The Moor - Laurie R. King [56]
At the very end of the afternoon, when the grey light of the day had long turned to black at the windows and the smells of dinner were coming in under the door, I found what I had originally had in mind when I had entered the study five hours before and forgotten in the pleasure of prospecting the shelves for nuggets: a manuscript copy of Further Reminiscences, the Baring-Gould memoir for the second thirty years of his life. The clean copy was probably now with his publisher, as the first volume had only just come out, and this version was sprinkled with cross-hatchings and corrections, but the small handwriting was surprisingly legible. I left it in place, as a loose sheaf of papers requires a sedentary reader, but I planned to return to it later. Of the third volume, 1894 -1924, there seemed to be only thirty pages or so of manuscript in a manila folder inside the high writing desk, along with a pen with a worn nib, crusted with ink, and a dusty inkwell. I held the manuscript pages in my hand, wondering bleakly if he would ever finish the volume. It did not appear to have been worked on for some time.
The study door opened and Holmes walked in. "Dinner in ten minutes, Russell. You ought to have memorised those maps by this time."
The maps. I had not even looked at the things, although Holmes could not know that for certain, as they had been shifted around in the course of the afternoon's ransacking—I might, after all, have folded them up after having committed the pertinent sections to memory. I murmured something noncommittal and began to search earnestly for a pencil. Holmes picked one up and held it out to me, not a whit deceived. I thanked him and stuck it in my shirt pocket, noticing as I did so the state of my nails.
"I think I ought to go and tidy up," I said. A fair percentage of the several cubic feet of dust I had set free seemed to have settled on my person. I picked up the tall stack of books I had set aside for reading and tucked them underneath my arm.
"Don't forget these, Russell," he said drily. I took the maps he was holding out, wedged them on top of the books, and made my way out of the crowded study and up the stairs.
***
After dinner we climbed the stairs to Baring-Gould's bedroom. We found him seated in a chair at the window, looking tired and ill and without strength. Looking what he in fact was: a man not far from his death.
Watching him, one could see the effort it cost him, but succeeded in rallying his forces, his eyes coming to life, his mind focussing again on us and the problem he had given into our hands.
"We're off tomorrow, Gould, for two days," Holmes told him. "We need to find how Lady Howard's carriage is coming up onto the moor, and I have to take a closer look at the army ranges for Mycroft."
A smile tugged at Baring-Gould's mouth. "Don't let them blow you up, Holmes."
"I shall endeavour to avoid becoming a target," Holmes assured him.
"You don't mean they're actually firing up there?" I exclaimed.
"It is a firing range, Russell."
"But—" I bit back the mouthful of protests and cautions, as there would