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.”
The professor had removed a tripod from his leather case and was settling upon it a camera that resembled a bottle on its side—a rosewood bottle with a square base, cylindrical brass neck and brass cap.
“I’m not going to pose with the thing,” said Whelan, “and that’s final.”
Vandervoort looked as if he would not mind posing, but Lamb didn’t ask. He merely laid a foot-rule on the sand in front of the arm to give an idea of scale. He slid a glass plate into the back of the camera then removed the lens cap. Glancing between a pocket watch in his left hand and the shifting clouds above, he exposed the plate for more than five minutes.
Harris meanwhile made more footprints. He tramped about impatiently, not looking at or seeing anything in particular. He was inclined to believe in Lamb, but was at the same time hoping that Lamb would find that he had underestimated the period of the limb’s immersion, by even as little as a week. Surely, an expert could go that far wrong without disgrace.
The professor at last removed his photographic plate. When he loaded a second, Vandervoort voiced concern for the public purse. One photograph, he said, would be quite enough. Lamb went ahead anyway, uncovering the lens for twice as long.
Collecting himself somewhat, Harris took this opportunity to show Whelan the tracing of Elsie’s sketch. The Pickering constable didn’t believe he had ever seen the subject.
“Is it her arm then?” he asked.
Harris had no reply.
“Well, whoever the poor lady was, bless her soul, her other parts had better not go turning up in the township of Pickering.”
When Harris asked if the lower Rouge were considered a dangerous place, he was harangued about the increase in lawlessness generally, short-sighted paring of police salaries, and the drunken rowdiness of railway crews in particular—although they had last month finally moved on to Darlington. Ending on a more cheerful note, Whelan said that at least the valley was no longer frequented by wolves and bears. “The only beasts today are the two-legged kind.”
Leaving Lamb to wrap the arm for transport, Vandervoort ambled over with a cadging gleam in his eye. He looked altogether too comfortable.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a cigar, inspector?” Harris inquired dryly.
Vandervoort’s face fell. “I was about to ask you the same,” he said. “Afraid I smoked the last of Lamb’s—but we might try Whelan.”
Poor Whelan, who was busy hoisting the dinghy’s sail, had not even managed to bring his trousers. Harris said he would sooner hear what the police knew of Mrs. Crane.
“We’ve been down that road before,” said Vandervoort.
“But something must have turned up in the last four days. Look here, Inspector, you seem happy enough to have been told about this find. Let’s work together.”
Vandervoort shook his head. “I saw it at Sheridan’s funeral,” he said, “when you tried to protect my informant from me. You’re an enterprising sort of man, Isaac Harris—and one that will not mind his own business.”
“Could you not tell me—?”
“I’ll tell you this. I’ve questioned your lighthouse keeper sober, and I’ve loosened his tongue with drink. I’ve turned him upside down and inside out. He knows nothing of any harm Mrs. C. may have come to.”
“And did you,” Harris pursued, “offer him the inducement of leniency in the matter of the contraband revolvers?”
“That’s out of my hands. Ask no more.”
Harris saw from a purplish tint suffusing Vandervoort’s countenance that he was about to anger the detective. The professor’s brains would in any case make for better pickings.
The first breeze in
