"I thought you didn't like cream and scones, Holmes," I said mildly, wasting no time to claim the larger of the two remaining on the plate and setting to with cream and jam. Holmes poured me a cup of tea and put the milk jug where I could reach it.
"Very occasionally, after a cold and strenuous day, I welcome a scone with Devonshire cream."
"Or two."
"Or two," he agreed. "Are you satisfied to stop the night here? I could arrange for a motor to take us to Lew Trenchard, if you would prefer, as our set tasks on the moor are, for the moment, more or less complete. I ought to consult with Gould before we determine our next actions." So saying, he stretched his legs out to the fire, rested his cup and saucer on the buttons of his waistcoat, and half closed his eyes. Somehow, he did not look overanxious to hurry off.
"Is there any need to return tonight?"
"None. And on the contrary," he said, lowering his voice, "the public bar might make for an informative evening."
"Grilling the locals while they're in their cups. Have you no shame?"
The corner of his mouth twitched and he allowed his eyes to shut. I ate my scones and poured out the last of the tea, refused the offered refill of both solid and liquid, and sat staring contentedly into the fire. When my cup was empty, I sighed, and glanced over at the relaxed figure in the next chair.
"Holmes, if that cup isn't empty, you're about to have an unfortunate stain."
It was not empty, but he drained it, replaced the cup on the tray, and we adjourned to the stronger refreshment and heartier companionship of the public bar.
***
The companionship we found went some distance beyond hearty, nearing raucous, and I slept late the following morning in the cloud-soft bed. I woke eventually, and lay staring through one eye at the teacup on the table beside the bed. I could smell the tea, could nearly taste the clean, acrid heat of it scouring the fur off my tongue, but I did not care much for the movement required in transporting cup to lips.
"God," I said, and then: "Do I remember dancing last night?"
"Briefly," said Holmes from somewhere across the room.
"God," I said again, and carefully pulled the bedclothes back up around my head.
***
We did not make an early start that morning. I am not certain it was even still morning when we left the Saracen's Head behind. I half wished I could leave my own head there, too.
"But I only drank cider, Holmes," I protested, when a mile of fresh air lay between us and the inn.
"Powerful stuff, Devonshire zyder." I had thought him untouched by our night of carousing with the natives, but on closer examination I decided that he, too, was moving with a degree more care and deliberation than was normal.
"Did we extract any information from the local inhabitants, though?"
"You don't remember?"
"Holmes."
"One of the lads told me an interesting tale about his wife's granny, who was alone in her house one night when the rest of the family had not yet returned from a wedding in Lydford, who heard a dog scratching at the door. She is, the boy admitted, very deaf, but her own dog raised such a noise trying to get out of the door it attracted her attention."
"Now there's a piece of hard evidence," I said. Sarcasm is a ready companion to a sore head.
"When did you learn to play the tin whistle?" Holmes asked innocently. "This is a talent you've kept well hidden from me."
"Oh Lord, I didn't play the tin whistle, did I? Yes, I suppose I did. I was going to surprise you with it someday; I thought it might prove a useful skill the next time we found ourselves disguised as gipsies or something."
"You did surprise me, and it did come in useful."
"Did it? I'm glad. How?"
"Do you recall the old smith-turned-motor-mechanic, Jacob Drew? With the full white beard and the red braces?"
"Er, vaguely." I remembered him not in the least, but I thought I would not admit it.
"He took quite a fancy to you, and came over to tell me while I was trying to tune that wretched excuse for a fiddle that we were not like all the summer trippers, and proceeded to recount some of their madder antics. Such as the pair of Londoners who stopped the night atop Gibbet Hill back in July and came down swearing they'd seen Lady Howard's coach of bones travelling across the moor."
"You don't say. Well, having met Dartmoor in all its forms, I can well believe in Lady Howard's coach, and in any number of black and ghostly huntsmen and their dogs as well. Where is the delightfully named Gibbet Hill?"
"The other side of Mary Tavy from here. We have to go near it in any case; I thought we might take a look."
"Sounds a charming place. Are we required to pass the night on its summit?"
"I think not."
"Good."
The rest of that trek across Dartmoor was uneventful, other than finding me wet, cold, hungry, and plagued with a headache. I also discovered what a kistvaen is by the simple process of falling into one (a burial hole ill-covered by a cracked and unbalanced slab of stone), and we met a herd of immensely shaggy, long-horned highland cattle, looking very much like prehistoric creatures recently risen from some weed-grown swamp. They did not much like the looks of us, either, and as a group took exception to our presence; fortunately, there was a wall nearby. Unfortunately, there was a small mire on the other side of the wall. When we came to Mary Tavy, it was with difficulty that we persuaded an innkeeper to allow us in, and then we were banished to the kitchen for our luncheon.
By afternoon, the clouds were high enough that Holmes thought it worthwhile to look and see what the two mad Londoners might have witnessed, so we trudged up the slippery sides of Gibbet Hill. This was not, as I had both assumed and hoped, so named because of some fancied resemblance of a rock formation, but because there had been an actual gibbet on the top of this prominent hill, employed on highwaymen captured on the busy road below, their bodies left high as an admonishment to their colleagues. It was an appropriately cheerless sort of place, gouged about with the remains of mines around its base and topped now not by a gibbet, but by a water-filled quarry, green with scum.
The view, however, was not without interest, and did indeed stretch for miles—or would have, given a clearer day. Holmes squatted down with the map, now in its final stages of returning to the state of pulp but still legible in the rectangles between the fold lines. He found a flat rock and aligned the map to the view in front of us, then began to tick off the landmarks: Brat, Doe, and Ger Tors, which I could see; Great Links and Fur Tors, which Holmes claimed he could see; all the sweep of the moor, emerging green and russet from the mist.
Placing his two index fingers on the map, one at each sighting of the ghostly coach, he compared the map and the land in front of us, his head bobbing up and down, up and down, until I began to feel a return of my earlier queasiness and went off to contemplate the waterlogged quarry.
I returned when I heard Holmes rising and trying to fold the map into a manageable size.
"Anything?"
"Not conclusive. We don't even know which way the coach was going when they saw it. We must try to find those two."
"Two stray Londoners on holiday in the middle of summer?" I exclaimed. "How do you propose to do that?"
"They may have spent one night shivering up here, but you can be certain they'd not repeat the experience. They will have made for the nearest kitchen and hot bath, and once there, they will have signed the guest register."
Holmes had a tremendous knack for sounding certain of himself, usually on the flimsiest of evidence. I took a deep breath and let it slowly out, and was just opening my mouth to agree to this scouring of all nearby inns, public houses, farmhouses, and cottages when Holmes interrupted me.