The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries Book 4) (12 page)

“No, sir, I assure you that that particular theory is etched within memory.”

I gave Reeves a hard stare. “I’m not saying it
has
to be a dead mouse, Reeves. It could be anything. But the only reason for Selden to change his modus operandi would be if he saw Pasco not as food to be played with, but as a container to be opened.”

“That is one interpretation, sir, but it
is
predicated on the considerable coincidence of both Pasco and Dr Morrow residing in Clerkenwell and Baskerville Hall at the requisite times. And we have it from Trelawny, the gardener, that Pasco was purchased last year. I cannot envisage Sir Robert buying a second-hand under gardener, which would mean that Pasco would not have been built when Selden was last in Clerkenwell.”

I couldn’t imagine Sir Robert buying a second-hand under gardener either. Oh well, that’s the nature of sleuthing — sometimes one’s best theory crashes and burns. One draws a line through it and moves on.

“Something adventurous in the sock line tonight, I think, Reeves. Have you laid out my evening dress?”

“No, sir. I will attend to it now.”

Reeves shimmered off to the wardrobe while I drained my glass of the early evening fortifier.

“What is it, Reeves?” I asked. The chap appeared transfixed by something within the wardrobe. “You’re not objecting to that red silk handkerchief again, are you? I have told you, even the Prince of Wales wears one in his waistcoat these days.”

“No, sir. There appears to be a head in the wardrobe.”

Twelve

what in the wardrobe?”

“A head, sir. It appears to be glowing.”

I don’t know about you, but Reginald Worcester does not like the idea of glowing heads appearing in wardrobes. I hastened over at once.

“I suspect it may belong to Pasco, sir.”

It was difficult to tell. The top of the head had received a considerable bash. And the face was covered in an odd greenish paint. But how many missing heads could there be?

“The rest of him’s not in there, is it?” I asked.

We searched the wardrobe, then the rest of the room. I even looked under the bed and felt a little way up the chimney. We didn’t find any more of Pasco, but we did find a tin of RadioGlo paint and a paint-stained brush concealed beneath my underlinen in a dressing table drawer.

“None of this was present this morning, sir.”

I read the label on the RadioGlo tin.

“What’s radioluminescent paint, Reeves? Is that another word for ‘odd shade of green?’”

“It’s a paint that glows in the dark, sir. I believe it to be a mixture of radium, copper and zinc sulphide. Pasco, or an accomplice, must have painted Pasco’s face to give it a spectral glow.”

One did not have to be a consulting detective to work out what for.

“So, Pasco was last night’s ghost.”

“So it would appear, sir.”

“You don’t sound convinced, Reeves.”

“One doubts the reliability of any evidence that has been planted, sir.”

“Lock the door, Reeves,” I said. “Whoever stowed this here is going to want this room searched pretty dashed soon. We need time to think.”

And a generous refill of the thought restorative.

~

I had that warm feeling in the head that one gets when one’s little grey cells are whizzing around with alcohol-fuelled vigour. And when Reginald Worcester’s l g c’s start whizzing there’s nothing they can’t accomplish.

“Might I suggest, sir, that we move the incriminating evidence to an alternative location? There are several empty rooms in this wing.”

“Not yet, Reeves. That’s exactly what they’re hoping we’ll do.”

“Sir?”

“I see all, Reeves. We are, as I suspected earlier, dealing with a criminal mastermind.”

“Oh,” said one of Reeves’ eyebrows. Not literally, of course, but figuratively. It rose a whole eighth of an inch.

“Indeed,” I said. “It’s a clever feint. They make us think that the plan is to have the incriminating evidence discovered in my possession. But it isn’t.”

“It isn’t, sir?”

“No, Reeves. I could say ‘I’ve never seen this severed head before in my life, officer.’ People might not believe me — Lady Julia for one — but no one could prove otherwise. But if we move the evidence, especially if we do so in haste, fingerprints will be left, Reeves. And fingerprints
will
stand up in court these days.”

“I shall wear gloves, sir.”

“Of course it could be a double bluff. Or even a triple one. You can never tell with criminal masterminds. What if they were expecting us to relocate the evidence, and then panic when we realised about the fingerprints, and rush back and wipe the evidence clean?”

Reeves was unusually silent.

“You see what I’m getting at, Reeves.”

“No, sir.”

“Fiendishness, Reeves. Criminal masterminds like nothing better than to manipulate others into doing their dirty work for them. And they’re risk takers. They may well have left their own fingerprints on the head knowing that we’d panic, and wipe the head clean for them. I expect they’re sitting in their room now having a good chuckle at how close we were to determining their identity.”

“I believe one can overthink a problem, sir. I hesitate to mention Ockham’s razor, but feel it appropriate in this situation to—”

“Reeves,” I held up my hand to stop him. “Does this razor to which you refer belong to William of Ockham perchance?”

“It’s a metaphorical razor, sir, for shaving away unnecessary assumptions.”

“Bearded chap, was he? This William of Ockham.”

“I believe he is normally portrayed as clean-shaven, sir.”

“Must have had two razors then. Or did the metaphorical one shave the other away?”

“I really cannot say, sir,” said Reeves, airing his disapproving face.

I drew myself up to my full seated height.

“We shall examine the evidence for fingerprints, Reeves. Then we shall move said evidence to a place of safety.”

Even a Reeves in the midst of low dudgeon could see the merit in that.

Reeves selected a white silk evening glove for the task ahead, and I inserted the Worcester digits therein. I then placed each of the three objects upon the corner of the dressing table where the light from the window was at its brightest.

I gave them all a good eyeball, from several angles, using my silver-mounted magnifying glass. Reeves then did the same.

“Can you see anything, Reeves? I can’t.”

“The tin and paintbrush handle are remarkably unblemished, sir. I would say that both have been deliberately wiped clean.”

“And the head?”

“That is more difficult to say, sir. There is a smudge — which could be a fingerprint — in the large depression to the crown of the head. It is, regrettably, too faint to make an accurate sketch.”

“Ha,” I said. “Not too faint for Serge,
Le Patissier
.”

“Sir?”

“You haven’t read
The Poisoned Brioche
?
The Eccles Cake of Death
?
The Girl in The Baklava
?”

“No, sir. I have not had those pleasures.”

“Amend that at your earliest convenience, Reeves. For, if you had, you’d know that there are ways to enhance fingerprints. Flour, for one. You dust it lightly over the print and —
voila
— things are brought up a treat. Serge always carries a bag of self-raising in his pocket just in case. He’s a crime-fighting patisserie chef, you know?”

“I did not, sir.”

“You would be staggered, Reeves, staggered at the number of people who have been murdered in his patisserie shop. A dozen at least. And that’s just the novels I’ve read. But Serge solves every case, and every time it’s the fingerprints that lead him to the guilty party.”

“Most interesting, sir. I have read several learned treatises on the subject of fingerprints written by the world’s foremost experts, but never encountered a mention of flour.”

“I am not surprised, Reeves. Everyone knows that authors know far more about the latest crime-fighting techniques than any so-called expert.”

I sent Reeves off to the kitchen for flour.

In the meantime — the little grey cells still warm and whizzing — I decided to engage in a little deduction. Clearly Pasco was the ghost, but could he have undertaken the task unaided? I very much doubted it. He wasn’t one of those augmented automata — the ones with all manner of rummy attachments. He was an ordinary gardening model who’d need a ladder to climb down from that window like everyone else. And he’d leave a substantial imprint in the ground if he just jumped out the window.

Could Lupin have carried him down? Lupin was certainly strong, but was he strong enough to climb down
and
carry a fully grown under gardener?

And what was the significance of the large bash on the head? Pasco had already been decapitated and stabbed in the turbines, why another wound? Or was the bash the first injury?

I was still musing when Reeves returned with the flour. And a sieve.

“I thought it would improve the efficacy of the flour application, sir.”

“Good thinking, Reeves.”

I took the sieve, added a good quantity of flour, and gave it a gentle shaking over the head, concentrating on the depressed bit where Reeves had seen the smudge.

“Can you see anything yet, Reeves?”

Reeves leaned over the head and gave it a good scrutinise with the glass. “No, sir. The flour appears to have covered the smudge entirely.”

I gave it the eyeball. Reeves was not wrong. I picked up the head and shook the flour back into the bag and tried again.

“Less flour this time, I think, Reeves.”

That didn’t work either. A light dusting revealed nothing. I couldn’t understand it. This didn’t happen in the books. One sift from Serge and every fingerprint revealed themselves instantly!

Maybe the smudge wasn’t a fingerprint? I decided to dust the rest of the head. Serge often found fingerprints where the
Sûreté’s
finest hadn’t even spotted the merest smudge.

But the flour wouldn’t stick. The more I sieved, the more slid off. I had a veritable flour mountain growing on the dressing table!

“I don’t think this is working, sir.”

A chap with whizzing l g c’s does not give up lightly. Didn’t something similar happen to Serge in an early book?
The Girl in The Baklava
, I think. The three-day-old poisoned macaroon that...

“An atomiser, Reeves!” I said. “We need to apply a fine spray of water to the surface prior to the flour.”

“I would not recommend it, sir. One would suspect the water would wash away any trace of fingerprint.”

“Not if you use a fine spray, Reeves. Serge swears by it. It helps the flour bind to even the smoothest surface. Do you know where Emmeline’s room is? She’s bound to have an atomiser we could borrow.”

Reeves returned in a matter of minutes, but not alone. Emmeline had insisted that if any game was afoot, her feet had to come along too.

“So that’s Pasco’s head,” she said, hoving alongside me. “Why does it have that large dent?”

“I suspect that was the initial blow,” I said. “It would have been dark, remember, and our murderer may not have known Pasco was an automaton. I think he whacked Pasco on the head thinking it would kill him, then, when Pasco kept on moving, he resorted to the stabbing and decapitating.”

“A possible theory, sir, but the position of the wound suggests to me a deliberate action to destroy Pasco’s memory.”

“Does it?” I asked.

“It does, sir. A single blow to the top of the head is a most unusual one. Most blows to the head occur to the sides or the back. Pasco’s memory boards, however, are located in the very spot that has been damaged.”

“So the murderer must know a lot about automata,” said Emmeline.

“Not necessarily, miss. They could have asked Pasco. This particular model is programmed to tell people the location of all their major parts, if asked, in order to facilitate repair. They are programmed to obey orders and be helpful. They have no thoughts of self-preservation.”

“Is that
all
orders, Reeves?” I asked. “If some chap trotted up to Pasco with a dress and a pot of RadioGlo paint, and said, ‘What ho, Pasco, would you mind awfully putting on this dress while I paint your face green?’ that this Pasco would acquiesce?”

“Yes, sir. Pasco’s model is a very basic one, designed for the garden where there will be minimum interaction with the general populace. Automata destined for work inside the house have more complex programming and, consequently, are more expensive to manufacture.”

“So Pasco could be an unwitting accomplice,” said Emmeline. “Someone could smuggle him into the house and order him to play the ghost?”

“Indeed, miss. And then, by destroying Pasco’s memory, their secret would be safe.”

“What about the shape of the dent, Reeves?” I said. “Any idea about the weapon?”

“I suspect the blunt end of the same axe that was used on his neck and hands, sir. One can discern a slight oval pattern in the dent which I am sure would match.”

“Right ho,” I said. “Have you got that atomiser, Emmie?”