Back in the Dog and Duck, a leering fiddler was scraping out “Pop Goes the Weasel.” One of the pudgier of the unbuttoned women was using her right index finger and left cheek to sound the pops, more or less on cue, and to show her freedom from constraint. These moist little explosions did nothing to revive Harris’s long-dead appetite. Notwithstanding, he providently bought some dark stew of unknown composition to take with him and, dodging the murky dancers, managed to place his sealed envelope in the hotel-keeper’s hands.
Once outside, he waited twenty minutes in the shadows across the square on the chance of being able to follow the courier. When none emerged, he rode—teeth gritted—back out King Street towards the Kingston Road.
Memories of the gulls’ yellow beaks, a fish with fingers, the smell, the waxy taste pushed against him as he advanced. He saw nothing of the countryside. This time he barely heard Banshee’s hoofs hammering upon the plank road. He felt he could not go back there, to the beach beneath the railway trestle—but he had to.
The arm must not be disturbed. This was the one sure beacon in a night of doubt.
Whose arm? Where was the rest? As horse and rider trotted on, the wind of their passage whispered unanswerable questions into Harris’s too-willing ear. Whose arm? How severed?
He found himself wondering too who was the fine-featured dark lady, the one that used to ride in the valley with Theresa, the one he had heard of at the mill. A cruel hope tempted him. Perhaps not Theresa, but she . . .
He rode on, still doubting that he could go back to that shrouded lump of torn and soggy flesh.
He was back.
The rain had stopped, though clouds still hung over the mouth of the Rouge. Frogs and crickets whined and belched into the gloom. Harris bit the glass head off a Promethean match, which exploded into flame. He lit the paraffin candle in the tin lamp he had brought and approached the weighted oilskin. It was just as he had left it.
Chapter Four
Sleeping Rough
Stretched on the sand, he managed to sleep till an overnight steamer clattered eastward down the lake towards Rochester or Kingston. Through the narrow gap in the embankment, he watched the sparks shooting from its twin stacks as it passed. You can incinerate a body or sink it. You can bury it or just leave it lying in the bush. Towards four thirty the sky grew pale behind the railway trestle, whose stark beams at dawn would have made a serviceable gallows.
As soon as it was light enough to collect firewood, Harris heated a cup of water for a shave. His toilet made, he inspected the valley floor and sides right the way round the lagoon. Then he clambered over the new railway embankment to look for signs of digging—a messy, unpromising business. All the earth was freshly turned. Nowhere was any grass disturbed, for none had yet had time to seed and grow. By nine he had finished the landward slope and crossed to the lakeward when from the direction of Pickering a dinghy hove in view. Two men pulled on a pair of oars each while a third, hatless and mostly bald, sat firmly gripping the gunwales in the stern. There was still no breath of wind.
The tall front rower wore red whiskers and faded tweeds, including a tweed cap with a button on the top. Harris climbed down to the sandbar to steady the nose of the boat as it grounded.
“So, Mr. Harris,” said Vandervoort, jumping out, “it’s plain you don’t keep bankers’ hours. Are all these footprints yours?”
Harris nodded. “The sand was quite smooth when I arrived. Here is the—here it is—this way.”
The inspector followed, crouching at the water’s edge to remove the stones from the oilskin.
“Watch where you put your feet now, Whelan,” he cautioned the disembarking second man, whose blue tunic looked as if it had been pulled on over pyjamas. “You don’t want to be walking on this.”
Once the cover was pulled back, there was no danger of Whelan’s walking anywhere in the vicinity.
“I’ll have a look around,” he announced with the assurance of someone not under Vandervoort’s orders, though he seemed willing enough to let the city detective take centre stage.
“Can you just help our scientific friend ashore first?” said Vandervoort. “Ah, French perfume.”
Harris clapped a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. This morning, however, he resisted the temptation to look away. In time, it had become possible actually to see the arm around or through the images it conjured up.
Vandervoort followed his gaze. “See anything you recognize?”
It was mostly white or the faintest pink, though mottled with darker patches, and too swollen to give any idea of its living thickness. The bracelet was so tight around it as to seem embedded in the flesh. Harris knelt and studied the four visible oval medallions, each of which depicted in intricate relief a European city. London, Paris, Dublin, Milan.
“I don’t know if this is a common pattern,” he said with difficulty. “William Sheridan did once buy his daughter something similar. Of course, she could have given it away.”
“Could she now? She used to ride here?”
“She and another lady.” Harris passed on the description he had got from the Scarboro sawmill. “In any event, you would not expect a woman going for a ride to wear this sort of jewellery.”
“Maybe she forgot to take it off,” Vandervoort casually suggested.
Theresa had been forgetful in just this way. Furthermore, had she intended to leave home, she would have taken as much of her jewellery as possible, if only to meet her expenses.
Rather than utter either of these two thoughts, Harris turned to ascertain what had become of the “scientific friend” and was surprised to recognize the chemistry professor who had come to the bank three days before. He wore the same old-fashioned green frock coat with full skirts and wide lapels. Even with Whelan’s help, he was having trouble leaving the dinghy. He seemed to be trying to climb over one of the thwarts, keep hold of both gunwales and carry a bulky leather case all at the same time.
Once his feet were planted on the sandbar, however, his queasiness left him, and he approached the arm without flinching. Vandervoort asked what he made of it.
“It has been in the water,” he said. His mouth formed a firm horizontal between sentences. “You can tell by the odour, quite different from decay on dry land. Oh, hallo, Mr. Harris. Not too long in the water, mind. The formation of adipocere is not far advanced.”
“Please, Dr. Lamb,” said Vandervoort. “I only went to a country school.”
“Come now, that fatty substance you smell that causes the bloating. Then again, the epidermis is mostly washed off, but not entirely. Do you see these patches of outer skin with the hairs still attached? Now compare these to the paler and quite hairless inner skin.”
Both Vandervoort and Harris took the hairs on trust.
“Going out on a limb, so to speak, I should say it has been immersed a matter of days, rather than weeks or months. Can’t tell much more until I get it back in the laboratory. First, though, it might be useful to take a photograph of it just as it was found.”
“Photograph!” said Whelan, whose reconnaissance had not taken him out of earshot.
“Don’t worry, constable,” said Vandervoort. “We are not going to hang it in your parlour.” To Harris he murmured, “Knows his cadavers, this Lamb. Foremost expert in the province and a great help to the department. When he writes his book, New York or Boston will hire him away from us in a trice.”
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