The Moor - Laurie R. King [49]
I had not been aware of the secretary's presence behind me, so light were his footsteps and so heavy the carpeting. He came into the low glow around the fire, his shoulders hunched in embarrassment, and went to the coffee tray to pour himself a cup. He had been away less than two hours, but he sounded stone-cold sober now.
"I really must apologise," he said to us. "I have some sort of blood imbalance that makes me highly sensitive to the effects of alcohol. I shouldn't drink at all, really. I make such a fool of myself. I do beg your pardon if I seemed at all…forward."
"My dear boy," said Ketteridge, "I'm sure you offended none of us. I was merely concerned, knowing your sensitivity, that you might make yourself ill."
It had sounded more like anger than concern in his voice, back in the dining room, but I assumed that he was being generous in excusing the younger man's lapse. Employees did not normally indulge in public drunkenness, even in the relative informality of an American household, and Scheiman knew it: He sat in a chair apart from his employer and the guests, away from the fire.
"So, David. Do you have a story from Dartmoor for us?"
"I, er, they're not really all that interesting. That is to say, I find them interesting, but—"
"Mr Scheiman," said Holmes in resignation. "Perhaps you might tell my wife the story of the Baskerville curse."
Scheiman looked startled, and glanced at his employer for instructions. Although Ketteridge had so firmly discouraged his secretary from inflicting these doggy reminiscences on us, he could hardly now insist that his guest be saved from them when it was Holmes himself asking. Ketteridge shrugged.
"As our guest suggests, David. Do tell the story of the black hound of Dartmoor." And so Scheiman, looking uncomfortable, began his story.
"In doing some reading about the history of the area, I came across the story that the Baskerville curse was actually based on. Not the one as given in The Hound of the Baskervilles," he said, with an apologetic glance at Holmes, "but the true story. There lived in the seventeenth century a squire by the name of Richard Cavell or Cabell. He was a man of great passions, who had the fortune, or perhaps misfortune, to marry him a beautiful young wife.
"For the first year or two all was well, except that they had no children. Soon, however, he discovered that she was betraying him. He forbade her visitors and kept her at home, but it continued, and became ever more indiscriminate. He sent away every male household servant aside from the near-children and the truly elderly, he hedged her around with limits, but still his wife turned her back on him. His jealousy grew. When he saw her flirting with a stable hand, he hit her and forbade her to ride. When he witnessed her in conversation with the farm manager, he punished her again and locked her in the house. He grew afraid that the women in the house would plot with their mistress to bring her lovers, and so he got rid of the old servants and hired new ones. He loved his wife and he hated her, and soon the only friend she was allowed was her dog.
"The day came when he again caught her in yet another transgression. He beat her nearly to death, threw her in her room, and took the key.
"By this time the woman feared for her life. She let herself down the wall of the house on the ivy and fled, on foot, for the house of her sister across the moor.
"She did not make it. He discovered her absence, mounted his horse, and rode her down and, in his passion of jealous rage, he killed her. But as he drew his knife from the body of his wife, the woman's only friend took its revenge. The dog went for him and tore out the throat of his mistress' murderer. The dog then disappeared, out into the desolation of the moor, where to this day he wanders, waiting either for his mistress, or for her husband."
A short silence fell, silence other than the hiss and crackle of the low-burning fire, until Holmes stirred. "Interesting," he said in a bored voice, and pulled out his watch.