"That would be fine," I said. "Thank you. And thank Mrs Elliott for me, please."
"Yes mum." I heard the gentle rattle of a tray being put down, and then the door to the bedroom closed.
After a final sluice to rid myself of the last of the mud that had lodged itself in skin and hair and nails, I wrapped my hair in a towel and myself in a dressing gown, and went to investigate the tray. The soup was still warm, and immeasurably better than the nearly rancid, gruel-like mixture served us the first night. There were also freshly baked rolls, a large slab of crumbling orange cheddar, a slice of lemon tart, and an apple. I finished everything.
My hair was nearly dry by the time Holmes came upstairs. He had paused to change more than his muddy boots, and looked very appealing, tall and slim in his jet suit and snowy shirtfront. One thing led to another, as is the wont in a marriage, and we did not get around to speaking about Ketteridge until after the housemaid had fetched up the morning tea.
I settled myself up against the pillows while Holmes perched in his dressing gown on the seat beneath the mullioned windows.
"Tell me, Holmes, who is Richard Ketteridge and what is a Californian mulatto with the scars of frostbite on his face and fingers doing in Lew Trenchard, Devonshire?"
"Interesting chap, isn't he?" he said. "Gould sees a great deal of him." I squinted against the pallid morning light, moved my teacup from my stomach to the bedside table, found my glasses and put them on, raised myself to sit more vertically against the pillows, and looked at him.
"Would you care to elaborate?"
"No," he said, studying the burning end of the cigarette he held between his fingers. "No, I don't think that I would. I should prefer to have your unsullied reaction after you have met him properly. Which will be this evening," he added. "We are dining at his house."
"Dining! Holmes, I don't have a gown suitable for evening."
"Of course you don't."
"You go. Have a nice time with the other gents over your cigars."
"I told him we were not kitted up for formal dress, and he assured me black tie was not required. A simple frock. You did bring a frock."
"And the shoes to go with it." It was a very nice frock, too, and unless I tripped going out of the door and went sprawling, I should not be disgraced in wearing it. I acquiesced. I was more than a little curious about Mr Richard Ketteridge, even without Holmes' enigmatic refusal to discuss the man. A man with the scarred skin and abused hands of a labourer wearing the clothing of a West End dandy, who could demonstrate his intimate familiarity with the prickly squire of Lew Trenchard by acting as drinks host, was no simple character.
***
First, however, was the good Mrs Elliott's breakfast table. I took with me a pen and paper, and as we sat I sketched in the dates we had accumulated thus far:
Tuesday 25 or Wednesday 26 July—Johnny Trelawny sees coach, dog
Friday 27 July—London ramblers on Gibbet Hill see coach
Friday 24 August—courting couple sees coach, dog
Saturday 15 September—Josiah Gorton last seen in northwest quadrant
Monday 17 September—Gorton found in southeast
I passed the paper over to Holmes, who glanced at it, took my pen, and added,
Monday 20 August—plate falls off shelf
Sunday 26 August—Granny hears dog
"Holmes!" I said in some irritation. "You needn't mock me."
"I am not mocking your calendar, Russell," he protested. "I am merely contributing to it."
He seemed sincere, but I couldn't think what a broken plate or a lonely granny who heard noises in the night might have to do with Lady Howard's coach. Rather than arguing, however, I let it stand.
"Does the list tell you anything?" he asked offhandedly, reaching for the coffee.
"The moon was full around the twenty-sixth of July and the twenty-seventh of August," I said, "and that could explain why the coach was visible then."
"Or rather, why the coach was out then, so as to be visible."
"Precisely. However, that does not explain the timing of Josiah Gorton's death, which was a full eight or ten days before September's full moon."
"Nor does it explain the broken plate."
I was already tired of the broken plate, and decided he was merely using it to annoy me. I was grateful when Mrs Elliott chose that moment to bring us our breakfasts.
After we had eaten, Holmes arranged with Mrs Elliott for a troop of rural Irregulars to quarter the Mary Tavy inns, public houses, hostelries, and farmhouses in search of two Londoners who had seen a ghostly carriage. He then spent the day closeted with Baring-Gould, going over our time on the moor. I, too, spent the day with the man, though not in his physical presence. I uncovered a cache of his books and settled in with a stack of them beside my chair.
It was a singular experience. Odd, in fact. I had to admit that the man was brilliant, although I drew the line at "genius." He held an opinion on everything—European cliff dwellings, Devonshire folk songs, comparative mythology, architecture, English saints, werewolfs, archaeology, philology, anthropology, theology—and seemed possessed of a vast impatience with those who disagreed with him. Inevitably, though, the breadth of his scope meant a lack of depth, which he may have gotten away with in his novels and the werewolf book, but which rendered, for example, the works on theology quite useless. Theology is, after all, my field of expertise, and the best I could say for Baring-Gould and his conclusions (for example, that Christianity was proven to be true by the simple fact that it worked) was that he showed himself to be an enthusiastic amateur who might have made some real contribution to the world of scholarship had he possessed a more focussed sense of discipline.
However, there was a strong pulse of life in even the more abstruse tomes, a bounce and vigour one would not have predicted. His occasional references to Devon, and particularly Dartmoor, sang with life and humour, and if he was sometimes pompous and often paternalistic, the passion he felt for the land made up for it.
The novels were embarrassingly melodramatic, but intriguing. There seemed to me a deep vein of cruelty, almost brutality, running through his stories, a distinct lack of tenderness and compassion towards his characters, particularly those living in poverty, that seemed odd in a man dedicated to God's service, and moreover an interest in savage, almost pagan emotions that was surely unusual in an otherwise calm and responsible squire. I began to understand his fascination with the moor, and also to wonder about the man's blunt dismissal of his children on that first night, describing them merely as "scattered."
I was in the final throes of a furious potboiler called Mahalah when Holmes came into the room. He said something; I grunted in reply and turned the page, and after a minute another page.
Ten minutes later I had finished the book and sat back, feeling equal parts exasperation and the sense of romantic tragedy that Baring-Gould had been trying to evoke. I looked at Holmes, then looked at him more attentively.
"Why are you dressing, Holmes?"
He glanced up from his task of threading one gold cuff link into his cuff. "Dinner, Russell. At Richard Ketteridge's? I did inform you."
"Oh Lord!" I threw myself at the wardrobe and snatched up my frock. "How long do I have?"
"The car is already here. Five minutes will make us only fashionably late."
I flung my clothes on the floor and dropped the frock over my head, succeeded in hoisting my silk stockings without putting a ladder into either of them, and turned to the mirror to subdue my hair into some kind of order.
"Is it still raining?" I asked.
"It is."
"I must have an umbrella. Go and find me one. Please."
As always happens when I am in a hurry, my hair went up lopsided and had to be taken down and arranged again. Still, in the end I was presentable. I caught up a thin woollen wrap and hurried downstairs.