"He filed the man's letters down in the study, although he is certain the address was only care of the university. I'll dig them out before I go, and send them to Fyfe."
"Will you go tonight, or wait until the morning?"
"It will save me nearly two hours of daylight if I stop the night in Bridestowe or Sourton and set out at dawn. And unless I come across a problem, I ought to be back here Monday."
The "problem" he might stumble across could very well be related to the problem that had landed Pethering in the lake. Without looking at him, I asked, "Are you taking a revolver with you?"
"Yes."
I nodded, and fastened my bag shut.
"Good hunting," he told me.
"And you, Holmes," I answered, and to myself added, Just don't you become the prey.
***
It might have been faster to walk to Lydford, but I did arrive relatively unsullied by mud, and reached the station with ten minutes to spare. I walked up and down the platform in an attempt to keep warm, my breath steaming out as the sun sank low in the sky, taking with it any heat the day might have had. As usually happens, the clearing of the skies meant a sharp drop in temperature. There would be frost on the ground tonight, and tomorrow Holmes would find the moor a bitter place.
The train when it came was well populated, which was a blessing in disguise, for the carriages were old and draughty, and the only source of heat in my compartment was the three other passengers. We huddled in our overcoats (the others had the insight, or experience, to have brought travelling rugs) and watched the ice gather on the corners of the windows. It was far too cold to read, even if I had been able to turn the pages with gloved fingers. Instead, I wrapped my arms around to keep them and me warm, hunched my shoulders, and endured.
We stopped in every village that possessed more than six houses. It was black night when the train shuddered into Plymouth, although only eight o'clock. I stumbled towards a taxi and had the driver take me to whatever he judged to be the best hotel in town, where I took a room, a hot bath, and some dinner. It was too late to call on Miss Baskerville anyway, I told myself, and climbed into bed with the Book of Dartmoor.
Dartmoor
was the essential Baring-Gould: quirky, dogmatic, wildly enthusiastic, and as scattered as a blast from a bird gun. We began with quaking bogs, stepping into which he compared to a leisurely investigation of the underside of a duvet, adding with heavy-handed whimsy that whether or not the man who conducts such an investigation "will be able to give to the world benefit of his observations may be open to question." He then moved on to the beauties of furze, the glories of furze-blossom honey, tors, whortleberries, and tenements, Chinese orthography and customs, flint arrowheads and Christian saints, the rheumatic attack of Archbishop Lawrence, the peculiar phosphorescent characteristics of the moss Schistostega osmundaca, the Domesday book, dolmens, menhirs, and country roads. When he began to discuss the "twaddle and rubbish" of the Druid-supporting archaeologists I roused slightly, thinking of poor, mysterious Pethering, but Baring-Gould's discussion of the wind atop Brentor soothed me, and by the time he hit Elizabethan tin works and mediaeval adits, my eyelids were descending.
And then the word gold caught my eye, and I was jerked out of my torpor:
That gold was found in the granite rubble of the stream-beds is likely [wrote Baring-Gould, adding] A model of a gold-washing apparatus was found on the moor a few years ago. It was made of zinc.
Full stop. That, it appeared, was all the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould had to say about gold, although I read on attentively for another hundred pages while the author discussed such compelling topics as a forty-year-long lawsuit, the comparative vegetation of the east and west sides of the moor, the Welsh "martyr maid" St Winefred, the sycamore versus the beech, and the benefits of Dartmoor air for young men with weak lungs; nary a word about gold, or even the machines with which to wash it, or why I might care that they were made of zinc.
In disgust I shut down the light and pulled the bedclothes up to my chin. Despite the length of the day and the almost complete lack of sleep the two previous nights, I did not drift off for a long time, but lay contemplating the image of Josiah Gorton's hidden phial with its pinch of gold granules.
TWENTY
But to return to family portraits. That, in spite of the influx of fresh blood from all quarters, a certain family type remains, one can hardly doubt in looking through a genuine series of family pictures.
—Old Country Life
The first thing I saw in the formal drawing room of Miss Baskerville's house the following afternoon was the portrait of a Cavalier with fair ringlets and a stern, thin-lipped face, dressed in black velvet and a lace collar, taking possession of his surroundings from his place above the fire.
It had taken me some time to gain entrance to the room and the Cavalier's presence, for although I had been at the door at what I had thought a sufficiently early hour for a Sunday morning, the mistress of the house had already left.
The housemaid could not tell me precisely where her lady had gone, although she was happy to tell me that it was her habit of a Sunday morning to call on any of a number of her father's old and retired servants who lived in the area, enquiring as to their wants and transporting them to their respective churches (or, in one case, chapel). She would then arrive for the midday services at her own church, before dismissing her driver to attend to the redistribution of the old retainers to their homes, and walk home or, if the weather was too foul, wait at the rectory until her motorcar came to take her home.
I therefore had been obliged to take my place in the back of the Victorian monstrosity where she worshipped, which, even though I claimed a seat directly over a vent from the floor heating, was nonetheless intensely cold until about two-thirds of the way through the service, when the heat suddenly shot on and had us steaming and discreetly shedding garments.
During the sermon I reflected on something Mrs Elliott had mentioned in passing, that Mr Baring-Gould was one of those all-too-rare proponents of the ten-minute, single-topic sermon, to the extent that he would begin to clear his throat if an underling went to fifteen minutes, and rise briskly to his feet at twenty. This particular specimen of the clergy before me did not suffer from brevity of speech, although he compensated by displaying a considerable brevity of both wit and learning. The stout, sweating man beside me was kept from snores only by the sharpness of his wife's elbow.
The housemaid had given me a fair description of the lady I was seeking, and after the service had finally broken up I approached her outside on the pavement where she was pulling on her gloves and talking with friends. I waited until the friends had finished their business, a luncheon arrangement for the following week, and as they departed and she turned to go, I stepped to her side.
"Miss Baskerville, I believe?"
"Yes?" she asked.
"My name is Mary Russell. I'm a friend of the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, who asked me to look you up while I was in town." Which was not strictly true, but the look of reserved politeness she gave me was clear evidence that, while she knew who he was, she was not about to be mentioning my small deception in any casual letter or future conversation.
Our gloves clasped briefly while I explained that her housemaid had told me how to find her, and asked if I might walk back with her.