The Moor

Xs.

'Where was he going?' Holmes asked.

'Latimer told him the hound had been seen near Watern Tor.'

His elbows on his knees, Holmes gazed into the fire, fingers steepled and resting on his lips. 'Why the hound?' he mused.

Before Fyfe could respond, the rattle of crockery heralded Mrs Elliott's approach. Holmes prodded the cat until it jumped down, tail twitching in disgust, allowing Mrs Elliott to put the tray on the bench. She had thoughtfully included a high pile of buttered toast and three plates, although Holmes and I had only recently eaten. Fyfe, however, ate nearly all of it, drinking three cups of coffee as well before he was through.

'What was that about the hound?' he asked, his voice rather muffled with toast.

'I was merely wondering, Inspector, why the hound should be making an appearance.'

Fyfe swallowed. 'I understood there'd been a number of sightings over the summer.'

'Those were of Lady Howard's coach, which does indeed come complete with dog, but that does not explain why the dog should also appear sans coach.'

Fyfe had suspended his toast in puzzlement. 'I took it the hound referred to the Hound of the Baskervilles story.'

'They are very different hounds, Inspector, separated by their time, their ghostly genesis, and their mission. It is as if Jacob were to have appeared in Isaac's tent to receive his blessing wearing Joseph's coat of many colours: not entirely impossible, one would suppose, but not terribly reasonable either.'

'Different stories,' I translated for the inspector, who was looking confused. 'Everyone seems to be mixing up the two different hounds.'

'The only question is,' said Holmes, 'whether or not the confusion is deliberate.'

'Hardly the only question, Holmes,' I objected mildly.

'No? You may be right. Tell me what the postmortem found, Inspector.'

Fyfe hastily thrust the remainder of his wedge of toast into his mouth and reached into his pocket for a notebook. When the page was found and the toast was out of the way, he began to read. 'A slim but adequately nourished male approximately thirty-seven years old, five feet six inches tall, distinguishing features a birthmark on his right shoulder blade the size of a shilling and an old scar on his left knee. Minor dental work—the description is being sent out—and otherwise in good health until someone cracked his skull open with a length of pipe.' The last sentence had not depended on the notebook.

'Why pipe?' Holmes asked sharply. 'Did the pathologist find traces?'

'No, I just said pipe to indicate the size and hardness. Could have been a walking stick of some dashed hard wood, or the barrel of a rifle, if the killer didn't mind mistreating his gun that way. 'Course, it'd make more sense than the other way around. I once had a gunshot that we thought was murder until we had the victim's hand-print off the end of the barrel—a shotgun it was, and he'd swung it at another man, and when the stock hit the other man, the gun discharged and took off the head of the man holding it. But that's neither here nor there,' he said, recalling himself to the matter at hand. 'Some blunt instrument a little thicker than your thumb, most likely from behind by a right-handed man. Went at a slight angle, up to the front.' He drew a line just above his own hairline, clearing the ear and ending at his right temple. It could have been a blow delivered by a left-handed individual standing above the victim, if Pethering had been on his knees, for example, but Fyfe's simpler explanation was the more likely.

'When was death?'

'Very soon after he was hit—there was not much bleeding into the brain, and external blood loss the doctor estimated at less than a pint. Rigor had come and gone, putrefaction had begun in spite of the cold. Doctor said all in all he was probably killed late Tuesday or early Wednesday, but he'd only been in the water a few hours. Less than a day, certainly.'

'Stomach contents?' Holmes asked. Fyfe looked sideways at me and put the next piece of toast down onto the edge of his plate.

'Been a long time since he'd eaten, just traces of what the doctor thought might be egg and bread.'

Which helped not at all, as that combination might be eaten at any time of the day, from breakfast to tea, particularly on a hike into the moor.

Holmes jumped to his feet and held out his hand to Inspector Fyfe, who, after a quick pass at his trouser knee, shook it.

'Thank you, Inspector. That is all very interesting. You have taken the fingerprints of the body?'

'Yes, we raised some good prints, in spite of the puffiness from the water. Nothing yet, but we've sent them to London.'

'Good. Let us know what else you find. We'll be in touch.'

NINETEEN

In La Vendee we saw men with bare legs wading in the shallow channels that intersect the low marshy fields. After a moment of immersion out was flung one leg and then another, to each of which clung several leeches…

The women do not go in after them; and they are more rubicund, and indeed more lively. Leech-catching is not conducive to hilarity.

—Early Reminiscences

Neither Fyfe nor I was quite sure how Holmes had come to assume apparent control of the investigation, but the arrangement seemed to have at least tacit understanding on all sides. Fyfe took his somewhat bemused leave, having been reassured that Baring-Gould would be questioned when he woke as to his past communication with the man he knew as Randolph Pethering, and that information passed on to Fyfe.

Holmes closed the door behind Fyfe and leant back against it for a moment as if trying to bar any further complications from entering.

'That is a poser, is it not, Holmes?' I remarked.

He did not bother to answer, but pushed himself upright and walked back into the hall, where he stood looking oddly indecisive.

'Have you missed the train?' I asked. He waved it away as unimportant, then drew a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, lit it, and stood smoking while I put the maps and the second breakfast tray of the day in order.

'Let us go look at the bag Pethering left with the innkeeper,' he said decisively. He threw the half-smoked cigarette onto the logs, and swept out the door.

***

It was a paltry offering that Pethering had left behind at the inn, comprising for the most part the 'good' clothes he would not have needed while clambering over the moor. Holmes set aside the carefully folded if slightly threadbare grey suit, a silk tie that had the flavour of an aunt's Christmas present, a white shirt that had been worn once since being laundered, and a pair of polished shoes with mends in both soles. We

examined the rest: another shirt, both patched and in need of laundering, and a pair of thick socks, also dirty; a pen and a small block of lined paper; a yellowback novel with a sprung cover and water damage along its top edge (the product, I diagnosed, of a book dealer's pavement display, already cheap but rendered nearly unsaleable by an unanticipated shower of rain), and a copy of a book by Baring-Gould that I had not found in his study, although I had been looking for it: his guide to Devon.

I picked up the guidebook, checked the inside cover for a name, and found the first sheet carefully torn out. Pethering concealing his own name, perhaps, or was this book stolen from a library? I turned to the index and found Dartmoor, thumbed through to the central section on the moor, and found that Pethering had been there before me. He had used a tentative hand and a pencil with hard lead, but had made up for his lack of assertiveness in sheer quantity, correcting Baring-Gould's spelling, changing the names of some locations, and writing comments, annotations, and disagreements that crowded the side margins and flipped over onto the top and bottom.

I held out a random page to Holmes, who was busy dismantling a patent pencil. 'Would you say this