[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
to the torch.
You like it, then?
Very much.
The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground; I have a goodly heritage, he
said with a small sigh that I took to be of satisfaction, and then Mrs Elliott
and Rosemary came in with the meal.
As I had noticed before, for a man staring death in the face he had a healthy
appetite, and ate the simple fare with gusto. He asked me if I had ever tasted
mutton from a sheep raised on the herb-rich traditional pasturage of my own
Sussex, and I could tell him that yes, one of my neighbours had a small and
undisturbed field that had been saved from the plough during the grain-hungry
Page 113
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
years of the Napoleonic War. He expressed his envy, and proceeded to talk
about food, of his lifelong lust for roast goose with sage-and-onion stuffing,
which his wife had indulged as often as she could, of the superiority of
spit-roasted beef over the pale, half-steamed modern version, o! the cheeses
of France and the shock of tasting an egg from a hen fed cheaply on fish meal
and the wartime blessing of living in a community that produced its own
butter. It ended with a small story about the portion of his honeymoon spent
in London, when he had subjected his poor young bride to a pantechnicon with
its improving display of knowledge through a variety of semiscientific
machines and lectures, and the dry sandwiches they had eaten on that occasion.
The sandwiches, he said with a note of reminiscence in his voice, had seemed
to Grace more than appropriate to the setting.
Then, as if I might take advantage of this slight opening and insert a jemmy
under the edge of his personal history, he said quickly, Tell me what you
think about Richard Ketteridge.
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 pillow, 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,
Page 114
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
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 garments
and clogs (the two who had them) and sent them out, pulled the wife out as
well by the simple statement that he had a house they could use for a week
until things were settled, and pushed her out of the kitchen door with the
parting over-the-shoulder shot that he would return in two days to check on
his patient, but that Mrs Elliott was doing everything perfectly.
In the silence that followed, Mrs Elliott gave herself a vigorous shake to
settle her ruffled feathers back into place, snapped at Rosemary to scrub down
the table at which the children had been sitting, threw the tea towel she held
onto the sideboard, and began snatching up the plates from which her invaders
had been eating. Before her eyes could fall on me, I made my exit, and went
back to my book.
Peace returned to Lew Trenchard, and peace reigned uninterrupted over the cat,
the fire, and me for a good twenty minutes, until I found myself reading a
story about a gold fraud on Dartmoor, and the afternoon was no longer a
peaceful thing.
twenty-two
Gold bydeth ever bright. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szamanka888.keep.pl
to the torch.
You like it, then?
Very much.
The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground; I have a goodly heritage, he
said with a small sigh that I took to be of satisfaction, and then Mrs Elliott
and Rosemary came in with the meal.
As I had noticed before, for a man staring death in the face he had a healthy
appetite, and ate the simple fare with gusto. He asked me if I had ever tasted
mutton from a sheep raised on the herb-rich traditional pasturage of my own
Sussex, and I could tell him that yes, one of my neighbours had a small and
undisturbed field that had been saved from the plough during the grain-hungry
Page 113
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
years of the Napoleonic War. He expressed his envy, and proceeded to talk
about food, of his lifelong lust for roast goose with sage-and-onion stuffing,
which his wife had indulged as often as she could, of the superiority of
spit-roasted beef over the pale, half-steamed modern version, o! the cheeses
of France and the shock of tasting an egg from a hen fed cheaply on fish meal
and the wartime blessing of living in a community that produced its own
butter. It ended with a small story about the portion of his honeymoon spent
in London, when he had subjected his poor young bride to a pantechnicon with
its improving display of knowledge through a variety of semiscientific
machines and lectures, and the dry sandwiches they had eaten on that occasion.
The sandwiches, he said with a note of reminiscence in his voice, had seemed
to Grace more than appropriate to the setting.
Then, as if I might take advantage of this slight opening and insert a jemmy
under the edge of his personal history, he said quickly, Tell me what you
think about Richard Ketteridge.
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 pillow, 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,
Page 114
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
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 garments
and clogs (the two who had them) and sent them out, pulled the wife out as
well by the simple statement that he had a house they could use for a week
until things were settled, and pushed her out of the kitchen door with the
parting over-the-shoulder shot that he would return in two days to check on
his patient, but that Mrs Elliott was doing everything perfectly.
In the silence that followed, Mrs Elliott gave herself a vigorous shake to
settle her ruffled feathers back into place, snapped at Rosemary to scrub down
the table at which the children had been sitting, threw the tea towel she held
onto the sideboard, and began snatching up the plates from which her invaders
had been eating. Before her eyes could fall on me, I made my exit, and went
back to my book.
Peace returned to Lew Trenchard, and peace reigned uninterrupted over the cat,
the fire, and me for a good twenty minutes, until I found myself reading a
story about a gold fraud on Dartmoor, and the afternoon was no longer a
peaceful thing.
twenty-two
Gold bydeth ever bright. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]