The Moor (2 page)

In the first instant I thought it was a butler standing there, the sort of lugubrious aged retainer a manor house of this size would have, as seedy and tired as the house itself, and as faithful and long-serving. It was his face, however, more than the old-fashioned clerical collar and high-buttoned frock coat he wore, that straightened my spine. Stooped with age he might be, but this was no servant.

The tall old man leant on his two walking sticks and took his time looking me over through the wire spectacles he wore. He examined the tendrils of escaped hair that straggled wetly down my face, the slime of mud up my clothing, the muck-encrusted boot I held in my hand, and the sodden stocking on the foot from which I had just removed the boot. Eventually he shifted his gaze to that of my lawfully wedded husband.

"We have been waiting for
this
person?" he asked.

Holmes turned to look at me, and his long mouth twitched—minutely, but enough. Had it not been that going back into the night would have meant a close flirtation with pneumonia, I should immediately have laced my boot back on and left those two sardonic males to their own company. Instead, I let the boot drop to the stone floor, sending small clots of mud slopping about the porch (some of which, I was pleased to see, ended up on Holmes' trouser leg), and bent to my rucksack. It was more or less dry, as I had been wearing it underneath the waterproof (a procedure which made me resemble a hunchback and left the coat gaping open in the front, but at least guarantied that I should have a dry change of clothing when I reached my destination). I snatched at the buckles with half-frozen fingers, jerked out the fat bundle of cloth-mounted, large-scale maps, and threw it in the direction of Holmes. He caught it.

"The maps you asked for," I said coldly. "When is the next train out of Coryton?"

Holmes had the grace to look discomfited, if briefly, but the old man in the doorway simply continued to look as if he were smelling something considerably more unpleasant than sodden wool. Neither of them answered me, but Holmes' next words were in a voice that verged on gentle, tantamount to an apology.

"Come, Russell. There's a fire and hot soup. You'll take your death out here."

Somewhat mollified, I removed my other boot, picked up my rucksack, and followed him into the house, stepping past the cleric, who shut the door behind us. When I was inside and facing the man, Holmes made his tardy introductions.

"Gould, may I present my partner and, er, wife, Mary Russell. Russell, this is the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould."

One would think, I reflected as I shook the old man's large hand, that with two and a half years of marriage behind him the idea of having a wife would come more easily, at least to his tongue. However, I had to admit that we both normally referred to the other as partner rather than spouse, and the form of our married life was in truth more that of two individuals than that of a bound couple. Aside, of course, from certain activities rendered legal by a bit of paper.

The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould made the minimum polite response and suggested that Holmes show me upstairs. I wondered if I was to be allowed back down afterwards, or if I ought to say good-bye to him now. Holmes caught up a candlestick and lit its taper from a lamp on the table, and I followed him out of the warmth, through a dark-panelled passageway (my stockings squelching on the thin patches in the carpeting), and up what by the wavering light appeared a very nicely proportioned staircase lined with eighteenth-century faces.

"Holmes," I hissed. "Who on earth is that old goat? And when are you going to tell me what you dragged me down here for?"

"That 'old goat' is the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, squire of Lew Trenchard, antiquarian, self-educated expert in half a dozen fields, and author of more books than any other man listed in the British Museum. Hymnist, collector of country music—"

A small light went on in my mind. " 'Onward Christian Soldiers'? 'Widdecombe Fair'?"

"He wrote the one and collected the other. Rural parson," he continued, "novelist, theologian"—Yes, I thought, I had heard of him somewhere, connected with dusty tomes of archaic ideas—"amateur architect, amateur archaeologist, amateur of many things. He is one of the foremost living experts on the history and life of Dartmoor. He is a client with a case. He is also," he added, "a friend."

While we were talking I had followed the candle up the stairway with its requisite portraits of dim and disapproving ancestors and through a small gallery with a magnificent plaster ceiling, but at this final statement I stopped dead. Fortunately, he did not go much farther, but opened a door and stepped into a room. After a moment, I followed, and found him turning up the lights in a nice-sized bedroom with rose-strewn paper on the walls (peeling up slightly at the seams) and a once-good, rose-strewn carpet on the floor. I put the rucksack on a chair that looked as if it had seen worse usage and sat gingerly on the edge of the room's soft, high bed.

"Holmes," I said. "I don't know that I've ever heard you describe anyone other than Watson as a friend."

"No?" He bent to set a match to the careful arrangement of sticks and logs that had been laid in the fireplace. There was a large radiator in the room, but like all the others we had passed, it stood sullen and cold in its corner. "Well, it is true. I do not have many."

"How do you know him?"

"Oh, I've known Baring-Gould for a long time. I used him on the Baskerville case, of course. I needed a local informant into the life of the natives and his was the name that turned up, a man who knew everything and went everywhere. We correspond on occasion, he came to see me in Baker Street two or three times, and once in Sussex."

I couldn't see how this sparse contact qualified the man for friendship, but I didn't press him.

"I shouldn't imagine he 'goes everywhere' now."

"No. Time is catching up with him."

"How old is he?"

"Nearly ninety, I believe. Five years ago you'd have thought him a hearty seventy. Now there are days when he does not get out of bed."

I studied him closely, hearing a trace of sorrow beneath his matter-of-fact words. Totally unexpected and, having met the object of this affection, quite inexplicable.

"You said he had a case for us?"

"He will review the facts after we've eaten. There's a bath next door, although I don't know that I would recommend it; there seems to be no hot water at the moment."

TWO

There existed formerly a belief on Dartmoor that it was hunted over at night in storm by a black sportsman, with black fire-breathing hounds, called "Wish Hounds." They could be heard in full cry, and occasionally the blast of the hunter's horn on stormy nights.

—A Book of the West: Devon

Holmes left, and I hurriedly bundled my wet, muddy clothes into a heap, scrubbed with limited success at my face and arms in the frigid water of the corner basin, and pinned my hair into a tight, damp knot. I hesitated briefly before deciding on the woollen frock—perhaps I had better not test the old man's sensibilities by continuing to appear in trousers. Ninety-year-old men probably didn't believe that women had legs above the ankle.

The froufrou of women's clothing takes longer to don than simple trousers, but I did my best and in a few minutes carried the candlestick back out into the gallery under that intriguing ceiling, which had struck me as not quite right somehow. I allowed myself to be distracted by the paintings (some of them very bad) and the bric-a-brac (some of it belonging in a museum), and stood for a long moment in front of a startling African-style wood carving that formed part of a door surround leading to one of the bedrooms. The proud, dark, nude female torso looked more like a fertility shrine than the decoration to a Victorian bedroom; I know it would have given me pause to have passed that lady each time I was going to my bed.

I continued my slow perusal, meeting a few Baring-Goulds whose faces were more interesting than their artists' techniques, and then made my way down the handsome stairs again in pursuit of the voices. When I came within earshot, Baring-Gould was speaking, sounding sternly critical.

"—only two miles, for pity's sake. I've done it in sleet at the age of fifty, and she can't be more than twenty-five."

"I believe you'll find she has more than ample stamina," Holmes replied easily. "That was irritation you saw, not exhaustion."

"But still, to fling the maps in your face in that manner—"

"As I remember, you yourself had a very quick temper, even when you were considerably older than Russell."

There was a pause, and then Baring-Gould began to chuckle. "You're right there, Holmes. Do you remember the time that fool of an innkeeper outside of Tavistock tried to throw us out?"

"I remember feeling grateful you weren't wearing your collar."

"Good heavens, yes. I'd have been dubbed the Brawling Parson forevermore. But the look on the man's face when you—"

Although I was certain that the reason Holmes had distracted his companion into this bout of masculine reminiscences was that he had heard my approach, I nevertheless counted slowly to thirty so as to allow the changed topic to establish itself before opening the door.

The stone fireplace was giving off more smoke than warmth, and the dank air was thick and cold. The long refectory table had been laid with three lonely places, with Baring-Gould in the middle with his back to the fire, and Holmes across from him. I came forward and sat in the chair to Holmes' right. Our host made a brief obeisance to manners by raising his backside a fraction of an inch from the seat of the chair as I sat down, then he reached forward and removed the lid from the tureen of promised soup. No steam came out. By the time he had pronounced a grace and served us, the soup had cooled even more, and to top it off, when I tasted the tepid mixture, it was obvious that it had been made a day or several before.

Still, I ate it, and the fish course and the stewed rabbit that came after. The rabbit was bland and chewy, as was the custard that followed.

There was very little conversation during the meal, which suited me. I was pleased, too, at the lack of toothless slurping noises that old people so often succumb to when their hearing goes. If one discounted the actual food, it was a pleasant enough, if quiet, meal, and I was looking forward to an early entrance into the featherbed and thick eiderdown I had felt on the bed upstairs.

This was not to be. Baring-Gould folded his table napkin and climbed stiffly to his feet, gathering his sticks from the side of his chair.

"We will take coffee in the sitting room. That fire seems to be drawing better than this one. Probably a nest in the chimney."

As we obediently trooped—slowly—behind him, I had the leisure to study his back. I realised that he was smaller than I had thought, probably barely an inch taller than my five feet eleven inches even when he was young. Now, stooped over his canes, he was considerably shorter than Holmes, but despite his obvious infirmity, his frame still gave the impression of strength, and he had eaten the tasteless food with the appetite of a young man.

He led us through to the adjoining room, which was indeed both warmer and less smoky. The curtains were drawn against the night, and the steady slap of rain against the windowpanes underscored the physical comfort of the room. If the company inside the cozy room made my feminist hackles rise, well, I was always free to slog back to the train tomorrow.

"I must apologise for the nonfunctional state of my radiators," Baring-Gould said over his shoulder to me. "They are normally quite efficient—I had them installed when my wife's rheumatism became bad—but yesterday we awoke to discover that the boiler gat no heat, and I am afraid the only person competent to quell the demons is my temporarily absent housekeeper. Like its master, my house is becoming tired." I reassured my host that I was quite comfortable, and, although I did not think he believed me, he allowed my reassurances to stand.

When we reached the sitting room, Baring-Gould made for a well-worn armchair and addressed himself to Holmes. "I received a gift today that I think might interest you. That small jug on the sideboard. Metheglin. Ever tasted it?" While he spoke, he propped his sticks against the side of an armchair and lowered himself into it, then reached to the side of the fireplace and picked up a meerschaum pipe with a stem nearly a yard long, which he proceeded to fill.

"Not in some time," said Holmes. I looked at him sharply, but his face showed none of the humorous resignation I thought I had heard in his voice.

"A powerful substance—I would suggest a small dose if you're not accustomed to it. Distilled from heather honey. This batch is seven years old—I should warn you, never drink it if it's less than three. Yes, I'll have a drop. It helps to keep out the cold," he said, in answer to Holmes' gesture. I took my husband's unintentional hint and demurred, reassuring my host that coffee would be sufficient to warm me. While they discussed the merits of the contents of their glasses, I examined my surroundings.

The room was panelled in oak and had a decorative plaster roof similar to that in the gallery upstairs. Up to head height the panelling was simple oak, but above that the wood was carved in ornate arches framing dimly seen painted figures that marched around the entire room, all of them, as far as I could tell, posturing ladies in billowing draperies. I took up a lamp from the table and held it to the figure there, a woman with dogs held straining against their leads:
Persuasio
it said in a caption above her. Above the fire I found portraits of
Gloria
and next to her,
Laetitia
; between all the figures alternated the phrases
Gold bydeth ever bright
and what was, very roughly, the French equivalent,
Toujours sans tache
.

"The one over there might be of interest to you," Baring-Gould suggested, and tipped his head at the inner wall.

"Gaudium Vitae?" I asked doubtfully, looking at the figure in her gold tunic, its gold ties blowing dramatically behind her and a massive gold chalice held nonchalantly in slim fingertips at the end of an out-stretched arm.