The Moor

too, I realised, from the front drive, the coach house, and the stables.

Much as I should have liked to sink into oblivion in the long, hot depths of the bath, I knew I could not submit to my imprisonment without at least trying to confirm my suspicions. Leaving the chair in place and the window wide open, I stripped one of the laces from my boots, tied it around a face flannel, and dropped the flannel in the water, swishing it around vigorously to give the maid the picture of my getting into the bath. I then resumed my perch with the other end of the bootlace wrapped around one toe. From time to time I pulled the flannel about, to evoke the sounds of languid bathing, all the while growing ever more stiff and uncomfortable with my head resting on the windowsill, waiting for a sound that would probably never come.

In the end, though, some ten or fifteen minutes after my vigil began, I was granted not only a sound, but a visual confirmation as well: The engine noise of Ketteridge's big touring car purred softly over the rooftops, and then a brief flare of the headlamps illuminated the tops of some trees that were at the very edge of my field of vision. The motor faded, going down the drive and away from the house. I did not know what it meant, but it was with satisfaction that I pulled down the window, replaced the chair and the laces, and slipped silently into the cooling bath.

FOURTEEN

On the road passers-by always salute and have a bit of a yarn, even though personally unacquainted, and to go by in the dark without a greeting is a serious default in good manners.

—A Book of the West: Devon

Ketteridge was all smiles and affability when I joined him, the agitation gone and a celebratory mood in its place. In fact, a bottle of some very fine champagne was nestling in a bucket of ice, to be plucked out and opened as soon as I entered the hall. Ketteridge was alone, and a small table set with two places was standing discreetly to one side. I was not at all sure about the intimacy of this tete-a-tete, but the hall lights were blazing, sweeping away the memory of the quiet and somewhat mysterious reaches of the room in the other evening's after-dinner candlelight, and Ketteridge did not seem in the least seductive, or even vaguely flirtatious. He seemed only brimming with high spirits, and his sun-dark face, full hair, and white, even teeth, though undeniably handsome, did not appeal to me personally (which was, frankly, a great relief, following the memory of a couple of very disconcerting moments with a man in the Ruskin case).

'Mrs Holmes! Come, join me in a glass of this marvellous stuff.' He poured two glasses, gave me one, and held his own up before him to propose a toast. 'To change!' he declared dramatically.

I hesitated. 'I don't know if I ought to drink to that, Mr Ketteridge. Not all change is good.'

'To growth, then. To progress.'

Not entirely certain what it was I was drinking to, I nonetheless put the rim of the glass to my lips and sipped.

'Are we celebrating something, Mr Ketteridge?'

'Always, my dear Mrs Holmes. There's always something in life to celebrate. In this case, however, I think I may have found a buyer for Baskerville Hall.'

'I see. I did not realise your plans to move on were so far advanced.'

'They weren't before; now they are. Sometimes decisions have to be made on the fly, as it were. Strike while the iron is hot.'

Privately, I agreed that striking at cold iron was not the most productive of exercises; however, neither was the availability of hot iron generally as accidental a state as he seemed to be suggesting. I found it hard to believe that a buyer for Baskerville Hall had simply dropped, preheated as it were, out of the air.

'I'm very glad for you. Do I take the champagne to mean that you have reached a happy agreement?' I was not so gauche as to ask how much he was getting for the hall, but I had found industrialists, particularly successful American industrialists, less likely to take offence at a discussion of pounds, shillings, and pence than the other sorts of wealthy Englishmen were, and a gold baron was surely an industrialist of a sort.

'Happy enough,' he said. 'Yes, happy enough. And I think Baring-Gould and his friends will be satisfied. The buyer is an older man—just as well, it's not exactly a family kind of a place, is it?—and he wants a quiet place to write and study while his wife joins the local hunt. An American—the place seems to have a tradition for outsiders, doesn't it? But I think they'll fit in well.'

It was something of a surprise that Ketteridge would even consider the respective suitability of his buyers and their new neighbours, given the amount of money at stake, and I was touched by his thoughtfulness. Not, I reflected, that he would refuse to sell to a rapacious financier with a scheme to knock the house down and replace it with a set of holiday flats to hire out to city dwellers by the week, but he seemed genuinely happy that he had reached a right solution.

'When will the sale take place?' I asked. 'Will you be leaving soon?'

'It's not completely settled yet,' he hastened to say. 'Some questions to hammer out first. Early spring, most likely. By June.'

Baring-Gould would have the entertainment of this odd American whom he had befriended, then, until the end. I smiled a bit sadly and drank my wine.

Ketteridge divided the remainder of the bottle between our two glasses (most of it having gone into his) and then rang for Tuptree, who came in and arranged the small table and two chairs before the fire.

'I thought this would be more comfortable, Mrs Holmes. The dining hall is a little formal, and damn—darned cold for someone who's just been swimming on Dartmoor.'

'That's very thoughtful of you. Although I have to say the dining hall is a room with a great deal of character. I should like to see it more thoroughly, sometime.'

'I'd be happy to give you the tour tonight, if you wish.'

'I would like that very much,' I said, and sat back to enjoy my meal.

We were served as attentively as we would have been in the formal setting, and the meal was, as before, simple food cooked superbly. I commented on it.

'Is your cook English, Mr Ketteridge, or American?'

'French, would you believe it? It took me three years to convince him that his sauces made me bilious and that the plainer meat and vegetables are, the better they taste.'

'How on earth did you convince a French chef of the virtues of simplicity?' I asked, amused.

'I threatened him. Told him the next time he resigned, I'd actually accept it. I pay him more than he could get anywhere else, so he learned to change.'

I laughed with him. 'How clever of you. I shall keep the technique in mind.'

'I don't imagine you'd have much use for it,' he said. I kept my face straight, but he instantly realised how ill-mannered such a remark was and tried to cover his lapse. 'That is to say, Reverend Gould was telling me the other evening how simply you and your husband live, down in Sussex.'

'It's very true,' I said, sounding ever-so-slightly regretful. It was only to be expected that Ketteridge would want to prise any Sherlock Holmes gossip he could out of Baring-Gould, but either Baring-Gould or Holmes himself had neglected to mention that our unadorned manner of living had everything to do with choice and nothing with necessity. I toyed for a moment with the idea of making Ketteridge a cash offer on Baskerville Hall, then put it away. Independent wealth did not go well with the picture Ketteridge had formed of the Holmes household, and I decided that, for the present, I should leave the picture undisturbed. Besides which, he might actually accept my offer, and then where would I be?

'Tell me, Mrs Holmes, does your husband still investigate cases, or is he well and truly retired?'

Ah, I thought, Baring-Gould was not indiscreet enough to tell him everything.

'Very occasionally, when something interests him enough. For the most part he writes and conducts his research. We live a quiet life.' That Ketteridge did not burst into wild laughter told me all I needed to know about his ignorance of Holmes' very active career. 'Why do you ask?'

'I thought perhaps while he was down here I might hire him to look into the mysterious sightings of the Hound of the Baskervilles.'

'Oh yes?' Interesting, I thought, that everyone should be confusing the Baskerville hound with the one accompanying Lady Howard's coach. Considering Richard Ketteridge's enthusiasms it was not all that surprising that he should do so, but I could only think that Conan Doyle's influence extended out here, twisting reality until it resembled fiction. It would not be the first time Holmes had confronted himself in a fictional mirror.