“Oh, you are most welcome. Must you leave so soon?”
“There are some roots I want to look at,” said Siger. “The black oak that I was telling you about.”
“I hope you will be back in time to join us at the theater.”
“We will do our very best,” said Siger.
“It would be a shame to miss it. Everyone in town is going. Absolutely everyone will be there, and—oh my—dear, are you all right? Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no,” said Lois. “I’m fine, really. We will certainly join you at the theater if we can. I do so love that play.”
They made their way to the door.
“Well. We’re very glad to have run into you,” Roy said, “and we’ll be thrilled if you decide to take the other room upstairs.”
“Yes. It’s so important to have a good backup ready, just in case,” said Nancy.
“The room, we mean, of course,” said Roy, “in case you don’t find another.”
“Yes,” said Nancy. “That’s exactly what I meant.”
Siger and Lois went to the car, Siger opened the door on the driver’s side, and he was about to get in himself.
“What are you doing?” asked Lois.
“You are in no condition to drive,” he said.
“You said you haven’t driven in twenty years!”
“I haven’t.”
“Then go back to your own side. I’m still driving,” said Lois. With an effort, she stopped sniffling.
“As you wish,” said Siger.
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the coroner,” said Siger.
Siger got in the passenger side, and Lois sat down behind the wheel. She sniffled once more, blew her nose, took a breath, and then floored the accelerator, peeling out onto the road.
They were about to pass by the theater on their way out of town.
“Slow down,” said Siger.
“I’m fine, and I’m driving,” said Lois.
“I mean that I want to look at something,” said Siger.
“What?”
“Just a bit slower, please. No need to stop.”
She slowed. Siger rolled his window down and stared out at the theater entrance as they passed by.
“What?” said Lois again.
Siger shook his head dismissively.
“Nothing important,” he said. “Their playbill shows a casting change, is all. Let’s go talk to the coroner. And you may drive as fast as you like.”
22
Lois took the winding curves at a speed that gave Siger white knuckles from gripping the armrest, but even so, it was late afternoon when they reached Amesbury.
If there was anything more to know, Lois wanted to know it now, and not struggle through the night with doubts. She was relieved to see that there were still other vehicles in the small car park as they pulled up.
They entered the coroner’s reception area. Again it was empty, and no receptionist, but the door to the inner office was open, and Lois knocked on it.
The coroner was at his desk. He looked up, saw who it was, and waved them both in.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I know this is not the news you were hoping for. We still have not found physiological evidence of the passenger in the plane. But we have identified the pilot.”
On his desk he had a large white envelope with the official markings of Her Majesty’s Judiciary Branch; from it he pushed several high-gloss photographs of someone’s teeth and jawbones.
Lois began to feel sick at the pit of her stomach. She looked away.
Now he took a yellow clasp envelope out of a drawer, opened it, and slid four narrow sheets of celluloid out onto his desk. They were dark around the edges, shiny gray a bit farther in, and white where the images of the teeth appeared. He tapped them lightly—almost patting them—as if it might make Lois feel better.
“These are very old,” said Siger almost immediately, leaning in for a better look.
“Yes,” said the coroner.
“Why?” asked Siger. “Has it been decades since Ms. Rankin has been to the dentist?”
“No, of course not,” said the coroner, and now he looked at Lois. “But I knew you wanted an answer as soon as possible, and all of the students who attended the boarding school were treated by the only dentist who was in town at that time. His practice still exists here, and we were fortunate to find that all of the students’ dental records—including those of Ms. Rankin—are still in the archived files. So rather than require you to wait until her dentist in London can be found, I thought you would prefer to see what we have immediately.”
Lois hesitated.
“Does that even work?” she began. “I mean, what about baby teeth, and crowns, and—”
“All of an adult’s permanent teeth are in well before the age of fourteen, which is the age Ms. Rankin was when she had her last exam by the local dentist,” said the coroner. “And although fillings and other dental work can continue, of course, throughout one’s life, there were more than enough positive matches here to make an identification—biting surfaces, the shape and angle of the roots, all a perfect match.”
Lois was silent, and tensely trying to hold it together.
Siger stopped staring at the old X-ray sheet and looked up.
“I suppose that back in the day,” he said, “the local dentist may have had as many clients at the school as in the town itself.”
“Quite so,” said the coroner. “He found it necessary to keep offices in both locations. He treated both faculty and students at the school, and they accounted for more than half his practice.”
The coroner struggled desperately for something more to say.
“The records show that Ms. Rankin always had truly excellent teeth, by the way, if that’s … any … consolation. I mean, knowing that she never had a bad time at the dentist is something.…”
“What?” said Lois.
“I’m sorry; that was just a ridiculous thing for me to say,” said the coroner.
“No, no,” said Lois, “I mean, I wasn’t paying attention, really. Just … thinking. What to do next. What to … say to her aunt. What to—”
Lois turned suddenly to Siger.
“What about the perfume thing?” she began. “Do we need to ask—”
Siger shook his head emphatically.
“What perfume thing?” asked the coroner.
“Oh,” said Lois, “we just … uh—”
“We will report back to Ms. Rankin’s aunt,” said Siger quickly, “and then she will be in touch. Thank you once again for your time.”
Siger stood, clearly now in a hurry to leave, and Lois took the hint. The coroner got up from his desk as they proceeded from his office into the lobby.
“If there is anything else I can do…”
“Thank you so very much,” said Lois.
Lois and Siger went out to the car. Lois got behind the wheel again—wordlessly—and she to began to take the turn toward the main road.
“Wait!” said Siger suddenly. “Stop the car.”
“Aren’t we going back to Aunt Mabel’s?”
“Not yet.”
Lois pulled to the curb.
“Do you have a hard copy of the wedding photo? The one I saw on your computer at Baker Street?
“I … well, yes,” said Lois.
“Get it out, please,” said Siger.
Lois went to the boot of the car, opened the one bag she had packed, and brought out the desk photo of the wedding couple.
When she got back to the front seat with it, she saw that Siger had taken a jeweler’s magnifying glass out of his coat pocket.
Under other circumstances, she might have regarded that as pretentious. Right now, she was too distressed to think of that.
“Thank God for Ms. Rankin’s toothy smile,” said Siger as he took the photo.
He held the magnifier up close against the photo for a long moment, adjusting it very slightly.
; Then he sighed and put both items down.
“Inconclusive,” he said. “Now we’ll have to go to the dentist’s.”
“Why?” asked Lois. “We just saw the X-rays, didn’t we?”
“It will only take a moment,” said Siger.
They drove toward the center of town and found the dental office at the end of a row of converted eighteenth-century town houses.
“It’s closed,” said Lois as they drove up.
“No matter,” said Siger.
He got out of the car and went first to the front door and then, very quickly, around to the side. There he spent a few seconds more, bending over to look closely at the door lock.
Then he came back.
He was almost smiling. Lois could see that he was quite energized about something.
“What?”
“It’s good news,” said Siger. “Not conclusive, and you mustn’t get your hopes up.”
“What?” repeated Lois.
“Their lock has been picked, and recently,” said Siger. “They have been burglarized—and my guess is they don’t even know it.”
Lois considered that.
“What do we do now? Go to the police?”
“What? Oh, my dear woman, no. Not until we have finished our chores. We have talked to the doctor. We have been to the dentist’s. Now we must go to the school.”
23
They stayed on the main road, bypassing Bodfyn, and made their way as quickly as possible to the school.
Even so, it was near dusk when they arrived.
As Lois pulled to a stop in the empty car park, her strongly ingrained sense of the proprieties reasserted itself.
“Don’t forget, we promised that couple we would meet them at the theater,” she said as Siger jumped out of the car.
Siger looked back with a quizzical expression, then nodded dismissively and began walking quickly around the south end of the school.
“Wait,” called Lois. “Wait for me.”
He slowed his pace only slightly, and she ran to catch up.
“Why not try the front entrance first?” she said. “Are you afraid it will be more heavily secured?”
“No,” said Siger. “Or, rather, yes, it will be, but I’m hardly afraid of that; an estate agent’s lock is not much of a deterrent. But we are in a hurry. The medical annex of a boarding school—and so, of course, the medical and dental records cabinets, as well—is typically located between the main entrance, where prospective students are received and then sent for proper examination, and the gymnasium, where injuries are most likely to occur, and it’s typically at the end of one of the buildings, for easier access from the dormitories, as well, which means that—ah, yes, here we are.”
They had tromped around to the south end of the main building. To their left was the gymnasium—they knew this because it had a sign indicating that here was the entrance to the girls’ locker room, the boys’ being, presumably, at the other side of the building.
To their right was a side door to the main building; it was not labeled, but Siger seemed sure of the location as he manipulated a thin metal tool in the lock.
“A bit of rust,” said Siger, by way of an apology for the delay, and then the lock fell open.
He grabbed the door handle and pulled.
Nothing happened.
Lois stepped up and gave the low outer corner of the door a good swift kick.
Siger pulled again, and now the door opened with a high-pitched moan.
“A bit of rust there, too,” said Lois.
Siger was about to step inside.
“Wait,” said Lois. “Are you sure there is no one else around?”
“Who would be here?”
“It’s for sale. Prospective buyers?”
“Not likely at this hour. Ours is the only vehicle here, and we’re not within walking distance of anything.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
“I thought I heard something.”
Siger turned away from the doorway and faced Lois.
“Heard what?”
“I’m not sure. It sounded rather like … some sort of pounding.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Siger, glancing back at the entrance. “But, of course, I’ve spent the past five years in a subway tunnel.”
“You were on the other side of the door,” said Lois. “I don’t think it came from that building.”
“From where, then?”
Lois pointed at the gymnasium building.
“That one.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“Do you hear it now?”
“I don’t know,” said Lois. She raised her hand. “Be quiet a minute, and let’s see.”
They both said nothing and listened as hard as they could for several seconds.
“Well?” said Siger.
Lois shook her head.
“I don’t hear anything now. Do you?”
“No,” said Siger. “Are you sure you actually heard anything at all?”
“How should I know?” said Lois. “I’m not sure of anything. My best friends are dead. I haven’t slept for an hour straight in the past two days. I’m cold and tired and hungry and everything wrong is my fault. How the bloody hell do I know if I’m hearing things or not?”
“Now, Lois,” began Siger, and then he stopped, because he really wasn’t used to this sort of thing. “There, there,” he said, and he realized he should have been patting her back or something as he said it, but she was several feet away, and it seemed like a difficult thing to do, somehow, under the circumstances.
“Now, Lois,” he said, trying again, “you … we … you mustn’t give up hope.”
“Why the bloody hell not?”
“Because there is always hope. Or, to put a finer point on it, there almost always is, and since we can never be completely certain when there is and when there isn’t, it is always necessary to think and feel and behave as though there is. If you follow me.”
Lois had started sniffling again. Siger began to realize that this was usually a good sign—the sniffling seemed to follow the worst of the emotional crisis more often than to precede it.
“Oh, all right,” said Lois. “Let’s just get on with it, then. Here. It looks like we’ll need my torch.”
Lois produced a small LED flashlight from her purse. Siger, already standing in the dark entryway, accepted it and went in first.
They were in a long corridor; it was too dark to know any more than that. Siger used the flashlight to find a wall switch, and he flipped it, but no light came on.
“I don’t see how they can expect to sell the place with the electricity off,” said Lois.
“Perhaps it’s the bulbs, or perhaps off at the main switch,” said Siger. “But I don’t think we will have to go far.”
Siger shone the light first on the floor ahead of them to see where they would be putting their feet, and then on the walls, searching for a doorway and a nameplate.
Within a few feet of the entrance, they found a narrow door that opened on just a janitor’s closet—and the view and scent of an old and moldy mop.
They moved on for several more feet to another closed door, a full-size one this time, on the opposite side of the corridor. Siger brushed dust away from a nameplate near the door.
“We’ve found it,” he said.
He turned the door handle easily enough, and then had to give the door a push. It opened with a shudder.
They surveyed the room with the flashlight.
It was the patient lobby for the infirmary.
The chill air and the limited scope of the flashlight made it feel eerie, but beneath the accumulated dust, Lois could see orange and blue plastic chairs, a linoleum tile in a pattern that at one time would have been regarded as friendly and calming, and a bulletin board that still had helpful cartoon-character tips about personal hygiene tacked to it.
There were end tables next
to several chairs, and unlike the waiting room at the coroner’s office, this waiting room had reading material.
A Boys’ Life magazine. A very tame teen glamour mag. Someone’s homework with a cheery “Well Done!” marked in violet felt pen. A yearbook.
Lois was curious, for no particular reason that she was aware of, and she would have looked closer at some of this, but now Siger aimed the light on a short hallway that extended from the waiting room to the interior offices.
The first two, as expected, turned out to be medical exam offices, and then a medical storage closet, and then, finally, the dental office.
Siger went first. The door opened easily, he aimed the flashlight at the center of the room—and then he screamed.
Not a loud scream, not sustained, and not high-pitched by any means, more like just a guttural gasp, if you had asked his opinion, but it was a scream nonetheless.
He dropped the flashlight, and the entire corridor went dark. Lois bumped into Siger as she moved forward to help.
What?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” said Siger. “I apologize, and if we had time for me to be embarrassed, I would be. I’ll just admit it: I can abide the sight of almost anything in medicine, but not the sight or sound of the dentist’s drill.”
“Oh,” said Lois. “Goodness. It only hurts a little. I took you to be someone a little more stoic than that.”
“Oh, it’s not the physical pain. It’s the bad memories.”
“You should have had them knock you out, then. That’s what I do, almost as soon as I get in the chair.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. I wasn’t in the chair. I was the one with the drill. I tried dental school for a bit after I was booted from my medical internship. I went overseas to the States. They had a program where they train you on low-income dental patients, and—”
“Oww, oww, oww,” said Lois.
“Yes,” said Siger. “I heard that a lot. As I said, bad memories. I couldn’t take it, had to drop out.”
“Uh-huh,” said Lois. “Well, can you abide going in now—assuming you didn’t break our only light?”
Siger nodded, then cleared his throat and said yes, remembering that she could not see him in the dark.
A Baker Street Wedding Page 15