The Moor mr-4

by Laurie R. King

  "It is very impressive, that influence. He had a law-abiding dairyman assaulting a police constable, just for the asking."

  "I told you it was a backwoods. They probably still practice corn sacrifice. Tell me about Ketteridge."

  I told him everything I could remember about my hours in Baskerville Hall. He listened intently, asking no questions, and when I had finished he rose and, wrapping his dressing-gown around him, went to stir the fire into life. Having done so, he took up his pipe and lit it, puffing thoughtfully down at the newly crackling flames.

  "You handled it well," he said unexpectedly.

  "At least I didn't fall apart until I was alone."

  "That is all one may ask of oneself."

  "I suppose. I feel stupid."

  "Human," he corrected me.

  "God, who would be a human being?" I said, although I was beginning to feel somewhat better about the episode and its effect on me.

  "I've often thought the same," he commented drily, and then returned to business. "You have no idea who Ketteridge might have been escorting so anxiously off the premises?"

  "None."

  "No smell of perfume, for example, or of cigarettes? The night he was here, Ketteridge mentioned that he smokes only cigars, and his fingers did not give lie to it."

  "No perfume. Cigarettes, yes, but I think Scheiman smokes them."

  "I believe you are right. Do you know, that entire ménage interests me strangely. Tell me: When Ketteridge allowed you the brief tour of the banqueting hall, did you notice a portrait of a Cavalier in black velvet, lace collar, and a plumed hat?"

  "No," I said slowly. "A variety of uniforms, one blue velvet jacket, and an assortment of wigs, but no Cavalier."

  "As I thought, the portrait of old Sir Hugo Baskerville, the scoundrel whose sins led to the Baskerville curse in the first place, has been taken down from the gallery. I should be very interested to know when."

  "And why?"

  "When might tell us why." Having delivered his epigram, he tossed the barely drawing pipe onto the mantelpiece and began to pull clothing from drawers and wardrobe.

  "Holmes, tell me what you found in London."

  "Breakfast first, Russell; the morning is half gone and I, for one, have not eaten since lunchtime yesterday."

  I forbore to look pointedly at the first pale light at the window curtains, merely removed my recovering body from the bed and proceeded to clothe it. Holmes was not the only one who could follow nonverbal commands.

  Before we left the bedroom, however, there was something I had to know. "Holmes, why did you tell me you'd met Baring-Gould during the Baskerville case?"

  "I did not. I merely said that I had used him during the case."

  "You deliberately misled me. Why didn't you want me to know he was your godfather?"

  He paused in the act of brushing his hair and looked over at me, startled. "Good heavens, he is, isn't he? I had completely forgotten."He turned back to the mirror slowly. "Extraordinary thought, is it not?"

  With that, I had to agree.

  ***

  Mrs Elliott was up and ready for us, although Baring-Gould was not. I had not expected he would be, after the rigours of the day before; I could only hope he had not suffered from the unwonted expenditure of his limited energies.

  The chimney in the dining room was still not functioning satisfactorily, so we had been served in the drawing room with the painted Virtues looking down at us, and there we remained for our council. I had to wait until Holmes had tamped and lit and puffed at his pipe, a delaying nuisance that had not grown any easier to bear over the years. I swear he did it deliberately to irritate me.

  "Holmes," I growled after several long minutes, "I am going to take up knitting, and make you sit and wait while I count the row of stitches."

  "Nonsense," he said with a final dig and puff. "You are quite capable of talking and counting at the same time. Am I to understand that you wish to hear the results of my sojourn?"

  "Holmes, when I left you on Monday, you were going to northern Dartmoor and returning here two days later. It is now Saturday, and the only word I have had were secondhand rumours of a hasty trip to London. I've told you about Pethering's death and my visit to Baskerville Hall; I see no reason to go into my trip over the moor and my conversation about hedgehogs with the witch of Mary Tavy parish until you've given me something in return."

  "Ah, I see you've met Elizabeth Chase."

  Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have a husband whom I might astonish.

  "Holmes," I said sternly.

  "Oh very well. Yes, I went onto the moor, and no, I was not blown to bits; I was not even lightly shelled. I even missed the worst of the storm on the Tuesday. I asked farmwifes, shepherds, three stonemasons, two thatchers, a goose girl, and the village idiot whether or not they had seen a ghostly carriage or a black dog, had heard anything peculiar, noticed anything out of the ordinary. All but the village idiot gave me nothing but nonsense, and he gave me nothing but a smile.

  "The testing ground for Mycroft's secret weapon (which, by the way, is a sort of amphibious tank) is to the east of Yes Tor, down to Black-a-ven Brook. It's a pocket of ground difficult to overlook except from the army's own observation huts, but I did find a patch of hillside outside the artillery range with an adit showing signs of recent use."

  "An adit being a horizontal mine shaft," I said tentatively, dredging up the word from somewhere in my recent reading. Holmes nodded. "Not an active mine, I take it?"

  "By no means. Its entrance was heavily overgrown and nearly obscured by a rock-fall."

  "How did you find it?"

  "I smelt it."

  "You smelt…?"

  "Coffee. Whoever spent time in there brewed coffee, and threw the grounds at the roots of the whortleberry bushes growing near the entrance."

  "Good heavens."

  "Extraordinary oversight, I agree," he said, which was not quite what I was exclaiming about, but I let it pass. "The rest of his débris he simply threw back into the shaft—eggshells, greasy paper, tins, apple cores—but the coffee dregs went out in front. Presumably he was in the habit of drinking it at his front door, as it were, and dashing out the thick remnants in the bottom of his cup where he stood. As you are aware, Russell, habit is the snare by which many a criminal is caught."

  "How recently was he there?"

  "Two or three weeks, I should say. Not more. And to anticipate your question, the new tank was last tested seventeen days ago."

  "Suggestive," I agreed. "But that does not explain five days and a trip to London."

  "Patience," counselled my husband, one of the least patient individuals I have ever met. "I returned here late on Tuesday, spent a pleasant evening with Gould, and on Wednesday a lad arrived with the name of the people we were looking for."

  "The London hikers?"

  "Not quite, although he had found the farmhouse where they stayed. Unfortunately, being an informal hostelry, they do not keep records of their guests, and as the two Londoners had not made advance arrangements, there was little evidence as to whence they came. However, they were a memorable pair, even without the tale of the ghostly carriage they brought with them down the hill: young, the man perhaps twenty-eight, the woman a year or two younger, who impressed the farmwife as being a 'proper lady,' or in other words, wealthy. The man, on the other hand, had a heavier accent, and seemed much more shaken by the idea of seeing a ghostly carriage on the moor than his wife was. He also had a bad limp and one 'special shoe,' and at some point during the stay told the farmer that he was studying to become a doctor."

  The limp, the nerves, and the student's advanced age gave him away as a wounded soldier. I asked drily, "You mean to say you didn't get his regiment?"

  "But of course. Not from the farmer, although he did give me the name of the village where the future doctor was injured during Second Ypres, and the War Office could have told me his regiment and thence his identity. However, I thou
ght it simpler to phone around the teaching hospitals and enquire after a young man missing part of his foot. I found him straight off, at Bart's."

  "So simple," I murmured.

  "Regrettably so. Do you have the maps?"

  "Upstairs. What is left of them." I trotted up and retrieved the pile, some of them pristine, hardly unfolded. Those for the north quarter had seen hard use, and I pulled open the still-damp sheets with care and laid them across the padded bench that sat in front of the fire. There happened to be an elderly cat upon it, but the animal did not seem to mind being covered up. No doubt, living in the Baring-Gould household, it had seen stranger usage.

  He pored over the maps for a long time, then said, "Do we have the one-inch-to-the-mile here?"

  I dug through and found it. He laid it out, found Mary Tavy and the nearby Gibbet Hill, and then took out a pencil. Using the side of a folded map as a straight edge and pulling the map to one side to find a flat place, he began to draw a series of short lines, fanning out from Gibbet Hill and touching the tops of half a dozen peaks and tors to the northeast of the hill. These were, I understood, the tors and hilltops visible from the peak.

  "It was dark, and their sense of direction was sadly wanting, but they were quite definite that whatever they saw was to the northeast, that it wrapped around a hill, going from right to left, and after a minute or two disappeared behind a tor—probably, they thought, Great Links or Dunna Goat."

  "And what exactly was it they saw?"

  "A pair of lights, old-style lanterns rather than the new automobile headlamps, mounted on the upper front corners of a light-coloured square frame. They had with them a strong pair of field glasses."

  "As if two lanterns on a coach built of bones."

  "As you say."

  "How would you judge them as witnesses?"

  He shrugged. "Ramblers," he said dismissively. "The sort of young people who would read up on the more arcane myths and legends of an area and spend a week traipsing about, raising blisters and searching for Local Romance."

  "Holmes, that sounds perilously close to what I have been doing this last week."

  He looked startled. "My dear Russell, I was certainly not drawing a comparison between your search for information and the self-indulgent—"

  "Of course not, Holmes. Did they see a dog, or any person either inside or driving?"

  "Not to be certain, no, although they had convinced themselves that they saw a large black shadow moving with the horse."

  "Of course they did. Was there anything else to be had in London?"

  "There was, but I should like to delay until you've read something. Just remain there," he said, getting to his feet. "I won't be a moment."

  He went out and, judging by the sounds of another door opening almost immediately he left the drawing room, I knew he was in Baring-Gould's study. A certain amount of time passed, and several muffled thuds, before he returned with a slim book in his hand. He tossed it in my lap and picked up his pipe from the ashtray on the table.

  "How long is it since you've read that?" he asked.

  "That," to my amazement, was Conan Doyle's account of The Hound of the Baskervilles, looking heavily read. "At least three years. I'm not certain," I replied.

  "More than that, perhaps. I should like to consult with Gould for an hour or two; you have a look at that and see if anything within Baskerville Hall strikes you as it did me."

  "But Holmes—"

  "When I return, Russell. It won't take you long, and you might even find it amusing. Though perhaps," he added as he was going out the door, "not for the reasons Conan Doyle intended."

  EIGHTEEN

  Take my advice. Henceforth possess your mind with an idea, when about to preach. Drive it home. Do not hammer it till you have struck off the head. A final tap and that will suffice.

  —Further Reminiscences

  Actually, although I would have hesitated to admit it in Holmes' hearing, I enjoyed Conan Doyle's stories. They were not the cold, factual depictions of a case that Holmes preferred (indeed, when some years later he found that Conan Doyle had set a pair of stories in the first person, as if Holmes himself were describing the action, Holmes threatened the man with everything from physical violence to lawsuits if he dared attempt it again), but taken as Romance, they were entertaining, and I have nothing against the occasional dose of simple entertainment.

  In any event, it was no great hardship to settle into my chair with the book and renew my acquaintance with Dr Mortimer, the antiquarian enthusiast who brings Holmes the curse of the Baskervilles, and with the young Canadian Sir Henry Baskerville, come to the moor to claim his title and his heritage. I met again the ex-headmaster Stapleton and the woman introduced as his sister, and the mysterious Barrymores, servants to old Sir Charles. The moor across which I had so recently wandered came alive in all its dour magnificence, and I was very glad this book had not been among my reading the previous weekend, leaving me to ride out on the moor with the image of the hound freshly imprinted on my mind. I could well imagine the terror raised by hearing the rhythm of four huge running paws (or the "thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank" of fog that Dr Watson described), the hoarse panting from between those massive jaws, even without the eerie glow of phosphorus on its coat to render it otherworldly:

  A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame.

  So engrossed was I that I completely missed the reference Holmes had wanted me to see. Only when the Hound was dead did I recall the point of the exercise, and thumbed back to the previous chapter that described the evening when Holmes first saw the interior of Baskerville Hall. The reference startled me, and I sat deep in thought for twenty minutes or so, contemplating the "straight severe face" which was "prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye" until I heard the door behind me open.

  I said over my shoulder, "You think Scheiman may be a Baskerville? Stapleton's son, even?"

  "Stapleton's body was never found," Holmes pointed out unnecessarily as he resumed his chair on the other side of the fire. "I was never happy with Scotland Yard's conclusion, and always felt it possible that he had prepared an escape route and slipped through it while we were occupied elsewhere, but he was never seen, and after two weeks, Scotland Yard was satisfied with his fate in the mire and took their watch from the ports."

  "I have to agree that the description of the Cavalier painting, wicked Sir Hugo himself with his prim lips and his flaxen hair, does fit Scheiman."

  "Scheiman is by no means so clear a case, else I should have noticed it when first I laid eyes on him. If Stapleton married in America —although legal marriage it could not have been, nor indeed would Sir Henry's have been to Beryl Stapleton, the supposed widow—the woman contributed a great deal more to her son's looks than did the father. Ears, eyes, cheekbones, and hands are all hers; only the mouth (which you will have noticed he takes care to conceal beneath a beard) and the stature are his father's."

  "You wondered when the portrait of Sir Hugo had gone: If the surviving Baskerville took it with her rather than sell it with the others to Ketteridge, for the dubious privilege of preserving a memento of the family history perhaps, then its absence is innocent, whereas if it was removed after the sale, by Ketteridge or Scheiman—"

  "Then the why is obvious: that Scheiman's family resemblance might not be seen by visitors to the house."

  "Visitors such as Sherlock Holmes. I don't think I told you, by the way, that Ketteridge was interested in hiring you to investigate the hound sightings."

  That brought a laugh, as I had thought it might do, albeit a brief one.

  "What brought the resemblance to your mind?" I asked. Surely he hadn't picked up The Hound of the Baskervilles to read on the train?

 
; "A number of things. Scheiman's interest in the antiquities of the moor, the dim lighting of the dining hall, how he spent the least amount of time possible with us—with me, who had known Stapleton. But, I have to admit, the actual possibility was got through hindsight.

  "As I told you, the Ketteridge establishment interests me. It interested me when first I saw the man helping himself to Gould's liquor cabinet. He does not fit in Dartmoor, and does not seem eccentric enough to justify the oddity of his presence here.

  "So while I was in town, I initiated some enquiries about Ketteridge and his secretary. The responses to my telegrams will take days, even weeks, but I did come across one thing of interest: The two men were not together when they boarded the ship coming over here. Ketteridge began his journey in San Francisco, but Scheiman joined the ship in New York."

  "There could be an explanation for that."

  "There could be any number of explanations. However, Ketteridge told us he came over in the summer, yet his passage was in early March."

  I had to agree that although the oddity was hardly evidence of criminal activity, it did call for a closer examination of the two men.

  "You've sent wires to New York and San Francisco?"

  "And Portland and Alaska."

  "So you think Ketteridge is involved."

  "He may or may not be. Scheiman is definitely up to something."

  The generality of the word something was unlike Holmes; after a moment's thought, and particularly when he would not look at me, I knew why.

  "You believe that Scheiman is after Mycroft's tank," I said in disgust.

  "It does not do to theorise in advance of one's facts," he said primly.

  I made a rude remark about his facts, and went on. "If this is deteriorating into a spy hunt, Holmes, you don't need me. It's been a truly invigorating holiday from my books, but perhaps I may be allowed to take my leave."

  "Two murders now, Russell. I should have thought that sufficient to overcome your distaste for the War Office."

  I dropped my head back onto the chair and closed my eyes. "You really need me, Holmes?"