"The maps you asked for," I said coldly. "When is the next train out of Coryton?"
Holmes had the grace to look discomfited, if briefly, but the old man in the doorway simply continued to look as if he were smelling something considerably more unpleasant than sodden wool. Neither of them answered me, but Holmes' next words were in a voice that verged on gentle, tantamount to an apology.
"Come, Russell. There's a fire and hot soup. You'll take your death out here."
Somewhat mollified, I removed my other boot, picked up my rucksack, and followed him into the house, stepping past the cleric, who shut the door behind us. When I was inside and facing the man, Holmes made his tardy introductions.
"Gould, may I present my partner and, er, wife, Mary Russell. Russell, this is the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould."
One would think, I reflected as I shook the old man's large hand, that with two and a half years of marriage behind him the idea of having a wife would come more easily, at least to his tongue. However, I had to admit that we both normally referred to the other as partner rather than spouse, and the form of our married life was in truth more that of two individuals than that of a bound couple. Aside, of course, from certain activities rendered legal by a bit of paper.
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould made the minimum polite response and suggested that Holmes show me upstairs. I wondered if I was to be allowed back down afterwards, or if I ought to say good-bye to him now. Holmes caught up a candlestick and lit its taper from a lamp on the table, and I followed him out of the warmth, through a dark-panelled passageway (my stockings squelching on the thin patches in the carpeting), and up what by the wavering light appeared a very nicely proportioned staircase lined with eighteenth-century faces.
"Holmes," I hissed. "Who on earth is that old goat? And when are you going to tell me what you dragged me down here for?"
"That 'old goat' is the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, squire of Lew Trenchard, antiquarian, self-educated expert in half a dozen fields, and author of more books than any other man listed in the British Museum. Hymnist, collector of country music—"
A small light went on in my mind. " 'Onward Christian Soldiers'? 'Widdecombe Fair'?"
"He wrote the one and collected the other. Rural parson," he continued, "novelist, theologian"—Yes, I thought, I had heard of him somewhere, connected with dusty tomes of archaic ideas—"amateur architect, amateur archaeologist, amateur of many things. He is one of the foremost living experts on the history and life of Dartmoor. He is a client with a case. He is also," he added, "a friend."
While we were talking I had followed the candle up the stairway with its requisite portraits of dim and disapproving ancestors and through a small gallery with a magnificent plaster ceiling, but at this final statement I stopped dead. Fortunately, he did not go much farther, but opened a door and stepped into a room. After a moment, I followed, and found him turning up the lights in a nice-sized bedroom with rose-strewn paper on the walls (peeling up slightly at the seams) and a once-good, rose-strewn carpet on the floor. I put the rucksack on a chair that looked as if it had seen worse usage and sat gingerly on the edge of the room's soft, high bed.
"Holmes," I said. "I don't know that I've ever heard you describe anyone other than Watson as a friend."
"No?" He bent to set a match to the careful arrangement of sticks and logs that had been laid in the fireplace. There was a large radiator in the room, but like all the others we had passed, it stood sullen and cold in its corner. "Well, it is true. I do not have many."
"How do you know him?"
"Oh, I've known Baring-Gould for a long time. I used him on the Baskerville case, of course. I needed a local informant into the life of the natives and his was the name that turned up, a man who knew everything and went everywhere. We correspond on occasion, he came to see me in Baker Street two or three times, and once in Sussex."
I couldn't see how this sparse contact qualified the man for friendship, but I didn't press him.
"I shouldn't imagine he 'goes everywhere' now."
"No. Time is catching up with him."
"How old is he?"
"Nearly ninety, I believe. Five years ago you'd have thought him a hearty seventy. Now there are days when he does not get out of bed."
I studied him closely, hearing a trace of sorrow beneath his matter-of-fact words. Totally unexpected and, having met the object of this affection, quite inexplicable.
"You said he had a case for us?"
"He will review the facts after we've eaten. There's a bath next door, although I don't know that I would recommend it; there seems to be no hot water at the moment."
TWO
There existed formerly a belief on Dartmoor that it was hunted over at night in storm by a black sportsman, with black fire-breathing hounds, called "Wish Hounds." They could be heard in full cry, and occasionally the blast of the hunter's horn on stormy nights.
—A Book of the West: Devon
Holmes left, and I hurriedly bundled my wet, muddy clothes into a heap, scrubbed with limited success at my face and arms in the frigid water of the corner basin, and pinned my hair into a tight, damp knot. I hesitated briefly before deciding on the woollen frock—perhaps I had better not test the old man's sensibilities by continuing to appear in trousers. Ninety-year-old men probably didn't believe that women had legs above the ankle.
The froufrou of women's clothing takes longer to don than simple trousers, but I did my best and in a few minutes carried the candlestick back out into the gallery under that intriguing ceiling, which had struck me as not quite right somehow. I allowed myself to be distracted by the paintings (some of them very bad) and the bric-a-brac (some of it belonging in a museum), and stood for a long moment in front of a startling African-style wood carving that formed part of a door surround leading to one of the bedrooms. The proud, dark, nude female torso looked more like a fertility shrine than the decoration to a Victorian bedroom; I know it would have given me pause to have passed that lady each time I was going to my bed.
I continued my slow perusal, meeting a few Baring-Goulds whose faces were more interesting than their artists' techniques, and then made my way down the handsome stairs again in pursuit of the voices. When I came within earshot, Baring-Gould was speaking, sounding sternly critical.
"—only two miles, for pity's sake. I've done it in sleet at the age of fifty, and she can't be more than twenty-five."
"I believe you'll find she has more than ample stamina," Holmes replied easily. "That was irritation you saw, not exhaustion."
"But still, to fling the maps in your face in that manner—"
"As I remember, you yourself had a very quick temper, even when you were considerably older than Russell."
There was a pause, and then Baring-Gould began to chuckle. "You're right there, Holmes. Do you remember the time that fool of an innkeeper outside of Tavistock tried to throw us out?"
"I remember feeling grateful you weren't wearing your collar."