The Moor - Laurie R. King [15]
"So, judging by this," Holmes said, continuing the conversation that had broken off with my entrance, "Josiah Gorton might readily have been brought from the place where he was last seen down to where he was found, without a soul seeing it."
"Oh yes, easily, by anyone who knows the moor."
"How intimate a knowledge would be required?"
"I should have thought a week or two of wandering might do it. That and a good map."
"It's a great pity, Gould, that I could not come at the time. The body might have told many tales."
The old man made no polite effort to excuse Holmes his preoccupation, although he admitted, "I was not informed myself until after he had been prepared for burial. If you wish to speak with the women who laid his body out, I can give you their names."
"I may do, later. Now tell me, where was this dog-and-carriage apparition seen? This is another reference to a local folktale, Russell," he explained. I looked up from the encyclopaedia article on pineapples that I was reading. "A particularly difficult local noblewoman—"
"Noble by marriage only," inserted Baring-Gould.
"A woman who married a local lord," Holmes corrected himself, "lost him, along with three other husbands, under circumstances the local populace thought suspicious, with some justification. She was never officially accused and tried, but for her sins she is said to be condemned to riding in a coach made of the bones of her dead husbands, driven by a headless horseman and led by a black hound with a single eye in the centre of his forehead. The carriage drives at midnight from the ancestral house near Tavistock up to Okehampton castle for Lady Howard to pluck one blade of grass—"
"The hound plucks it," Baring-Gould sternly corrected him.
"How could a hound pluck a blade of grass?" objected Holmes.
"I merely tell you what the story says."
"But a hound—"
"Holmes," I interrupted.
"Oh very well, the hound plucks the grass, and not until every blade is plucked—or bitten—can Lady Howard be free to take her rest. It's a popular story, with songs and such, that by the way probably gave Stapleton the idea for his personal variation on the so-called Baskerville hound—which does not, in the legend, actually glow. It is said, I should mention, to be highly unlucky to be offered a ride in the coach, and certain death actually to enter in with Lady Howard."
"So I should imagine," I murmured.
"At any rate, Russell, the point is that Lady Howard and her hound have been seen on the moor."
During Holmes' recitation, Baring-Gould, pausing occasionally to correct Holmes, had gone to a cupboard in the corner and returned with a very large, heavily worn, rolled-up map, which he now spread out across the worktable on top of the other. This one was of a smaller scale, the Ordnance Survey's one-inch map—although I saw, looking more closely at it, that it actually comprised portions of four or five adjoining maps, carefully trimmed and fastened together so as to encompass the entire moor and its surrounding towns. Corrections had been made in a number of places, roads crossed out and redrawn and the names of tors and hamlets rewritten: Laughter Tor had become Lough Tor, Haytor Rocks changed to Hey Tor, Crazywell Pool was corrected to Clakeywell. The writing was cramped and sloping, undoubtedly that of Baring-Gould.
Before Baring-Gould could begin, the door at the end of the room opened and a woman with iron-grey hair and an iron-hard face put her head inside.
"Pardon me, Rector," she said, "but you wanted me to tell you when the Harpers came in."
"The Harpers? Oh yes. Would you feed them, Mrs Elliott, and get them settled in? I'll not be much longer here."
The housekeeper nodded and began to draw back, then stopped and addressed Holmes. "You're not tiring him, I trust," she said, sounding threatening.
"We are trying not to do so," Holmes said.