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The Moor
by Laurie R. King
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Copyright © 1998 by Laurie R. King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Other Mystery Novels by Laurie R. King
Mary Russell Novels
A Letter of Mary
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
The Beekeeper's Apprentice
Kate Martinelli Novels
With Child
To Play the Fool
A Grave Talent
For Ruth Cavin,
editor extraordinaire,
with undying thanks and affection.
A blessing on you and your house.
WITH THANKS TO
Dr. Merriol Baring-Gould Almond and the Reverend David Shacklock, for correcting as many of my missteps as I would allow
The Reverend Geoffrey Ball, rector of Lew Trenchard Church
Mr. Bill Crum, a mine of information
Ms. Kate De Groot, for bringing Brother Adam to my attention
Mr. Dave German and the other helpful shepherds of Princetown's High Moorland Visitor Information Centre
Mr. James and Ms. Sue Murray, whose conversion of Lew House into Lewtrenchard Manor Hotel has been done with the same grace and warmth they show their visitors (and to Holly and Duma, who together do a very effective nocturnal imitation of the Hound)
Ms. Jo Pitesky, for the lost Russelism on page 28
Mr. David Scheiman (the real one), one of the good people
Ms. Mary Schnitzer, and to all of the readers.
They are not to be held responsible for any factual errors that may, either through misunderstanding or with malice afterthought, have stubbornly persisted into the final work. There are times, after all, when a writer must twist the truth in order to tell it.
EDITOR'S PREFACE
This is the fourth manuscript to be recovered from a trunk full of whatnot that was dropped on my doorstep some years ago. The various odds and ends—clothing, a pipe, bits of string, a few rocks, some old books, and one valuable necklace—might have been taken for some eccentric's grab bag or (but for the necklace) a clearing-out of attic rubbish intended for the dump, except that at the bottom lay the manuscripts.
I thought that they had been sent to me because the author was dead, and for some unknown reason chose to send me the memorabilia of her past. However, since the publication of the first Mary Russell book, I have received a handful of communications as ill assorted as the original contents of the trunk, and I have begun to suspect that the author herself is behind them.
***
It should be noted that in the course of her story, Ms. Russell tends to combine the actual names of people and places with other names that are unknown. Some of these thinly disguise true identities; others are impenetrable. Similarly, she seems to have taken some pains to conceal actual sites on the moor while at the same time referring to others, by name or description, that are easily identifiable. A walker on Dartmoor, therefore, will not find Baskerville Hall in the area given, and the characteristics of the Okemont River do not correspond precisely with those in the manuscript. I can only assume she did it deliberately, for her own purposes.
***
The chapter headings are taken from several of Sabine Baring-Gould's books, with the sources cited at each.
ONE
When I obtained a holiday from my books, I mounted my pony and made for the moor.
—A Book of Dartmoor
The telegram in my hand read:
RUSSELL NEED YOU IN DEVONSHIRE. IF FREE TAKE EARLIEST TRAIN CORYTON. IF NOT FREE COME ANYWAY. BRING COMPASS.
HOLMES
To say I was irritated would be an understatement. We had only just pulled ourselves from the mire of a difficult and emotionally draining case and now, less than a month later, with my mind firmly turned to the work awaiting me in this, my spiritual home, Oxford, my husband and longtime partner Sherlock Holmes proposed with this peremptory telegram to haul me away into his world once more. With an effort, I gave my landlady's housemaid a smile, told her there was no reply (Holmes had neglected to send the address for a response—no accident on his part), and shut the door. I refused to speculate on why he wanted me, what purpose a compass would serve, or indeed what he was doing in Devon at all, since when last I had heard he was setting off to look into an interesting little case of burglary from an impregnable vault in Berlin. I squelched all impulse to curiosity, and returned to my desk.
Two hours later the girl interrupted my reading again, with another flimsy envelope. This one read:
ALSO SIX INCH MAPS EXETER TAVISTOCK OKEHAMPTON. CLOSE YOUR BOOKS. LEAVE NOW.
HOLMES
Damn the man, he knew me far too well.
I found my heavy brass pocket compass in the back of a drawer. It had never been quite the same since being first cracked and then drenched in an aqueduct beneath Jerusalem some four years before, but it was an old friend and it seemed still to work reasonably well. I dropped it into a similarly well-travelled rucksack, packed on top of it a variety of clothing to cover the spectrum of possibilities that lay between arctic expedition and tiara-topped dinner with royalty (neither of which, admittedly, were beyond Holmes' reach), added the book on Judaism in mediaeval Spain that I had been reading, and went out to buy the requested stack of highly detailed six-inch-to-the-mile Ordnance Survey maps of the southwestern portion of England.
***
At Coryton, in Devon, many hours later, I found the station deserted and dusk fast closing in. I stood there with my rucksack over my shoulder, boots on feet, and hair in cap, listening to the train chuff away towards the next minuscule stop. An elderly married couple had also got off here, climbed laboriously into the sagging farm cart that awaited them, and been driven away. I was alone. It was raining. It was cold.
There was a certain inevitability to the situation, I reflected, and dropped my rucksack to the ground to remove my gloves, my waterproof, and a warmer hat. Straightening up, I happened to turn slightly and noticed a small, light-coloured square tacked up to the post by which I had walked. Had I not turned, or had it been half an hour darker, I should have missed it entirely.