The Moor mr-4

by Laurie R. King

  His story had the worn and polished texture of a favourite possession, taken out regularly to be handed around and admired, and I could easily imagine him sitting with his new friends in a Scottish hunting lodge after a day's rough shoot, trading stories of unlikely places and successful ventures.

  "You plan to move, then?" Holmes asked.

  "I think so."

  "Baring-Gould will miss you," commented Holmes.

  "I'll miss him. He's a crazy old coot, but he does tell some fine stories. I'll think of him when I'm sitting in the sun, in the south of France, maybe, or even Hong Kong for a real change. My secretary would like that, wouldn't you, David?"

  I had not been aware of the secretary's presence behind me, so light were his footsteps and so heavy the carpeting. He came into the low glow around the fire, his shoulders hunched in embarrassment, and went to the coffee tray to pour himself a cup. He had been away less than two hours, but he sounded stone-cold sober now.

  "I really must apologise," he said to us. "I have some sort of blood imbalance that makes me highly sensitive to the effects of alcohol. I shouldn't drink at all, really. I make such a fool of myself. I do beg your pardon if I seemed at all…forward."

  "My dear boy," said Ketteridge, "I'm sure you offended none of us. I was merely concerned, knowing your sensitivity, that you might make yourself ill."

  It had sounded more like anger than concern in his voice, back in the dining room, but I assumed that he was being generous in excusing the younger man's lapse. Employees did not normally indulge in public drunkenness, even in the relative informality of an American household, and Scheiman knew it: He sat in a chair apart from his employer and the guests, away from the fire.

  "So, David. Do you have a story from Dartmoor for us?"

  "I, er, they're not really all that interesting. That is to say, I find them interesting, but—"

  "Mr Scheiman," said Holmes in resignation. "Perhaps you might tell my wife the story of the Baskerville curse."

  Scheiman looked startled, and glanced at his employer for instructions. Although Ketteridge had so firmly discouraged his secretary from inflicting these doggy reminiscences on us, he could hardly now insist that his guest be saved from them when it was Holmes himself asking. Ketteridge shrugged.

  "As our guest suggests, David. Do tell the story of the black hound of Dartmoor." And so Scheiman, looking uncomfortable, began his story.

  "In doing some reading about the history of the area, I came across the story that the Baskerville curse was actually based on. Not the one as given in The Hound of the Baskervilles," he said, with an apologetic glance at Holmes, "but the true story. There lived in the seventeenth century a squire by the name of Richard Cavell or Cabell. He was a man of great passions, who had the fortune, or perhaps misfortune, to marry him a beautiful young wife.

  "For the first year or two all was well, except that they had no children. Soon, however, he discovered that she was betraying him. He forbade her visitors and kept her at home, but it continued, and became ever more indiscriminate. He sent away every male household servant aside from the near-children and the truly elderly, he hedged her around with limits, but still his wife turned her back on him. His jealousy grew. When he saw her flirting with a stable hand, he hit her and forbade her to ride. When he witnessed her in conversation with the farm manager, he punished her again and locked her in the house. He grew afraid that the women in the house would plot with their mistress to bring her lovers, and so he got rid of the old servants and hired new ones. He loved his wife and he hated her, and soon the only friend she was allowed was her dog.

  "The day came when he again caught her in yet another transgression. He beat her nearly to death, threw her in her room, and took the key.

  "By this time the woman feared for her life. She let herself down the wall of the house on the ivy and fled, on foot, for the house of her sister across the moor.

  "She did not make it. He discovered her absence, mounted his horse, and rode her down and, in his passion of jealous rage, he killed her. But as he drew his knife from the body of his wife, the woman's only friend took its revenge. The dog went for him and tore out the throat of his mistress' murderer. The dog then disappeared, out into the desolation of the moor, where to this day he wanders, waiting either for his mistress, or for her husband."

  A short silence fell, silence other than the hiss and crackle of the low-burning fire, until Holmes stirred. "Interesting," he said in a bored voice, and pulled out his watch.

  "Yes," I said brightly. "It is interesting. The—"

  Holmes interrupted me loudly, no doubt fearing (with reason) my scathing response to the clean-up job the secretary had done on what was essentially a very dirty little story. "My dear," he said, all syrup and honey, "I know you undoubtedly have a strong academic interest in the tale, but the hour is late."

  We faced off over the empty coffee service. Ketteridge dutifully cleared his throat, although he was no doubt conscious of how his social triumph of having Sherlock Holmes to dine in Baskerville Hall could only be capped by the marital battle he could feel brewing. I ignored him.

  "As I was saying," I continued, "it is quite interesting. The squire's name might be related to the Latin for horse, caballus, or it might be a reference to a political intrigue or cabal in which the squire was involved, presumably as a Cavalier in the Civil War. But you know, the truly tantalising bit there is that his name is the same as that of King Arthur's beloved hound. The centre of Arthurian legend is somewhat to the north of here, I realise, but—"

  Holmes interrupted again, with not a trace of the relief he must have felt at hearing only this nonsense. "It could also indicate that Cabell was simply his name. It is time we were gone, Mr Ketteridge."

  Scheiman had been interested in what I was saying, but with the interruption I noticed that Ketteridge was looking at me oddly, so I subsided, and allowed the business of leave-taking to rise up around me.

  In the car, Holmes sat back and said in a quiet voice to the back of the driver's head, "You know of course the Latin words cavillari and cave."

  "Related to calvi, to sneer," I said, also too quietly for the driver to overhear, "and cave: beware."

  He smiled briefly, and we sat for the rest of the drive in amicable silence.

  NINE

  Some have speculated that the standing stones were intended for astronomical observation, and for determining the solstices; but such fancies may be dismissed…and as for stone gate sockets, it is really marvellous that the antiquaries of the past did not suppose they were basins for sacrificial lustration.

  One really wonders in reading such nonsense as this whether modern education is worth much.

  —A Book of Dartmoor

  It was long after midnight when the big car finished negotiating the lanes and turned through the Lew House gates, but again all the lights downstairs were burning. I could have used a relatively early night, I thought with resignation; at least this time I was dressed for an occasion.

  "How on earth did I get the impression that Baring-Gould lived a solitary life?" I asked. "He seems to have an endless stream of visitors, and at all hours."

  After allowing Ketteridge's chauffeur to open my door and to retrieve the fur rug in which I had been wrapped, I thanked him absently and followed Holmes into the house. There had been no vehicle standing outside, and to my surprise, the hall where I had first met Baring-Gould, and later been faced with Ketteridge, Scheiman, and the curate Arundell, was now deserted but for the cat asleep in front of the freshly fed fire.

  "Hello?" Holmes called in a low voice. When no answer came, he started for the stairs, then stopped abruptly. A figure was rising up from the high-backed chair that faced the fireplace, the figure of a bony, brown man in his late thirties with sparse hair, loosened collar, and rumpled tweed suit. He had obviously been asleep, and was now blinking at us in growing alarm. He reached quickly down and came up gripping the fire poker; still, he looked more ridicu
lous than threatening.

  "Who are you?" he demanded in an uncertain voice. "What do you want?"

  "I might ask the same of you," said Holmes, and calmly set about divesting himself of his outdoor garments. He dropped his hat and gloves onto a pie-crust table and began to unbutton his overcoat. "Where is Mr Baring-Gould?"

  "He's locked in his bedroom." Holmes' long fingers paused for a moment at the implications in this statement. "He said he was going to bed, and he just left, and I tried…They just…" He stopped, looking shamefaced but with his chin raised in an incongruously childish defiance. "I said I'd just wait here; he has to come down sometime."

  Holmes' fingers slowly resumed their task. He pulled off his scarf and overcoat and tossed them across the back of a sofa, then walked across to close the inner doorway so our voices would not carry up the stairs. He then went over to the drinks cabinet, poured two glasses of brandy, walked over to where I was standing and handed me one, and finally took his drink over to the sofa, where he settled down, stretching his left arm casually along the cushioned back and propping his left ankle on his right knee.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said after he had taken a swallow of brandy, "but it sounds to me remarkably as if you pushed your way into Mr Baring-Gould's presence, drove him to seek refuge in his bedroom, followed him despite, no doubt, the objections of his servants, attempted to force your way through a locked door, and then retreated down here to lay siege, drinking the old man's liquor and burning his firewood, secure in the knowledge that everyone under this roof is twice your age and incapable of enforcing their master's wishes."

  The man took a step forward and I thought for a moment that I was going to have to take action, since Holmes (another inhabitant nearly twice the man's age) was settled deep into the sofa. However, the fireplace poker in his hand seemed to have been forgotten, although I kept a close eye on it and mentally noted heavy objects within reach that I could grab up to pelt him with.

  "No!" he protested furiously. "I only want to talk to him. He has to be made to understand—"

  "Please keep your voice down, young man," Holmes interrupted sharply. "And we might begin with your name."

  "Randolph Pethering," he said more quietly. "I'm a…I'm a lecturer. In Birmingham, at the teachers' training college. I must speak with Mr Baring-Gould about his anti-Druidical prejudice. He must withdraw the statements he has made, or at the very least speak up for my thesis. I can't get a publisher; they've all read his books and articles about the ruins on the moor, and they won't even listen to me. So I've drawn up a list of his mistakes, and if he doesn't help me by speaking to my publisher, so help me, I'll release it to the press. He'll be ruined. A laughingstock!"

  His voice had climbed again during this all but incomprehensible tirade, but Holmes and I could only stare at him until he broke off, wiping his brow and panting with emotion and the heat of the fire and no doubt the alcohol he had drunk.

  Holmes balanced his glass on the arm of the sofa, steepled his fingers, touched them to his lips, and addressed the distraught figure.

  "Mr Pethering, am I to understand that you regard yourself as an antiquarian?"

  "I am an archaeological anthropologist, sir. A good deal more of a scientist than that old man upstairs."

  Holmes let it pass. "And yet you are convinced of the presence of Druidical remains up on the moor?"

  "Most certainly! The stone rows for their ceremonial processions and the sacred circles for religious rites; the sacrificial basins on the tops of the tors and the places of oracle; those exquisitely balanced logan stones they used for oracular readings; the Druidical meeting place of Wiseman's Wood near Two Bridges, rich with the sacred mistletoe; the great tolmen in the Teign below Scorhill circle; the stone idols—why, it's as plain as the nose on your face," he exclaimed in a rush. "And Baring-Gould and his ilk would have us believe that the circular temples are mere shepherds' huts, and that the runic markings on the—"

  The rapidity of Holmes' movement surprised me, and it must have terrified Pethering, who nearly tumbled backwards into the fire as Holmes leapt to his feet, took three long steps forward, twisted the poker from the man's hand, and snatched him back from the fire. He then stood looming over him with a terrible scowl on his face.

  "You are tedious, young man, and I see no reason to permit you to remain here and plague our breakfast table. Would you prefer to leave under your own power, or do we put you out?"

  He left. Holmes latched the door. We then made our way around the entire perimeter of the building, checking every window and door, before going upstairs to bed. I had to agree with Holmes that there was no need to stand guard: Pethering was not the sort who would actually break a window to get back in.

  ***

  The antiquarian Pethering was not at the breakfast table the following morning, Sunday. Neither was anyone else, for that matter, nor did the room show any sign that there had been an earlier setting. We eventually ran Mrs Elliott to earth out of doors, supervising the digging up of potatoes by an elderly gardener. The morning air was still and damp and smelt richly of loam, and I breathed it in with appreciation. Bells were ringing somewhere not too far off, that evocative clamour of an English Sunday. After a minute or two Mrs Elliott turned and saw us, and her face lit up.

  "There you are, then, nice and early. I didn't know when you'd be wanting your breakfast, bein' up so late and all, but it's all ready, I'll have it in a moment."

  We tried to assure her that toast and tea would be adequate, but she bustled us out of her kitchen and in a very short time presented us with enough food to keep a labourer happy. This was, it seemed, by way of a reward.

  "I am so grateful to you, runnin' that rascal off the place. I thought Charley—Mr Dunstan—was goin' to fetch his whip, but Mr Baring-Gould settled it by up and goin' to bed. I half expected that I'd have to step across the man to take up the Rector's tea this morning, but then I heard you come in and him go out, and I went to sleep like a baby in sheer relief."

  "That's quite all right, Mrs Elliott. I only regret we were not back earlier; it might have saved some grief all around. Is he still in bed, then?"

  Her dour countrywoman's face drew in and became pinched as with pain. "There's days he doesn't get up," she said. "This looks to be one of them."

  "May I speak with him?"

  "Oh surely, for a brief time. He doesn't sleep, he says, just thinks and prays. With his eyes shut," she added. "I'll take you up after you've had your breakfast."

  Her good temper had manifested itself in lovely soft curds of scrambled eggs, fresh toast, and three kinds of jam, and we soon put away our labourers' portions, sighing with satisfaction. Our introduction to the cuisine of Lew House the week before may have been dismal, but the meals since then had been of a very different order—not fancy, but good, solid English cooking. I commented on the change to Holmes.

  "Yes," he said. "Mrs Elliott was away visiting her sister. The village woman left in charge did little but stretch the remnants of the previous meals, and no one seemed capable of adjustments to the central heating when it went off. Mrs Elliott arrived back the morning after you arrived;she was not pleased at the state of the household." He sounded amused, and I could well imagine the proud housekeeper's reaction to the tough stewed rabbit we had been served. He drained his coffee cup and stood up. "Shall we go and see Gould?"

  "You go, Holmes."

  "Come along, Russell. You mustn't avoid your host simply because he is a rude old man. Besides which, he has quite taken to you."

  "I'd hate to see how he expresses real dislike, then."

  "He becomes very polite but rather inattentive," he said, holding the door open for me. "Precisely as you do, as a matter of fact."

  Gould was awake, but he lay on his pillows moving little more than his eyes. His voice was clear but low, and with very little breath behind it.

  "Mrs Elliott tells me you've rid me of a household pest."

  "Does that sort of thi
ng happen often?"

  "Never. Only friends come here."

  "You should have sent for the village constable."

  "Pethering is harmless. I couldn't be bothered. Tell me what happened."

  Holmes pulled up a chair and told him, making a tale out of it.I sat on the seat below the window, watching the two men. Baring-Gould's eyes, the only things alive in that tired, sallow face, flicked over to me when Holmes told him how I had moved closer to the collection of heavy objects as Pethering had raised his weapon, and they began to dance with appreciation as the story of the man's discomfiting progressed. Holmes embroidered it slightly, enjoying his audience, and at the end Baring-Gould closed his eyes and opened his mouth and began to shake softly in a rather alarming convulsion of silent laughter.

  It was short-lived, and at the end of it he lay for a moment, and then drew a deep breath and let it out again.

  "Poor man. Dear old William Crossing remarked somewhere that one of the great goals of the Druids seems to have been the puzzling of posterity. One could say they have been quite successful. Pethering hasn't shown up again?"

  "Not yet."

  "When he does, tell him I'll write him some sort of a letter. He's a lunatic, but he has a wife and child to feed."

  "I'll tell him."

  "How was your dinner last night?"

  "I was glad that you finally chose to warn me that we were going to be at Baskerville Hall, but we sorted it out eventually. Thanks to Russell, actually, who gave an astonishingly realistic performance of a young wife fiercely protective of her eminent husband's comfort and reputation. Ketteridge no doubt thinks her a fool."

  The sharp old eyes found me again across the room, and this time the twinkle in them was unmistakeable.