The Moor - Laurie R. King [70]
"And in the morning it wrinkled its little nose at me, asking clear as it could, 'Where's my breakfast?' "
"Was it all right, then?" I asked. Not perhaps the most professional of investigative enquiries, and certainly not the question Holmes would have had at that point, but I did want to know.
"Not very good, you understand, but it lived. I did have to take off its little foot with a pair of sewing scissors, I'm afraid. It was too badly crushed to save, and the infection would have killed it."
I winced at the picture of two ancient ladies bent over the kitchen table doing an amputation with a pair of scissors, and moved quickly on to the proper questions. "What had caused its injuries, do you know?"
"Now that's just it, dear," she said, sounding approving. "It was something moving fast—a cart-wheel, maybe, or a boot—that squashed the poor thing's leg, but a dog had at it, too."
The hair on the back of my neck stirred. "How do you know that?" I demanded.
"Which, the cart or the dog?"
"Both."
"Well, dear, I know that whatever it was squashed Tiggy had to be moving quickly, because if poor little Tiggy'd had a minute's warning he'd have curled up tight and been flattened right across, not just one stray leg. And the dog I know because any wild creature would've had more sense, and once tearing at Tiggy that way he'd either have stayed to finish him off or taken him home to feed his babies."
Unlikely as it seemed, this was a witness after Holmes' own heart, and I took my hat off to her. Literally.
"What pretty hair you have, my dear," she exclaimed, and reached out to pat it lightly. "I had a cousin once who had strawberry blonde hair just like yours, and she was bright as her hair, too."
I had to admit that I was not feeling particularly bright, and asked her if she had seen any hoof marks or cart tracks.
"I'm afraid I didn't, dear. The ground was dry, you know, and it takes something pretty heavy to make a dent."
I found it hard to imagine the turf of the moor dry and hard, but I had to defer to her greater knowledge of the place. I then asked her about the precise location of the hedgehog's unfortunate accident. I offered her my map, but she waved it away, saying that her eyes found such fine work a difficulty, so instead she described her route subjectively—the hills and flats, a tor gone by, a stream crossed, the morning sun in her eyes—and I eventually decided on a stone circle below a rise that seemed to coincide with her description. I folded up the map and replaced it in the breast pocket of my coat. She seemed not to have finished with me, however, and sat with her head at an angle and an expectant look on her face. I thought perhaps she was waiting for my final judgement, which I did not think I could give her.
"I have to admit, I don't know enough about the habits of hedgehogs to say if I agree with your ideas," I began. Her face instantly cleared and she began to nod in understanding.
"Then you won't know the real question here, and that is, 'What was Tiggy doing there?' "
"I'm sorry, you'll have to explain that."
"Tiggy doesn't live out on the moor, dear. Tiggy likes the woods and the soft places."
"And there aren't any?"
"Not in two or three miles of where I found him."
"What if some animal had carried it? Whatever gave it the bite, for example, or a big hawk?"
"Well, that's possible, I suppose, dear," she said, sounding very dubious. "But I was wondering if it wasn't more likely that Tiggy was accidentally taking a ride on whatever it was run him down."
THIRTEEN
…The reader is tripping over uncertain ground, not knowing what is to be accepted and what rejected.
—A Book of Dartmoor
When I took my leave from Elizabeth Chase, the good witch of Mary Tavy, my mind, to borrow a phrase from Baring-Gould's memoirs, was in a ferment. It was still only midday, and Lew House little more than two hours away; I decided