The Trouble With Tortoises

by Evelyn James

  “He does have a keen nose,” Mr Cobb said approvingly. “Poodles were originally bred to be gundogs, you know. At least, the larger variety of poodle. They were water retrievers, hence the dense coat for protection from the cold.”

  He stepped to one of the pens and picked up a tortoise.

  “Let us try a simple experiment,” he said. “Let Bramble sniff Melanie, here, and then throw him the ball.”

  Clara did as instructed. Bramble enthusiastically raced after the ball. Once Clara had retrieved him and his ball, Mr Cobb suggested they place Melanie under a flowerpot and if Bramble went up and sniffed at her, he could have his ball again.

  They worked on this game for a while. Any time Bramble sniffed out the tortoise, he was thrown the ball. It was not a challenging task for the poodle, as he knew where the creature was hidden, so soon he would race to the flowerpot the moment Clara had the ball, scratch at the base and then look up eagerly for his prize.

  “Good, good,” Mr Cobb said, pleased with their progress. “Now let’s really challenge him. You go outside and I shall put out three flowerpots with Melanie under one of them. Let’s see if he can find her.”

  Clara took Bramble outside and blew on her hands. She stroked the little dog and he curled around her arm happily, helping her to rub him all over.

  “Such a clever dog,” she cooed at him and Bramble appreciated every word.

  “Come back in, Miss Fitzgerald!”

  Clara took Bramble back into the shed. As promised, there were now three flowerpots on the floor.

  “She is under the one nearest the wall,” Mr Cobb said. “Let Bramble go and see what he does.”

  Clara relieved Bramble of his lead and told him to ‘go search’. The dog pranced across the floor and then studied the three flowerpots. The game had just gotten harder and he looked uncertain, then he put his nose to the floor and started to sniff. He passed the first flowerpot, then the second, when he came to the third, beneath which Melanie hid, he started to wag his tail, then he scrabbled at the edge, just like he did when trying to catch a mouse.

  “Good boy!” Clara cried out and threw the ball.

  Bramble leapt into the air and grabbed it, then paraded it around the shed in delight.

  “I think your dog knows how to sniff out tortoises,” Mr Cobb grinned. “The real test, however, will be when inside a house that has many rooms. That will be far tougher than this simple arrangement.”

  As he spoke, he retrieved Melanie and offered her a large chunk of cucumber in compensation for being a stooge in their experiment.

  “How shall he know he is looking for a tortoise in the house?” Clara asked, a pinch of uncertainty knotting her stomach.

  “I could bring over one of mine, to give him the scent,” Mr Cobb suggested. “Once he knows that is what he is looking for, hopefully he shall be away.”

  “That would be perfect, Mr Cobb, I truly cannot thank you enough for all this help.”

  “Nonsense!” Mr Cobb grinned. “I have had an entertaining afternoon, and this can form another chapter of the book I am writing. It is called The Educated Animal: The Hidden Intelligence of Creatures Large and Small. I hope to make people more aware of how sophisticated the mind of any animal truly is. I want to prove that animals not only think but can solve complex problems and feel emotions. I hope this will revolutionise the way we look after the creatures in our lives, from farm animals to pets, and even how we perceive those animals we label as vermin.”

  Mr Cobb’s eyes glittered with emotion. He was passionate about animals and their welfare. Clara felt a new warmth towards the man.

  “Then, I am delighted to have contributed to your book, Mr Cobb,” she said. “I shall contact my friend and arrange our tortoise hunt.”

  Mr Cobb clapped his hands together eagerly.

  “I shall look forward to it.”

  Clara took her leave of the helpful zookeeper, who still had a considerable amount of work to do before he was done for the day. Clara offered to help, as she had imposed heavily on his time, but he insisted she go home and get warm.

  “I am at my happiest when I am tending to my animals,” he assured her. “And it does not matter how long it takes me, as I have a little camp bed in my office. I don’t go home during these cold nights, just in case one of the animals needs me. I am quite content here.”

  Clara could see that that was perfectly true. She waved goodbye to Mr Cobb and thought it nice that he had something he could be so passionate about and which gave him such purpose and pleasure. While being a detective gave Clara purpose, and she was certainly passionate about her work, she could not always call it a pleasure.

  She strolled back past the duck pond, Bramble almost too tired by his busy afternoon to bark at the birds, but he rallied himself at the last moment.

  “You are a very good dog, Bramble,” Clara informed him warmly.

  He tilted his head up towards her and she was sure he understood every word.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Clara went home and arranged to visit the Malorys the following afternoon. She hoped she would be able to get to their home with so much snow lying about. Edgar was in a desperate state – there was no sign of Jeremiah and he had nearly convinced himself that the poor fellow had perished with his resting place undiscovered. The knowledge that Ethel had not stolen the tortoise, and was now deceased herself, had been the final straw to his despair. He was beside himself with guilt at having considered the girl a thief (Clara had not mentioned the purloined fountain pen) and kept talking about making amends. This seemed to consist of him sending money to Mrs Dickinson, with his sincerest condolences.

  That left the mystery of Jeremiah and when Clara explained that he must be somewhere in the house, Mr Malory simply gave a hollow laugh.

  “I have looked everywhere,” he insisted. “The tortoise is not here!”

  However, he did agree to Clara’s experiment with Bramble. Not without hesitation, mind, and with a rebuke at Clara for considering his searching skills inadequate.

  “I have been top to bottom in this house looking for him. Even examined the attic, and heaven only knows how he might have got up there, but I looked anyway. You shan’t find him here, but if it satisfies you…”

  Such were his parting words.

  Clara took his churlishness with good grace; she appreciated he was in a good deal of distress over the affair and was not amused at having his ability to search his own house thoroughly questioned. Then again, if Bramble did discover the tortoise safely in the house, Clara would not be able to help feeling a glow of self-satisfaction. She would never say to a client, ‘told you so’, that would be unprofessional, but she could think it.

  The evening was now drawing on and Clara seemed to have ice in her bones. No matter how hard she tried, she could not shake the cold which had invaded her on the canal bank earlier in the day. She decided what she needed was a quiet few hours before the fire, toasting her feet and reading a book that had nothing to do with tortoises or criminal gangs. She had just settled with a copy of A. A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, when the telephone rang.

  The telephone tended to be Clara’s prerogative. Annie did not much like the contraption, she said it worried her how you could not see the face of the person speaking and how their voice was just suddenly in your ear. She avoided answering it, and Tommy always seemed to assume someone else would reach it before him, if he just ignored it long enough. Besides, it always was someone wanting to speak to Clara, never him.

  Thus, Clara gave a small groan, wrenched herself from her chair and wandered into the hallway. She picked up the earpiece of the old candlestick telephone and announced herself.

  “Clara Fitzgerald speaking.”

  “Hello Clara,” it was the inspector, she knew his voice instantly. “I thought you would like to hear about the report on the man we dragged from the canal today?”

  “Dr Deáth has finished it already?” Clara said, thinking that the co
roner had worked fast.

  “I asked him to work on this one before anything else,” the inspector answered, and Clara could envision him pulling a face as he spoke. “He wasn’t entirely happy. Been a bit busy at the morgue with so many cases of sudden deaths due to the weather. Anyway, once I explained, he understood.”

  “Has he identified the man?” Clara asked, thinking that was a priority.

  “In that we had some luck,” the inspector confirmed. “The gentleman had a number of identifying marks that we were able to compare to the criminal record of Mr Graham Wood.”

  Clara heard the ruffling of paper at the other end of the line.

  “Let me see, Mr Graham Wood had been through a number of London police stations in his time, and each had recorded not only his crimes, but his particulars to help with future identification. He was aged thirty-six and Dr Deáth began by ascertaining that the corpse on his hands was between the ages of thirty and forty.”

  “I hope you have something a little more concrete than that to prove it was Mr Wood in that canal,” Clara said drily.

  “Wait for it, Clara,” the inspector scolded her lightly. “I want you to see how thorough we have been. Mr Wood was five foot six in stature, and the corpse conformed to that height. He had dark brown hair, brown eyes and when last arrested had all his fingers and toes present. So much for the basics, which I might add agree with our corpse. Now to the specifics.

  “Mr Wood had the following identifying features: One, a broken front tooth, described by one police constable in his file as having sheered in half diagonally. Two, a scar cutting across the top lip of about an inch, possibly acquired at the same time as the tooth was broken. Three, a faded tattoo on his left wrist that appeared to be a badly executed anchor. Mr Wood had spent time as a merchant seaman, you see. Four, one toe of the right foot had been broken and healed badly, causing it to curl up. Five, during one of his many prison sentences, Mr Wood got into a fight with another prisoner and took a blow to the head which damaged his left eye and over time it had started to grow cloudy in appearance.

  “Six, another fight had left him with a broken leg that healed a good inch shorter than the other and left him with a permanent limp. Seven, he was once stabbed in the shoulder and had an obvious scar from the injury.”

  “No mention of a missing fingertip,” Clara noted when the inspector finished.

  “That must have happened in the last few years. Wood has not been in police hands since 1917,” Park-Coombs explained. “Anyway, there were enough unique identifying features for Dr Deáth to make a positive match between the man on his slab and Graham Wood as described in the police files.”

  “The corpse had all seven of those marks?” Clara was careful to confirm.

  “He did. The scar on the lip was difficult to see because of the bloating to the body, but Dr Deáth informs me it is there. And the damage to the eye was just visible beyond the decomposition. He is certain, as am I, that this man is Graham Wood.”

  Clara paused to contemplate the implications of this news.

  “How did he die?” She asked. “Was it the stab wound, or did he drown?”

  “Dr Deáth found no fluid in the lungs. He was dead before he hit the water,” the inspector explained. “He had been stabbed by a long blade, the wound was deep, and the knife had sliced through his intestines and pierced the stomach. Even if he had survived the initial blood loss, his chances of recovering were pretty slim. In fact, I should say he was a goner the moment that blade went into his belly.”

  “On that I shall agree,” Clara said. “I take it from what you have said, Dr Deáth believes he bled to death?”

  “Yes. The body was almost empty of blood, some of that would have leeched out in the canal, but Dr Deáth is confident Wood died of…” Inspector Park-Coombs hesitated as he read from his report. “Exsanguination. That means severe blood loss.”

  “I know what it means,” Clara assured him. “I was a nurse. Sadly, I saw such cases more than once.”

  “Anyway, looks like the body was then taken to the canal. Wood’s pockets were empty, might be his assailants were trying to make it harder to identify him. There were marks around his wrists and ankles, which Dr Deáth says could have been from rope. They might have tied stones or bricks to his arms and legs to try to weigh him down. Either the rope was rotten, or the knots bad and the body worked loose. Luckily for us.”

  Lucky indeed, Clara mused. Had Wood remained at the bottom of the canal in his tethers until his body had decomposed enough to break free, then they might never have identified him. Bones might have been found washed against the bank. If they were fortunate, they might have found his skull, but aside from his broken tooth, all his facial markings were surface scars. They would probably have never found his toe or leg bones. They would have ended up assuming that Wood had slipped away from Brighton, after murdering Jao Leong.

  In some ways, that would have resolved the case, though not to Chang’s satisfaction and Clara was not the sort of detective who could live with finding any culprit who fit the bill to solve a case. She needed to know for sure that she had the right man.

  “How long has he been dead?” Clara asked.

  “Dr Deáth says it is not that easy to tell. The temperature has been cold, and the water freezing, so decomposition might have been slower than normal. He is confident, however, that Wood has been dead for over a week, more likely ten days to a fortnight.”

  Clara ran this through her head.

  “Before Leong was murdered,” she said.

  “Seems likely. In any case, how could Wood have been stabbed during the raid? We would have come across his body or at least the scene of where it happened. There must have been a lot of blood.”

  “Leong told me she stabbed the man who originally attacked her and killed him. I wondered about that when I was told Wood had been behind both the stabbing and the shooting. I knew someone had to have been lying and it struck me that it was not Leong,” Clara sighed. “No, this confirms to me that the information Chang was given by Bobby Jones was a load of nonsense to get on his good side.”

  “I also think you should bear in mind that Bobby may have been one of the people who disposed of Wood’s corpse. He might have supposed that with the body underwater, he was safe to point a finger at Wood.”

  “And that raises all sorts of questions,” Clara agreed. “I should speak to Bobby again, without Chang. Let him know that I know he is lying.”

  “You will have a tough time doing that,” it was the inspector’s turn to sigh. “The day after you spoke with Mr Mac, I received a telephone call from a solicitor who insisted Bobby was being held unlawfully and must be put out on bail. We have been dragging our heels on the matter, I confess, but these are dangerous men and I didn’t expect they would get bail, anyway.

  “This solicitor pushed the issue, made a complaint about the way we were handling the matter and before I knew it, I had orders to release Bobby Jones from our cells. My hands were tied. I suspected Chang had put one of his people onto the matter and they had made enough fuss that the Chief Constable simply reacted. He is losing interest in all this now the Earl of Bristol is safe, and the gang is dissolved. One thug going free isn’t going to trouble him.”

  Clara made a noise in her throat, a choked huff of disapproval and annoyance.

  “I know,” Park-Coombs muttered. “Anyway, I have no idea where Bobby Jones is, though he has probably not gone far. He has no money and London would be a dangerous place for him, under the circumstances.”

  “That is not the news I was hoping for,” Clara replied, knowing it was not the inspector’s fault either.

  “How does that affect your investigation?” Park-Coombs asked cautiously, Clara sensed his concern.

  “I am confident I shall be able to prove the police were not involved in Leong’s death,” she promised him. “Whether I can find the actual killer is another matter. But I am never defeated.”

  “No, you neve
r are,” Park-Coombs said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

  He was not deriding her, only pleased by Clara’s staunch determination in all things.

  “You know, even if you can’t solve this mystery, I am very grateful for all you have done,” he added.

  “Don’t give up hope just yet, Inspector,” Clara countered. “I am far from finished.”

  “I find myself wondering what Wood was planning,” Park-Coombs mulled, a stifled yawn echoing down the line. “Was he intending to take over the gang? Or had he simply had enough of Leong?”

  “We shall never know,” Clara admitted. “But, whatever he intended, he certainly paid a high price.”

  “Crime doesn’t pay,” Park-Coombs muttered. “Not in the end. Well, I am off to my bed.”

  “Goodnight Inspector.”

  “Goodnight Clara.”

  The line went dead, and Clara replaced the bell-shaped earpiece before wandering back into the parlour. She picked up her discarded novel, but no longer felt in the mood for more mysteries. Somewhere, out there, Leong’s killer was lurking. He might be one of the men who slipped away during the raid, more likely he was among those arrested. He was keeping his head down, hiding among the crowd and hoping no one, or more specifically, hoping Chang never discovered who he was. Was he lying on his bed right at this moment in fear of what might come?

  The actions of that man, on the day of the raid, had been rash, but if the raid had failed, the rewards for Leong’s killer could have been immense. He would have taken over her gang, with its members hurt and dishevelled from the gun fight and honed it into his own personal army. Instead, he was now a hunted man, with Chang out for his blood.

  Had he considered the risk he was putting himself in when he murdered Leong? Had he considered her brother when that opportunity had presented itself? Had he realised how Chang would thirst for vengeance? He surely must be considering it now.

  Clara should ring Chang and inform him of the news, but she did not have the energy. Instead she drew the curtains firmly across the window, damped down the fire and headed up to her bedroom. She needed to sleep and, in the morning,, she would face this new problem. Chang would just have to wait for once. Tomorrow he could learn how Bobby Jones had played him. Tomorrow was soon enough.