The Moor - Laurie R. King [100]
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.
***
It 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