by Evelyn James
“I searched that house thoroughly with Malory,” Tommy protested, he was engaged in clearing up the coal dust he had accidentally knocked out of the fireplace when he was poking it up. He did not want Annie to see the mess he had made.
“Did you search everywhere?”
“Yes,” Tommy said, annoyed, then he frowned. “Well, no. Malory wouldn’t let me help him search several of the rooms upstairs. He was concerned about his and his wife’s privacy.”
“Then it is possible he missed something,” Clara nodded. “He didn’t strike me as a man who would know how to conduct a proper search.”
Tommy shrugged.
“He was a little hit and miss.”
“Supposing he missed Jeremiah, could be easily done if the creature had tucked himself tightly under a chest of drawers or something. Remember when Bramble brought that mouse in and it slipped behind the sideboard and died?”
“I remember the smell,” Tommy pulled a face.
“Yet, though we had the smell to go on, we could not find where it was. But the moment we let Bramble into the dining room he went straight to it.”
“I was in Annie’s bad books for a week after that,” Tommy sighed.
Clara sat back on the sofa and sipped her tea thoughtfully.
“Jeremiah has to be in that house. Mr Cobb was certain he would not have gone outside with it being so cold.”
“And we are sure the cook didn’t take him? I mean, we thought Ethel stole him.”
“The cook seems unlikely to have removed him. She has been with the Malorys a long time and is clearly devoted to them,” Clara answered, fingers lacing around her cup. “She seemed genuinely surprised by news of the tortoise too.”
“It does seem like the only logical option. He woke up, maybe he was too warm in the linen cupboard? Anyway, he woke up, scrabbled out of his box and went on a wander. Then he starts to grow sleepy again and finds somewhere to hide up,” Tommy ran through the theory Clara was proposing. “And now he is hibernating again, happy and safe.”
“I do hope that is the case,” Clara said, her lips pursed in worry. “The other options I can think of all end rather miserably.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe he wandered into the kitchen and ate rat poison and then crawled somewhere to die. That is just one of the troubling notions I have come up with.”
“You really have a dark mind,” Tommy raised an eyebrow at her.
“Because I see all possibilities?”
“You see all the unhappy possibilities.”
“Curse of this job,” Clara remarked coolly.
There was a shout from the kitchen, followed by the scuffling of small paws down the hallway.
“Thomas Fitzgerald, catch your dog!” Annie yelled as Bramble blew past Tommy’s legs with the wind up his tail.
“Bramble!” Clara called to the dog, trying to grab his collar as he raced past. She missed.
“Here boy!” Tommy called, patting his legs.
Brambled had disappeared under a set of nesting tables, squashed as tightly to the back as possible. A pair of dark eyes glinted at them, and his tail wagged.
Annie appeared in the doorway looking flustered.
“He has another mouse in his mouth!” She snapped at Tommy as if this was all his fault.
“What were we just discussing?” Clara said to her brother with an ironic air.
“I hate when we talk things up,” Tommy grumbled, then he got down on his hands and knees and looked under the tables. “Bramble, why don’t you come out?”
“He was fussing around the chicken pen again,” Annie told Clara. “My hens were all tucked indoors with extra straw and feed to keep them warm, but I saw him snuffling and sniffing around the sides. Then there was this squeak as he grabbed something. I should have closed the back door, but I was then emptying the ashes from the oven. He scuttled past me like his tail was on fire and was in the house before I could do anything.”
“Oh dear, Bramble,” Clara said sympathetically to the small dog. His tail wagged even harder. “He is only trying to be useful. You don’t want mice about your chickens.”
“He isn’t a cat,” Annie complained. “And he shouldn’t bring them inside once he is done with them!”
Tommy had his face pressed to the gap beneath the tables and had one arm reaching in.
“There is a good boy, give it up and you can have a biscuit,” he crooned to the dog.
“He certainly cannot!” Annie retorted.
“Good dog, clever dog,” Tommy kept coaxing. “That’s it, I’ll have that.”
Bramble emerged from under the tables, beaming with glee at his adventure. He jumped up on the sofa and pranced towards Clara, looking very pleased with himself. Fortunately, his mouth was now empty.
“Horrid dog,” Annie informed him.
Bramble barked at her and tapped her with a paw until she grudgingly gave in and stroked his head. Tommy had pulled himself out from under the table, finding it more challenging than Bramble had. His shirt had become wedged and there had been a moment when he was truly stuck, but he had wriggled free. He held up a large dead rodent by its tail.
“I think you should thank Bramble, Annie. That wasn’t a mouse he caught, but a rat. If that had found its way into your henhouse, you wouldn’t have any eggs left.”
Annie scowled at the rat dangling from Tommy’s fingers. Having grown up on a farm, Annie was not squeamish about rodents. She gave Bramble a pat on his head.
“Good dog, you best have a biscuit.”
She turned back for the kitchen and Bramble followed her with a spring in his step, their friendship restored.
“I’ll discard this chap in the bin,” Tommy rose stiffly from his knees. His legs had mostly recovered from his war injuries, but he still found certain movements challenging.
Clara had gone very quiet and was staring at the rat intently.
“Clara?”
“Bramble is very good at sniffing out things,” she said. “You said before, what if we could teach him to sniff out tortoises?”
Tommy opened his mouth to say something, then stopped himself.
“I did say that, now I am not so sure. A tortoise is different to a rat. He likes to kill rats for a start.”
“He only has to give us an idea of where the tortoise is, he is not going to pull it out,” Clara countered. “This could be our only chance to find Jeremiah. I am worried about him finding food and water if he is not discovered soon.”
Tommy glanced at the rat in his hand.
“Well, I am game to give it a try, but Bramble is not exactly a bloodhound.”
“He is not a cat, either, as Annie has pointed out, but he found that rat.”
“I wonder if there are more where this fellow came from?” Tommy mused as he walked out of the room with the dead rodent hanging from his fingers.
“I’ll need to ask Mr Cobb to assist me,” Clara muttered to herself, wondering when the petting zoo keeper would arrive for work on a day like today.
She was disturbed by the doorbell ringing. Going to the door, Clara was surprised to see a cold Brilliant Chang huddled on her doorstep.
“What are you doing out in this weather?” She asked him. “I would have thought you would have been snug in your hotel room.”
“Gladly I would be, but something has happened,” Chang blew into his hands. “Are you going to let me in so I can explain without freezing to death?”
Clara stepped back from the door and Chang stomped inside, marching snow into the hallway.
“Annie won’t be pleased,” Clara told him.
Chang ignored her. He was not in the mood for banter. He clapped his hands against his upper arms to try to warm himself up.
“I thought people came to the coast because it was warmer in winter?” He snarled.
“I don’t know where you heard that,” Clara chuckled. “You must have a very good reason for being out today.”
“I do, I hate the cold,” Chang stopped flapping his arms and resigned himself to simply standing still and shivering. “One of my men reported to me this morning that a body had been noticed floating in the canal. Well, not floating exactly. It was causing a stir because the canal had partially iced over and this body was encased in the ice, face up.
“It was a man’s body and, as my men have been listening out for any news of Graham Wood, they went to take a look. They think the body might be him. Difficult to say as the face was bloated and blue, but if it is…”
Chang tailed off and let his words hang in the air.
“If it is, how did he end up in the canal,” Clara finished. “You have not gone to look for yourself?”
“The police have arrived. Someone reported the body,” Chang’s expression said what he thought of this conscientious citizen. “I can’t get near, but you could.”
Clara saw where he was going, and it was a fair point. If this was the body of Graham Wood they needed to know, it would have a significant bearing on their investigation into Leong’s death.
“Is the inspector at the scene?”
“I believe so,” Chang nodded. “Last I heard they were discussing with the coroner how to extract the body from the ice without doing any damage.”
“Then they are probably still there. I’ll need directions.”
“I can do better than that,” Chang had his old grin back on his face. “You don’t think I walked all the way here, do you? My car is parked around the corner.”
Clara wondered about the sanity of driving in thick snow, but she did not fancy a long hike in icy weather if she could help it.
“All right, just let me fetch Tommy.”
~~~*~~~
Half an hour later the car pulled up near a towpath and Chang climbed out.
“You need to follow the path for about two hundred yards and round that bend, then you should see them,” he told Tommy and Clara as they left the car and joined him. “I shall wait here for your return.”
Chang returned to the car. Clara glanced at Tommy and then they carefully negotiated the icy towpath. The still waters of the canal had frozen along each edge, only a narrow strip of free-flowing water remaining in the very centre. Ducks hunkered on the banks, looking morose, and a moody swan, restricted to land by the weather, hissed at Clara as she went past. Everything was very quiet, so that when there was any sound at all, it seemed to reverberate all around them. Both Clara and Tommy stumbled and skidded on the frozen path before they reached the bend and caught sight of several uniformed constables.
The towpath was too narrow for vehicles and they had been left parked on a road that ran alongside the canal and up a steep bank. A stretcher had been carried down the bank for the body to be lifted onto, but at this instant was not needed, for the body had frozen in place several feet from the bank and it was not obvious how it was going to be retrieved.
Dr Deáth was standing on the bank debating about heating water in buckets to pour on the ice and free the corpse. The practicalities of such a plan, not least finding a means of heating the water on the bank, were proving a problem. Meanwhile, a pair of constables had secured a small rowing boat. They just needed the ice to be broken to enable them to get it into the water.
It seemed the whole situation was causing a good deal of consternation.
Inspector Park-Coombs spotted Clara before she spotted him and walked over to her. He was wrapped up in a scarf, woollen hat and thick gloves.
“Have you just happened upon us?” He asked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I would say I was out for a nice stroll, but we both know that would be a lie. I would much rather be at home right now before the fire,” Clara responded.
“Me too,” Park-Coombs puttered.
“We had word about the body,” Clara lowered her voice. “I was told this unfortunate man might be a fellow by the name of Graham Wood.”
“And he is important, because?” Park-Coombs asked.
“I have been told that Graham Wood had a vendetta against Jao Leong and that he was responsible for stabbing her just a few days before her murder. One of Leong’s men has suggested he came back to finish the job on the day of the raid.”
Park-Coombs’ brow furrowed, though it was hard to see his frown beneath the thick hat.
“Why would he take that chance?”
“According to my source, he had no choice. Once he failed to kill Jao the first time, not only was his life in peril, but that of his family. All he could do was finish the job he started.”
Park-Coombs considered this and beneath the scarf there was a ruffle of movement as he twitched his moustache.
“Well, it would be a solution to the mystery, at least,” he said carefully.
Clara sensed that what he really meant was that even if Graham was not the killer, pinning it onto him would at least take the threat of Chang’s vengeance off the police.
“I am gathering more evidence,” Clara told him. “Everything is pointing to Leong being shot by one of her own people. Maybe that was Graham.”
Clara didn’t add that if it was Graham, she was not sure how he had persuaded Freddie to turn his back to him. Freddie had been shot by someone he trusted, but why would he trust Graham? The only other option was that he was working with Graham, which did not explain why he was shot.
No, there were a lot of problems in assuming Graham was the culprit, but it would also make a sort of sense.
“This could take a while,” Park-Coombs nodded to where Dr Deáth was discussing with his assistants how to retrieve the body.
He gave a long sigh, then turned to Clara.
“Tea?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The solution to the retrieval of the frozen body came in stages. Firstly, a brazier was located and borrowed from a local building site. As it happened, the workmen who had shown up for work that morning had found themselves idle, the snow and freezing temperatures making much of their work impossible. They were not, however, going to go home and forfeit a day’s pay. When the police arrived and asked to borrow the brazier the men were using to keep warm, the foreman saw an opportunity to get the workers off his hands for a while. Not only was the brazier borrowed from the building site, but several of the men who were curious enough to help out the police came too. They were looking for something to stave off the boredom and the cold for a while, rather than out of any sense of duty to assist the authorities – but the outcome was the same.
With the brazier set up and the workers stoking it to a fearsome temperature by scavenging wood, rags and paper from along the bank and nearby roads – the inspector turning a blind eye to where much of it was coming from – the next task was to find sufficiently large containers for the water.
These were borrowed from local women, who offered up big cast iron or copper pans, the sort you might boil bones in or use for making up huge batches of broth. One woman dismantled her laundry copper and produced the internal washing pot, which would certainly hold plenty of fluid, but was too cumbersome to be transported in the little rowing boat.
Water was easy enough to come by; there were sufficient amounts of it frozen along the edges of the path. The police and workers used shovels to heap snow into buckets then melted it by the brazier, before pouring the icy sludge into one of the many pans sitting atop the brazier. Soon the snow was transformed into hot water.
Dr Deáth had insisted the water should not be boiling; he feared scalding the corpse as the water was poured around it and potentially destroying important evidence. The water just had to be nicely warm, like hot bath water. It might take a little longer to melt all the ice encasing the body this way, but it would prevent any damage befalling it.
The rowing boat was manned by one constable at the oars. Two others manhandled the big, heavy pots of water into the boat and sat on the middle bench. Dr Deáth sat at the stern, ready to supervise the pouring.
The first task was to melt a ch
annel to the body from the shore. This was done by pouring hot water ahead of the boat’s prow and then slapping the ice with an oar. Dr Deáth had his eyes on the body at all times, in case the channel cutting suddenly dislodged it or caused harm. All went as smoothly as could be expected, and the rowing boat was launched. The oarsman could not use his oars in the usual way, and instead pushed himself across the ice, rather like he was punting the boat. Great care had to be taken once they neared the body. Any knock with the oar could cause it to disintegrate, and make pieces fall off and disappear into the water.
Dr Deáth peered over the edge of the boat, leaning so far that at one point he was perilously close to tipping the craft onto its side and the constables had to sit opposite him to balance out the motion.
Inspector Park-Coombs stood beside Tommy and Clara to watch the proceedings.
“This Graham Wood,” he said. “Tell me about him.”
“I don’t know a lot,” Clara admitted. “Except he joined Leong’s gang and, at some point, decided she needed to be removed. Or so I have been told. I don’t exactly trust my source.”
Park-Coombs nodded his head thoughtfully.
“When was the body discovered?” Tommy asked him.
“Early this morning by a man on his way to work. He found a police constable and pointed out the corpse. When he first saw it, he thought it was a tangle of branches in the water, only as he got closer did he notice a hand lying on the ice and realise it was a person frozen there.”
“That must have been a shock,” Tommy replied. “Do you suppose he has floated down the canal?”
“I don’t speculate on those things,” the inspector pulled at his moustache. “Water currents are fickle. Could be he was dumped here and has only now floated to the surface or could be he was dumped a mile away. From the state of him, and Dr Deáth has agreed on this, he has been in the water a while.”
