Free Death at Dartmoor by Robin Paige Page A

unmistakable. It certainly had an impact on Doyle, who stiffened and looked uncomfortably away. Charles was intrigued. Was Robinson a collaborator in the story Doyle had mentioned to him, The Hound of Whatever-It-Was? But why would a successful writer like Doyle undertake a collaboration with a man of no reputation, who had very little to offer him?
    Tantalized by the possibilities of this exchange, Charles looked with greater attention at Robinson, a youngish man, not yet thirty, he guessed. Brown hair, eyeglasses, of medium build and weight, he was not the sort of man who called attention to himself in a crowd. A war correspondent for the Daily Express, Doyle had said. The two were on friendly terms, it seemed, for Doyle occasionally called Robinson “Bertie,” and he reciprocated by calling Doyle “Sherlock.” The two men had spent some time together recently, for there had been mention of a stay at Robinson’s house at Ipplepen, a village east of the moor.
    â€œI don’t mean to constrain creativity, of course,” Crossing was saying in a conciliatory tone. “The folklore of this place is fantastic enough to inspire the imagination of any writer. Pixies used to be seen often at Piskies’ Holt in Huccaby Cleave, where troops of them used to gather on moonlit nights.”
    â€œPixies?” Doyle asked with some interest.
    Crossing nodded. “Any Dartmoor child would be delighted to show you their favorite haunts. And there is the doomed huntsman and his demon hounds, whose eyes glow like balls of fire. And the gigantic hound that chased poor Luke Rogers twelve miles across the moor, not a month ago.”
    Robinson leaned forward. “A gigantic hound?” he repeated eagerly. “D’you hear that, Doyle? That’s the creature I described to you. The very one!”
    â€œIndeed,” Crossing replied, his eyes twinkling. “There’s a story about that hound, you know. It seems that Luke’s wife was not amused when he arrived home much later than usual and told her about a great black dog who had waylaid him, whose very fur sparked fire. ‘Black doag afire!’ she exclaimed.” Here Crossing slipped into the lilting dialect of the moormen. ‘Doan’t ye tell me no such foolishness, Luke Rogers. Where wuz ye th’ fust part o’ th’ aivnin’?’ Luke explained that he had passed an hour or two at the pub at Newhouse. ‘Es, I thought so,’ said his wife. ‘An’ if ye go there agin, ye’ll find me after ye. Ye’ve got away from th’ houn’ to be sure, but ye woan’t get away from yer wife.’ ”
    â€œY’ see there, Doyle!” Robinson crowed, elbowing his friend. “The hound, to the life. The moor is a wild, fantastical place, full of creatures yet unknown to science! Something like Darwin’s Galapagos, I imagine.”
    â€œWild and fantastical it is, sir,” Crossing said, with a little smile. “Or so Luke Rogers learned, after an hour or two at the pub at Newhouse. Our moor brew is powerful enough to conjure up any number of spectral hounds.”
    Amid the general laughter, Charles turned to see the servants removing the food and then the cloth from the buffet table and then moving the table itself to the shadows at the dimmest end of the room. The somber clang of a gong shivered through the air, and their hostess called for their attention.
    â€œMr. Westcott tells me that the spirits are near and it is time for the séance,” she announced. “If you will take your seats around the table, we will begin.”
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    Several hours later, as Patsy undressed and climbed into the great oak bed in her room at the Duchy Hotel, she thought that the séance had been a massive disappointment. It wasn’t her first such event, of course. She had attended a perfectly marvelous séance in Paris, where the heavy oak table had risen nearly a foot off