“We have Frank Statten in detention and caught red-handed—or red-pawed—with the goods. Because you tipped us off, we are inclined to be lenient.”
She stood up and glared down at me. “Lolita Doll rats out nobody, copper!”
I held up a hand. “Please. Calm yourself. You all but sent engraved invitations. Now, take your seat.”
She slowly sat down on her chair, still glaring at me, then looking down ashamed. “You helped me a lot, Inspector Jaggers. That’s the truth. You and the parrot. Don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t fallen into your hands. That Dr. Ehrenberg helped me, too. But how’d you know I had a partner in that Wallingford job? And how’d you know to come here to catch us?”
“Unintentionally, perhaps, but you told me both times, my dear. The parakeet was certainly too small either to hide or carry much in the way of swag. About all it could do was map out the security systems and get the codes when they were entered. You had to have a partner. Add to that you worked at Songbirds and we already knew Frankie Statten owned the shop, and there you were. Then when I heard a large jewel heist had gone down at Powderham and saw Betsy Blythe had brought a large dog, well, it was obvious that Lolita Doll and Frankie Statten were at it again.”
“Sorry?” She was frowning at me.
“Betsy Blythe,” I repeated. “Blythe from the Blythe doll created in 1972 by the American Kenner toy company and Betsy from the Betsy Wetsy created in 1934 by Ideal.” I held out my hands. “‘It’s me, Doll.’ Perfectly obvious.”
“Remarkable,” she said.
“At times I astound even myself. What were you trying to do, Lolita?”
She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears. “See, all the ladies had these little changing cubicles set up in the room off the First Library where they could change before the reception and dance. Can’t thunder rock wearin’ all that ice. Mr. Collier there had folks they could leave valuables with, but most guests didn’t bother. Frank was right about that. But a signal’s supposed to go off when we returns to the shop. That’s when we was all supposed to get nicked. I suppose this is all right for what it is, but it’s only going to be attempted, isn’t it? I wanted the whole book.”
“I thought you wanted some place safe, Lolita, to be taken care of, to be happy and loved. You’re not going to get that locked up in the nick.”
“Half a loaf,” she offered lamely.
“Is half a loaf short,” I completed.
“It’d be almost worth it to think on Frank being miserable for a tenner.”
“Listen, Lolita. I believe I have the answer to all your problems and mine.” I held out a hand toward the tortoise. “Do you know Clarice Penne?”
She looked at the tortoise and back at me. “Oh, sure. I mean I seen her here in the garden maybe a hundred times tellin’ stories to the children, the tykes pettin’ her shell and all. Every chance I get I come down here. I told Dr. Ehrenberg about it. So beautiful here.”
“How would you like to tell stories to children, Lolita? You’re good with lies and know the very best stories. How would you like Clarice’s job?”
“Now you hold on just a minute there, Sherlock,” said the tortoise. “This is my gig and for as long as I want it. I got a contract.”
I reached over, picked up the tortoise, and whispered at Clarice as I faced her about. “If you pee on me, love, I will put you on your back for the remainder of the meeting and leave you that way.” I aimed her snapping end at Lolita. “Clarice, look at Lolita, hush for a moment and consider: How would you like to have that face, that voice, that age, those legs, and that body as you reinvent yourself and relaunch your theatrical career? You’d still have all your current financial assets, belongings, degrees, whatever.”
The tortoise was dead silent, but I could almost see the smoke coming off the top of its wrinkled head. Finally the tortoise glanced back at me. “Who the hell are you, mate?”
“Forgive me, Miss Penne. I am D.I. Harrington Jaggers, Devon ABCD.”
The tortoise moved its head until it was once again looking at Lolita. Clarice said, “Would you consider it, girl, even for a serious second?”
“Oh yes! In a heartbeat!” she answered. “You have the most wonderful job in the world! Please!”
“Girl, you don’t even know what my body in stasis looks like.”
“I don’t care,” said Lolita. “I don’t want that body. I want the one you’re in now.”
“I have your natural all taken care of,” I said to Clarice. “Are we agreed, then? Lolita?”
“Safe, taken care of, happy, and loved. You remembered everything, Inspector. Is there nothing you can’t do?”
“We’ll see. Clarice?”
“I’d sure like to know how you read me so well, Sherlock.”
“Elementary, Miss Penne. You are the only thorn-thighed tortoise in the United Kingdom on antidepressants.” I held a hand out toward the cruiser. “Shall we? There is only a miniscule window of opportunity.” Ian and Watson both hunched their shoulders, turned their backs, and faced the stairs.
I took Clarice and Lolita over to the cruiser, ran up the mechs, moved a few things out of the way, moved in one woman bio and one tortoise bio, swapped their imprints, and moved out one woman bio and one tortoise bio. Once that was accomplished the two of them went to a far corner below the rose garden wall to talk over some tortoise-girl, girl-tortoise stuff. As they were thus engaged, I sent the cruiser to the next location, the outside entrance to our improvised dungeon, and said to my faithful medical companion, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”
* * *
It was not a bad dungeon for our purposes. The space was below ground level, sufficiently dank, the walls of ancient dressed stone, the atmosphere musty. The room’s past as a storage place for meats was evidenced by the number of rusty meat hooks protruding from two of the four walls. There were no grinning skeletons hanging from irons, but the castle’s spider population had done a grand job of decorating the craggy beams above with filthy old webs. The lights were electric instead of smoky old torches, but the lights were grimy and adequately dim.
In the center of the room was a large wooden butcher’s block table. Its dark uneven surface had seen much use over the centuries. The dips and stains testified to millions of cuts and oceans of blood. I stood at one corner of the table, Ian stood across from me. At the other two corners were two of Ian’s men, Peter Blake and Henry Tompkins. They were both retired constables who did professional wrestling on the local circuit. With the proper makeup they had also appeared in several locally produced horror vids. They were wearing the proper makeup.
In the center of the table sat about the sweetest, most good-natured, lovable dog I had ever seen. He was about seven stone, his fur light brown, curly, and uncut, giving him both a ragged and fluffy appearance. Delightful face, with a few of those curls hanging before his eyes. The dog’s name, according to his license tag, was “Doodles.” His brace, peculiar to seeing-eye dogs, had been removed and was on the floor in the corner behind Ian. To all appearances he was a real dog, which meant his bio receiver was being shielded by a Bio Shack special. Doodles, poor fellow, appeared just a bit nervous.
“Gentlemen,” I began, “While we’re waiting for Dr. Watson to finish cleaning up from working on the two cats, please be so kind as to note the breed of this animal. This is a cross between a Labrador retriever and a poodle known to dog fanciers as a Labradoodle.” I reached out and petted its head. “Good boy. Labradoodles are generally good natured, take complicated training extremely well, and are very remarkable in that they do not shed.”
“Not at all, Mr. Holmes?” growled Peter Blake.
“Your allergic sensitivities are safe with this pooch, Mr. Blake. Now, as I remarked, they are easily trained and well behaved, which is why this animal’s behavior quite puzzles me. There is only one reason I can think of why such a valuable animal should eat all that jewelry that was left in the changing room.”
>
“How can you be certain he done it?” asked Henry Tompkins.
“Elementary, Mr. Tompkins. Staff security have searched everywhere else, have they not?”
“Aye, we have.” The big man nodded his massive black-hooded head.
“And Dr. Watson has examined all of the other pets as possible hiding places, hasn’t he?”
Ian, Blake, and Tompkins hung their heads. “Aye,” said Tompkins. “He did that.” I rather hoped they weren’t overdoing it. I glanced down at the butcher block and there was just the right amount of tomato juice smeared about. The Labradoodle was looking down at the butcher block, as well. His tongue was out and he was panting.
“There you are, Mr. Tompkins,” I said. “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’“ I looked into the dog’s wide-eyed gaze and said, “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” A rattle followed by a low muttered curse came from the shadows beyond the arched doorway. From beyond it Watson emerged wearing the butchers apron stained from the waist down with tomato juice. He wasn’t wearing his tweed jacket and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled above his elbows. His hands were stained slightly with red, but the butcher knife in his right hand was coated with the stuff.
“Told you the jewels wouldn’t be in those cats, Holmes,” he muttered through hurt feelings.
“We had to look, old fellow.”
“Neither of them pulled through, you know. Wouldn’t’ve hurt anything to let me hop into the village and pick up some anesthetic from the chemist’s.”
“We were pressed for time, old fellow. Sorry to put you through that.”
He looked over the tops of his glasses at the assembly. “The owners of those cats are going to be quite distressed and it’s no fault of mine. I objected to all those procedures from the start. I want that on the record.” He snorted contemptuously at the butcher knife in his hand, which he began waving about. “Not even a proper scalpel. This thing’s dull as an old rake. Do a better job with a chain saw.”
“Couldn’t be helped, old fellow.” I reached out a hand and scratched the dog’s head. “Here’s the last one.”
The Labradoodle’s panting resembled a steam locomotive attempting to climb the South Face of Everest.
Watson’s eyebrows went up. “At least this one is big enough to hold the jewelry, Holmes.” He passed his thumb slowly over the knife’s edge. “Strange looking beast, there. What kind of breed is that?”
I held out a hand to Peter Blake. “You may have the honor, Mr. Blake.”
“Yes sir.” He looked at Watson. “This here, doctor, is a Labradoodle.”
“Labradoodle, you say? Well, there, stretch him out on the block boys and let’s see if we can’t separate his Labra from his doodles.”
“All right! All right! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” yelled the dog. “All bloody right!”
We watched as the dog sat back on its hind legs, pulled its forelegs to its sides, and a line appeared in the dog’s fine belly hair. The line parted starting at the top, and essentially unsealed spilling all of the missing jewelry into Peter Blake’s quick hands. Watson moved to my side.
“Congratulations, Holmes. You nailed Frank Statten.”
“Ah me,” I said as I shrugged. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you once again, old friend.”
He frowned, then one eyebrow slowly elevated. “I don’t believe it, Holmes. Not another catch and release.”
“With a condition.” I looked and saw I had everyone’s attention, including the Labradoodle’s. “Jewelry heist at Powderham Castle, right in the middle of a reception, famous guests, among them Lord and Lady Devon and the chief constable of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. The scandal would never do.” I looked at the dog. “Would it?”
He looked around, shifty-eyed. “No. No, the media would have a feast.”
“So it seems to me the best thing is to return the jewelry to its rightful owners, no theft, no scandal, no harm done.”
“That sounds cool.” The dog held up its right paw, extended a toe and wagged it back and forth. “But, call me Mr. Suspicious, I see a big fat fishhook with my name on it.”
“Whatever do you mean, sir?”
“In return for this generous offer, Mr. Holmes is it?”
“Yes.”
“In return, what’s Frankie Statten’s bill?”
“Why, I’m so glad you asked that question, Mr. Statten. We keep the jewelry, return it to its owners, and return you to your natural body in Exeter no harm done—”
“—And?”
“And that’s it. We keep your equipment, of course.”
“Equipment?”
“The bios.”
“All … Lolita. She ratted me out.”
“It’s only because of her you’re getting this deal, Frank,” I said. “We’ve detained her and she will be spending the rest of her life behind walls.” I pointed at the velvet-lined interior of his belly cavity. “We knew it was you all along because your gut was the last place there was to look. What about the deal?”
“You just let me go?”
“Once we get you back to Queen Street and Songbirds. Is that where you keep your natural?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need to be counseled on how much time you could draw doing things your way?”
“There has to be a catch.” The dog looked down and shook his head.
“Must be disappointing for you, too, Holmes,” said Watson to me, as Statten pondered the deal.
“Why do you say that, Watson? I would call this a most satisfactory conclusion to this matter.”
“Here you have a dog and you never got to say anything about the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”
“Nighttime? There was no nighttime.”
“Wasn’t that what was curious?”
“Wasn’t what—I don’t quite see what you are driving at, Watson. I thought the curious incident was that the dog wasn’t barking.”
“Well, this dog wasn’t barking. Didn’t you find that curious?”
“Not in the least.”
He leaned back. “Not even a smidgen?”
“Dear fellow, this Labradoodle is an amdroid imprinted by a human impersonating a very well-trained, well-behaved seeing-eye dog. Why would he bark?”
“Well, I thought it curious.”
“Really.”
“Game’s afoot and all that—”
“I agree to the deal,” interrupted Frankie Statten. “Just so I don’t have to listen to any more of this rubbish!”
“Thank you.” I turned to Watson and smiled. “Well done, old fellow. Well done. So, while you clean up and Mr. Blake and Mr. Tompkins discreetly return the jewelry to their respective owners, Mr. Collier, Mr. Statten, and I shall repair to the cruiser and sort out a few final details.” I held out my hand toward the stairs. “Gentlemen.”
As I followed Collier and the dog up the dungeon stairs, I heard the Labradoodle ask him confidentially, “This Holmes and Watson thing those two got going. An act, right? An act?”
“I don’t know,” answered Mr. Collier. “I simply don’t know.”
* * *
The cruiser rose from Powderham Castle in an arc that took us over the River Exe, giving us a good view of Lympstone’s Bay Tower red in the afternoon sun. I could see Mama Bimbo’s Cat House on The Strand being fitted out for some other kind of shop. A flight of gulls crossed below us and made wing for chips or fingerlings, whichever were more plentiful as the tide changed. Watson put us on autopilot and settled back in his couch.
“Holmes, what about Frank Statten and Songbirds?” He pointed toward the mech chip in the envelope on the dash clip. “Are you simply going to let him go without even a day in court?”
“I am going to take this chip to his stasis bed at Songbirds, update his natural, and leave, inquiry closed.”
“Memories of every crime and crooked deal Statten ever pulled, everything h
e has in the works right now, is in his memory recall bank. I cannot believe you won’t at least make a copy of that chip for the constabulary.”
“I won’t do it for two reasons, Watson. First, I gave him my word. Second, I don’t think Statten will believe either that I won’t copy his memory. Unless I’m terribly mistaken, every iron he has in the fire will be yanked out within hours of getting his engrams back into his nat. The deals he has going with any number of undesirable personages will be cancelled, and they will be after him to know why. Think he’ll stick around to try and explain how he had to make a deal with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson?”
Watson chuckled. “Not much to show on our records, though.”
“Small price to pay for ending a one-man crime wave and doing a good cop a favor, don’t you think? It should make absolute excrement of Frankie’s criminal life and reputation, which will settle his account with Loretta nicely.”
“I suppose.” We rode along silently for a while, then Watson said, “Holmes, what is going to happen to Clarice Penne’s body—the one in stasis? Sooner or later the owner of the stasis bed is going to have to put the body up for payments due, correct?”
“I’m surprised at you, Watson,” I said. “Surely you recall our visit to that fair seaside cultural center you insisted on pronouncing Limp-stone.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Of course I remember.”
“Do you also remember the woman who constituted one hundred percent of the clientele of Mama Bimbo’s Cat House?”
He chuckled at that. “Yes. Petting Place. Absurd name. Maddie girl, she was. Madeleine Wallingford. She brought in the hapless jewel thief now inhabiting Timmy the Tortoise over at Powderham Castle. Our first catch and release. What of her?”
“Remember the card Madeleine Wallingford had us place in the shop window? The one for the meeting of the Order of St. Trinians?”
“Vaguely. Theater group, wasn’t it?”
“I’m shocked, Watson. Absolutely shaken to my very nucleus. An old movie buff such as yourself? You yourself remarked how Clarice Penne’s natural body resembled actor Alistair Sim, he who in his heyday played the headmistress of St. Trinians girls’ school in The Belles of St. Trinians to such perfection—”
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