that this young man was not the same beau with whom she had been the night of the apparition, and in the course of ascertaining the whereabouts of the former suitor (the one whom Baring-Gould had referred to as 'stolid and un- imaginative') we nearly came to blows with the current gentleman.
The rejected suitor, Thomas Westaway, lived two miles off and was happy enough to interrupt his labours on a stone wall in exchange for some silver. Avoiding as best he could the touchy issue of Westaway's erstwhile ladylove, Holmes questioned him closely as to the precise location and times of the sighting.
The first query was settled by the lad pulling a piece of sacking cloth over his shoulders and leading us down the lane, over a stile (not a wooden contraption, merely lengths of stone protruding from the wall to form crude steps), and across a field. Built against the farther wall was a low shed, providing a sheltered feeding place for animals—and, no doubt, a sheltered private place for people. Baring-Gould's analysis of the situation was remarkably accurate, I thought.
On the other side of the wall was a flat track, similar in shape and wear to the track we had seen at the first site, either a part of the same road or a branch leading to it.
'This is where you saw the coach, is it?' Holmes asked, leaning against the wall and taking out his pipe and tobacco.
'Right here,' young Westaway agreed. 'Us heerd'y there, stood up and saw'n there, and seed 'er go by not forty feet off.'
'You saw a woman inside, then?' I asked.
'Didn't see no one. It were fair dark inside the box.'
'But you said—'
Holmes interrupted my protest. 'I believe you'll find that the pronoun refers to the coach itself, Russell, not its occupant. Devonshire speech uses a creative approach to the gender of its pronouns.'
'I seed her, I did, glowin' white with the bones of 'er vour 'usbands.'
'Of course,' said Holmes. 'You say the carriage followed the track up and around the hill?'
'Oh yes. Acourse, we baint 'zackly seed 'er go, bein' halfway to th' house and all.'
'Because of the dog?'
The lad had gone pale, and now swallowed hard. 'He were there, afore thicky gert stone there. He just standed and stared at us, and whined like he wanted to come over the wall at us, bevore the driver whistled him on. That's when we ran.'
'Were there any other noises, voices perhaps?'
'Just the harnesses clatterin' and thicky whistle. An' the growl.'
'Growl?'
'Sort of a hiss, or maybe a rattle.'
'From the dog?'
'I z'pose,' he said dubiously. 'He just sort a' comed with th' carriage.'
Holmes thought it over before deciding not to press further with the hissing rattling growl.
'And the horses?'
'Dark, they was,' the lad said promptly.
'Could you see whether there was one, or two?'
'Didn't see they a'tall.'
'Then how did you know what colour they were?' Holmes asked with remarkable patience.
'Because I couldn't see they, is how I knew they was dark.' It made sense to me, although for some reason, Holmes seemed to think the lad's logic less than impeccable. 'Heered the harnesses a-jangling something mad, though, zo there may've been two, even more.'
'But you did see the dog. It was light enough?'
'The moon were up, I saw her fine.'
'What time did you two come up here?'
'Just past evening chores, us…' He saw his slip too late, and looked away. 'The moon waddn' all that high, I reckon. It must've been still light, stays light late come August.'
'You came up here while it was still light, but the moon was up when you left,' Holmes said, completely ignoring his witness's attempt to save face.
'I z'pose. We come to talkin', you know?'
'I understand.'
The lad looked hard at Holmes, ready to climb on his dignity and ride away at the least sign of humour or criticism, but the expression on Holmes' face was merely blandly expectant.
'I z'pose it was three, four hours altogether,' he admitted. 'We comed up like I zaid, after evening chores, and it were vull dark when we got back. 'Cept for the moon, of course.'
'Where was the moon in the sky, when you looked over the wall and saw the dog?'
Our witness stood for a long moment, his face twisted in thought, before his hand went up to a point on the horizon. 'There, more or less. It were a day or two past vull, but very bright, and it was a remarkable clear night. We'd been talking about all the ztars,' he reminisced, and then ducked his head, blushing furiously.
We carefully did not see his discomfiture, but busied ourselves with climbing over the loosely laid stone wall to the track on the other side. There were no canine footprints to be seen; however, thirty yards up the hill we found a protruding boulder, one edge of which had been scraped to raw cleanness by a sharp edge. Holmes fingered it, and looked up at the farmer's lad.
'Has anyone been riding along here in the last months on a shod horse?'
'Why, no zur. Not that I know. Acourse, there's no telling what vurriners will get up to, in the summers.'
'True,' Holmes said, brushing off his hands. 'It would have been nice to know that we're dealing with an actual, iron-shod horse rather than a ghostly emanation. Spectral apparitions are the devil's own objects to lay hands upon. Still, I thank you for your time,' he said, before the lad could puzzle over his remark, and then he shook hands with the boy and gave him another coin. But before we parted, he gave the young man something else as well.
'Look, lad,' he said confidentially. 'I shouldn't worry too much about the girl. Best to find out now how undependable she is, instead of later, when there are children underfoot. No, you look around for a woman with brains and spirit. You'll never be bored.' He clapped the boy hard on the back and walked off; it would have been hard to say whether the lad or myself was the more nonplussed.
***
It was by now late afternoon, and although in the still-long days of August we might just have reached Lew Trenchard before darkness fell, we should certainly never do so on an already dim October's day. We made for the nearest inn, which Holmes said was in the hamlet of Two Bridges.
We passed a number of prehistoric settlements, now mere grass-grown foundations of the original circular huts, and picked our way over three streams. The fourth we followed downstream rather than cross, and entered into an extraordinarily weird area, a long strip of strewn boulders and stunted oaks that seemed to writhe in the half-light of the approaching evening.
'Odd to see trees again,' I commented, more to hear a voice than from any real need to communicate.
'A fey sort of place, isn't it? Wistman's Wood, it's called, which is either the corruption of a Celtic name meaning something along the lines of 'rocky woods along the water' or else the corruption of a Saxon term for 'foreigners,' indicating it was a Celtic wood, which in turn may be supported by the name 'Welshman's Wood' that some of the old people still use. You may take your choice of corruptions. Ah,' he said, as we emerged from the wood, 'nearly there.'
Along the river and past a farmyard, and indeed we were nearly there—but not before the most extraordinary thing we had seen all day passed in front of our eyes. Indeed, it nearly ran us down, as we stepped confidently out onto the black surface of an actual macadamised road, only to leap back aghast into the safety of the walls as a furious black mechanical monstrosity came roaring around the bend straight at us. After two days spent among sheep and standing stones, this reminder of the twentieth century came as a considerable shock.
SIX
