The Moor (13 page)

The lodge gates showed signs of recent attention, for although the edges of the pillars were smooth and shapeless with age, the stone glowed as if freshly scrubbed and the elaborate tracery of the iron gates gleamed with new black paint. The lodge itself was fairly new and very tidy and tenanted by someone sufficiently house-proud to have starched the white curtains into crispness. As we passed through the gates, I looked up at the amorphous stone objects that topped the flanking pillars. I thought they resembled enormous potatoes; Holmes said they were the boars' heads of the Baskervilles.

On the other side of the gate lay a long avenue of old trees that had dropped most of their leaves onto the drive. Nonetheless, the branches that met over our heads were thick enough to block the last rays of the evening's light, so that we seemed to be driving into a long tunnel, illuminated from below by the powerful headlamps of the motorcar. There was a row of light standards, planted at the side of the drive at regular intervals, but they were unlit, visible only in our headlamps.

Then, twenty feet from the end of the tunnel, the front windscreen of the motorcar flared into a blaze of light, blinding us as if a powerful search light had been shone directly into our faces. The driver slowed and put up one hand to shield his eyes, and we emerged cautiously from the avenue of trees. The drive passed through an expanse of lawn lined with flower beds, and I found myself looking up at a house shaggy with ivy, its central block surmounted by the two towers I had seen from the approach. Impressive from a distance, they now looked crowded together, thrown out of balance with the original house by the addition of two modern wings. One huge light fixture hung from the wall above the porch, drenching the lower part of the house in blue-white brilliance. The upper reaches, shielded by a reflector, receded into darkness but for the squares of a few mullioned windows that had lights behind their curtains.

"Well," said Holmes to himself, "I see Sir Henry got his thousand-candle-power Swan and Edison."

"Two or three lesser bulbs might have got the job done less dramatically."

"His purpose was to expel the gloom."

"He did that," I said, although I could not help noticing that where the light eventually trailed to a halt, the dark seemed even more solid than it had in the unlit avenue.

Richard Ketteridge had been standing at his open porch door when we emerged from the avenue of trees. He came out onto the drive to greet us, and now his hand was on my door, opening it. I arranged a gracious smile on my face and permitted him to hand me out of the motorcar. Fortunately, I did not trip and fall at his feet, and as the rain had momentarily slowed to a sort of falling fog, I waved away the driver with the umbrella.

Ketteridge began to speak the moment my door cracked open, his ebullient Americanisms spilling over us as he bowed over my hand and shook that of Holmes, pulling us inside all the while.

"Well, I must say, this is an honour, an honour indeed. Little did I know when I bought this place that I'd one day be welcoming the man who saved it from a rascal, all those years ago. Of course," he confided to me, "it was one of the reasons I bought it in the first place, that ripping good story about the Hound. I felt like I was buying a piece of English history, and an exciting piece at that. Come in, come in," he urged, for we had reached the door. "You'll find a few changes in the old place," he said to Holmes, and scurried forward to fling open the door into the hall itself, nearly bowling over the butler who stood on the other side.

"Sorry, Tuptree, didn't see you there. Come in, Mrs Holmes, Mr Holmes, warm yourselves by the fire. What can we get you to drink?"

I decided that the butler must have worked in Ketteridge's house for some time, since he was not only resigned to his employer's hasty willingness to do away with his services by opening doors for himself, but he did not even react to receiving an apology from his employer. Perhaps, I amended my diagnosis, he had merely worked for Americans before.

The fire was enthusiastic and well fed, set in a massive and ancient fireplace surrounded by several yards of padded fender. I perched my backside on the leather, enjoying the heat and the crackle of the flames while Holmes and our host exchanged some innocuous words of greeting. After a moment, Tuptree came up with our drinks on his polished tray, and I then removed myself to a deep armchair of maroon leather and sipped my sherry, examining my surroundings with interest.

Sir Henry's passion for lightbulbs had been indulged in the interior of his hall as well, with the result that I now sat in the best-lit Elizabethan building outside of a film stage. It was startling, particularly as I had not seen an electric light since leaving Oxford. Every dent and chisel mark in the balusters of the upstairs gallery were readily visible; I could see a small mend in the carpeting on the staircase, and pick out a faint haze of dust on the upper frames of the pictures. It was incongruous and somewhat disturbing—surely those high, age-blackened rafters were never meant to be viewed in such raw detail, nor the cracks and folds in the high, narrow stained-glass window picked out with an intense clarity they would not have even in full sun. The intense illumination made the old oak panelling gleam and brought out all the details of the coats of arms mounted on the walls, but on the whole it was not a successful pairing, for despite the apartment's rich colours and sumptuous, almost cluttered appearance, the harshness of the light made the hall look stark and new, a not entirely successful copy of an old building.

I realised belatedly that the two men were looking at me attentively.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"I just asked what you made of the place," replied Ketteridge.

"Actually, I was wondering how on earth you power all these lights."

"Generators and batteries," he said promptly. "Sir Henry put them in. Did it right, too—I can run every light in the place for six hours before the batteries start to run down. When they don't break down, that is—a man from London is supposed to be here to look into what's gone wrong with the row of lights in the avenue. They've been out for days."

"The problems of the householder," I murmured sympathetically.

He looked at me sideways, opened his mouth, changed his mind, and took a sip from his drink instead (not sherry, but by the look of it a lightly watered whisky) before turning back to Holmes.

"So what brings you to Dartmoor this time, Mr Holmes? Not another hound, I hope?"

"I am on holiday, Mr Ketteridge," Holmes said blandly. "Merely paying a visit to an old friend." He, too, raised his glass, and smiled politely at the American.

"Baring-Gould, yes. Did you meet him during the Baskerville case? He was here then, wasn't he?"

"He was here, yes, but no, I had met him before that."

Ketteridge wavered, and I could see him ruefully accept Holmes' broad hint that any further questioning along that particular route would be boorish. He chose another.

"I believe we have a mutual friend, Mr Holmes."

"Oh?" He was very polite; he did not even raise an eyebrow.

"Lady Blythe-Patton. You did a little job for her a few years back. I met the colonel at my club, and they invited me out to their country place for a weekend. Fine people. She had much to say about you."

Only an American, I reflected, could actually form a new acquaintanceship at a men's club. I kept my face without expression when Holmes turned to speak to me.

"I found a necklace that she had lost, Russell, many years ago when I was a hungry youth with the rent to pay."

"Recovered it within an hour of entering the house, she says," Ketteridge elaborated with a no-false-modesty sort of joviality.

"Behind the cushions of the settee," Holmes replied, sounding bored. "I don't suppose that within her panegyric she included the advice I gave her at the time?"

"Not that I recall, no," Ketteridge said doubtfully.

"I told her that in the future she ought to remove her valuables to the safe before imbibing as heavily as she had been, and moreover, that increasing her expenditures on domestic staff might make it possible for the overworked housemaids to clean more thoroughly, turning out the cushions at regular intervals. The settee was really quite disgusting."

Ketteridge thought this hilarious. I waited until his laughter was subsiding, and then I asked Holmes, "Did she actually pay you after that?"

"Do you know," he said, sounding surprised, "I don't believe she did."

Our little piece of burlesque succeeded in putting Ketteridge off track just long enough for me to nudge the train of conversation off in another direction.

"Tell me, Mr Ketteridge, what do you do to amuse yourself, here on the moor?"

His answer wound along the lines of outdoor enterprises and the pleasures of restoring a down-at-its-heels building to a state of glory, interspersed with regular away trips; however, listening between the lines, it sounded to me as if the charms of Dartmoor had begun to pall, and the thrill of owning the piece of English literary history that was Baskerville Hall was beginning to fail in its compensation for the setting. What he did for amusement on Dartmoor, it appeared, was get away from it, to London, Scotland, Paris, and even New York. He had bought the hall in a burst of enthusiasm, spent many months and a great number of dollars arranging it to his satisfaction, and now that the rich man's toy was shiny and nearing completion, clean air, fox hunts, and conversations with the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould would not be enough to keep him.

Ketteridge seemed to become aware of how thin his answer had been, and rapidly turned the topic back to Holmes. "And you, Mr Holmes, down there on the Sussex Downs; surely beekeeping doesn't occupy your every waking hour? I've noticed how few and far between Conan Doyle's stories have been lately—you must keep your hand in the investigation business, if nothing else than to give him something to write about."

Holmes took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and placidly answered, "Active investigation is a task for younger men, Mr Ketteridge. I spend my days writing."

I busied myself with my empty glass, but before Ketteridge could give verbal expression to the scepticism on his face, movement at the far end of the room attracted his attention. The butler Tuptree stood at a doorway and informed us that our dinner was served. As we turned towards him, Holmes shot me an eloquent glance. I raised my eyebrows a fraction, and he shook his head minutely. It seemed that it was not yet time for me to succumb to the vapours, despite the fact that since we had entered his house, Ketteridge had not allowed more than half a dozen sentences to pass without pulling the conversation back to the Baskerville case. For some reason, Holmes did not wish to leave. However, I decided that enough had become enough.

I went through into the dining room, followed by Holmes. Once inside, I stepped to one side, paused while Holmes walked past me into the room, and then turned on my heel to come face to face with Ketteridge, who necessarily jerked to a halt. I drew myself up, put a hand out to his sleeve, and, looking at him eye to eye (actually, I was a fraction taller than he), I spoke in a slow, clear, ironclad voice.

"My husband does not really enjoy talking about his old cases, Mr Ketteridge. It makes him uncomfortable."

Most men, and certainly forceful men like Ketteridge, tend to overlook women unless they be unattached and attractive. I usually allow this because I often find it either amusing or convenient to be invisible. Such had been the case with Ketteridge, between my self-effacement and his fascination with Holmes, but now he reared back on his heels in astonishment. I merely held his eyes for a moment longer, then smiled, let go of his arm, and left him to gather his wits and scurry around to seat us at the long, gleaming table that was set with four places and lit only by candlelight. The dim light was a great relief.

A distraction arrived in the form of Ketteridge's secretary, David Scheiman, adjusting his tie as he entered hurriedly and slipped into the fourth chair.

"Sorry I'm late," he said. "I got involved in my work and lost track of the time."

"All you missed was a drink and some pleasant conversation, David," his employer said. "Both of which you can catch up with. Wine, Mrs Holmes?"

I am not certain why I did not correct his form of address to the surname I normally use, the one I was born with. Men do not change their names with marriage, and it had always struck me as odd that women were expected to do so. Perhaps I did not correct him because I did not wish to underscore the impression of unexpected strength I had just made on him, or perhaps it was for some other reason, but after a tiny hesitation, I merely nodded and allowed Tuptree to pour a dark red wine into my glass. Holmes did not remark on the incident, not even nonverbally, but I knew he had not missed it.

"What sort of work were you doing, Mr Scheiman, that so occupied you?" I asked, more to set the conversational ball rolling than from any real interest. What I could see of him in the uncertain light confirmed that he was a pleasant if unprepossessing young man, fair-haired, prim, with a blond beard trimmed neatly low on his cheeks and a moustache that nearly obscured his thin lips. His hands, like those of his employer's, were large and callused, and the skin of his face was browned to an agreeable semblance of rude good health.

"Some old manuscripts," he said unexpectedly. "It's very interesting, the number of myths and legends that can be found about the moor. You wouldn't believe the diversity, even when the stories are basically the same. Take the myth of the black hound, for example—"

Holmes, across from me, winced perceptibly, but before he could slump into resignation, Ketteridge spoke up.

"Very interesting, I'm sure, David. Perhaps you could tell us a story after dinner." Scheiman frowned in what appeared to be confusion, a sharp line appearing low on his forehead, but he did not press the matter. Ketteridge continued, "You know of course, Mrs Holmes, that your host at Lew Trenchard is a great collector of stories, but perhaps he has not mentioned that he travelled to Iceland when he was a young man?"