The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4

by Laurie R. King

  “Pipes?” I said, as there flashed before me the bizarre image of a collection of meerschaums and briars planted stem-first into a hill.

  “Empty steel piping, two inches in diameter and approximately two feet long. There were twenty of them altogether, arranged about four feet apart from one another, sunk into the ground and covered carefully with a cap to keep the inside clear of debris.”

  “Not filled with pieces of gold and a charge of black powder?”

  “Not yet.” His eyes gleamed briefly. “I believe that the technique is to prepare the hole by drilling or shoveling down into soft ground and inserting a length of hollow pipe. One then takes a similar length of a smaller diameter of thin-walled, soft pipe which has had a good number of holes drilled or punched into it and then been loosely packed with the charge and the gold, probably an ounce or so mixed into a spadeful of river sand. The smaller of the pipes is then dropped—gently—into the larger, after which the outer pipe is withdrawn, and the wires on the detonators fastened onto a master wire running to the detonator plunger.”

  “And, boom. Clean up the pipes and wires, and you have gold flakes in your streambed.”

  “Farther down the river,” he continued, “I found the mine where Pethering’s body had lain. I left the rucksack beneath some rocks nearby, and walked down the footpath until I came to a farm.

  “And do you know, the residents of the farm thought on the whole that perhaps they had heard a motorcar, just after dark, on Thursday night.”

  For a long moment I could not think why he was looking at me so intently. I began to reconstruct Thursday in my mind, and when I did I felt as if someone had hit me very low in the stomach.

  “Just after dark? Oh Holmes, no. You don’t mean … You can’t mean …”

  “Approximately how long was Scheiman gone with the motorcar when you were at Baskerville Hall?”

  “Perhaps three hours,” I answered reluctantly.

  “Say fourteen miles from Baskerville Hall to the farm, a mile in and down to retrieve the body, fourteen miles back. Three hours sounds right.”

  I put my hand over my mouth in revulsion. If Holmes was right, the car in which Ketteridge had driven me back to Lew House had also contained the two-day-old body of Randolph Pethering. Ketteridge must have known. He had to know.

  “Did Ketteridge know?” I asked.

  “So it would seem, unless you think Scheiman motored back home with his employer, and then immediately turned around and retraced his steps to bring the body here.”

  “No. And I can’t see Scheiman quite so cold-blooded, not to turn a hair at his innocent employer’s getting behind the wheel with a corpse in the boot of the car.” I shuddered at the reminder that I had been in that car, had sat making inconsequential remarks about the beauty of the evening, while just behind me lay the folded-up remains of the man whose coat I would be hanging onto the following morning.

  I pushed it away from me. “Why not leave him in the mine? Why bring him here?”

  “Look at the map, Russell. Even though the actual sightings cut across the diagonal from northeast to central west, I think we can safely say that their entire purpose has been to keep people away from the northwestern segment of the moor. When they have been forced to create points of interest, such as where Josiah Gorton was left and the hound sighted, or Pethering’s body found, each of those points has been away from the northwestern quadrant. It would have been a risk to leave a body in a mine so near the area they wanted people to avoid—bodies have a way of getting themselves found, after all, particularly when they lie less than a mile from farms with their sharp-nosed dogs. And it would be arduous in the extreme to dig a large enough hole in the sodden peat to bury someone, and carrying him across the moor, to Watern Tor perhaps, would also involve the risk of discovery. Josiah Gorton they transported clear to the other side of the moor, but for some reason—grown cocky perhaps, or short of time, or merely the difference between disposing of a wandering tin seeker who had no family and a young and educated outsider whose death could be expected to attract a degree of attention—they decided to remove Pethering from the moor altogether. Your arrival that day at Baskerville Hall may have given them the idea, or they might have settled on it in any case.”

  I thought about it for a long minute, dissatisfied, but there was no more to be done with the question at the moment. “Have you been up on the moor all this time, then?”

  “More or less. After interviewing the farmer I determined that there was, indeed, a place where a motorcar had pulled off the road two or three days before. Dunlops,” he said, before I could ask. “Relatively new, such as Ketteridge’s motor runs on.”

  “Thank God for that. I was beginning to think he was as ghostly as Lady Howard.”

  “Though it’s not much use as proof in a court of law.”

  “True.”

  “I then went to visit the army garrison near Okehampton.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “I had to be sure that what appeared to be shelling was in fact not.”

  “Of course.”

  “Major-General Nicholas Wyke-Murchington gave me a cup of tea.”

  “How nice.”

  “Not terribly. It was nine o’clock this morning and I could have done with strong coffee and a full breakfast.”

  “Where did you stop the night yesterday?”

  “In the farmer’s barn.”

  I had half expected him to say, in the abandoned mine. At least the barn would have been dry and, with any luck, warm.

  “So you had a nice tea with the major-general.”

  “And, with Mycroft’s cachet in hand, he showed me his tank.”

  “A singular honour.”

  “Any self-respecting spy would have died laughing at the sight of it, although I can well believe it would not have sunk into the mire of Passchendaele. It distinctly resembles a duck perched atop a half-inflated balloon, and it moves—trundles is perhaps the word—at the pace of an arthritic old woman.”

  “A truly revolutionary design.”

  “He also gave me another piece of information that I think you will not mock so freely.”

  “A radical model submarine boat with wings?”

  “No, the schedule for firing.”

  “But, didn’t Baring-Gould say they only used the ranges in the summer ?”

  “Except when they wish to practice in foul-weather conditions.”

  “I’d have thought the summer months here would suffice, but pray continue.”

  “Night manoeuvres are planned, in moonlight, on Thursday night. The day after tomorrow. And the schedule has been posted on the moor notice boards.”

  “Now, why should—wait,” I said, beginning to see what he was suggesting. “We’re past the usual season when one might reasonably count on the occasional thunderstorm, and yet Scheiman and Ketteridge have been making preparations for another blast.”

  “The occasional natural thunderstorm, certainly, but would not an artificial storm suffice to conceal their activities, with the thunder of guns instead of that from the sky? A man standing in the entranceway to the old adit could easily see when the soldiers were away from the immediate area, but could also see the flash from the firing that would conceal the blast of the black powder.”

  Another thought came to me. “And the moon is nearly full as well. By God, one way or another, we may be able to catch them at it.”

  Holmes smiled slowly, but merely said, “I should be interested to see the references you found in Gould’s books.”

  We moved upstairs to our room, where I showed him the places and left him, stretched out shoeless on the bed with one book in his hands and one on either side of him on the counterpane. When I put my head in an hour later, he was asleep. I went quietly away.

  24

  Where the one-inch fails recourse must

  be had to the six-inch map.

  —A BOOK OF THE WEST: DEVON

  WEDNESDAY MORNING THE f
rost had departed and the sky was dull with cloud, but inside Lew House there was a feeling of sunshine and relief, because the squire of Lew Trenchard was on his feet again.

  Holmes and I had a great deal to discuss and some complicated arrangements to make before the army’s scheduled firing on Thursday night; however, the topic being mooted over the breakfast table was honey. The painted Virtues looked on in approval and Holmes seemed more than willing to indulge his old friend, so I could only throw up my hands and give myself over to the game.

  “I gave you some of the metheglin the other night,” Baring-Gould was saying. “Now have a taste of the honey it was made from.”

  Holmes obediently thrust his teaspoon into the pot of thick stuff before him on the table, twirled the spoon to keep its burden intact, and put it into his mouth. Baring-Gould and I watched, and even Rosemary stopped in the act of taking the coffeepot to be refilled and waited for the judgement.

  “Remarkable,” said Holmes stickily. He reached for his coffee cup.

  Baring-Gould nodded vigorously. “Didn’t I tell you? It is produced from furze blossoms, a most superb and aromatic variety. Keeping bees on the moor is no easy thing, as you know, because of the perpetual wind, but there is a monk down at the Buckfast Abbey who has succeeded Brother Adam, his name is—a young man, but already the head beekeeper.” (Was head beekeeper so hard-fought a position, I wondered idly, that only a monk of high seniority would be likely to win it?) “He has some very sound ideas about breeding—you ought to get down there and talk with him.”

  “Yes,” said Holmes, “I have corresponded with Brother Adam. He consulted me recently on the acarine problem. I suggested he look to Italy, which I believe is free from the disease.”

  “You don’t say. He’s a German, of course, which hasn’t made it easy for him the last few years, but he’s an original—a true character. Perhaps a bit over enthusiastic, I admit, but all the more appealing for it in this age when detachment rules and cool indifference is the standard of behaviour. Do you know,” he said, warming to his new topic, “in the old times there were men and women who stood out; now there seems to be a plague of homogeneity, spread by the machinations of the press and the ease of railway travel. Why, I am sure you have heard of this crystal wireless set which seems certain to achieve popularity; I imagine that the resultant instant communication will complete what modern education and quick travel have begun, and we will soon see the death of regionalism and individuality. Haven’t you found this, Holmes? The world is becoming filled with sameness, with men and women as like as marbles. Not a true eccentric in sight.” I looked at him carefully, waiting for the twinkle that would tell me he was making a jest, but he was frowning as he drizzled furze honey over his toast. I glanced over at Holmes, who was nodding in solemn agreement over the tragic loss of eccentricity in the modern world, and I had to get up and go to the kitchen for a moment to ask Mrs Elliott if we might have another few slices of brown bread toasted. When I returned, Baring-Gould was telling a story, apparently concerning one of his late lamented characters.

  “—begging, dressed as a seaman who had been shipwrecked, or a farmer whose land was under water in Kent. He would watch the newspapers, you see, for word of the latest disaster, and take on whatever disguise that might call for. One day he might be a householder burnt out of his house, taking up a position on the pavement wearing little more than a charred blanket; the next day he would appear as an impoverished soldier. He had letters of verification from magistrates and noblemen—forged, of course. The gipsies eventually claimed him, and elected him King of the Beggars. You could learn from him, Holmes.” He chuckled at the idea.

  “Still, Gould,” said Holmes, “there have always been degrees of rogue. One may feel a grudging admiration for Bamfylde-Moore Carew because of his sheer effrontery, but then there are men like the Scamp.”

  “Oh yes,” Baring-Gould said, allowing his knife and fork to come to a brief pause. “The Scamp was indeed a bad lot.” He resumed his meal, and spoke in my direction. “‘The Scamp’ is my family’s name for one of the eighteenth-century Goulds, Captain Edward—his portrait is on the stairway. He nearly lost us this estate, and certainly lost a great deal else. He killed a man, one of his gambling partners, and at his trial was defended by one John Dunning, to whom he also owed a great deal of money. An eyewitness to the shooting testified that he saw Edward Gould by moonlight, but at the trial Dunning produced a calendar proving there had been no moon that night. Gould was acquitted, though by that time he was so in debt to Dunning that he had to make over nearly everything he owned to the man, which would have lost us Lew Trenchard had it not been under his mother’s name. And the funny thing was, the calendar John Dunning produced? It was a fake.”

  It did not seem terribly amusing to me, and even Baring-Gould merely shook his head at the iniquity. Holmes did not even seem to be listening. His attention was on the door to the kitchen, and when Rosemary came through it his eye was on her right hand and the yellow envelope she carried.

  “Yes, Rosemary?” said Baring-Gould. “What is it?”

  “Telegram, sir, for Mr Holmes.”

  Holmes had the point of his knife through it before the door had swung shut, and his eyes dashed back and forth over the lines before coming up to mine. He nodded, then folded the square away into an inner pocket and turned to Baring-Gould with a brief and genial explanation and a deft change of subject.

  After breakfast Baring-Gould went off to write some letters and take a rest, and Holmes handed me the yellow envelope. The author of this telegram had taken Holmes’ concern for circumspection to heart, and the wording of his message was cautious indeed:

  PRIMARY SUBJECT KNOWN TO US REGARDING ACTIVITIES INVOLVING SALE OF REAL PROPERTIES FOLLOWING UNVERIFIABLE MISREPRESENTATION OF MINERALS CONTAINED THEREIN. SUGGEST FURTHER ENQUIRIES COLORADO NEVADA SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA . SECOND SUBJECT UNKNOWN HERE. APOLOGIES FOR EXPORT TAINTED GOODS. LETTER FOLLOWS. APOLOGIES FOR EXPORT TAINTED GOODS. LETTER FOLLOWS. HARRISON

  “Ketteridge is known for fraudulently selling land, claiming it had ‘minerals’—I assume gold—when it did not,” I interpreted the paper in my hand. “Harrison is with the Alaska police?”

  “The Mounties, actually. The Canadians were largely responsible for policing the Territories during the gold rush. I would say by the tone of his apology and the fact that he has been following Ketteridge’s career, he knows the man to have been guilty of gold fraud but could not pin it on him.” He paused and looked up, gazing through me more than at me. “What was it Ketteridge said about his childhood? He let slip some description about the land, when he was talking to you at Baskerville Hall.”

  “Red stone,” I said. “Something about the hills where he grew up having tors, only they were dry and red.”

  The far-off look on his face told of a search of that prodigious memory of his, as full of jumble as a lumber room. After a few minutes he suddenly came across the bit of lumber he had been seeking, and his eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

  “San Diego,” he said. “Late 1860s, perhaps 1870.”

  “Sorry?” I prompted when he said no more. His gaze focussed.

  “There was a gold rush in the red hills outside San Diego, California, in the late 1860s. It was an actual discovery, but as was the case with most such finds, it was soon overwhelmed by the influx of swindlers, claim jumpers, and speculators.”

  “And Ketteridge’s accent comes from the southern part of California. But he couldn’t have had anything to do with that; he’s barely your age.”

  “Fifty-seven, unless he lied about being thirty-one when the Klondike rush began. No, he is too young, but he may have learnt the techniques as a child—at his father’s knee, perhaps, or merely seeing the activities around him as he was growing up. I shall look forward to receiving Harrison’s following letter, which may allow us to pin the man down with his crimes where the police forces of two other countries have failed.”

  It was only t
hen that the full picture of what we were facing, mad as it seemed, hit me: the very real possibility of a gold rush on Dartmoor. The mediaeval tin seekers with their prodding and digging and dark, shallow tunnels in the earth would be nothing to the catastrophe set off by the whisper of that spellbinding word, gold. It would be over in weeks, of course, as soon as the blasted hillsides gave forth nothing heavier than tin and the diverted streams washed away everything but flecks of base metals from the flumes, but the devastation wrought by tens of thousands of hobnailed boots and spades and sticks of dynamite, the ruin they would leave behind across the ravaged face of the moor—it did not bear thinking.

  I shook my head, more to clear it than in denial. “Surely we wouldn’t see an actual gold rush here. It’s … preposterous.”

  “You think the English immune to gold fever?”

  “We’ve got to stop it.”

  “I wonder,” said Holmes contemplatively, and stopped.

  “About the possibility of a gold rush?” I prodded.

  “No, that is clearly possible. Rather, I was reflecting on the care with which they have set up the elaborate mechanism of rumours. The hound and the carriage may be both a diversion while they are salting the ground as well as an essential part of the plot itself. A deeper layer of deception, as it were, to encourage potential speculators to reason along the lines of, ‘A: The rich American gold baron has been buying up land on the quiet and trying to frighten people away; B: The gold baron is a clever and successful investor; therefore C: The value of the gold at Black Tor must be considerable, and we ought to buy in now, without hesitation.’ I should think it would also make for an interesting legal conundrum,” he commented, “if one were to sell pieces of land without actually making fraudulent claims as to its content, relying only on rumours.”

  “Surely it would have to be illegal,” I said, although I was not at all certain.

  “Ultimately, yes, it would be declared fraud, but only after lengthy consideration. However, one would assume that his plans include a hasty departure from the scene the moment the cheques from the auction are deposited.”