“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?”
“He hasn’t said anything about it, no,” I replied, a literally true statement, although because of my day’s reading I was aware of his voyage.
“A great traveller he was, like his father. Of course, he was practically born on the road, so I guess you could say it’s in his blood. His father got itchy feet when the boy was about three or four, bundled his family up, popped them in a carriage, and took off for the Continent. That’s how Baring-Gould grew up, moving from Germany to the south
of France and back again, until he was about fifteen, when he finally spent some time here. What a way to spend your childhood, eh? No teachers, no rules, learning languages by speaking them and science when it interests you.”
It was much the same history that Baring-Gould himself had told us the first night, and now, having some idea of the man’s life, I reflected that his parents’ approach towards their son’s education did explain something about Baring-Gould’s flighty attitude towards research.
“Have you read his memoirs?” he asked us. I shook my head, having just taken a mouthful of food, and Holmes said simply that he had not. “Very interesting book. Very interesting life. It’s just the first volume, of course. The next will be out next year, and he’s working on the third one now.”
“There’s nothing about the Baskerville legend in the first volume,” Scheiman remarked.
“Of course not,” said Ketteridge, a touch repressively. “It ends thirty years before that. Now tell me, Mr Holmes, you’re something of an antiquarian. Do you think the Romans ever made it up onto Dartmoor?”
The conversation moved away from Holmes’ professional life for a time while Ketteridge and Holmes discussed tin mining and Phoenician traders, moorland crosses, the conflict between the military and the visitor during the summer months, prison reform, and the possible meanings behind the avenues of standing stones (which personally I had decided were the result of near terminal boredom on the part of the natives, who would have found heaving large rocks into upright lines an exciting alternative to watching the fog blow about) while I sat and listened politely and Scheiman drank three glasses of wine.
Gradually the topic turned back towards Baring-Gould and his work, the problems the man had in maintaining a writing schedule with his failing health, and the progress of the third and final volume of his memoirs. At this point Scheiman again interjected a comment.
“I wonder if
The Hound of the Baskervilles
will be in that volume,” he said to Holmes. His speech was slightly slurred, and I thought that
perhaps he had not missed his predinner drinks, after all. Ketteridge shot him a hard glance.
“David, I think you’ve had enough wine,” he said. His voice was quiet but hard, almost threatening, and his secretary put down his glass in an instant and automatic response. Unfortunately, the edge of it caught the side of his dinner plate, a glancing blow but enough to jolt the glass out of his hand and send its contents shooting down the table straight at me. I jerked back, avoiding the worst of it, but not all.
Everyone but Holmes was on his feet, me dabbing at the front of my dress, Scheiman looking abruptly ill, and Ketteridge flushing with anger.
“David, I think you’d better leave.” Without a word, his secretary dropped his table napkin on his chair and obeyed. Ketteridge apologised ; one of Tuptree’s minions silently whisked away the place setting, I reassured him (I hoped not falsely) that no permanent damage had been done my frock, and we resumed our places and our meal.
Ketteridge picked up his fork and determinedly resumed the conversation where he had left off, regaling us with stories of our host in Lew House. We heard about the pet bat that used to perch on Baring-Gould’s shoulder when he was a schoolmaster (the boys called it his familiar, and swore it whispered dark secrets in his ear), and the Icelandic pony he had rescued and brought home with him, about the long black bag he had taken to carrying as a travel case, draped over his shoulder and called by the pupils “Gould’s Black Slug.” Ketteridge had never met Baring-Gould’s wife, Grace, who died in 1916, but had prised the story of their courtship out of Baring-Gould’s half brother and one-time curate, Arthur Baring-Gould, and recounted for us the tale of how the thirty-year-old parish priest had seen a nearly illiterate, sixteen-year-old girl going home in her clogs from her work in the mill and known that she would be his wife. He sent her away to friends, who taught her a correct accent and how to make polite conversation, and when she was nineteen they had married: the tall, eccentric, middle-aged parson and the short, quiet, hard-working young girl with the gentle iron will and the generous heart and the unexpected dry sense of humour. It was an
unlikely match of great affection and mutual dependence, and everyone agreed that he had not been the same since she had died.
To do him justice, I do not think that when Ketteridge began the story, he was aware that his two guests might take it as something more personal than a quaint and touching tale of another’s marriage. His face gave away the moment when he did become aware that he was speaking to a man and a woman with an even more exaggerated disparity of age, if not of education, but he rallied and ploughed on as if unconscious of the potential discomfort his narrative might bring.
However, immediately that story ended, he went off on another tack entirely, and we were soon hearing about the Baring-Gould archaeological excavations on the moor and the reports of the Devonshire Association.
Sweet course and cheese disposed of, we returned to the central hall, bidding farewell to the serried ranks of purchased ancestors staring down at us from the dark recesses of the minstrel’s gallery at the far end of what was more accurately a banqueting hall than a dining room. Back in the hall, we found the brilliant lighting blessedly shut down, replaced by the gentling glow of a multitude of candles. It had been an excellent meal, the food unadorned, even homely, but beautifully cooked; now, the chairs in front of the fireplace where we sat to drink our coffee and the men their brandies were comfortable, and the conversation, Ketteridge having laid aside his curiosity about Holmes’ past cases, was amiable. All in all, a much nicer evening than I had anticipated.
Even the hall seemed more appealing. Without the stark electric lights, the room reverted to its proper nature, a richly furnished chamber that had outlasted dynasties, outlasted too the family it had housed for five centuries.
It was, despite its opulence, remarkably comfortable and easy on the eyes and the spirit. I had assumed that Ketteridge bought the furnishings along with the portraits, but looking at them again, I began to wonder. The pieces were all either very old indeed or too new to have been installed during the Baskerville reign, and surely a house put together by a
woman could not have been so unremittingly solid, dark, and male. Even the many decorative touches were masculine, the carpets and statues, pillows, wall tapestries, and paintings all large, intense in colour, and lush in texture, the overall effect so rich one could almost taste it. Studying the room in mild curiosity, trying to analyse how this came about, I noticed the subtle use of geometry, from the square of the chairs and settee before the fireplace to the triangle formed by the arrangement of three discrete centres that were placed with deceptive thoughtlessness, across the expanse of floor.
It was a collection of deep red, blue, and black needlework pillows on the sofa opposite the fireplace that nudged me into realising what the room reminded me of: Moroccan architecture and decorative arts, the elaborate arabesques built around the most basic geometry, as if the strength of a Norman church were to be combined with the delicacy of a piece of lacework. It was very unlikely, given the setting of a building from the Elizabethan era risen from foundations two hundred years older, but the hall that had at first seemed cluttered and overly furnished with colour and pattern, now in the dimmer light of the many thick candles assumed the persona of an Oriental palace. I smiled: Our dusky host had made for himself a Moorish retreat in the midst of Dartmoor.