The Moor mr-4

by Laurie R. King

  "I could ask Watson."

  Dr Watson was only five years older than Holmes, but his heavy frame had aged as Holmes' wiry build and whip-hard constitution had not. I dismissed his halfhearted suggestion. "A cold day on the moor would cripple him." That Holmes might rely on police help or Mycroft's men was so improbable as to be unworthy of mention. "I'll stay and see it through. Although I can't promise that I won't blow up that flipping tank myself at the end of it."

  "That's my Russell." He smiled. I scowled.

  "Will you go down to see Miss Baskerville yourself, to ask about the painting?" I asked him.

  "I should like to know as well some of the particulars concerning the sale of the Hall. Yes, I shall go myself. Now, you have yet to tell me about Elizabeth Chase's hedgehogs."

  "One hedgehog, and it does not belong to her. It now resides in the garden of a friend of Miss Chase's in Widdecombe-in-the-Moor, where Miss Chase carried it to nurse it back to health after finding it on the twenty-eighth of July, its leg crushed by a fast-moving wheel and its back bitten by large teeth."

  "Aha!"

  "Indeed. Moreover, she goes on to offer us one large and spectral dog with a glowing eye and a taste for scones." To my great pleasure, this statement actually startled Holmes.

  I told him about Elizabeth Chase's wounded hedgehog and about Samuel's encounter with the Hound, and after telling him I sat forward and pulled the map to me, marking with an X the spot between the stone row and the hut circles where she had heard the piteous cry of poorwee Tiggy and the place where Samuel had seen the dog. Holmes took the pencil and drew in the probable route of the coach as seen from Gibbet Hill, added a star shape to mark the adit in which he had found signs of life, and we studied the result: my X, his line, two Xs for the sightings of the coach in July, and a circle to show where Josiah Gorton had last been seen. All of them together formed a jagged line running diagonally across the face of the moor from Sourton Tor in the northwest to Cut Lane in the southeast, roughly six miles from one end to the other. The imaginary line's nearest point to Baskerville Hall was three miles, although the closest sighting, that of the courting couple, was more than four miles away.

  I sat for a time in contemplation of the enigmatic line while Holmes slumped back into his chair, eyes closed and fingers steepled. When he spoke, his remark seemed at first oblique.

  "I find I cannot get the phial of gold dust from my mind."

  "Did you give it over for analysis?"

  "I looked at it myself in the laboratory. Small granules of pure gold—not ore—with a pinch of some high-acid humus and a scraping of deteriorated granitic sand."

  "Peat is highly acidic," I suggested.

  "Peat, yes, but there was a tiny flat fragment that looked as if it might have been a decomposed leaf of some tough plant such as holly or oak."

  "Wistman's Wood is oak."

  "So are a number of other places around the moor. I shall ring the laboratory later today, to see if their more time-consuming chemical analyses have given them any more than I found. In the meanwhile, I think I can just catch the train to Plymouth, although it may mean stopping there the night. Perhaps you could go and ask Mrs Elliott if Gould's old dog cart is available."

  "And if the pony can pull it." Red was still in residence at Baskerville Hall.

  Holmes went up to put his shaving kit and a change of linen into his bag, and I put the breakfast things back on the tray and took them into the kitchen. There I found Mrs Elliott, looking somewhat dishevelled.

  "Oh bless you, my dear. I don't know what I'm going to do. Rosemary and Lettice have taken to their beds with sick headaches—from crying no doubt; they'd be better off working and keeping their minds off that silly man, but there you have it."

  "I'm sorry, Mrs Elliott. Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked hesitantly. "Washing up or something?"

  She looked shocked. "That will not be necessary, mum. But thank you for the kind thought." She would have to be in a sorry state indeed before she allowed a guest to plunge her ladylike hands into a pan full of dishes.

  "Well, please let me know if there is something I can do. But I need to ask, can someone take Mr Holmes down to the station? He needs to catch the train to Plymouth."

  She looked up at the clock over the mantelpiece and hurriedly began to dry her hands. "He'll need to step smart, then. I'll have Mr Dunstan hitch the pony to the cart."

  She ducked out through the door. I eyed the stack of unwashed dishes and left them alone, going up the back stairs to tell Holmes the cart would be ready. I found him just closing his bag, and reported on the time constrictions. He nodded and sat down to change his shoes.

  "What do you wish me to do while you're away?" I asked. I was half tempted to throw together a bag and join him, for the sake of movement if nothing else.

  "We need to know more about Pethering," he said. One set of laces was looped and tied, and the other foot raised. "I want you to—"

  "Sorry, Holmes," I said, raising one hand. "Was that the door?" We listened, hearing nothing, and I went over to the window. There was a motorcar in the drive, but the porch roof obscured my view of the door, so, feeling a bit like a fishwife, I opened the window and put my head out to call. "Hello? Is someone there?"

  After a moment a hatted, overcoated man came into view, backing slowly out from the porch and craning his head to see where the voice had come from.

  "Inspector Fyfe!" I said. He found me and tipped his hat uncertainly. "Do come inside and warm yourself; the door is not locked. We'll be right down." I drew in my head and latched the window.

  Holmes was already out of the room, and I did not catch him up until he was shaking hands with a still-hatted Inspector Fyfe in the hall. As I seemed to be playing hostess (or rather, in the temporary absence of Mrs Elliott and her disturbed assistants, housemaid), I took his coat and hat. Not knowing quite what to do with them, I laid them across the back of a chair and joined the two men at the fire.

  Fyfe rubbed his hands together briskly in front of the smouldering fire, while Holmes squatted down to coax it back to life. "What can we do for you, Inspector?" I asked.

  "I have some questions to ask Mr Baring-Gould about the man Pethering."

  Holmes looked up. "What do you imagine Gould would know about him?"

  "Well, I hope he knows something, because we can't find a trace of where he comes from or who he is."

  Holmes' eyebrows went up. "I understood that he was a Reader at one of the northern universities. York, I believe Gould said."

  "They've never heard of him. Nor do they have anyone on their staff who fits his description, an archaeologist or anthropologist or what-have-you, with a wife and young family."

  "You interest me, Inspector. Mrs Elliott," he said, raising his voice, and indeed, when I turned to look, there she was in the door to the drawing room. "Would you be so good as to tell Mr Dunstan that I won't be needing the cart? I shall have to take a later train. And I believe the inspector could make good use of a hot drink." He swept the maps off the bench in front of the fire, uncovering the blithely sleeping tabby, and sat down beside the animal, gesturing Fyfe towards a chair. "Tell me what you do know about him, Inspector."

  Fyfe settled onto the edge of the nearest armchair. "I'll be calling in Scotland Yard this afternoon," he said, sounding resigned about it. "We don't have the facilities here. Meantime, about all we know about Pethering, or whatever his name might be, is that he arrived at Coryton station on the Saturday afternoon, walked up to Lew Down to arrange a room at the inn, had some tea, and then came here to Lew House, where he stayed from 'round about six until you turned him out, which Miss—Mrs—which your wife says was a shade after midnight.

  "He then returned to Lew Down and knocked up the innkeeper, who let him in. He came down from his room around ten o'clock Sunday morning, struck up a conversation with William Latimer, who stepped in to deliver a basket of eggs his wife had promised for Saturday but couldn't bring because one of th
eir boys fell out of an apple tree and broke his arm, and she was away at the surgery getting it seen to. Latimer told Pethering about the sightings of the hound on the moor, Pethering got all excited and rushed upstairs to get his map. Latimer showed him where to look, and Pethering ran upstairs again, put on his heavy boots, and packed two bags—or one bag and a large rucksack. He left the bag with the innkeeper, and walked off down the high road in the direction of Okehampton.

  "A farmer near Collaven saw him 'round about two o'clock, making for the moor. That's the last anyone saw of the man alive."

  I retrieved the one-inch map from the floor and looked for Collaven. It lay at the foot of the moor, two miles north of Lydford and a mile from Sourton Tor, on the edge of the area so heavily marked by our pencilled lines and Xs.

  "Where was he going?" Holmes asked.

  "Latimer told him the hound had been seen near Watern Tor."

  His elbows on his knees, Holmes gazed into the fire, fingers steepled and resting on his lips. "Why the hound?" he mused.

  Before Fyfe could respond, the rattle of crockery heralded Mrs Elliott's approach. Holmes prodded the cat until it jumped down, tail twitching in disgust, allowing Mrs Elliott to put the tray on the bench. She had thoughtfully included a high pile of buttered toast and three plates, although Holmes and I had only recently eaten. Fyfe, however, ate nearly all of it, drinking three cups of coffee as well before he was through.

  "What was that about the hound?" he asked, his voice rather muffled with toast.

  "I was merely wondering, Inspector, why the hound should be making an appearance."

  Fyfe swallowed. "I understood there'd been a number of sightings over the summer."

  "Those were of Lady Howard's coach, which does indeed come complete with dog, but that does not explain why the dog should also appear sans coach."

  Fyfe had suspended his toast in puzzlement. "I took it the hound referred to the Hound of the Baskervilles story."

  "They are very different hounds, Inspector, separated by their time, their ghostly genesis, and their mission. It is as if Jacob were to have appeared in Isaac's tent to receive his blessing wearing Joseph's coat of many colours: not entirely impossible, one would suppose, but not terribly reasonable either."

  "Different stories," I translated for the inspector, who was looking confused. "Everyone seems to be mixing up the two different hounds."

  "The only question is," said Holmes, "whether or not the confusion is deliberate."

  "Hardly the only question, Holmes," I objected mildly.

  "No? You may be right. Tell me what the postmortem found, Inspector."

  Fyfe hastily thrust the remainder of his wedge of toast into his mouth and reached into his pocket for a notebook. When the page was found and the toast was out of the way, he began to read. "A slim but adequately nourished male approximately thirty-seven years old, five feet six inches tall, distinguishing features a birthmark on his right shoulder blade the size of a shilling and an old scar on his left knee. Minor dental work—the description is being sent out—and otherwise in good health until someone cracked his skull open with a length of pipe." The last sentence had not depended on the notebook.

  "Why pipe?" Holmes asked sharply. "Did the pathologist find traces?"

  "No, I just said pipe to indicate the size and hardness. Could have been a walking stick of some dashed hard wood, or the barrel of a rifle, if the killer didn't mind mistreating his gun that way. 'Course, it'd make more sense than the other way around. I once had a gunshot that we thought was murder until we had the victim's hand-print off the end of the barrel—a shotgun it was, and he'd swung it at another man, and when the stock hit the other man, the gun discharged and took off the head of the man holding it. But that's neither here nor there," he said, recalling himself to the matter at hand. "Some blunt instrument a little thicker than your thumb, most likely from behind by a right-handed man. Went at a slight angle, up to the front." He drew a line just above his own hairline, clearing the ear and ending at his right temple. It could have been a blow delivered by a left-handed individual standing above the victim, if Pethering had been on his knees, for example, but Fyfe's simpler explanation was the more likely.

  "When was death?"

  "Very soon after he was hit—there was not much bleeding into the brain, and external blood loss the doctor estimated at less than a pint. Rigor had come and gone, putrefaction had begun in spite of the cold. Doctor said all in all he was probably killed late Tuesday or early Wednesday, but he'd only been in the water a few hours. Less than a day, certainly."

  "Stomach contents?" Holmes asked. Fyfe looked sideways at me and put the next piece of toast down onto the edge of his plate.

  "Been a long time since he'd eaten, just traces of what the doctor thought might be egg and bread."

  Which helped not at all, as that combination might be eaten at any time of the day, from breakfast to tea, particularly on a hike into the moor.

  Holmes jumped to his feet and held out his hand to Inspector Fyfe, who, after a quick pass at his trouser knee, shook it.

  "Thank you, Inspector. That is all very interesting. You have taken the fingerprints of the body?"

  "Yes, we raised some good prints, in spite of the puffiness from the water. Nothing yet, but we've sent them to London."

  "Good. Let us know what else you find. We'll be in touch."

  NINETEEN

  In La Vendée we saw men with bare legs wading in the shallow channels that intersect the low marshy fields. After a moment of immersion out was flung one leg and then another, to each of which clung several leeches…

  The women do not go in after them; and they are more rubicund, and indeed more lively. Leech-catching is not conducive to hilarity.

  —Early Reminiscences

  Neither Fyfe nor I was quite sure how Holmes had come to assume apparent control of the investigation, but the arrangement seemed to have at least tacit understanding on all sides. Fyfe took his somewhat bemused leave, having been reassured that Baring-Gould would be questioned when he woke as to his past communication with the man he knew as Randolph Pethering, and that information passed on to Fyfe.

  Holmes closed the door behind Fyfe and leant back against it for a moment as if trying to bar any further complications from entering.

  "That is a poser, is it not, Holmes?" I remarked.

  He did not bother to answer, but pushed himself upright and walked back into the hall, where he stood looking oddly indecisive.

  "Have you missed the train?" I asked. He waved it away as unimportant, then drew a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, lit it, and stood smoking while I put the maps and the second breakfast tray of the day in order.

  "Let us go look at the bag Pethering left with the innkeeper," he said decisively. He threw the half-smoked cigarette onto the logs, and swept out the door.

  ***

  It was a paltry offering that Pethering had left behind at the inn, comprising for the most part the "good" clothes he would not have needed while clambering over the moor. Holmes set aside the carefully folded if slightly threadbare grey suit, a silk tie that had the flavour of an aunt's Christmas present, a white shirt that had been worn once since being laundered, and a pair of polished shoes with mends in both soles. We

  examined the rest: another shirt, both patched and in need of laundering, and a pair of thick socks, also dirty; a pen and a small block of lined paper; a yellowback novel with a sprung cover and water damage along its top edge (the product, I diagnosed, of a book dealer's pavement display, already cheap but rendered nearly unsaleable by an unanticipated shower of rain), and a copy of a book by Baring-Gould that I had not found in his study, although I had been looking for it: his guide to Devon.

  I picked up the guidebook, checked the inside cover for a name, and found the first sheet carefully torn out. Pethering concealing his own name, perhaps, or was this book stolen from a library? I turned to the index and found Dartmoor, thu
mbed through to the central section on the moor, and found that Pethering had been there before me. He had used a tentative hand and a pencil with hard lead, but had made up for his lack of assertiveness in sheer quantity, correcting Baring-Gould's spelling, changing the names of some locations, and writing comments, annotations, and disagreements that crowded the side margins and flipped over onto the top and bottom.

  I held out a random page to Holmes, who was busy dismantling a patent pencil. "Would you say this handwriting belongs to Pethering?"

  He glanced at it and went back to the object in his hands. "Without a doubt."

  "Do you think Fyfe would object to my borrowing it? Even without Pethering's comments, I had intended to read the book, only I couldn't find a copy in the study."

  "You may have noticed that the study is now largely inhabited by volumes no one has valued enough to carry off. Gould keeps this book in the drawer of his bedside table along with his New Testament and Book of Common Prayer. And no, I'm sure Fyfe would not notice it gone."

  "Baring-Gould keeps a guide to Devon in his bedside table?" I said. It seemed an odd place to find it, particularly as the man could scarcely see to read, even in a bright light.

  "Sentimentality, I suppose." Holmes gave up on the pencil and tossed it back in the bag. "He can no longer get onto the moor, and can't even see it from the house, so he keeps his books easily to hand, along with one or two photographs and a sheaf of sketches." His words and gesture were so matter-of-fact as to be dismissive, but the lines etched on his face were not so casual.

  I was so struck by the poignancy of the image that I did not think about his words until we had left the inn and were going down the hill towards Lew House.

  "You said he keeps his books beside his bed. What are the others?"

  "Just Devon and his book on Dartmoor. Oh, and a few manuscript copies of some of the songs he collected."

  "I should very much like to look at the Dartmoor book."

  "He wouldn't mind, I'm sure. It's not particularly rare, just something he treasures."