“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 their 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 handprint 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.”
19
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
N
EITHER 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.
I
T 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, thumbed 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.”
“Good. Now, how are we dividing up?”
“I shall follow Pethering’s track up onto the moor, if you hunt down Miss Baskerville in Plymouth.”
I had known he would suggest this particular arrangement rather
than its reverse—even towards me, Holmes was usually gallant about shouldering the less comfortable tasks. Of course, this meant he took possession of the more interesting leads as well, but in this case I would not argue for the privilege of walking back out onto the moor. I merely asked when the next train left Coryton. Holmes took his watch from an inside pocket and glanced at it.
“Mrs Elliott will have an ABC, but I believe you’ll find going to Lydford will put you on a train in a bit under two hours.”
That would leave me time to change from my habitual trousers into the more appropriate all-purpose tweed skirt I had brought. Coming past the stables, I put my head inside and asked Mr Dunstan please to get the dog cart ready again. I smiled a sympathetic apology at his sigh of patient endurance, and trotted up to the house to pack the overnight bag I was sure to need.
Holmes came in as I was standing and surveying the room to see what I had forgotten. He held out a book.
“Gould says he hopes you find it of interest.”
“Thank you Holmes,” I said, and put it in the bag, first removing Pethering’s copy of
A Book of the West : Devon
, whose tiny, pale annotations would, I knew, prove diabolical in the poor light and movement of the train. “Did Baring-Gould have any idea where to find Pethering?”
“He filed the man’s letters down in the study, although he is certain the address was only care of the university. I’ll dig them out before I go, and send them to Fyfe.”
“Will you go tonight, or wait until the morning?”
“It will save me nearly two hours of daylight if I stop the night in Bridestowe or Sourton and set out at dawn. And unless I come across a problem, I ought to be back here Monday.”
The “problem” he might stumble across could very well be related to the problem that had landed Pethering in the lake. Without looking at him, I asked, “Are you taking a revolver with you?”
“Yes.”
I nodded, and fastened my bag shut.
“Good hunting,” he told me.
“And you, Holmes,” I answered, and to myself added, Just don’t you become the prey.
I
T MIGHT HAVE been faster to walk to Lydford, but I did arrive relatively unsullied by mud, and reached the station with ten minutes to spare. I walked up and down the platform in an attempt to keep warm, my breath steaming out as the sun sank low in the sky, taking with it any heat the day might have had. As usually happens, the clearing of the skies meant a sharp drop in temperature. There would be frost on the ground tonight, and tomorrow Holmes would find the moor a bitter place.
The train when it came was well populated, which was a blessing in disguise, for the carriages were old and draughty, and the only source of heat in my compartment was the three other passengers. We huddled in our overcoats (the others had the insight, or experience, to have brought travelling rugs) and watched the ice gather on the corners of the windows. It was far too cold to read, even if I had been able to turn the pages with gloved fingers. Instead, I wrapped my arms around to keep them and me warm, hunched my shoulders, and endured.
We stopped in every village that possessed more than six houses. It was black night when the train shuddered into Plymouth, although only eight o’clock. I stumbled towards a taxi and had the driver take me to whatever he judged to be the best hotel in town, where I took a room, a hot bath, and some dinner. It was too late to call on Miss Baskerville anyway, I told myself, and climbed into bed with the
Book of Dartmoor
.
Dartmoor
was the essential Baring-Gould: quirky, dogmatic, wildly enthusiastic, and as scattered as a blast from a bird gun. We began with quaking bogs, stepping into which he compared to a leisurely investigation of the underside of a duvet, adding with heavy-handed whimsy that whether or not the man who conducts such an investigation “will be able to give to the world benefit of his observations may be open to question.”
He then moved on to the beauties of furze, the glories of furze-blossom honey, tors, whortleberries, and tenements, Chinese orthography and customs, flint arrowheads and Christian saints, the rheumatic attack of Archbishop Lawrence, the peculiar phosphorescent characteristics of the moss
Schistostega osmundaca
, the Domesday book, dolmens, menhirs, and country roads. When he began to discuss the “twaddle and rubbish” of the Druid-supporting archaeologists I roused slightly, thinking of poor, mysterious Pethering, but Baring-Gould’s discussion of the wind atop Brentor soothed me, and by the time he hit Elizabethan tin works and mediaeval adits, my eyelids were descending.
And then the word
gold
caught my eye, and I was jerked out of my torpor:
That gold was found in the granite rubble of the stream beds is likely [wrote Baring-Gould, adding] A model of a gold-washing apparatus was found on the moor a few years ago. It was made of zinc.
Full stop. That, it appeared, was all the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould had to say about gold, although I read on attentively for another hundred pages while the author discussed such compelling topics as a forty-year-long lawsuit, the comparative vegetation of the east and west sides of the moor, the Welsh “martyr maid” St Winefred, the sycamore versus the beech, and the benefits of Dartmoor air for young men with weak lungs; nary a word about gold, or even the machines with which to wash it, or why I might care that they were made of zinc.
In disgust I shut down the light and pulled the bedclothes up to my chin. Despite the length of the day and the almost complete lack of sleep the two previous nights, I did not drift off for a long time, but lay contemplating the image of Josiah Gorton’s hidden phial with its pinch of gold granules.