What was a kistvaen? I wondered, seeing the word on the map, but Holmes spoke before I could ask.
"Who on earth was out in that wasteland to see a spectral coach?" he demanded.
"It is not a wasteland, Holmes," Baring-Gould corrected him sharply. "Merely sparsely populated. A farmworker saw it. He was benighted on his way home from a wedding."
"Why does that say 'Artillery Range'?" I interrupted without thinking.
I felt two sets of disapproving male eyes boring into me, and did not look up from the map.
"Because," said Baring-Gould, addressing me as if I were a regrettably slow child, "the army uses it to practice with their guns. A fair portion of the moor is given over to them during the summer months, and is therefore off limits to the rambler and antiquarian. They do post the firing schedules at various places around the moor, and they are scrupulous about mounting the red warning flags, but it is really most inconvenient of them."
I sympathised, but privately I could see why the army should want to make use of Dartmoor: There was probably less life to disturb in that hand's-breadth of the map than on any other English ground south of Hadrian's Wall. Even the mapmakers seemed to have tired of the exercise before they penetrated to the middle, for most of the Gothic markings were along the edges. Or perhaps primitive man found the centre of the place too daunting even for him, I reflected. I suppressed a shiver.
"A farmworker on his way home from a celebration might not be considered the best of witnesses," Holmes noted drily, returning to the subject at hand. "How much had he drunk?"
"Quite a bit," Baring-Gould had to admit.
Holmes' only comment was with his eyebrows, but that was enough. He bent to study the map for a moment, then turned to a familiar packet, selected a map, and spread it with a flourish over the top of Baring-Gould's marked-up old sheet. He then withdrew a fountain pen from his breast pocket.
"The sighting of the coach around the time Gorton was last seen was here, would you say?"
Baring-Gould patted around his pockets until he remembered where he had put his spectacles, and pulled down one of the two pairs on his head and adjusted them on his nose. He peered at the crisp new map briefly, then pointed to a spot on the left side of the moor. Holmes put a neat circle on the place indicated, and then moved the pen over until it hovered near a Gothic-lettered notice of "hut circles."
"Gorton was last seen here?"
Baring-Gould seized the pen from Holmes impatiently and automatically extended it out as if to dip into a well before he caught himself, shook the thing hesitantly, and then wrote a firm X a bare fraction of an inch from where Holmes had held the nib. He then moved his hand the width of the moor to place another X near the hamlet of Buckfastleigh.
"He was found here," he said. "And these are where the coach was seen. The first sighting, as near as I can find, was in the middle of July, somewhere in this area here. That I know only through hearsay, but on August the twenty-fourth, two people saw it, and I spoke with them both. The third time was the fifteenth of September; that was the farmworker."
"And the dog?"
"What of the dog?"
It was now Holmes' turn for impatience. "When was he seen, Gould? Only with the carriage, or has he also appeared by himself?"
Baring-Gould slapped down the pen, sending out a gout of ink that obliterated half the countryside between Bovey Tracey and Doddiscombesleigh. "It is so irritating," he declared querulously. "One has the impression that a hundred people have seen both hound and coach, but all I can lay hands on is rumour. This is precisely why I need you, Holmes. I cannot go up and find the truth for myself. I know for certain that the couple who saw the coach in August specifically mentioned seeing the dog; does it matter if the hound was at times alone or invariably with the coach?"
"I do not know what matters until I have more data," Holmes retorted. "What certainly matters is ensuring that what information is available be both accurate and complete."
"Well, I simply do not know."
Holmes pulled out his handkerchief and began dabbing at the map in disapproval.
"Then we shall have to enquire," he said heavily. "And the farmer and his son who found Gorton's body? Their house is here?"
"Slightly below that." Baring-Gould's finger touched briefly on a spot half an inch south of the X where Gorton had lain, and then suddenly he seemed to tense, and draw in a sharp breath. I looked quickly at his face, but what I had taken for a jolt of revelation was obviously something much more immediate and physical. The man was in pain.
Holmes' hand shot out, but stopped as Baring-Gould straightened his back slowly and shook his head briefly in self-disgust. He removed himself from the worktable and hobbled on his sticks over to an ancient armchair in front of the fire, lowering himself into it. He sat very still for a long moment, let out a pent-up breath, and went on. His voice was slightly constricted, but otherwise he showed no sign that anything untoward had taken place.
"The August sighting, as I said, was by a courting couple. The girl, when I had them brought here a week after, was still quite incoherent with terror, although I had the distinct impression that she might have been somewhat more sensible had her beau not been present. Still, she was rather stupid, and surprisingly high-strung, considering the peasant stock she comes from. The man was stolid and unimaginative, which makes me rather more willing to credit his story."
"That story being?"
"They were seated on a stone wall that night (lying in the lee of the wall, more likely) when they heard a faint noise approaching, a rush and a jangle and a muffled beat of running hoofs. They peered over the wall in time to see it pass by: a faintly glowing carriage pulled by one or two horses invisible but for the gleam of moonlight off their harness trimmings, with a woman clearly visible inside. They heard the crack of a whip, and as the carriage was passing another dark shape appeared behind it. The shape turned and looked straight at them, and it whined. They were both clear that they had heard the whine. At that point in her story the girl broke down into hysterics, because when the beast turned to look at them, they could clearly see that it was possessed of a single eye, large and glowing, in the centre of its head. The driver of the carriage whistled, and the hound—or whatever it was—loped off, leaving the two lovers to collect what wits they might have, and their clothing, and race for the girl's cottage as if, as the saying goes, all the hounds of hell were after them."
Baring-Gould allowed his eyes to close, and his mouth opened slightly. He was exhausted by his lengthy narrative, but Holmes continued to pore over the map, and I felt sure that if his old friend would benefit by a doctor's attention, Holmes would summon one. Not knowing quite what was called for, I thought I ought at least to comment on what the old man had so laboriously given us.