"I doan s'pose you knaw how ta turn a calf," were his first words to us.
"Er, no," Holmes admitted. "Unless?" He turned to me, and the young man looked up in hope.
"No," I said firmly. "Sorry."
His face fell back into its morose state. "I can't do'n. I tried an' tried, but my hand, she just gets squeezed and dies. Poor ole cow," he said with unexpected affection. "Her'll just have to bide 'til Doctor gets here, that's all. He'll charge me half what the calf be worth," he added. Long, contemplative seconds ticked by before he looked up, realising at last that he was not conversing with family members or two spirits of the moor. He asked, "Be ye lost?"
"I do not believe we are," said Holmes. "Not if you're Harry Cleave."
"That I am." He put out a meaty hand that had all too obviously been but lightly sluiced since its last exploration of the cow's birth canal, and with only the briefest of hesitations, Holmes shook it. I left my own gloved hands firmly in my pockets, and instead smiled widely and nodded like a fool as introductions were made.
"Well," said Cleave, "no sense maundering, baint nothing I can do 'til Doctor comes. I sent the lil maid to vetch 'en," he explained, "when I seed how she lay. Let us go by the house and 'ave a cup."
Paradise and ambrosia were the words he had uttered, and we crowded his heels across the muddy yard to the low stone farmhouse.
It was warm inside, from a peat fire burning low and red in the wide stone fireplace. I removed my glasses and could see little, but my cold-shrivelled skin began tentatively to unfold, and my nose told me of a soup on the fire and fragrant herbs strewn underfoot. I patted my way to a bench near the fireplace and settled in for what I sincerely hoped was to be a long and leisurely visit.
The tea Cleave made for us was fresh and powerful and sweetened as a matter of course by our host; what was more, he had cleansed his hands with soap before making it. I removed a layer of clothing, resumed my warmed spectacles, and examined the room and the young man, wondering if both were typical of the moor.
Cleave was a quiet, self-contained figure, short but heavily muscled. His dark eyes shone with an intelligent interest, and humour lurked ready at their corners. His easy authority over the house and its furnishings spoke more of an owner than a hired man, and I thought the simple room, light and tidy, suited him well.
"So," he said, settling himself at a scrubbed wooden table with his own teacup. "You comed out auver th'moor for ta vine 'Arry Cleave, and naow you've vound'n."
I expected Holmes to follow his standard routine for such investigations, particularly useful in gossipy rural areas, which was to invent some piece of spectacular flimflam behind which he could hide his real purpose. I had even settled back in anticipation to watch the expert, but to my utter astonishment he instead chose to use the simple truth.
"I'm a friend of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould. He asked me to look into Josiah Gorton's death."
At the first name, Cleave's humour bloomed full across his face in surprise and wholehearted approval. It dimmed somewhat at the second name, but he left that for the moment.
"The Squire, by Gar. How is he?"
"Old. Tired, and not very well."
"Yair," Cleave agreed sadly. "That he must be, poor ole beggar. He were old when I'as a child, and used to come across him digging his'oles or writin' down zongs. Fey old fellow. I remember thinking oncet, he looked like God in Paradise, 'walkin' in the garden at the end of the day.' Proud and amused. So, he wants to knaw what happened to ole Josiah, mmm?"
"Yes," said Holmes. "Yes, he does."
"And his legs won't carry him no more, is it? Pity, that. It's been a mort of years since he's been up the moor. Still, he'd be inter'sted, acourse. Wisht I could tell you what you want to knaw, but all I knaw is, Josiah was a-makin' 'is way out along Hew Down on the Sattiday night, we exchanged a word or two, and we both went our ways. I never saw nothin' like this 'ghostly carridge' they be talkin' of. Nothin' 'tall."
"What did Gorton say to you?"
" 'Tweren't nothin' much. Just 'Evening' and a word on the weather, which were thundery and low and lookin' to spit down but wasn't yet, and I offered him the barn if he needed a roof, but he said no, and 'Wish 'ee well' it was."
"Did he say he had a place to stay? I shouldn't think there are many farms in that direction."
" 'Fore dark he'd only have made it to Drake Hill, but he didna'. Drake hisself telled me."
"And after dark?"
" 'Tweren't no moon to speak of, and he wasn't carrying a lantern, but I s'pose I thought he was heading for one of his old mines. There's some still have buildings you could shelter in, if you wasn't too particular. That's right, that's what I figgered, because he said he would'n take my barn, he was lookin' to earn hisself a week's beer money."
"His precise words?"
"Near 'nough. Zomething about buyin' me a pint when next he seed me. Any row, he liked 'is zecrets and his findings, did Josiah, so I leaved 'im to it."
"Did he often buy you a drink?"
"Never in mortal memory."
"Interesting."
" 'E were a good'n, were Josiah. Kept hisself to hisself, 'side from zingin' all they ole zongs over 'is ale, but 'e 'ad 'is pride, and look as 'e might like a gipsy, 'e were as honest as the day be long. An' though he liked to keep to hisself, he were willin' to help out, in a pinch. The maid took ill one year just at the height of lambin' and ole Josiah nursed 'er for two days 'til she were hersel' again. A good man, that. He'll be missed."
As a eulogy, one could do far worse.
We drank more tea, and Holmes questioned him further about the precise location and directions he and Gorton had taken. When a commotion sounded out in the yard and a girl of perhaps twelve burst in, Holmes allowed the farmer to return to his cow and the veterinarian, and before we could be pressed into surgical assistance to a bovine midwife, we took our leave.
***
A half hour brought us to the place where Cleave had seen Gorton, and another forty minutes to the Drake farm. It was down in a valley bottom, and we stood on the rise looking down at it. A more dismal site, or a more disreputable set of buildings, would have been hard to imagine. Even the trickle of smoke from the lopsided chimney seemed dirtier than usual.
To my surprise, Holmes turned his back on the farm and began to survey the ground that fell away from our hillock on all sides.
"Aren't we going down there?" I asked him.
"Gould thought it unnecessary. Unless Drake himself did away with Gorton, he would have no reason to lie about not seeing him, and according to Gould, Drake hasn't the wits to build a wall, much less arrange for a clever murder. And you'll have to admit, a man who can't bother to keep his chimney clean and is willing to live in the undoubtedly foul atmosphere that exists inside that house down there is hardly likely to go to the inconvenience of hauling a body to the other side of the moor. He'd be more inclined just to toss it down a nearby hole. Come."