The Moor

and suggested that luncheon was ready, we adjourned to the next room.

'I hope you don't object to a light luncheon, Miss Russell,' she said. 'I know that most people like a substantial dinner after church, but I can never seem to face it, somehow.'

I told her I was quite content with sharing her standard fare, and prepared to make merry with the consomme and tinned asparagus in aspic.

'Do you miss the moor?' I asked after a while.

'Oh, I don't know. At first I thought I never would, it was so bright and cheerful and…lively here. But now, well, I sometimes think about when the furze would blossom, and the drifts when the ponies are driven down from the moor, and the dramatic smoke and fires when they swale the heather. I even miss those dreary tors that I used to find so gloomy, staring down at the Hall.'

I laughed. 'Gloomy it is, but oddly beautiful.' I could well imagine, for a conventional girl only a bit older than I, that the huge old building miles from anything that might be termed society might well be a burden to be shed rather than an inheritance to be valued. I also remembered that her mother had not been born here, but had come obedient to her husband's criminous plans, later to be transferred to the protecting arm of Sir Henry and kept on the moor for the rest of her life.

I judged it time to return delicately to my main area of interest. 'How did Mr Ketteridge come to hear about the Hall? An advertisement?'

'Oh no, I couldn't have done that. No, I wasn't actually even thinking about selling, really. After all, the land has been in the family for six hundred years—that's hardly something to be broken lightly. Although I know there's a lot of that sort of thing happening now, with the war and the change in the tax laws. Still, I probably would have held out for a while longer, but he came to me. He'd heard I was interested in letting it, but he wanted to buy it outright. He was passionate about it, seemed to know more than I did about its history, and just…loved it. I thought about it for a few weeks, during which time I had a huge bill for the coal and another for repairing some frozen pipes, and an estimate on woodworm and roof work—it all came at once.

'And I thought, Why should I be burdened with six centuries of Baskervilles? The house was built at a time when there was a huge estate of rich agricultural land, which various ancestors had whittled off over the years, leaving me with no means of keeping the roof standing. To me it was a burden—becoming a prison. To Mr Ketteridge it was a prize. I sold it.'

I wondered how she would feel when news reached her that he had already tired of his prize. I was not about to be the one to tell her; rather, I looked at her with a degree of admiration, both for her sense of history's injustices and her self-respect. There was one question to be asked, though, particularly considering the attractive face and deferential manner that nature had wedded to her monetary inheritance.

'Have you ever considered marriage?'

She blushed, very prettily. 'I had thought not to be granted that happiness, Miss Russell. I was once engaged, during the war, but six months later my fiance was killed in France. Afterwards, well, it isn't quite so simple, is it?' She let her voice drift off as she considered me, Miss Russell, a woman five or six years her junior who wore, incongruously, a gold band on the ring finger of the right hand, where it could either be taken for a wedding band in the style of certain European communities, or for a memento. I did not enlighten her, letting her think that perhaps I, too, was one of England's many spinsters. Whole, eligible men in those postwar years were a rare species.

'However,' she resumed, studying the spoon in her hand, 'recently I have…come to an agreement.'

I wished her congratulations and felicitations, and turned back to the all-important question of time.

'As I mentioned, the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould is writing his memoirs.'

'I believe I read something about a volume being published recently,' she said, sounding none too definite about it.

'Well, as you can imagine, he is becoming a bit hazy when it comes to remembering specific details, particularly when it comes to the more recent events. You know how forgetful old people become in that way,' I said, sending up a plea for forgiveness to the mentally acute if physically deteriorating old man in Lew Trenchard.

'I do,' she agreed, sounding more sure of herself. Her charitable work with the aged retainers caused my generalisation to strike a familiar note.

'One of the things that was vexing him the other day was trying to remember when he first met Mr Ketteridge, so to put his mind at rest I told him that I would try to find out, while I was in Plymouth. Would you happen to know?'

'I should have thought very soon after Mr Ketteridge bought the Hall. Thank you, Mary,' she said, which startled me for a moment until I saw she was speaking to the servant, who was clearing the plates preparatory to bringing the coffee.

'Do you know when—' I began to say, but she had only paused to recollect her dates.

'He first came to the Hall in April,' she said finally. 'Yes, it must have been early April, because the pipes burst in the first week of March and we were without water for three weeks altogether, and that's when I decided to see if I could find a tenant and move into town. He happened to arrive the day the plumbers were setting to work. I remember,' she said with a smile, 'because at first I thought he was one of them, and I was astonished that a plumber could make enough money to buy a car like that.'

Her joke and the laugh that followed were wasted on me, because I was alert, almost quivering, like a bird dog at the first scent of the warm, feathered object it was bred to seek.

'The first part of April,' I repeated. 'And you decided to sell it to him fairly soon after that?'

'Oh, perhaps not all that soon. Just before the summer equinox, I believe it was. The moor is at its loveliest then, and the nights so short—I walked up after dinner to the nearest tor and sat watching the sun set, and when I went back down it was nearly midnight and the decision had been made.'

And yet Ketteridge had told us he first heard about the Hall in Scotland shooting—something one did not do in the spring or midsummer. A coorius sarcumstance, indeed.

'So he first came to Baskerville Hall in April of 1921, and suggested that you sell to him, and you decided to do so two months later, in June. Is that correct?'

'Yes,' she said, and then the frown line was back as it occurred to her that it was odd I should be interested.

'Mr Baring-Gould,' I hastily reminded her. 'He gets so upset when he can't recall precise details.' That she did not object to this statement told me how little she knew him.

'Of course, the poor old man.'

'Ketteridge would then have taken possession in the autumn?'

'I believe we signed the final documents on the first day of September. He moved in just after that.'

'So he probably would have met Baring-Gould around that time, August or September,' I said, as if an important question had been decided.

'I suppose so. If it matters, why don't you ask Mr Ketteridge himself?'

'I hate to bother him, and I was coming to Plymouth anyway. Besides, Mr Baring-Gould wanted to see how you were doing in your new home. It was nice of Mr Ketteridge to bring you the painting of Sir Hugo so soon after you had moved in,' I added negligently. 'A sort of housewarming present, I suppose he considered it.'

'Yes,' she agreed, offering me more coffee, which I refused. 'He and David—Mr Scheiman—showed up at my door before the furniture was in place, to hang Sir Hugo for me.'

I froze in the very act of bracing myself to begin the leave-taking process, seized by an awful premonition.

'Mr Scheiman,' I repeated slowly. 'Tell me, do you see much of David Scheiman?'

The pretty blush returned, and I felt a thud of confirmation, the physical kick of an absolutely vital piece of information so nearly missed, as she said, 'Oh yes, he has been very attentive to my needs. He is the one,' she added, quite unnecessarily. 'We are to be married in the summer.'

TWENTY-ONE

I think it not improbable that both the Archbishop of York and Claughton of Rochester had inserted my name into the Episcopal 'Black Book,' for I had shown precious little deference to either. But, so far from this injuring me, it has availed in limiting my energies to my own parish.

—Further Reminiscences