"However, that is not for tonight, and probably not the most efficient use of resources to do it ourselves. Gould can muster a troop of Irregulars for us, men who know the ground."
Immensely relieved, I swung my heavy knapsack back onto my shoulders, tightened my slack bootlaces to protect my toes against the downhill journey, and lightheartedly followed my husband down from Gibbet Hill.
SEVEN
Towards evening I was startled to see a most extraordinary object approach me—a man in a draggled, dingy, and disconsolate condition, hardly able to crawl along.
—A Book of Dartmoor
Darkness overtook us on the road back towards Lew Trenchard. As I stumbled in Holmes' wake, barely conscious of the vegetation and the people and the rich odours of dung and grass and rotting leaves, I reflected that I had been wet, bedraggled, and exhausted before—generally in Holmes' company—and after two years of marriage to the man I had come to accept this as a common state of affairs. I should have been somewhat happier about it if only he, too, might show the same results, but Holmes had always possessed the extraordinary ability to avoid grime. Given two puddles, identical on the surface, Holmes would invariably choose the one with the shallow, neatly gravelled bottom, whereas I, just as invariably, would put my foot into the other and be in muck past the ankle. Or go over a wall fleeing from a herd of horned Scottish cows and land respectively on green turf and churned-up mud.
So it was that we approached Lew House, with me limping and slurping in my boots while beside me walked my partner and husband, his only dishevelment after three days of moor-crawling the day's light stubble on his jaw and a high-tide mark of mud around the lower half of his otherwise clean boots. He looked as if he were returning from a gentle day's shooting; I seemed to have spent the day wrestling a herd of escaped pigs through a bog.
The smell of wood smoke grew stronger as we came up the drive to Lew House, and I could see lights pouring from the windows, making the cold mausoleum seem almost warm and beckoning. Considering the late hour, in fact, the house seemed fairly blazing with lights. Nice of Baring-Gould to make the effort, I thought, and was aware of a faint feeling of warmth towards the man. Only when we were actually within the porch and I heard the voices within did I realise my mistake, and by then it was too late to bolt for the servants' entrance.
Again, our host himself opened the door. This time, at his back and peering curiously around the cleric's high shoulder, stood another man, a wide, swarthy face topped with thick, greying, heavily pomaded hair. The man's liquid brown eyes blinked at the sight of us, and shifted from their initial astonishment to a politely, if inadequately, concealed amusement.
"Miss Russell," our host said, "you look a bit the worse for wear. Shall I ask Mrs Elliott—"
"No thank you," I said, stung into asperity by the amusement in his voice that matched that of the stranger's eyes. "It is predominantly external." I sat on the bench and tugged at my bootlaces, praying fervently that they would not knot on me. I was saved from this small but final humiliation when the ties slid loose, allowing me to prise the boots from my feet. The sodden condition of the stockings I should simply ignore, along with the rest of my state. Pretend you've just come from the hairdresser's, Russell, I commanded myself. Imagine you've arrived at the home of a poor relation whose misbehaviours you have come to chastise. Put your chin up and cut them off without a farthing.
When my coat and hat had been peeled away and joined the sodden gloves on the bench, I turned towards the door and put my chin up and my hand out.
"Good evening, Mr Baring-Gould. I trust you are keeping well?"
"What? Oh, yes. Yes, thank you." He stepped back so I could enter the house, where after a moment, recalled to himself by my attitude and my heavily applied accent of immaculate breeding, he took another step backwards and motioned to the man who was now at his shoulder rather than behind it.
"Miss Russell, this is a friend and neighbour, Mr Richard Ketteridge. Richard, Miss Mary Russell. And her husband, Mr Sherlock Holmes."
The warm hand of the stranger gripped my own frigid palm solidly. His hand was as broad and muscular as the rest of him, at one with his almost swarthy skin and the pale patches of old scars on his face but contrasting oddly with his exquisitely tailored evening suit. On his right hand he wore a wide band of a strikingly deep orange-coloured gold, set with a small diamond. His eyes were dark, his nose was broad, and the tip of the small finger on his left hand was missing. Greeting me, the laughter in his eyes did not fade; if anything it grew, even when he turned to my tidy husband and took his hand as well.
"Evening, good to meet you. I was glad to hear the Reverend has friends to stay; he ought to do it more often, 'specially with his family away. I was dining with friends down the road a piece, just stopped in to see how he was doing."
The speech was as vigorous as the handshake had been. It was also delivered in a ringing American accent, much the same accent my California-born father had possessed, and which lay beneath my own English tones (half acquired, half inherited from my London-born mother).
Baring-Gould shut the door behind Holmes and ushered us into the warmth. The room's fire was blazing, logs heaped high beneath the carved fox and hounds and warming the backsides of two more strangers. One of them was small, slim, and not much older than I, dressed also in evening wear and possessed of sleek blond hair and a neat beard surrounding a drawn-in mouth and rather stern eyes. The man beside him wore a clerical collar, a remarkably hairy tweed jacket, and an air of sporty bonhomie, and I was surprised when Baring-Gould introduced him as his curate, Gilbert Arundell—it seemed an odd pairing. The fair young man, who seemed much quieter than Ketteridge and whose dinner jacket was of a slightly inferior cut, proved to be the American's secretary. His name was David Scheiman, and the few words he spoke were also in an American accent, although an America farther east than that of his employer, and with both English and Germanic traces down at its childhood roots. His palm was damp and his grip was brief, and he had to draw himself together to look Holmes in the face (a not uncommon reaction when even the most blameless of individuals first met Holmes, as if they dreaded that he was about to look into their souls and see their inner thoughts and what they did with their private lives).
Ketteridge went to the cupboard and offered us a drink. Holmes accepted, saying he would merely go up and put on a pair of shoes first, but I smiled and demurred politely, and took my leave with as much dignity as I could muster. As I left, the conversation around the fireplace resumed: It seemed to have something to do with cricket.
Holmes did not catch me up until I was in the bathroom with the hot tap full on.
"You will come back down?" he asked, although it sounded more like an order than a question.
"Holmes, I'd rather starve to death."
He seemed honestly puzzled, whether because he had missed the amusement in the two men or because he could not see why I should object, I could not decide. He might even have been putting on an act of obtuseness for some reason, but I decided it did not matter, that in any case my reaction would be the same.
"Enjoy yourself, Holmes, while I enjoy my bath." I pushed him out and closed the door.
A long, hot, drowsy time later I became aware of a sound outside the door. I raised my ears clear of the cooling water, and listened for a moment. "Holmes?"
"Sorry, mum," said a young female voice. "Mrs Elliott thought you might like a bowl of soup. I'll just leave the cover on it to keep it hot, shall I?"