“I’m glad they’ve taken to strangling people,” Elizabeth replied. “They weren’t sound at all on poisons.”
“Do you think they’ve killed everyone that they’re going to?” asked Frances.
“I expect so,” said Elizabeth. “It’s Saturday night. They’re running out of time.”
Kate giggled. “Too bad they can’t kill Susan Cohen.”
Frances Coles gasped. “It’s so odd that you should say that! I was thinking the same thing. And yet, she’s really a very nice person.”
Elizabeth unplugged the kettle and prepared their hot cocoa. “She’s a nice person in small doses,” she said. “But it’s the cumulative effect that’s wearing. After four days of Minneapolis travelogues and mystery fiction plot summaries, I think we’re all about ready to kill her.”
“I don’t think she’s used to interacting socially,” said Frances Coles. “Sometimes I get a second-grader who alienates the rest of the class just the way Susan does. It usually means they haven’t had much practice in getting along with people. I’ll bet she’s an only child.”
“But she’s very pretty,” Kate Conway pointed out. “It’s strange that we don’t like her. She’s so confrontational, which is strange. Pretty people usually find it very easy to socialize.”
“I can explain that,” said Elizabeth. She told them about Susan’s recent plastic surgery and her transformation from ugly duckling to swan.
“So that’s it,” said Kate, glancing at her own pretty face in the dressing table mirror. “Susan hasn’t learned how to stop acting like a wallflower. She’s only pretty on the outside; she doesn’t believe it yet.”
“Or perhaps she talks all the time to make up for all the times that she was lonely,” said Frances sadly. “It’s really awful of us to be so hard on her.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “Well, then… would you like me to invite her over for chocolate now?”
“No!” cried Kate and Frances in unison.
At breakfast the next morning Elizabeth and the other members of the mystery tour sat together, comparing notes so that they could turn in their whodunit ballots.
“Don’t forget we have to consider motive,” Susan reminded them. “You get points for guessing who did it and separate points for saying why.”
Frances Coles groaned. “Everybody has a motive. Mr. Scott could be Sir Herbert’s long-lost son, and Jackie and Ginger may be sisters, and what about the diamond smuggling clue?”
“I think the baron did it,” said Alice MacKenzie.
“The baron? Why?”
“Because it’s 1928,” said Alice darkly. “And he’s German.” After a moment of stunned silence, Susan burst out laughing. “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s one of the women. The baron is so obvious that only an idiot would fall for it. Now is it Jackie or Ginger? Or maybe Gladys was only pretending to be dead…”
“Detecting is very difficult in 1928,” Elizabeth complained. “I wish I could get hold of some decent forensic evidence.”
“We’d better huny and mark our ballots,” said Kate Con-way. “That Eylesbarrow woman is herding everybody toward the banquet room for the final confrontation. Who shall we put? Jackie or Ginger?”
“I’ll vote for whoever you pick, Alice,” said Frances Coles loyally.
“Let’s split our votes,” Alice suggested, glaring at Susan. “Then at least one of us will win.”
At ten minutes until one the members of the murder tour assembled with their bags in the hotel lobby, still rehashing the murder mystery weekend and chatting with two of the actors, who were now out of character. Rowan Rover appeared a few minutes later, with his canvas bag slung over his shoulders, and sporting freshly laundered khaki trousers.
“Good afternoon, everybody! I see that Bernard has returned and is pulling the coach up out front. Did you enjoy the murder weekend?”
“It was quite well done,” said Kate Conway with her usual look of big-eyed sincerity.
“It could have been anybody,” Susan Cohen declared, scowling.
“And did you solve the crime?”
“We did!” cried Miriam Angel, holding up the bottle of wine that was their trophy. “Emma and I were the only ones who guessed who did it!”
“And who did it?” asked Rowan indulgently.
“Why the baron, of course!” said Miriam.
“There is but one step from the grotesque to the horrible.”
– ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
CHAPTER 9
DARTMOOR
THE SUNDAY AFTERNOON drive to the next destination was a short one: seventeen miles to the edge of the Dartmoor National Park, to the Manor House Hotel, a beautiful Jacobean-style mansion nestled among the moors. Bernard maneuvered the coach up the narrow access road, past the golf course, and up to the massive stone arch that marked the entrance to the Manor House parking area. From the vantage point of a full-sized tour bus, the archway looked dangerously low and disastrously solid.
“You’ll never make it,” said Susan Cohen, surveying the obstacle from her usual seat behind the driver. “You’d have to be stupid to even try.”
Charles Warren got up and signaled for Bernard to open the coach door. He walked through the arch and, with a succession of nods and hand signals, he guided the coach through the archway with inches to spare. When he had parked in the paved lot on the side bordering the golf course, Bernard modestly acknowledged the cheers of the passengers and then climbed down to unload the suitcases.
The tour members stood in the parking lot and surveyed their new lodgings, the first of the accommodations that was not newly constructed. This one was imposing and ancient-looking, but a certain reticence on the part of the hotel literature led Rowan to suspect (aloud) that it was actually constructed in the late nineteenth century by a nouveau riche industrialist with aristocratic delusions. The Manor House was a sprawling beige stone building, or series of buildings, about the length of a city block, with formal archways, pitched roofs, and multiple chimneys, looking very much like the country estate it must have been once. The enormous mansion was set down in an expanse of well-tended lawn, surrounded by acres of wood and park land, some of which was now a golf course.
“This looks familiar,” said Maud Marsh, twisting a lock of silver hair. “I’m sure I’ve seen this place somewhere.”
“I expect you have,” said Rowan Rover. “It was the setting for the 1939 version of The Hound of the Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone.”
The others gathered around. “Oh, is this Sherlock Holmes country?” asked Susan.
“The Hound of the Baskervilles is set in this area,” Rowan replied. “Many of the place names mentioned in Conan Doyle’s story are variations of actual places nearby: Hound Tor and Black Tor. Cleft Tor can only be Cleft Rock. If you know the area well, it is possible to pinpoint the locations in the story.” He paused for two beats, and then said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “Would you like to go for a walk on the moors? It’s an unseasonably warm day for September. Not a cloud in the sky.” He glanced at Elizabeth MacPherson. “No shops open.”
Everyone assured him that they would love to go for a walk, and they agreed to meet on the south terrace of the manor in twenty minutes.
Rowan closed his personally annotated guidebook with a smile, wondering how well any of them actually remembered the Holmes tale. He had wisely chosen not to read them the passage of his notes concerning another feature of the Baskerville story: