I leant in to have a squint at the small print and slam! Hoo snapped the book shut, trapping my hooter like a mouse in a trap.
I swore and I squirmed; he let me go. There was a glimmer in his eye; he was enjoying himself. He strode over to the bureau and put the book back inside. Then he rolled it shut and twisted the key - I’d left it in the bleedin’ lock, hadn’t I? And he took the key out and slipped it into his pocket.
“Why?” I protested. “Why let me have a sniff at the rabbit and then lock the hutch?”
Of course, he didn’t answer on account of him never explaining nothing.
“List,” he said, holding out his hand again. I fished out the piece of paper and handed it over. “Things?”
“In a bag. Downstairs. I did it. I got the lot.”
He nodded and that’s how I could tell he was pleased with me, and why he was being so lenient with me about poking around in his drawers.
He stalked out of that room and I knew I had to follow or else he would lock me in. He don’t say much, don’t Doctor Hoo, but somehow I can read him like a book what ain’t shut away in no writing-desk.
***
Well, that was then. Here I am now, recovering from arm-replacement surgery what I didn’t even want, and waiting to see what the bleedin’ hell Hoo had got in store for me next. Perhaps he took my arms off as punishment because he caught me trying to pull a fast one with the toff’s money? They do that in some countries, you know. But then, why did he give me new ones?
Because my nicking stuff suits him sometimes. Like that cabinet’s worth of instruments I was telling you about.
I just don’t get it.
Twelve
Kipper was both amazed at and impressed by the speed at which the lads from Scotland Yard got things done. But he was buggered if he was going to let them know that. If it was me, he reflected, it would take weeks of begging and cajoling my superiors but no, here we are, just a few hours later, standing in the cemetery, watching two men with shovels dig up the final resting place of that toe rag, Damien Deacus.
Kipper felt like a bit of a spare part. They wouldn’t even let him hold a lantern. He stamped his feet on the cold, damp earth and rubbed his hands together. The Scotland Yard lads were more suitably attired. They must exhume bodies all the time.
Honour was at stake. What was warming Kipper’s cockles was the anticipation of seeing the smiles drop from their smug faces when the corpse was revealed to be where he’d said it was. Then they’d see. Then they’d see he was as good as they were.
The edge of a shovel struck something - but it didn’t sound like the wood of a coffin lid.
“O-ho!” said Bigby. “What have we here?”
“Dead body,” said one of the diggers; it came as no surprise to him.
“Hold up,” said the other. “Make that two. There’s another one in here and all.”
Bigby sent Kipper a quizzical look. “Did your friend Deacus have a Siamese twin?” He puffed on his pipe.
“Not my friend!” Kipper muttered. He peered over the edge of the excavation. Two faces peered up out of the dirt, contorted with pain and blackened from fire. Kipper backed away - but not too quickly in case it was interpreted as weakness.
Bigby directed the removal of the bodies. Moments later, they were laid out on the ground on tarpaulin sheets.
“Which one?” Bigby chewed his pipe.
“Which one what?” blinked Kipper.
“Which one is Deacus?”
“Um...” Kipper forced himself to look closely. Damien Deacus had been a slight, wiry fellow, with prominent cheekbones and long, stringy hair. Before him lay the bodies of two burly blokes, shaven-headed and at least ten years too old - as far as Kipper could judge. The men looked like they had been set on fire and buried.
“Well?” Bigby pressed for an answer although the smirk on his face suggested he already had one.
“Neither of them,” Kipper’s shoulders slumped.
“O-ho!” Bigby raised his voice. “So what you’re telling me is that your friend Damien Deacus is not here?”
Kipper blushed and looked at his shoes.
“What’s that, Inspector?” Bigby cupped his ear.
“No,” Kipper muttered. “He ain’t.”
“So, is he dead or isn’t he? According to you, he’s buried in this very spot. Might he still be numbered among the living after all? Might he still be at large?”
Kipper shrugged. “I suppose.”
“You suppose!” Bigby laughed. “I don’t know what you boys are playing at down at Bow Street but if you can’t tell whether a villain is dead or alive - well!”
Kipper shook his head. He could not look Bigby in the eye.
“Right,” Bigby addressed the team. “Let’s get these two back to the Yard and have a proper look at them. Find out who they are and what did them in.”
The men began to wrap the bodies in the tarps and to gather up their equipment. Kipper did not move.
“You may come with us, you know,” Bigby offered, gesturing to the police carriage into which everything had been loaded. “You never know; you might learn something.”
***
Kipper would never say it out loud but he was impressed with the facilities at Scotland Yard. There was a special room for the examination of bodies, with white tiles on the floor and up the walls, and a pair of porcelain-topped tables with guttering. To drain away the fluids, he realised and shuddered.
The men from the grave were laid out on these tables and divested of their garments by the aid of a large pair of scissors. The clothes were handed to one of Bigby’s team who began a systematic search of the pockets.
Meanwhile, Bigby introduced a fellow in a white coat and oilskin apron. “This is Chivers, our mortician. He’ll have these chaps open and revealing their secrets faster than Father can carve the Christmas goose, what!”
Chivers nodded to Kipper. Kipper smiled weakly; he would much rather watch that fellow going through the effects of the deceased. He took the smirk on Bigby’s face as an affront to his manliness and resolved not to allow his squeamishness to show.
“Right-o, Chivers. Let’s see if we can find the sixpence, what!”
The mortician began with an inspection of the bodies, making marks on charts that bore outlines of the human form. He spoke his observations aloud. Kipper kept a smile on his face and nodded along, before deciding that a smile was not perhaps the appropriate expression in the presence of dead men and opted instead for a look of mild interest and respect.
“Both men appear to be middle-aged. Forties. No obvious signs of trauma. Burns to the head, neck and hands appear superficial.”
“So they did not burn to death?” Bigby prompted.
“No, chief,” said Chivers.
“Then why the fire? Killer trying to destroy evidence, do you think?”
“Doubt it,” Chivers pursed his lips. “Not if he was going to bury them in any case.”
“Sir?” A man came in, whom Kipper recognised from the graveyard. A couple of the team had been left to continue the excavation.
“Jim?” said Bigby. “What news?”
“We found a lantern. In the grave,” Jim was breathless with excitement rather than from exertion.
“Oh?” said Bigby, teeth champing on his pipe. He turned to Kipper. “Thoughts, Inspector?”
“Um,” said Kipper, taking a while to realise he was the inspector being addressed. “Well, it’s obvious, ain’t it? They had a lantern on account of it being dark, on account of it being night and all. See?”
Bigby’s eyebrows went up. He turned back to Jim.
“Oil lamp, was it?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Could that account for the burns, then, Chivers?”
/> “I’d say so. If somebody chucked it at them.”
Bigby sucked on his pipe as he considered this. “The question is who and why?” He turned to the man going through the clothes. “Any joy, Bob?”
Bob, a fellow who was also equipped with a pipe, approached with his hands full. He held out a battered wallet, a penknife, a soiled handkerchief and a length of string.
“Anything with any names on?” Bigby didn’t sound hopeful.
“No, chief.” He opened the wallet and tipped it over. A button fell out.
“Didn’t think so. Chivers, before you do the honours, might I be a spoilsport and get my men to take prints from these gentlemen?”
Chivers bowed and stepped aside. He polished a couple of his enormous knives while he waited.
“Fingerprints –” Bigby began, but Kipper cut him off.
“Latest tool in the fight against crime,” Kipper said. “I know.”
He watched as a couple of men - how many were in Bigby’s team? - went from hand to hand of the dead pair, pressing fingers carefully onto an ink pad and then rolling the fingertips onto a sheet of card with boxes drawn on for each digit.
“We’ll see if these match anyone we know,” said Bigby. “These chaps might have form.”
Kipper nodded.
The fingerprint men scurried away to check the records. Chivers stretched like an athlete and stood over the first corpse.
“No obvious trauma,” he repeated. “Going to start from the top down.” He placed gloved hands on the dead man’s head and turned it from side to side. “No contusions or abrasions,” he intoned. “He wasn’t struck on the bonce.”
Bigby nodded, so Kipper nodded too.
“Hang about,” Chivers’s brow furrowed as his fingers moved down to the neck. “Something here.”
“O-ho!” Bigby enthused. Kipper didn’t know what to do.
Chivers reached for a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers from his trolley. With a look of concentration, he worked away at the neck before pulling out a small, sharp point.
“O-ho!” said Bigby.
“A-ha?” said Kipper.
“Object appears to be a needle of some kind,” Chivers held out the object.
“Interesting...” said Bigby. “Inspector?”
Damn it, thought Kipper. Why is he always picking on me, like an inattentive schoolboy?
“Sewing accident?” he offered.
“Oh! Good one!” Bigby guffawed a little too enthusiastically. “Chivers?”
“More like a dart, now that I look at it.”
“What say you, Inspector? Pub tournament got out of hand?”
Kipper grunted. He wasn’t prepared to commit to anything.
“Not pub dart. Poison dart, I reckon,” Chivers continued. “They do this kind of thing abroad, sir. Cowardly way to do someone in, in my view. Quick puff of a pipe.”
“Ugh,” Bigby reflected. He removed his own pipe from his mouth and peered at it.
“Where?” said Kipper. “Where do they do this kind of thing?”
Chivers grimaced. “South America. Africa. Far East. You name it.”
“China?”
“Yes, mate?”
“No. I mean, do they use such things in China?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised.”
Bigby looked at Kipper with renewed interest. “What’s this, old man? Got a whiff of something in the old hooter, have we?”
“I don’t know,” said Kipper. “Just a thought... What about the other man?”
Chivers inspected the second man’s neck and discovered an identical dart in a similar place. “I’ll run a few tests on these little beauties. Might be traces of toxins on them.”
“So...” Bigby proceeded to pace around. “Let’s review. Two men in a grave that was not meant for them. The intended occupant is conspicuous by his absence and these two are slightly burned and it looks like poisoned with darts of unknown origin.”
“That’s about the size of it, chief,” Chivers agreed. “I’ll be able to tell more once I get them open. See the effects of the toxins.”
He wielded his largest blade. Kipper stepped forward.
“Couldn’t the dirt have killed them?” he said quickly. “You know, being buried alive, or the weight of it or something?”
“Unlikely,” said Chivers. “Poison was most likely instantaneous. They dropped dead where they stood.”
“And then they were covered over in the grave,” Bigby nodded. “Seems straightforward to me. Proceed, man.”
Chivers raised the blade but before he could bring it down again, his examination was interrupted by the sound of Inspector Kipper hitting the floor, having fainted clean away.
***
He came to in an office with a coat draped over him and his feet on a chair. Bigby was standing over him, puffing his pipe with a look of bemused concern.
“Back with us, old boy!” he observed. “Good man.”
Kipper rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand and looked around. “What happened?”
Bigby smirked. “You hit the deck like an old lady in a heavy frost. Missed the lot. Old Chivers had those blokes in pieces almost as quickly. It’s confirmed: death by poison. And, furthermore, my lads have uncovered the identity of our mystery men.”
“Go on!” Kipper urged, keen to learn and keener still to get things wrapped up so he could get back to Bow Street.
“Turns out they’re a pair of professional grave-robbers. Body-snatchers in the pay of most of the medicos in this city. Whoever did them in did us a favour. Saved us the job of tracking them down and subjecting them to due process of the law.”
“Stroke of luck, then.”
“But we can’t have people going around bumping off body-snatchers left, right and centre. Makes us look bad.”
But Kipper wasn’t listening. He removed the coat and got to his feet. He paced while he thought and thought while he paced. “Hold on...”
“Johnny?” Bigby watched the inspector do a few laps of the room. “You’re on the scent of something.”
“I bloody am!” said Kipper. “Think about it: those two - why would they be in a grave?”
“Well, somebody did them in and hid the evidence.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Go on.”
“What if... What if they was there, plying their trade? They digs up the body - Damien Deacus’s body, lest we forget - but somebody else wants it more than they do. Surprises them with a lamp and then, two quick darts to the neck and bosher!”
Bigby looked impressed. “You might not be as thick as you look, old man. Someone robbed the robbers!”
“Or...” Kipper was on a roll, “Somebody hired them to do the dirty work, dig up Deacus, and then silenced them so they couldn’t rattle their chops.”
“By Jove...” Bigby gaped in admiration. “The question remains: Who?”
“That’s exactly right,” said Kipper. “Hoo done it. I’d stake my orchestras on it.”
***
He hurried back to Bow Street, worried that he had said too much. He didn’t want Bigby and his great bunch of bastards to find Doctor Hoo before he did. Deep down, Kipper knew what was important was that the man be found, not who did the finding. But to him it was a matter of personal pride. He wanted to get one up on Scotland Yard and put a dent in the smug smiles of Bigby and his lads.
“Hello, sir!” Adams seemed surprised. “Wasn’t expecting you until the morning.”
“Doctor Hoo!” Kipper snapped, omitting the social niceties. “Where can I find him?”
“Well,” Adams stroked his beard, “he’s got a place on Harley Street. But you know that already.”
“And the place is aba
ndoned,” Kipper added. “I need to find him and I need to find him pretty damn sharpish.” He gave Adams a hopeful expression but the ever-resourceful sergeant could only shake his head.
“I haven’t the foggiest, sir,” he said sadly. “Wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“Oh, really, Adams?”
“I have been reading up, sir. Just in case you arsked me. Nobody don’t know nothing about him, sir. Hasn’t been heard of for donkeys’. Not since a bit of a how-d-you-do at the Lord Mayor’s dinner, a few years back.”
“Oh?” Kipper was intrigued.
“I dug about in the library, sir. Old newspapers. The dinner was ruined, sir. They all come home early, thanks to the...” He peered at his notepad, “...outrageous claims made by one of their profession.”
“Claims, Adams?”
“Something about bringing new life... I didn’t fully understand it, sir. I ain’t no scientist... Transplants was mentioned. Reanimation.”
“Oh...” Kipper peered at Adams’s scrawled notes. “And you found this in the library, you say?”
“Matter of public record, sir.”
“Good man!” he clapped the sergeant on the shoulder blade. “Keep digging. I want a list of all those who attended that dinner and interviews with the lot. Find out what they remember.”
“Yes, sir!”
“That’s going to take some time. I could do with finding this doctor as soon as possible.”
“I only wish I could help, sir.” Adams looked downcast.
“You already have, man.”
He brought Adams up to speed with the latest from Scotland Yard. Adams listened, agog and wincing at the appropriate points in the account.
“Seems to me, sir,” he scratched his hairy face, “the last people to see this Doctor Hoo was them poor buggers what was dug up.”
“Yes...”
“But where did he meet them, sir? Where do you go to engage yourself a couple of body-snatchers?”
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