The Moor (32 page)

In the silence that followed, Mrs Elliott gave herself a vigorous shake to settle her ruffled feathers back into place, snapped at Rosemary to scrub down the table at which the children had been sitting, threw the tea towel she held onto the sideboard, and began snatching up the plates from which her invaders had been eating. Before her eyes could fall on me, I made my exit, and went back to my book.

Peace returned to Lew Trenchard, and peace reigned uninterrupted over the cat, the fire, and me for a good twenty minutes, until I found myself reading a story about a gold fraud on Dartmoor, and the afternoon was no longer a peaceful thing.

TWENTY-TWO

Gold bydeth ever bright.

—Gould family motto

It came in a chapter on Okehampton, buried between a lengthy discussion of a white-breasted bird credited with being a harbinger of death and a song, given in the vernacular, about a young man who, vexed because his sheep had run away, "knacked" his old "vayther" on the head and was condemned to hang.

The gold story was given as follows:

Some years ago a great fraud was committed in the neighbourhood. It was rumoured that gold was to be found in the gozen—the refuse from the mines. All who had old mines on their land sent up specimens to London, and received reports that there was a specified amount of gold in what was forwarded. Some, to be sure that there was no deception, went up with their specimens and saw them ground, washed, and analysed, and the gold extracted. So large orders were sent up for gozen-crushing machines. These came down, were set to work, and no gold was then found. The maker of the machines had introduced gold-dust into the water that was used in the washing of the crushed stone.

Gold fraud.

All my nerves tingled. This was not precisely what I had been looking for to make the pieces fall into place—gozen laundering and the sale of a large number of machines did not go far enough—but by God I knew that something about the concept of gold fraud was the key.

What, I did not know.

I devoured the rest of the book, but again, Baring-Gould had finished playing with that shiny idea and did not return to it, not within those covers. He did mention using the idea in a novel, but I doubted the usefulness of a fictional development of gozen laundering. I felt like throwing the volume across the room.

I did not. Instead, I dutifully went back and picked my way over Pethering's remarks, the myriad tiny scratchings of his own mania. He knew nothing about gold, nothing about the moor, nothing about scholarship at all, I soon decided. Nearly every remark reverted to Druidical evidence, and whenever Baring-Gould wrote a criticism of the doctrine, it set off a tirade so intense that Pethering had taken to writing between the lines of print to fit it all in.

Long before I reached the end of the book, my nerve broke, and I did end up throwing the book against the wall, upsetting the cat and bending the book's cover irreparably. I put on my coat and went for a long walk in the freezing air, and in the course of the walk I came to a reluctant decision: Despite the fragile state of his health, Baring-Gould should have to be asked about gold fraud.

I went to see Mrs Elliott when I returned, finding her as usual in the kitchen.

"I need to talk to Mr Baring-Gould, Mrs Elliott, just for a few minutes. Could you please let me know when he's awake?"

"I'll not have you upsetting him," she declared, the unerring mother hen, obviously still feeling the effects of the invasion of snotty-nosed children.

"I didn't do so before," I pointed out, "and I shall try my best not to do so now, but it concerns what he brought us here to do. Ultimately, it is in his own interest."

She seemed to find this argument specious, for which I could not blame her. It was clearly self-serving. However, grudgingly she allowed that when he had eaten his supper (which he would do upstairs and alone) she would ask if he could see me briefly. I thanked her, and told her I would be in his study.

There I worked, pulling books from the shelves, thumbing methodically through them looking for further tales of auric crime and finding nothing more than dust. Rosemary came to tell me my own dinner was ready, and I ate it with a book in front of me, scanning each page, unaware of its contents aside from a lack of the word
gold
. It was a tedious and no doubt pointless way of doing research, and it would take a very long time to go through the ninety or more books of his that I had not yet read, but it gave me something to do while I waited.

Unfortunately, the waiting was prolonged by Baring-Gould falling asleep over his supper. Mrs Elliott refused to wake him, telling me firmly that he was sure to awaken refreshed in two or three hours, or perhaps four, and he would surely speak to me then.

In an agony of frustration I returned to the endless shelves, feeling like Hercules faced with his task in the stables. Rosemary silently brought me coffee at nine, and again before she went to bed at eleven. Jittering, unkempt, and black-handed from the books, I waited.

At midnight I heard footsteps in the silent house. Mrs Elliott's tread sounded on the stairway outside the study door, and faded, going into the kitchen. When she came out, I was at the study door, waiting.

"Come, dear," she said cheerfully, and then, "Oh my, you do look a little the worse for wear. Never mind, two minutes with the rector and then you can have a nice wash and into bed."

Grimly, I followed her up the stairs and to Baring-Gould's bedroom, and there I waited while she gave him his hot drink and medicine and plumped his pillows and chattered cheerfully until my hands tingled with wanting to pitch her out the window.

In the end it was Baring-Gould who broke the impasse. The light from the single candle was not strong enough for his old eyes to pick me out, but I must have moved, for he craned his head forward and squinted at where I stood.

"Who is that?" he asked sharply.

"It is I, sir," I said, and stepped into the candle's glow.

"Mary, it's very late. Surely you're too young to begin this habit of broken nights."

"She has a question to ask you, Rector," put in Mrs Elliott, and to my relief took herself out of the door with the hot-water bottle.

"Come, then, Mary. Sit down where I can see you, and ask. It must be important, not to wait until the morning." I sat down as indicated, on the bed beside him.

"I don't know how important it is, just vexatious, because I can't find any more information. In your book on Dartmoor you mention that gold may be found in the gravel streams of the moor."

"Did I? How very irresponsible of me," he said with a complete lack of either interest or concern.

"Has it ever been found?" I persisted.

"Never. Ridiculous thought. I did use it in the
Guavas
novel, for the romance of it, but I don't believe anyone has ever actually filled so much as a single goose-quill from the soil of the moor. The closest to gold I have ever seen in a lifetime of wandering Dartmoor is the moss
Schistostega osmundacea
, which gleams with sparks of gold when seen in a certain light."

"I see. But, in your book on Devon, the first volume of
A Book of the West
, you describe a gold fraud, which involved washing gold into samples of the gozen from old tin mines in order to sell great numbers of the crushing machines."

He got a faraway look on his face, which after several seconds relaxed into one of delight. "I had forgotten about that. Oh yes. Very clever, that." He chuckled. "Of necessarily limited duration, however."

"Most frauds are. But what I need to know is, are there any other references to gold on the moor in your books, either speculations as to its presence or descriptions of fraud?"

A long minute ticked past as the old man put his head down and thought. When he raised it, my heart fell.

"I cannot think of any. Why do you need to know?"

"Rector, I'd really prefer not to go into that just now."

"Does it have to do with Richard Ketteridge?"

"It may," I said reluctantly. To my surprise, he reached forward and patted my hand.

"Don't worry, Mary, I won't press you. I'll hear about it when the story is complete. Much better that way."

"Er…if Ketteridge comes to visit, do you wish me to have Mrs Elliott say you are not receiving visitors?"

"Heavens no. I certainly possess enough duplicity for that degree of deception."

I got up from the bed. "Good night, sir."

"Good night, Mary. I wish you luck."

"Thank you." I turned to go.

"There was," he said thoughtfully, "another sort of fraud."

I stopped and waited.

"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?"