The Moor - Laurie R. King [128]
"Hardly a peerage," Holmes said drily.
Ketteridge gave a dismissive wave with the wire clippers. "Well, I had to tell him that city jobs aren't exactly my strong point. Too many foreign ideas, and way too many, what do you call them, bobbies? But I invite him to dinner and he tells me about this place, and I begin to get a few ideas. A remote place like this, a man can have some room to set things up. So, we talk it over and we come to an agreement: I run the land-sale side of things, and he takes care of scaring people away from the piece of ground we're developing as well as giving me a hand with toting and hauling."
"Which he did by adapting some vehicle or other to resemble Lady Howard's coach, and then bringing in some large, dark dog to add to the charade. Actually," Holmes said, "I was rather wondering why you didn't make more extensive use of the dog."
Ketteridge laughed and shook his head over the wires. "Have you ever worked with a dog, Mr Holmes? Maybe the one we managed to get hold of was just particularly badly trained, but it was a real nightmare. Oh, it looked the part all right, and David even fixed a cute little contraption on its head to give it a 'glowing eye'—powered by a battery—but the whole point of having the dog was making it ghostly, and a hundred and twenty pounds of dog is anything but. Lock it in the stables and it howls and scratches the door down; turn it loose and it chases sheep and gets itself shot at; you have to feed it meat and then clean up after it so your ghostly dog isn't leaving great stinking piles across the countryside; and you never know, when you're off on a Lady Howard run, if the dog isn't going to take off. We did two trips out with the 'coach' back in July, and two in August, and halfway through the second one the damned animal lit off at high speed for a nearby farm where I'd guess there was a bitch on heat. We were unbelievably lucky there, because the family was away, all except one deaf old granny, but my nerves couldn't take it, and I had David get rid of the animal. I have to hand it to David's father, to go about his own version of the scheme with just a big dog. Damned if I know how he did it."
"And for this he planned to get the Hall and you would get—what?"
"Oh, I'd have the lion's share of the actual money—which only seemed fair since I was doing most of the expert work—and as we planned it, I'd then sell him Baskerville Hall—all fixed up and pretty as we made it—just as the swindle started, for what would be on paper a goodly sum but in actual fact would be less than a dollar. I'd take the blame and the profits and skip the country, he'd be left with egg on his face, having not only been so stupid as to choose such a crook for a boss but to have fallen for his boss's land scheme as well. But then again, he'd have all the linen in Baskerville Hall to wipe it off with. And," he paused again, this time sitting back on his heels to grin across at his assistant, "this clever devil even went and got himself engaged to that pasty-faced Baskerville woman. He was looking to have it all."
"Until Pethering."
Ketteridge uttered a monosyllabic curse, and went back to his work. "Yeah, until that blasted shrimp stumbled into our setup. Jesus, what a piece of luck. I mean, the old guy last month, that was one thing, but then he goes and cracks the nosey little mutt of a professor on the head."
"What else could I have done?" Scheiman shouted. "We couldn't let him go, and he sure wouldn't be paid off."
"You're absolutely right, David," Ketteridge said freely. It sounded like a familiar argument, one in which he was not terribly interested any longer. "But it did put paid to you taking over the Hall. Having the neighbours whispering among themselves that you had more to do with that damn American's swindle than it looks like