The Trouble With Tortoises

by Evelyn James

  Gladys’ shoulders sagged in relief.

  “Took a walk?” She said thoughtfully. “But where would it go?”

  “Exactly,” Malory groaned. “The poor fellow will be cold and hungry.”

  “I assume you have not noticed a tortoise wandering about?” Clara asked Gladys.

  The cook shook her head.

  “Why was there a tortoise in the cupboard?” She asked, in a voice that suggested it would not have been any more bizarre if a hermit had been found in there.

  “He is a present for Mrs Malory,” Malory replied. “If we can find him.”

  “Oh, she has always wanted a tortoise,” cook agreed. “Has a thing about them. Always makes her feel queer when she seems a recipe for turtle soup in one of those ladies’ magazines she reads.”

  “Yes,” Malory frowned. “Look, if you do spot him, then just pop him somewhere safe and summon me.”

  “I will,” Gladys promised. “I’ll look everywhere here, I will. Every cupboard and shelf, and box. Everywhere.”

  “Thank you, Gladys,” Malory said with little hope in his voice.

  Having warmed themselves by the kitchen fire, the trio made their way to Malory’s study to contemplate what to do next.

  “A thorough search of the house seems in order,” Colonel Brandt observed. “From top to bottom. Can tortoises climb stairs?”

  The question was addressed to Malory, their self-appointed tortoise expert, but all he could do was shrug.

  “As for wondering if he has been stolen, well,” Brandt scratched his chin. “We could dust the cupboard for fingerprints.”

  “That is only useful if we have a suspect in mind,” Clara pointed out. “If we exclude Gladys, who else comes to the house on a daily basis and could have discovered Jeremiah in the cupboard?”

  “We have a daily maid, she doesn’t live in,” Malory said. “She comes Monday to Friday but does a half-day on Wednesday.”

  “Is she here now?” Clara asked. It was Thursday, but she had seen no sign of a maid. That might be because the girl was discreet. More likely it was because she was not there at all.

  Malory looked around him as if the maid would suddenly pop into existence beside him.

  “She should be about. I don’t pay much heed as my wife deals with the servants.”

  Clara ran her finger along a bookshelf and withdrew it with a thick smudge of dust on the tip.

  “My inclination would be to get a new maid,” she presented her finger to Malory. “Yours does not appear to be taking her work seriously.”

  Malory looked astonished, but slowly it seemed to dawn on him that other parts of his study were looking as if they had not been touched by a cloth or duster in some time. There were cobwebs at the corners of the ceiling and around the window frame, and nearly every surface was dusty. The fire had not been swept properly in a while, a fresh fire being laid on top of the ashes, and it was questionable when the rug was last taken out and given a good beating. Not to mention the piles of dust and dirt that had collected along the skirting board.

  To the eyes of a woman, alert to these things, it was apparent the room had not been swept and cleaned in weeks, but to the eyes of a man like Malory, oblivious to domestic arrangements, the situation came to him as an abrupt shock.

  “This is impossible!” He declared and left the room in a hurry.

  Colonel Brandt cast amused eyes at Clara and then they followed. Malory had returned to the kitchen to speak with Gladys.

  “Gladys, where is the daily maid?”

  The cook looked up sharp and had much the same expression as Malory had worn earlier, as if the maid should have been right there under her nose, and she had not noticed her absence until it was mentioned.

  “Let’s see, why she ought to be doing the upstairs bathroom about now,” Gladys said, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. “I don’t really have the time to keep track of her and it is not my place.”

  “Thank you, Gladys,” Malory said and now he was heading up the stairs, a new purpose to his stride, the mystery of Jeremiah the tortoise for the moment at the back of his mind.

  When they reached the first floor, it was clear the maid was not anywhere to be found. Malory traipsed from room to room, his agitation increasing with each step. Finally, he came to a halt in the middle of the hallway.

  “She is not here!” He declared as if Clara and Colonel Brandt had not already guessed.

  At that moment a lady emerged from one of the rooms. She had half-moon glasses perched on her wide nose and a magazine clasped in her hands. Behind her, it could be seen that the room was arranged as a sitting room and Clara surmised that this was Mrs Malory.

  Mrs Malory was neat, like her husband, but in a softer way. She was all comfortable curves and subtle padding. A woman rather like a cosy sofa; all plump cushions and delicate floral patterns. She observed her husband over the top of her glasses.

  “What are you up to Edgar?” She asked.

  Malory spun on his heel and Clara wondered what he would say to explain himself, but his words tumbled out easily enough.

  “What has become of the maid? My study is a mess, dust everywhere, and here I was with friends to entertain,” he waved a hand at Brandt and Clara, “I quite feel ashamed of the house.”

  Mrs Malory was unmoved by this outburst, if anything, she seemed somewhat amused.

  “You are referring to Ethel Dickinson, the girl we hired last spring. Not the best, I admit, but she does come every day.”

  “Until today,” Clara mentioned.

  Mrs Malory turned her intelligent eyes onto Clara, a wisp of a smile on her lips.

  “Ethel sent a message this morning, saying she was indisposed. Influenza.”

  Malory spun back to his guests, he was almost bursting to speak, but was restraining himself with his wife nearby.

  “If your study is so messy, I am sure Gladys would chip in to give it a clean,” Mrs Malory remarked, apparently unconcerned at the laxness of their maid.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Malory called over his shoulder, then he ushered his guests downstairs once more and into the study. With the door shut behind him and his eyes bulging he looked from one to the other. “There you go! She did it! Took Jeremiah and sent a message today to say she was sick. Sick, my foot, she is selling the tortoise as we speak! Oh, poor Jerry.”

  Malory looked quite crazed by this news. Clara decided it was best she take things from here.

  “I shall go see Ethel,” she said. “It may be she really does have ‘flu.”

  “And Jeremiah grew wings and flew away!” Stormed Malory. “No, it is her, I know it!”

  Chapter Four

  Clara promised she would visit Ethel Dickinson when she had the chance, she did not think there was an urgent danger of Jeremiah being sold on, (if indeed he had been stolen, which she was uncertain about). The market for pet tortoises was somewhat niche. When Malory protested that Ethel might have absconded from the area with Jeremiah, Clara observed that was unlikely too – where, after all, would she go? This had to be a crime of opportunity. Ethel had never stolen from the family before; at least no one had noticed anything missing. No, she felt sure she could afford to visit Ethel at her leisure and, besides, she had another appointment.

  Malory grumbled, but finally gave in. Clara suggested he continue conducting a conscientious search of the house. There was still a strong likelihood that the tortoise had woken unexpectedly and taken itself for a wander within the property. Perhaps he was nestled beneath a sofa as they spoke. Malory agreed this was a fair point and, having now become aware of Ethel’s limitations as a maid, it did seem that if she was not a thief, she would certainly have been capable of missing a tortoise during her cleaning duties.

  “I’ll help you,” Colonel Brandt offered. “We shall probably need a broom and a dustpan and brush, from the looks of things. I can’t imagine Ethel has swept under the furniture in a while.”

  It was not clear exactly what Ethel
did do during her working hours at the house, but Clara did not add to Malory’s woes by reminding him that he was paying a maid who didn’t appear to clean at all.

  She wished the men goodbye and extracted a promise that at the first sign of a tortoise they would send her a message. Malory brightened at this information, since it implied Clara was confident he would find the tortoise in the house and he was clinging to any hope he could find at that moment in time.

  “I keep having this vision of him climbing into the winter lettuces for a bite to eat and being murdered by the frost,” he said with a hint of emotion to his tone. “June would never forgive me.”

  Colonel Brandt patted him on the back and cast Clara a look that suggested he thought his friend was being a tad over-dramatic. Clara departed and hoped she would soon hear news that Jeremiah had been discovered in the sideboard, or something. Tortoises surely could not just vanish into thin air.

  Her afternoon appointment was of a peculiar nature. Clara was heading to the Brighton morgue, to meet with the police doctor, Dr Deáth, and discover what he had learned about the death of Jao Leong.

  Dr Deáth had been rather busy of late. A cold snap had resulted in several unexpected deaths, and while most were dealt with by family doctors and the local hospital, he had been sent a couple that had fallen under the heading of ‘suspicious’. Because the Chief Constable had lost interest in Jao, he had placed priority on these unexplained deaths, rather than on her. Thus, Dr Deáth had been forced to put Jao in one of the storage compartments of the morgue, promising her cold body he would get to her as soon as he could. He had felt bad about putting her to one side, but even he did not argue with the Chief Constable.

  Clara had given Dr Deáth time to finish his work and he had sent her a message earlier that morning stating that if she could visit him in the late afternoon, he should have some answers for her. Clara was happy to oblige.

  She walked down the steps of the morgue, heading below ground into the white tiled space, the temperature dropping several degrees. Clara wished she had donned another coat or thicker stockings, for she started to shiver almost at once.

  The main room of the morgue was an arched, open space, reminiscent of a grand cellar, but with the ceiling much higher and big lamps hanging from it. The morgue always smelled of carbolic soap, with just the vaguest hint of decomposition in the air. Dr Deáth did all he could to ensure the morgue was pristinely clean, but death had a tendency to leave its mark.

  “Hello Clara,” he called as she arrived. He was removing various cutting tools from a sink where they had been soaking. A sizeable bone saw was in his hand as he waved to her. “I was just going to make a pot of tea. It is positively freezing today.”

  If Deáth had felt stung by the Chief Constable insisting he virtually ignore Jao until the time was more convenient, he did not show it. He seemed as jovial as ever.

  Considering the nature of his work, Dr Deáth never became depressed or morbid. He saw that he had a job to do and he did it with respect and grace. Being miserable would not help him, and no one, not even a corpse, wants to be stuck around a person who is constantly moaning and groaning. He did not find his work unhappy, even though some of those who came through his doors had passed before their time was due. No, he was a friend to the dead, helping them to tell their story. He did not allow sorrow or despair to enter the equation.

  Deáth finished removing the tools from the sink and motioned for Clara to head into his small sitting room; a side-chamber off the main morgue where a stove was always warm, ready to make tea, and cosy chairs sat before it, keeping warm. It was nice to step into this snug space after the freezing conditions of the morgue.

  “My wife has been making Christmas biscuits,” Dr Deáth took a pretty tin from a shelf. It was decorated with a nutcracker soldier and a great deal of holly and ivy. When the lid was popped, it revealed golden brown biscuits. “Help yourself, she has rather gone into over-production with them. Found the recipe in a magazine and has not stopped since. My wife can be a little obsessive about things.”

  Clara found this an amusing statement coming from the doctor whose sitting room was completely swamped by medical curiosities; anatomical models, old surgical tools and bottles, papers and journals on medicine and anatomy dating back at least thirty years and at least three human skulls, as far as Clara could see. The room was packed with this hoard of medical paraphernalia, to the point it would seem impossible to add more to it. Yet somehow Dr Deáth always found room for something more. His obsessive collecting was on a par with his wife’s obsessive over-baking, which probably explained why the two were harmoniously married.

  The Christmas biscuit was very good and when Dr Deáth offered Clara a second one, she saw no reason to refuse.

  “Now, let’s talk about that poor Chinese girl in my corpse drawer,” Dr Deáth said as he set a kettle to boil. “I finally managed to look at her early this morning and there was no real surprise as to the cause of death.”

  “Shot in the head,” Clara stated.

  “Yes,” agreed the doctor. “I took her temperature when I first went to collect the body and as best as I can tell, she would have died within the time frame of the police raid, give or take an hour or so. I can’t be more precise.”

  “Then she could have died before the raid?”

  “That is a possibility,” Dr Deáth nodded. “It is always hard to gauge exactly when someone died. I mean, I can tell you she died that day and roughly five to seven hours before I had the chance to see her. With the room being quite cold, her temperature had dropped rapidly, which makes calculating things a little harder.”

  “What about the blood pool?”

  “That was interesting, still wet and sticky in places. Again, the cold helped that,” Dr Deáth paused for a moment as the kettle whistled and he filled a teapot. “That made me suspect the time of death was closer to five hours before I saw her. Placing it around the time of the raid again.”

  “Would she have died quickly?”

  “Instantly, I would think. The shot had gone straight through the brain.”

  “Did she have any other injuries? Any sign she had struggled with someone before she died?”

  Dr Deáth gave Clara a curious look, wondering what she was getting at.

  “There were no new injuries and the bullet was fired from a distance. When a gun is fired close to someone, the wound has a different appearance to when it is fired from a distance. The shooter would not have been near enough for Jao to have struggled with them and my instinct would be that she never saw them,” Deáth paused. “In terms of old injuries, Jao had a stab wound to her side that was partially healed. Perhaps a few days old.”

  Clara nodded her head.

  “I met Jao in the hospital shortly before she died, and she was clutching her side. She mentioned she had been stabbed.”

  “The knife had not struck anything vital, though it had come extremely close to puncturing the bowel. If the bowel had been nicked, then Jao would have likely developed fatal peritonitis. As it was, the main concern would have been preventing the wound from getting dirty and infected, but also there would have been a risk of blood loss.”

  “But it was healing?”

  “Yes. It had been stitched up, I imagine by the hospital, and was covered by clean bandages.”

  “How would it have affected her?” Clara asked.

  Dr Deáth leaned back in his chair.

  “Wounds like that are painful, naturally, but they also damage the muscles where the knife cuts through them. She would have found it difficult to stand quickly and lift her arm on the injured side. Twisting or bending would have been impossible without risking opening the wound again. There was also extensive bruising around the site of the injury, and she would have had trouble dressing and doing a multitude of everyday tasks we take for granted.”

  Clara paused to consider this. Injured, Jao would have been extremely vulnerable.

  “I don’t think th
ere is much else I can tell you,” Dr Deáth said in an apologetic tone.

  “Did the bullet leave her skull?” Clara asked.

  “No, there was no exit wound,” Deáth replied. “Another indication that it was shot from a distance and had lost some of its force before hitting her.”

  “Have you extracted the bullet?”

  Dr Deáth grinned.

  “No. What are you thinking?”

  “The soldiers were firing rifles,” Clara said. “The police had pistols. I know it is a long shot but, if we could work out what sort of gun the bullet came from, it could help us to determine if Jao was shot by a soldier or policeman, or by one of her own people.”

  “I can get the bullet for you,” Deáth said, his eyes twinkling at this new notion. “But whether it will be of any use I don’t know. Bullets often deform once they hit into something. That being said, I have dug them out in the past virtually whole. I will need to send it to a gun expert to help you with the rest.”

  “Thank you. There is another thing, before you remove the bullet, could you work out the angle it entered the skull from?”

  Dr Deáth was now intrigued.

  “I have already done as much,” he said. “It is part of my routine to determine the angle a weapon was used from. Sometimes it is very critical to know. The bullet entered at an upwards angle.”

  Clara was disappointed, that implied the bullet had been fired through the window from the street below.

  “Wasn’t that helpful?” Deáth asked.

  “It muddies things,” Clara replied, trying not to look too forlorn. “I really need you to get that bullet out so I can discover what gun it came from.”

  “I’ll do it this afternoon,” Deáth promised.

  He poured them both a cup of tea.

  “Does this mean all the gang trouble is over in Brighton?” He asked after a while.

  Clara had nestled the teacup in her hands, enjoying its warmth.

  “I like to hope so, enough arrests were made. I never had the chance to ask Park-Coombs if others were shot in the raid.”