, do you see much of David Scheiman?”

  The pretty blush returned, and I felt a thud of confirmation, the physical kick of an absolutely vital piece of information so nearly missed, as she said, “Oh yes, he has been very attentive to my needs. He is the one,” she added, quite unnecessarily. “We are to be married in the summer.”

  21

  I think it not improbable that both the Archbishop

  of York and Claughton of Rochester had inserted my name

  into the Episcopal “Black Book,” for I had shown precious

  little deference to either. But, so far from this injuring

  me, it has availed in limiting my energies to my own parish.

  —FURTHER REMINISCENCES

  I HAD NO idea what it might mean, that Ketteridge’s secretary, a man with the mouth of old Sir Hugo, had proposed marriage to the only living child of Sir Henry Baskerville, but I did not need the kick in my vital organs to tell me it meant something.

  For the life of me, however, I could think of nothing else to ask Miss Baskerville. I made polite noises, extracted from her an amorphous invitation for a return visit, and, with a final glance at the Cavalier over the fireplace, left her house. I went up the street and turned the corner, and there I stood, gazing into a row of severely pruned rose bushes, until the gentleman of the house came out and asked me with matching severity whether or not he could help me.

  I moved on obediently, allowing my feet to drift me back to the hotel where I had stopped the previous night. There I retrieved my small bag, and took a taxi to the train station, only to find that I had several hours to wait before I could catch a train to Lydford.

  I had nearly memorised portions of Dartmoor by the time I climbed up into the train, into a compartment even colder than had been the one on the way down. I made no attempt to read, but sat, my scarf and collar raised around my ears, my hands thrust up into my sleeves, staring at a button on the upholstered seat back across from me, thinking.

  I felt certain that the various pieces of information we had assembled, if laid in the correct order, would make a pattern. As always, the extraneous data confused issues, and as always, it was not easy to know what was extraneous and what central. The best way of trying to find a pattern that I knew of was to hold all the data in mind, and remove one piece, and if that did not cause the remaining pieces to shift and click into place, replace it, and remove another.

  And so, as the train chugged and slowed and paused at every village between Plymouth and Lydford, I sat and stared at the button, completely ignoring the glances, giggles, and growing consternation of the two young women sharing their compartment with a person who appeared to be in a trance, a young woman whose forehead revealed a half-healed gash with its fading yellow bruise whenever her hat shifted. I pawed over my pieces, holding them up to look at, removing each one in turn, trying to decide which contributed to the overall pattern and which was foreign to it.

  Josiah Gorton stayed on the table, as did Lady Howard’s coach. And Pethering? He remained, although the reason for his presence, both on the moor and ultimately in the lake, was not clear. But in the centre of the picture, did we find gold—actual, shiny gold? Or military tanks? Or something else entirely?

  Up and down went the pieces, round and round went the questions, and all the while I was aware that time was beginning to enter into the equation, and I had none to waste.

  It was dark when the train reached Lydford, and I was mildly surprised to find no sign of Charles Dunstan and the dog cart. I had told them I expected to return on an afternoon train, but perhaps he had got tired of waiting, or the pony had thrown a shoe, or some other demand had been made on his time. It was not raining, and the moon, three days from full, would soon be high enough in the sky to light my way. So, leaving a message with the station master as to my whereabouts, I walked down the road to an inn and took a large, hot meal.

  Some time later, filled with beef and leek pie, I gathered my coat and hat around me and stepped into the road. It was very cold, the sky clear, and there was no waiting dog cart. A motorcar went past, an ancient Ford rattletrap by the sound of it, and when my eyes had begun to adjust to the night, I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed in the direction of the Ford.

  I knew where I was going, having tramped most of these lanes over the past two weeks, and although they looked very different in the pale, tree-blocked light from overhead, I knew I could not go too far wrong before coming either into the high road that ran from Launceston to Okehampton or the Coryton branch of the railway. I was well fed, adequately insulated as long as I kept moving, burdened only by the light bag and unthreatened by rain; all in all, it was the most pleasant Devonshire stroll I had yet undertaken.

  I did not even miss my way (although I did follow the road, bad as it was, rather than cut through the fields on the rough path to Galford Farm). I crossed the Lew near the old dower house, saying hello to the dogs at the mill, who quieted and snuffled my by-now familiar hand, and came to Lew House through the woods at its back. I detoured at the last minute in order to enter by the porch, knowing that Mrs Elliott would think that the more proper behaviour for a guest, and threw open the door to the hall, bursting with fresh air and goodwill.

  I was also bursting from the brisk exercise coupled with the soup and Devonshire ale I had drunk, so I hurried through the still house and up the stairs. It was early, but once there, the bed caught my eye. The room was cold and the bed looked soft, and within minutes I had burrowed into it and found warm sleep.

  It was still cold in the morning, even colder, I thought, than the day before, and when I had dressed, I went outside to appreciate the morning. My walk was not a long one, but the brisk air and the smell of burning leaves drifting over from Lew Down filled me with well-being and gave me a good appetite for Mrs Elliott’s breakfast. Baring-Gould had been in his bed since Friday, she told me, but his energy was returning and she thought he might come down in a day or two. Mr Holmes had got off to a late start on the Sunday, and was not expected back until the next day. And lastly, if I heard strange noises from the dining room, I was not to concern myself, because it would only be the sweep, working on the blocked chimney.

  After breakfast I went up and found the annotated book on Devon that had been in Pethering’s bag and brought it down with me to the warm hall to read. I pulled one of the armchairs up to the fire, threw some logs onto the red coals, kicked off my shoes, and drew my feet up under me in the chair. It was very pleasant, sitting in the solid, patient old house, in the wood-panelled room with the threadbare, sprungbottomed furniture. The fire crackled to itself, the cat slept on the bench, the fox and hounds ran across the carved fireplace surround, and occasional voices came from the other end of the house. Sighing, deeply content, I began to read.

  The book, too, was like settling in with an old friend in a new setting. We began with a desultory exploration of the ethnology of the inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall and their mixture of Celtic and Saxon b
lood, and moved on to glance at the Dumnonii, the Romans, and the Picts. The Roman invasion was given a few scattered lines, the introduction of the first lapdog two pages. Baring-Gould bemoaned the way the tender, graceful melodies of the Devonshire countryside were giving way before the organ and the music-hall ditty, and how the picturesque and sturdy native architecture was scorned by the pretentious London professional. Anecdote tumbled after anecdote, tied together by sweeping generalisations with clouds as their foundations and romantic visions of lost times that were breathtaking in their blithe neglect of facts. Druidic fantasies he dismissed out of hand, while at the same time offering the presence of large crystals in some neolithic huts as proof that those huts had belonged to medicine men (who used the crystals for divining) and numerous small round pebbles in others as evidence of the Stone Age love of games.

  I was enjoying myself so much, lost in the pull between respect for the man’s boundless enthusiasm and indignation at his inability to take scholarship seriously, that I did not notice Mrs Elliott’s approach until she touched my shoulder to get my attention. I looked up startled, to see her holding a yellow envelope in her hand.

  “Terribly sorry, mum, but this just came for Mr Holmes, and the rector says would you like to take lunch with him, upstairs. Also, was you expecting Charley—Mr Dunstan—to meet you last night?”

  “No, of course not,” I lied. “It was a very tentative arrangement.”

  “Good,” she said, sounding relieved. With everything else on her mind, she had simply failed to ask Dunstan to meet me. It was nice to know that even the iron woman was fallible.