The Moor

'It involved tin, though,' he said.

I came back to his side and sat down again. 'What happened?'

'I don't recall the details. Something to do with blowing bits of tin into the hillside to make the area look rich in the metal. Salting, don't they call it? I wonder what it has to do with salt?'

I was rocked back on my heels by the galvanic shock of his words, shooting down my spine like a bolt of electricity that set all the pieces of my puzzle shuddering as they danced across the table and began to bond together in front of me.

Salting, don't they call it.

Gold flakes in a spoonful of leafy sand. Josiah Gorton, killed for wandering the moor on a stormy night, and Randolph Pethering after him, for the same reason. A remote cottage in which the thunder knocked a plate from the hutch. God, I had it. I had it.

'Thank you,' I said calmly. I paused on the way to the door. 'Do you remember which book you wrote about that in?'

'Which one? My dear, there were so many. It might have been in Curiosities of Olden Times, or perhaps Dartmoor Idylls, or even Old Country Life. Does it matter?'

'I shouldn't think so. Good night.'

Mrs Elliott was coming back in with the gurgling water bottle in her hand, and her appearance made me think of something else.

'Mrs Elliott, that family that was here today. Where were they from?'

'I don't know, and I don't care.'

'What family was that?' Baring-Gould demanded.

Mrs Elliott shot me a dark look. 'Samuel and Livy Taylor came by here, and the doctor is giving them a place for a few days until they can arrange transport to her brother's place in Dorset.'

Baring-Gould answered immediately, without pausing for thought. 'Their farm is near the West Okement, just below Higher Bowden.'

And old Sally Harper and her husband had just moved from their farm a mile or two away. And what of the ancient woman wrapped in rugs, who had arrived here the other day? I would ask Mrs Elliott later, I thought. 'Thank you again, and good night,' I said with finality, and went back down to Baring-Gould's study.

It took me until four o'clock to find the reference, but find it I did, in a book entitled An Old English Home and Its Dependencies, a portion of a chapter on mineral rights. It told the story of a fraud committed, as Baring-Gould had said, by blowing pieces of tin into soil to create the appearance of a rich source.

If tin, why not gold?

***

I fell into bed and slept for three hours, and then rose and dressed and went down to ask Rosemary for directions to the doctor's surgery. I had to reassure her mightily that I was not ill, that I did not require her granny's tincture or a hot brick for my feet, only directions to the surgery. Reluctantly, she gave them.

The frost was thick on the lawns and the fallen leaves, but although I walked quickly, the doctor was already away, attending a difficult birth up on the moor. The doctor's wife, who ran the surgery, saw my disappointment and offered to help. When I told her I was looking for the evicted Taylors, she said with some asperity that she knew precisely where they were, and whose victuals they were eating as well. She pointed me down the road.

'My own house, that is; my sister lived in it until she died in the spring, and if that woman allows her brood to damage my mother's furniture, I'll not be responsible for my actions.'

The household, however, was not as chaotic as I had expected. Taking the upset and the number of children into account, it was actually almost controlled. I did, nonetheless, ask Samuel Taylor to step outside for our conversation.

I asked him who owned the house from which he had been evicted. He scratched his head and set himself to the achievement of thought.

'Wall, it were the judge up by Ockington, but now that were the problem, baint it? Because he soldy, didn't he, just three months gone now, and sayed as soon as t'crops were in, we'd have to go.'

'I don't suppose you know who the buyer was?' I asked without much hope, but he surprised me.

'Mr Oscar Richfield, he said, in Lunnon. I dunno what a Lunnon man wants with me zmall farm, but it be 'is now, and I hope it brings he joy.'

He was not being bitter; he truly hoped his spot of river bottom would bring pleasure to its next owner. I myself very much doubted that joy would enter into the equation.

***

On my way back through Lew Down I stopped to use the public telephone. Mycroft had not yet left his Pall Mall digs for the office where he laboured, and I spoke briefly with him, explaining nothing, asking him merely to have discreet enquiries made about a Mr Oscar Richfield and his ownership of a tiny farm on the edge of Dartmoor.

When I returned to Lew House, I sought out Mrs Elliott to enquire about the old woman who had arrived the other day while I was working in Baring-Gould's study, and had since disappeared.

'You mean dear little Mrs Pengelly? Poor thing, had to leave the cottage her husband built with his own two hands, and go to distant family far away in Exeter. Still, she now has a bit of a nest egg to show for it, and that'll make her last years more cosy.'

'Where did Mrs Pengelly come from?'

'Oh, she's Cornish, I'm sure.'

'I mean to say, where was the cottage her husband built for her up on the moor?'

'Where? Oh my dear, I can't remember just where it was, but I'm sure it was not too far from Black Tor. A nasty place, to tell the truth, cold and lonesome. I told her she'd be much happier in Exeter.'

'I'm sure you're right, Mrs Elliott. Thank you.'

Rather confused, the good housekeeper left me alone with my thoughts, which revolved around this fact: Of the three individuals and families who had passed through Lew House in the recent weeks, each had come from virtually the same place on the moor. The very place where Holmes had set out the other night to investigate.

I did not like the tenor of my thoughts, but at present there seemed little I could do but stare out the window and wait for him to return.

TWENTY-THREE

She had not been long asleep when she was awakened by such a clatter at the door as if it was being broken down, and it was thundering and lightning frightful. Nurse was greatly frightened, but lay still, hoping the knocking would cease, but it only got worse and worse. At last she rose and opened the window, when she saw by the lightning flashing, which almost blinded her, a little man sitting on a big horse, hammering at the door.

—'A Pixy Birth' in A Book of the West: Devon

As the long morning drew on I became increasingly distracted, anxious to lay eyes on Holmes, unable to sit still any longer. I finally took my coat and told Mrs Elliott I would be back in time for dinner, and left Lew House.

I ended up not far up the high road to Okehampton, sitting in the window of an inn, drinking coffee and pushing a pastry around on the plate in front of me, staring blankly down the road, when I saw Holmes heave into view on a distant rise in the road. I quickly gathered up my things, left coins enough to cover the bill, and went out to meet him.

He came towards me, striding with brisk concentration and an enormous rucksack complete with tin cup swinging wildly from a tie on the side: A less likely member of the rambling brotherhood it would have been difficult to imagine.

We approached each other rapidly, halted on the macadam facing each other, opened our mouths, and spoke simultaneously.

'He's salting the streambed,' said Holmes.

'He's planting gold to run a fraud,' I said, adding for good measure, 'with dynamite.'