I was thirsty, with the wine and coffee I had drunk, so I went through to the kitchen for a glass of water, and then climbed stiffly up the back stairway, feeling all the aches I had accumulated.
At the top of the stairs I noticed a shaft of light coming from a partially opened door down the corridor. I thought it was from Baring-Gould's room, and I paused, not wishing to disturb him, yet not willing to walk away in case the old man might have been taken ill. In the end I went quietly up the hallway and, tapping gently, allowed the door to drift open under my knuckles.
The squire of Lew Trenchard lay propped on his pillows, his hands folded together on top of the bedclothes. A faded red glasses-case lay on the table beside the bed, along with a worn white leather New Testament, looking oddly feminine, a lamp, a glass of water, and a small tray with at least ten bottles of pills and potions. The pocket of his striped pyjamas had torn and been carefully mended, I noticed, and this touch of everyday pathos made me suddenly aware of how shockingly vulnerable this fierce, daunting old man looked. I stepped backward to the door, but one eye glittered from a lowered lid.
"Is that you, Miss Russell? I cannot see you."
I stepped forward into the light. "Yes, Mr Baring-Gould. Is there anything I can get for you?"
He did not answer my question, if indeed he had heard it. His eye drifted shut and his breathing slowed. I eased back towards the door, and to my astonishment I heard him say, "I am relieved to see you home again safely. The storm the other night would have been ferocious on the open moor. I dreamt…" There was a pause, so long a pause that I began to think he had fallen asleep. "I dreamt I was a child by the seashore. The trees, you know. The Scotch pines and the oaks above the house sound remarkably like the surf on the coast of Cornwall, when the wind is blowing through them."
I waited, but that seemed to be all, so I wished him a good night and went to my room. There was no sign of Holmes, and one of his bags was missing, so I went quietly to bed, and to sleep.
***
At five o'clock in the morning I lay open-eyed, staring at the ceiling. The portions of my body that didn't ache gently hurt actively, with the occasional shooting pain from my ribs for variety.
This is ridiculous, I decided, and began the laborious process of oozing out from under the bedclothes. Surely I can make it down the stairs without waking Baring-Gould, and make myself a pot of tea without disturbing Mrs Elliott. I wrapped myself in Holmes' dressing gown, pushed my feet into his bedroom slippers, and tottered downstairs, considerably less spry than Elizabeth Chase.
I need not have bothered with silence: Baring-Gould was sitting before the drawing-room fire, a half-full cup of tea with the cold skin of age on it by his side. He held a book on his lap, a small green volume with gilt letters, mostly obscured by his hands but having something to do with Devon. He was not reading it, only holding it while he gazed into the fire. By the looks of the coals, he had been there for some hours.
"Good morning, Miss Russell," he said without turning his head. "Do come in."
"Good morning. I thought I might have some tea. Would you like another cup yourself?"
"That would be most kind of you. Although truthfully I can scarcely be said to have had the first one."
I removed the cup and returned with a tray holding pot, cups, and paraphernalia. I poured his cup, milked and sugared it to his instructions, and hesitated.
"Please do sit down, Miss Russell. Unless, of course, you have work to do."
"No," I said quickly, stung by the faint, so very faint, note of request in the proud voice. "No, I am between projects at the moment." Oh dear, that didn't sound very good. "You know how it is, one thing finished and the next still coming together in the back of the mind."
"I envy you. I never had the leisure to think in advance about the next, as you call it, project." He raised his tea to his lips to give me time to absorb the gentle scorn. This was not going well.
"What are you reading?" I asked him.
"Nothing, actually. My eyes are too bad. I do like to hold a book from time to time, though. Rather like conducting a telephone conversation with an old friend: unsatisfactory, but better than nothing at all."
"Would you…shall I read to you?"
"That is a kind offer, Miss Russell, but not perhaps at the moment."
Each time he said my name, it sounded as though he had it in italics. This unorthodox form of address was obviously more than he could swallow. I relented.
"Please, Rector, call me Mary."
"Very well, Mary. One of my daughters is named Mary, and she too has a lovely voice. No, I think that, rather than read to me from books in my library that I already know, I should prefer to hear about your own efforts. My friend Holmes tells me you are in the final stages of writing a book of your own. Tell me about it."
"I have finished it, in fact. The first draft, that is—I sent it to the publisher just before I came down here. There will be a fair amount of work before it's actually ready to publish, of course, but it is very nice to make it to the end of the first time through."
"Hmm," he said. "I never was much of one for second drafts. It always seemed to me that if my publisher did not like it to begin with, no amount of tinkering would set it right. Best to start on something new."
"So you would just scrap it?" I asked, astonished.
"Not invariably, but generally, yes. Who is your publisher?"
I told him, and he asked about the editor, and we talked about the mechanics of publishing for a few minutes. Then he asked, "And the subject? You never did answer me."
"Sophia," I said. "Wisdom."
"Hochmah," he said in rejoinder. "You are Jewish, I think?"
"I am. My father was a member of the Anglican Communion, but my mother was Jewish, which under rabbinic law makes me Jewish as well."
"Have you seen our church here in Lew?"
"On Sunday. It's very lovely."
"Paravi lucenum Christo meo," he said. I have prepared a lamp for my Christ.
I ventured a tiny joke from the same Psalm: " 'For the Lord has chosen Lew Down, he has desired it for his dwelling place.' "
He smiled. " 'This is my resting place forever, here I will dwell, for I have desired it.' Truly," he mused, "I have both desired and chosen. I had thought to have my daughter Margaret paint a picture in the church of the mother of God as Sophia, but we haven't got to it yet. It was my mother's name, Sophia."
"That is a portrait of you with her upstairs, isn't it? She was very pretty."
"Do you think so? Prettier than her anaemic-looking son, at any rate. The painter took against me, didn't like my asking so many questions about mixing paint and the techniques of perspective, so he made me look even more priggish than I think I actually did."
"It's a sweet picture," I protested.
He snorted. "You ought to see the thing I just sat for. Makes me look like an old boat."
"Is it here?"
"Oh no, hanging in London. What do you have to say about Sophia, then, Mary?"
So, at five in the morning in the echoing old house, we talked about theology. He was an interesting partner in conversation—as inquisitive as a child, but intractable and opinionated on the things he considered he knew; impatient with extraneous detail but insistent about the detail he thought important; utterly imperious yet innately gracious at the same time.
Curiously like another enthusiastic amateur I knew, in fact; two members of a dying breed.
When we had finished with that topic to his satisfaction, he turned to another. "Tell me what you make of Dartmoor, Mary."
To help myself think of an answer, I dribbled the last of the tea into my cup, milked it and sipped it and nearly choked on it—I had not noticed that we had been there long enough for the pot to stew cold and bitter. I hastily put down the cup.