Set in late 1923, The Moor (1998) is the fourth in Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series. It sees married couple Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes called to Dartmoor, famously the site of The Hound of the Baskervilles, to investigate a murder. In fact, the murder has some echoes of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1901 novel, as it seems to involve yet another phosphorescent hound.
There have been sitings around the moor of a ghostly luminous carriage, along with a demonic hound. This is a real Dartmoor legend – the story of Lady Howard’s coach – which may well have inspired the Baskerville backstory.
The ghost of Lady Howard is said to ride at night in a coach made of the bones of her dead husbands. There is even a (real) song about it, dating back centuries:
My ladye hath a sable coach,
And horses two and four;
My ladye hath a black blood-hound
That runneth on before.
My ladye’s coach hath nodding plumes,
The driver hath no head;
My ladye is an ashen white,
As one that long is dead.
‘Now pray step in, my ladye saith,
‘Now pray step in and ride.’
I thank thee, I had rather walk
Than gather by thy side.
The wheels go round without a sound
Or tramp or turn of wheels;
As cloud at night, in pale moonlight,
Along the carriage steals.
I’d rather walk a hundred miles
And run by night and day
Than have the carriage halt for me
And hear the ladye say:
‘Now pray step in, and make no din,
Step in with me and ride;
There’s room I trow, by me for you,
And all the world beside.’
Investigating the legend and the murder, Holmes and Russell end up at Baskerville Hall, speaking to its owner, the last of the Baskerville line, and recalling the events of Holmes’s most famous case. Russell finally learns that the two legends – Howard and Baskerville – are being used by the guilty party to exploit local superstitions.
King clearly had fun writing in the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould as a kind of guide to the moor. Baring-Gould (1834-1924) was a real historical figure, author of hundreds of novels, memoirs, and miscellany, including several books on Dartmoor. You can also blame him for 'Onward! Christian Soldiers', and he was the grandfather of William S. Baring-Gould, whose 1962 biography of Sherlock Holmes mingled canon and fancy in a manner that continues to influence how the character is understood.
Mary Russell uses these books to navigate the geography and mythologies surrounding her case, and occasionally meets with the near-nonagenarian who, in reality, died in January 1924, not long after The Moor’s setting.
Russell critiques as she reads, and grows frustrated at Baring-Gould’s wandering mind. Here, King is clearly indulging in literary – and researcher’s – criticism of her own, and the result is entertaining.
After finding (and block-quoting) a relevant anecdote from Baring-Gould’s memoirs, Russell reflects:
All my nerves tingled […] I knew something [discussed in this passage] was the key. […] 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. […] I felt like throwing the volume across the room.
But herein lies a question. Why doesn’t Russell simply ask her friend, living handily nearby and apparently just waiting to turn up awkwardly at a party? Why does she need to read his published work, rather than just talking to him, and asking follow up questions?
Of course, it’s because King is working with the published work, and not with the man – so too, therefore, is Russell. But it kind of begs another question: why include him as a character in the first place?
Nonetheless, this is an entertaining, well-told story, I also want to give a final shout out to King’s/Russell’s snark. Who else could write, within just a few paragraphs, that one person ‘did not suffer from brevity of speech, although he [made up for it with] a considerable brevity of both wit and learning’ and another ‘did not seem overly gifted with subtlety of mind’? Fans of the Russell/Holmes series are bound to enjoy The Moor.
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