Harris understood. Many an immigrant signed a lease before discovering he wasn’t cut out for agriculture. Often as not, he would drift into town leaving untended and unregretted whatever crude structures he had managed to knock together. A vagrant’s cooking fire or vandal’s torch might easily claim them without alarming the neighbours.
“Now that shed—I went round for a look, and that shed was not empty when it burned.” Vandervoort shook his sack.
The dry clicking sound it emitted brought a pained crease to Lamb’s broad forehead.
“If you’ve brought me bones, inspector,” he said, “I would as soon you didn’t reduce them to bone chips.”
“Bones,” said Vandervoort, emptying his haul harum-scarum onto the work bench. He wasn’t clumsily drunk, just too pleased with himself to be inhibited by professorial objections. “Bones and more bones, and that’s just a start.”
Among other large pieces, half a human skull tumbled out. Clean and dry as a nutshell, and—from what anyone could tell in that foul chamber—odourless. It wasn’t repugnant to the senses, but alarming enough in its way. The nut had been someone’s brain. Harris approached warily.
“Will you be able to tell if these fragments came from the same body as the arm?” he asked Lamb. He naturally hoped they did, having already concluded from the position of the bracelet and the coarseness of the hairs that the arm was not Theresa’s.
“No indeed!” snapped Lamb. “I’m no clairvoyant.”
“But there can’t be any doubt,” said Vandervoort. “They were found less than two miles apart. And then there’s the axe.”
Ignoring him, Lamb continued less waspishly to Harris, “Anatomical analysis alone won’t even tell us if all these are from the same body. What can be observed is that this pelvis,” he pointed to a dish-like object, “is almost certainly a woman’s. You can see from this fragment of the pubic arch. It’s rounder and wider than a man’s.”
“Pubic arch?”
“Here, Mr. Harris.” The professor pointed without embarrassment to the location of the structure on his own anatomy. “Although, in a man, it forms an angle rather than an arch. I can also say that none of these new bones appears to be from the right arm. Further conclusions must wait on measurement . . . Clavicle—5 1/8 inches . . .”
While he was measuring, Harris turned to Vandervoort.
“What axe, inspector?”
From a side pocket of his tweed jacket, Vandervoort took an object wrapped in a charred scrap of green fabric. Merrily, he prolonged the mystery. Twice he asked if Harris were sure he wanted to see inside. Finally the package was set on the bench and the cloth folded back to reveal an axe head with the charred stump of a new wooden handle protruding from it. A stain appeared to have burned onto the blade.
“Blood,” said Vandervoort with a flourish.
Harris glanced at the professor.
“Sternum—just a moment . . .” Lamb set down his notebook and used his ruler to lift the axe blade so it caught the lamplight. “Looks like it,” he said, “but whether human or animal blood there’s no way of saying. Even using the microscope.”
“If ever you get a really straight answer from Dr. Lamb,” chuckled Vandervoort, “then you can bet your mother’s teeth you’re on to something. Tell me about the arm, professor. I suppose you have already made a full report to our nosey friend.”
While Lamb was reporting in scientific language, and again in plain words, Harris looked at the lengthening list of measurements. Through his damp white shirt, he felt for the point where his neck joined his shoulder. The clavicle, he thought, was the collarbone—but where did it start? Over five inches sounded long. He eased the ruler out of Lamb’s hand.
“Details are all well and good,” Vandervoort was saying, “but what matters is the pattern. Mrs. Crane leaves home. She’s attacked and killed. The killer tries to cover his tracks by burning her remains and the weapon. Tries, but doesn’t do a very thorough job. Have you found anything to contradict that story?”
“I have not had time to. You don’t seem to appreciate, inspector, how long it took simply to strip these three arm bones. Then, before I get to the hand, you bring me a whole other bag of tricks.”
“These at least are clean,” Vandervoort pointed out.
“Splendid. Now, if you want an expert opinion on these, leave them with me.”
“Of course, but so far you can’t say I’m wrong.”
Lamb wearily acknowledged that, insofar as he had been able to assess, the dimensions of all bones and bone fragments in both sets were not inconsistent with their forming part of a single skeleton. Vandervoort seemed satisfied.
“If I’m not interrupting,” said Harris, “I should like to ask Professor Lamb whether a woman of five three to five five with a five and one eighth inch clavicle would appear broad-shouldered.”
“That, I think, would be fair to say.”
“Stocky rather than slim?”
“Definitely.”
“Then,” Harris declared, “it’s not Mrs. Crane.”
Vandervoort pulled a goatish face. “Well, Dr. Lamb,” he said, “you have had a long day, considering that I dragged you out of bed this morning at four o’clock. Mr. Harris and I shall go and let you get on with your work. Oh, and you might want to look at that bit of green cloth too. It’s devilish like the sleeve we found the arm in.”
Harris noted the we and foresaw that it would soon slip into I. When that happened, there would be no more comradely sharing of information, and every question would again in all likelihood be turned back with another question. To make the most of the momentary opening, he took the opportunity of walking south with Vandervoort.
The College Avenue, stretching from the university grounds to Osgoode Hall, was closed at night. They settled for Park Lane, which hugged the avenue’s east side fence and borrowed the dignity of its parade of chestnut trees. A landau with jingling harness passed them at a trot, its occupants doubtless heading home from Sunday dinner at one of the new uptown villas. Otherwise, the city under the night clouds was as still as a fiddle in its case.
Just waiting, Harris thought, for the note-making to resume, the music of commerce.
“Pity about the smuggling charge,” he said. It seemed a safe bet that this was the case Lamb had earlier referred to as having fallen through.
“There was no way of knowing.” Vandervoort drank from his tin flask. “I made sure Mr. Harvey Ingram didn’t have any daughters in service to the Attorney General’s household or any second cousins on City Council. He friggin’ near ruined one alderman tea merchant by getting lushed up and letting the light go out in a storm.”
“You mean the winter before last,” said Harris, “when the China Queen went down?”
“Beaches black with pekoe leaves till spring . . . Now I’m told our beloved old campaigner has ‘friends’ in the first rank of capital and clergy, men on whom his claims are ‘not to be inquired into.’ Hush!” Vandervoort drank. “Never mind—this Crane business will make me. I’ve got a body now. In due course, I’ll get a felon.”
“The body,” said Harris, “isn’t Mrs. Crane’s.”
“Fond memories—”
“Even apart from the question of size,” Harris interrupted, “the arm is an obvious decoy.” He was appropriately grateful to Ingram’s anonymous backers, but their interference