The Moor - Laurie R. King [109]
I knew instantly that I could not tell him what I feared concerning Ketteridge; Baring-Gould had brought us here to solve the mysterious happenings on his moor, but I prayed it could be done cleanly, without leaving a trail of mistrust, uncertainty, and tension along the way. Holmes might decide to the contrary, but as far as I was concerned, last Friday's discovery of the body in his lake was quite enough involvement for a sickly ninety-year-old man.
"He must have had an extraordinary time up in the Yukon," I said instead. "Has he told you about being buried in the avalanche?"
We talked about that for a while, and I told him about the improvements being made to Baskerville Hall (carefully omitting any reference to a future transfer of ownership) and the secretary's fascination for Hound stories. By that time he seemed to be tiring, so I helped Mrs Elliott lift the heavy little table from the bed and prepared to leave him.
At the door, however, his voice stopped me.
"Mary, I would not want you to think that I failed to notice that you did not actually answer my question about Richard Ketteridge." I looked back at him, dismayed, but I could see no anger in his face, only a mild and humorous regret. "I am ill, true, but I am not easily misled." He closed his eyes and allowed Mrs Elliott to tug and shift his pillows, and I left and went back down the stairs.
However, my peaceful immersion in the prose of Sabine Baring-Gould was not, it seemed, destined immediately to continue. I sat down with Devon and the bell rang, and although Rosemary reached the door before I could, the doctor who came in insisted on talking with me. It took ten minutes to convince him of my complete ignorance about any aspect of Baring-Gould's condition save his appetite and his ability to maintain a conversation. Perhaps the man just enjoyed talking with someone who had no physical complaints, I speculated, and returned to my book.
Five minutes later a disturbance in the kitchen first distracted me, then drew me. I stood tentatively inside the door to ask if I might be of help in quelling what had sounded like a minor revolution but on closer inspection appeared to be a family with five children under the age of eight. They all had running noses and hoarse coughs, and this seemed to be the focus of Mrs Elliott's wrath.
"You cannot stay here; Mr Baring-Gould needs his rest, and I can't be risking him taking on that affliction." The husband of the family seemed resigned to an immediate departure, but the wife was sticking to her guns.
"The Squire, he told us, if we needed anything, to come, and we've come."
"Keep your voice down," hissed Mrs Elliott, to little effect. On one hip the woman had a thin baby with a disgusting nose and wearing an extraordinary hotchpotch of clothes; the other children were seated in a row on a kitchen bench eating bread and butter and watching the exchange with interest. The contest between the two women seemed destined to drag on to evening without resolution, until it was interrupted by the furious entrance of Andrew Budd, assistant gardener and my boatman from Friday.
"Who put the bloody cow in the garden?" he demanded loudly.
Mrs Elliott made haste to shush him, the husband responded by getting quickly to his feet, but his wife only claimed this for her own sorrows, having been evicted with five babies and a cow. Without taking his eyes from her, the husband began to sidle towards the door and, between one moment and the next, he clapped his hat to his head and faded out of it, followed by the still-irate Budd.
With that exit accomplished, the other door opened and the doctor entered; I began to feel as if I had walked into a pantomime production. The medical man, however, possessed an authority recognised by all, as well as the means of cutting through the Gordian knot. He hustled the children into their