We haven't had a good, old-fashioned murder mystery for the Kingsport Investigateers in a while, and TinaLouise has been sending me more prompts than you could shake a stick at. Hopefully this corrects the deficit!

1937

Faith walked into the Larkrise hall and was assailed by the smell. She was used to the ordinary mishaps of Gremlin-wrangling; experimental clothes dying, spontaneous purchases of whole pigs from the butcher, that time Sophy had thought it wise to create her own perfume…this was nothing like that.

There was a distinct copper tang to the air, almost like blood, and something else, something Faith hadn't smelled since the war. Death, she thought with a shiver, unravelling the silk of her scarf and hooking it haphazardly on a peg. Oh please God let it be a mouse that crawled under a chair and died.

No luck. Coat shucked, gloves shed and shoes peeled blissfully off, Faith walked bare-shod to the doorway and stared agape at the tableau father, daughter and a leaping Dachshund Tuesday made around their dining table.

'Jem,' began Faith as calmly as she could muster in the face of corpse, dog, child, and the smell of organs, 'is that a body?'

'No,' said Jem.

'Jem, I can see it,' said Faith and gestured at the spectacular tableau. Tuesday whined, signalling his deep wish for fresh liver. Everyone ignored him.

A disembodied voice said from the depths of the lionback chair Jem normally favoured, 'I did wonder if letting Helen help…'

The voice, Faith realised, belonged to Benwick. She hadn't registered him in the chair because he wasn't usually present when the Investigateers called meetings. Mind, neither, usually were corpses.

'Helen's enjoying it,' said Kitty, visiting and on leave from Toronto. 'Look at her.'

In point of fact, Helen had assisted on her first autopsy when she was little more than a babe in arms. Looking at her now, elbow deep in spleen, Faith wondered if there were naff Christmas ornaments for Child's First Autopsy to pair with Baby's First Christmas and Daughter's First Birthday, and if so, where one purchased them. Then Faith realised she was still standing in the doorway. She leaned back ill-advisedly and felt the teeth of the door jamb sink into her spine.

'Not to go all dull and conventional on you,' said Faith, rubbing at the spot the jamb had struck, 'but why is there a corpse on our table?'

'Felix Elgin,' said Jem. 'Elgin, my wife. Faith, the late Felix Elgin. He's telling us how he died.'

'Yes,' said Faith, with what she felt was tremendous patience, 'but why here?'

'My morgue is full,' Jem said. He shrugged. 'It's already got two corpses in it. Terrible, you know. Old Edgar Adams, who died of a fire, and…'

'And you couldn't have sent this poor chap to Halifax?' asked Faith.

'They wouldn't take him,' said Jem. 'I'd already sent them two bodies, see. And I fobbed one off on the police surgery in Elie. Not sure who was more surprised to be told there was an Elie surgery, honestly, me, Geordie, or the police surgeon in Elie.'

Faith rubbed at her temples. 'Probably the poor corpse you sent Elie-ward, I shouldn't wonder.' Then, as she did the arithmetic, 'You're telling me there are six bodies?'

'Don't think they're related though,' said Jem.

'Tell me again how they died?'

'One by fire, two by asphyxia, one poor sod – '

'Gremlins, Doc!' This from Benwick.

' – Was shot in the head,' said Jem, oblivious. Faith could about see Jem's point, what with the middle Gremlin now poking about in Felix Elgin's intestines. ' Another one was shot in the throat. Horrible. And this one,' said Jem in summary, 'is as yet undecided. We were thinking of having dinner out.'

'Mm,' said Faith, joining her family over the corpse. 'That new Italian on the high street?'

'Looks promising,' said Jem. 'Helen and I were thinking poison.'

'Any petechia?' said Faith, and leaned closer for a better look. 'Discolouration under the nail beds…We could catch that travelling fair after, if we time it right. Ellie Blake says it's quite good value for money.'

'After dinner?'

'Yes,' said Faith. 'Say about 8?'

Jem nodded. 'Might be nice. What say, Helen? Fancy trying to win a cake? Interesting fact; even though they were killed differently, Geordie thinks it was the same killer.'

'Oh? How so?' said Faith.

From the lionback chair a distinctly perplexed Benwick was heard to ask, 'Do they always do that? Switch back and forth like murder's the evening news?'

'Well,' said Kitty, 'sometimes it is the evening news. And no, only when they think no one's paying attention.'

Faith could not see Benwick, but she sensed his squirming discomfort in the same way she sensed that Tuesday was more desperate than ever to sample the exposed liver of the unfortunate Felix Elgin. She hid a smile and wondered, as Kitty segued into some completely other conversational avenue if Benwick realised the tacking and turning was far from being unique to Larkrise. Tuesday thrust his long, greying nose in the air and began to howl the sad howl of a neglected dachshund.

'Someone,' said Faith, 'for God's sake take that dog outside. Get Christopher to run him, or something. But get him away from the poor Mr. Elgin. Helen's input is one thing, but really…'

Christopher, hearing his name, materialised from whither he had been and moved dutifully towards the garden door. Tuesday, sensing the possibility of squirrels, moved with him. Faith sat down on the sofa, and surveyed the remnants of Kitty's slapdash efforts of tea; two mugs, no coasters, said mugs splotched with spilt tea. Mug for Kitty, mug for Benwick, nothing for the duo carrying out the autopsy, then. Probably just as well. Independent Toronto living had clearly done nothing for Kitty's housekeeping. But never mind, Faith thought, with a surreptitious glance at Kitty. It wasn't a stone Faith could cast, and Kitty looked well-fed, and healthy, and Benwick didn't look like the chaotic culinary arrangement fazed him.

'I could get you a mug,' said Kitty. Faith was about to agree when a voice from the door said,

'No time, I'm afraid.'

Faith closed her eyes. 'Geordie,' she said, 'I don't work for you. And even if I did, I've spent a hellish afternoon telling the Pipers their mother had a stroke cleaning the oven.'

Geordie grimaced. Benwick, because he was touchingly oblivious this way, said, 'Didn't she?'

'No,' Faith said. 'You could still smell the gas in her hair. Mr.Piper knew I was lying, too. It was awful. Now what can we do you for, Geordie?'

'We've got a lead,' said Geordie.

'Well,' said Teddy, who Faith now saw was lurking behind his superior, ' the Superintendent thinks he's got a lead. Sir.' With a nod to Geordie, only superintendent ever to muck in with the rank and file. Or so Faith surmised from surrounding gossip. Hassle hadn't, anyway. Just caused all that nuisance over the tea and where people could brew it.

Kitty rose and seized the teapot. Teddy intercepted her though and said with all the proprietary concern of someone who could brew tea worth drinking, 'Better let me do it, Kitten. You'll want to hear this.'

Geordie groaned. Faith watched him sink into the wingback chair. His wingback chair really, seeing as no one else made use of it. Geordie scrubbed at his eyes and said from behind his hands, 'Faith, Jem, you both remember the Mansel case, don't you?'

'No,' said Faith.

'Sorry,' said Jem.

'Told you so!' said Teddy over the clatter of kettle and tap water bubbling and spluttering.

Geordie groaned again. He said, 'God, you're young. Sometimes I almost forget and then…big case, the Mansel boy. Done for murder in…you're telling me none of you remember?'

'Can't,' said Helen. 'I wasn't born. Least, I assume I wasn't if Mama and Dad are supposed to be old enough to remember it.' She sliced carefully into a kidney.

'Cheeky,' grumbled Geordie but good-naturedly because Helen was easy to love. Geordie muttered further about should gremlins be involved in active investigations but no one, least of all the relevant gremlin, took any notice.

'To be fair, Sir,' said Benwick, 'it's not the first time, and the case isn't all that active. Just six bodies the Doc can't connect.'

'Well it's about to be active,' said Geordie. 'Because you, Constable, are going through every file we've got on the Mansel-Taggart vendetta and finding the good doctor the connection he needs.'

'Now, hang on,' said Jem. 'Even if this old case is related, and we don't know it is, it's a far cry from there to six differently dead bodies.'

'I know,' said Geordie and scrubbed his eyes again. 'I know. But old Edgar Adams burning up like that got me thinking. I could swear he was on the jury that convicted Mansel.'

'You're thinking revenge?' said Teddy, appearing, mercifully, with tea.

'Well, not Mansel's, anyway,' said Benwick, 'if we really did string him up in the dinosaur days.'

'I dunno,' said Jem. 'I always fancied if I ever met the person or thing that did for Walter I could cheerfully have retaliated. Has your Mansel got brothers, Geordie?'

Geordie hummed affirmation.

'I'll try the paper,' said Kitty. 'If we covered it, there's bound to be copy somewhere. There should be a list of names. What year am I looking, at Geordie?'

'Somewhere early 1900s,' said Geordie. 'Before the '10s, though, because we weren't married yet.'

'And you think we followed it?' asked Jem, indignant. He waved his scalpel for emphasis. 'How old do you think I was back then?'

'Old enough to be reading, anyway,' said Geordie.

'Not the legal stuff, I wasn't,' said Jem.

'Your parents must have, though. It was big news. Judith and I used to chat about it.'

'Judith,' said Faith, 'followed you to a murder investigation by way of a romantic ensign. Of course you bloody talked about it. What I can't see is how Kitty is planning to get into the archive of a paper she no longer works for.'

'Sheer bloody cheek, I shouldn't wonder,' said Geordie. Reflectively he added, 'Probably where your daughter learned it from.'

'She'll charm the devil's own way into heaven, I'm sure,' said Jem. Benwick grinned. Kitty smiled the smile of the Holy Innocents.

She said, 'Oh ye of little faith. I'll tell them I'm breaking a story with a possible extra-provincial link that I need to verify by going through the archives, won't I?'

'I don't want to know,' said Geordie.

Instead, he, Judith and what remained of the Carlisle gremlins joined with Faith and family for dinner out and an evening at the travelling fair. Kitty would have gone too, but the archives waited for no woman, apparently, and Benwick said as long as he was stuck manning the phones at the station house he might as well get stuck into the files on the police end. He and Kitty would collate them later if anything matched up.

They did not go to the new Italian on the high street. They went to The King's Arms because Geordie was working an angle and the place was run by one Rob Mansel. He was a surly, ruddy-faced character, and Faith was grateful to slip into a booth with the gremlins and let Teddy, Jem and Geordie bend his ear. The eatery wasn't dreadful though; under the varnish she could smell a lemon juice rub, and vinegar too.

She said to Judith, 'You really remember this investigation?'

Judith laughed and said of course she did, it was what everyone used for small talk back when the case was ongoing.

'Well,' Judith said, 'they did right up until Colin Mansel swore on oath that he'd been fixed up for the shooting of Dick Taggart. Then they used that for small talk.'

Faith grimaced. 'Awful if it were true.'

'Mm,' said Judith, noncomitally. 'Why Geordie wants it re-opened, I think. Or why he's so determined to make Jem's half dozen bodies Mansel-Taggart related. Detective Lawson – '

'Was a damn good detective,' said Geordie, rejoining them with food. 'But fallible. And there was talk about – well never mind. No one ever took very seriously the rumours about him rehearsing witnesses. The important thing was getting Colin Mansel behind bars. On the other hand…'

Geordie shrugged, and for a second Faith saw in him the pull between justice, truth and some other, unnameable third that she saw in Jem. Stubbornness was part of it, and maybe vengeance was another, but on the other hand, autopsies made for easier parsing, and that was Faith's considered opinion as someone who treated the living. Faith let it go.

'But if Colin really was innocent,' she ventured, and Teddy interjected. 'Then,' he said, 'we have one hefty motive for him over there.' He jerked his thumb in the direction of Rob Mansel. Faith was hard pressed to disagree.

At the fair Teddy won Sophy an exotic doll in carnival get-up that was promptly christened Poliomyelitis, Polly for short. This, Faith thought, would probably have raised more eyebrows if Helen hadn't set a precedent for medically-inspired doll names. Over the years they'd had Spanish Influenza, the flamenco dancer, Baron Typhus and his wife Cholera, sisters Varicella and Rubella, regal and porcelain Lady Scarletina in red and her twin in blue, Countess Cyanotica Cruris. Sometimes Faith wondered if Larkrise shouldn't have branched out into fields of study less medical, and that had been before little Diptheria had put the cap on Helen's doll collection.

Now Faith leaned against the wooden slats of the improvised Crown and Anchor table, put a penny on a black diamond and listened to Geordie detail the ongoing Taggart-Mansel feud while up ahead a wheel spun round, and round, card suits flashing by in quick succession, the needle on the wheel clacking as it went. The air smelled of crowds and confectionary, and was full of the shouts of exuberant children. A dizzying backdrop for murder talk, but hardly the strangest they'd had.

'I remember it,' said Geordie, 'because it was early in my career and every copper going was desperate to stop it. They must have had half the city bent between them, the Mansels and Taggarts. More probably. Which would have been fine, but they'd got one of the bent lot to keep them in police-issue weapons. Caused all kinds of chaos, as you'd expect. The time we had...'

'Right,' said Jem. His Heart suit came up trumps and he diligently dived the money between the gremlins to use as they would. Helen went for the cake stall, Sophy and doll Polly for the fish pond, but Christopher hovered at parental elbows, betting on spades and to all appearances listening keenly.

'And the Mansels and Taggarts ran what, exactly? A black market enterprise?'

'A monopoly on fishing,' said Geordie. 'Oh, you can laugh,' he said, because Faith was trying hard not to, 'but the amount of trouble that caused – who had control of what dock…'

'And it wasn't just fish that came in,' said Judith.

'Well, quite, my sweet,' said Geordie, and smiled. Yes, Faith could see how this case had been instrumental in shaping the unit that was Geordie and Judith Carlisle.

'Of course,' said Geordie, 'we could never prove it. So naturally when Colin Mansel shot Dick Taggart – '

'Purportedly,' said Teddy.

'When Colin Mansel shot Dick Taggart,' said Geordie again, with emphasis, 'we jumped at the chance to bring him in. But he never coughed to any of it, not even the murder.'

'And no one ever thought,' said Teddy, 'that maybe that meant he was innocent?'

If Geordie Carlisle, Superintendent of the Kingsport Station House, did not exactly glower, he came close. 'The evidence,' he said, 'was incontrovertible. He had blood on his hands, and prints on the gun. You'd have done exactly what we did, Inspector.'

Teddy forbore to comment.

'You were right,' said Kitty, by way of unusual greeting, running to meet the returned revelers. The Carlisles, about to turn for home, abruptly stopped.

Faith ushered them Larkrise-ward as Kitty clucked and fussed over Sophy's carnival prizes. That lasted only until they were inside, whereat she brandished a clutch of notes and newspaper pages in their general direction.

Murderous Mansel Sentenced blazed the foremost headline, and beneath it, Curtain Closes on Cunning Colin's Last Caper. Further down the page, in blurry print, was a distorted photograph of the jurors. Under that, in still blurrier, smaller print, were their names.

'Better read them out, Kitten,' said Teddy. 'The Super's eyes aren't what they were.'

Geordie snorted. Faith hid a smile in the coats she was hanging up and gestured everyone out of the too-narrow hall and into the sitting room. There was still a corpse on the table and it was getting hard to ignore. Mercifully, someone had had the thought to shut Tuesday in Faith's surgery and drape a sheet over the body. Nothing, probably, would salvage the sheet, but at least Felix Elgin as had been had had a bit of dignity while they'd been at dinner. Still, Faith underlined a mental note to have Benwick arrange for Elgin's release to his family, if there were any. No need for the unsuspecting corpse to sit on the dining room table longer than necessary.

Geordie collapsed gratefully into his wingback chair. Jem took the lionshead chair, now Benwick was gone, and Teddy went to put the kettle on. Really, they should have something stronger, Faith thought, joining Judith on the sofa, but tea would do in a pinch. Jem, reading her mind, hauled himself out of the chair, crossed to the sideboard and shunted about in the cabinets until he'd surfaced the obligatory bottle of medicinal brandy for anyone wanting to top up their tea. Beaver Tea, they'd called that in Faith's salad days, though God alone knew why. Geordie looked grateful. Kitty, unfazed as any Larkrise gremlin by the proximity of a corpse, took a dining room chair, and read by the light of a gas lamp.

'Edgar Adams,' she read, 'leads fellow jurors Felix Elgin, Simon Halliwick, Gregory Alnwick, Nick Hanaford…stop me, someone, if any of these sound familiar.'

Jem raised a hand. 'Too familiar,' he said. 'I've autopsied over half of them already. What's your murder doing, Geordie? Going for them proportionate to culpability?'

Nattie Carlisle, half-drunk on sleeplessness and carnival throes surfaced from the jumble of gremlins on the floor and said, 'Like in And Then There Were None*, Uncle Jem? You know, the Agatha Christie?'

Geordie only said, to the horror of a teapot-bearing Teddy Lovall, 'Hell if I know. Kitty, give me the rest of that paper.'

Kitty parted with it. Geordie took it, rattled it until it was spread out before him before duly skimming it, growling, and finally saying, 'And there,' with a jab, 'there,' another jab, 'and there,' a final, furious jab, 'are your other three corpses, Doc.'

'So it is like And Then There Were None,' said Helen, halfway between thoughtful and excited. 'Does that mean something?'

'It means, lamby,' said Teddy, 'that someone's doing their level best to prove Colin Mansel's original verdict unsafe after the fact. And I'm guessing it's not Dick Taggart's family.'

'Can they do that?' asked Kitty. 'And if they can, what does that mean for the people who made the conviction?'

'Don't bloody go there,' said Geordie.

There was nothing for it, in the morning, but to go and call on the man who had hung Colin Mansel over 30 years ago. The passing of time meant he had long since retired out of the job, which went some way to explaining Jem's atypical presence at the interview. Ernest Shawcross, former hangman of the Kingsport men's prison had the withered, papery look of the old and the battered, wasted look of the cancerous. Or so Jem thought as he accepted the overstuffed armchair offered him by Mrs Shawcross. The air smelled of sickness anyway, and that was a fact. Lavender too.

'We're sorry to bring this up,' said Geordie, accepting a chair in his turn, and Jem could see that he meant it. Anyone could. Crowded like a badly folded accordion into his chair, Geordie looked at least as haggard as the man he'd come to interview. Vaguely Jem wondered about suggesting he hand the case over to Teddy, but he knew on some gut level that Geordie would drop dead of apoplexy before that happened. If this were any other case…but it wasn't.

So Jem sat with his friend and colleague in a room that smelled of sickness and lavender, and listened to the thin, reedy voice of Ernest Shawcross recount the dismal death of Colin Mansel. How Shawcross had always tried to make it quick, and how he liked to think he'd got good at telling the guilty from the innocent.

'The priest,' Shawcross said, 'had this way of letting you know if the…if they wanted to say something.'

'He did that for Colin Mansel?' asked Geordie.

Shawcross nodded. 'So,' he said, 'I held back with the hood, just for a second, mind. And that boy - Colin - leans forward, all shivering and trembling like an aspen-tree in a windstorm, and he says…'

There was a pause as Shawcross reached for and sipped at a glass of water. The lavender and sickness smell intensified. Jem waited for Geordie to prompt his subject, but he didn't. Shawcross leaned back, and sipped, and breathed deeply, and all the while Jem was acutely aware firstly, that his chair was too soft for comfort, secondly that the argyle pattern of the rug did not match the floral curtains, and thirdly, of the interminable ticking of a carriage clock. Fourthly he realised that he was choking on the lavender and sickness smell and crossed to a window. Finally, mercifully, Shawcross resumed.

'The boy, Mansel, he leans forward and says – but just for me, mind – I swear before God and all present I never murdered anyone.'

The carriage clock was merciless. Jem listened to it, half an eye on the wasted, decaying former hangman, and made it his mental assessment the man was fit for further interview.

'I always felt the police were on my side,' said Shawcross. 'We were a team, like. But the look on that poor boy's face changed that.'

Abruptly Geordie heaved himself up out of the depths of his overstuffed chair. Jim, following, detached himself from his place at the window. They thanked Shawcross at the door, Geordie lingering to apologise again for the nature of the call. It was a dismal morning.

'Now what?' said Teddy Lovall, back at the station house. This, mercifully, smelled only of dry air, paper and badly brewed tea. It was a relief. Geordie sipped a cup of tepid tea and declined comment. Jem, case file in hand said, 'I take it someone took Mansel's blood, back in the dinosaur days?'

'Probably,' said Geordie. 'And the stuff on his hands, I shouldn't wonder. Tea, Doc?'

'Good,' said Jem. 'Get Benwick to send for the old evidence, can you? We've come on a bit since then. I might be able to match some of this stuff up. No promises, though. And while Benwick's doing that, Teddy's going to take me round the crime scenes we've got now. Thanks.' He accepted the cup of tea Geordie proffered, sipped at it and said, meditative, 'No sugar?'

'Benwick forgot to buy it,' said Teddy.

'How could he possibly...'Jem began but then shook his head. He set the mug down and said instead, 'Crime scene, Teddy. With me, now. You're going to show me where our gunshot victims were.'

'I am?' said a baffled Teddy.

'Yes,' Jem said, 'because I want to see if any blood there– if there is any – matches any of the blood in Benwick's boxes.'

'You can do that?' asked Geordie.

Jem beamed. He waved a canister hitherto stationary on his desk and said, 'Luminol. Bloody useful stuff, pun unintended.' Then, as an afterthought, 'And while Benwick's about it, get him in touch with the Halifax people and have him make sure they take prints from our asphyxiated jurors. If there are any prints to take, obviously.'

So Jem and Teddy set out for the home of Simon Halliwick, who had had the misfortune to meet his demise courtesy of a bullet to the left temple. He'd lived a neat, tidy, even unobtrusive existence from what Jem could see. No stacks of post, sparse surfaces, not so much as a chipped mug out of place. Only the grandfather clock was eerily silent, with no one alive to wind it any more.

None of this did anything to hide the blood the luminol threw up. Teddy watched in awe as the hardwood floor flared to blue, livid life in the place of Halliwick's last moments. It wasn't gory, not exactly, not when Jem thought back over some of their previous collaborations, but it was still no way for a man to die. Not in his own home, like this, with the chairs at perfect right angles to one another and the floor varnished to mirror-smoothness. Jem could just smell lemon zest over the stale air of the house and couldn't decide if this was because the murderer had been thorough in his scrubbing of the floor or because Halliwick had liked to use it to mitigate the smell of floor polish.

Teddy stood gaping at the blue splotches of luminol.

'How are you doing that?' he said, so Jem explained. But really he felt he owed Halliwick an apology for sullying his floors.

'Definitely killed here,' he said. 'God, it was messy. Too messy for just one shot. Either our murderer was no marksman, which he was, because I saw the corpse, or some of this is his blood.'

'And…what?' said Teddy, 'he stuck around afterwards to straighten the room up?'

'Well,' said Jem, 'he scrubbed the floor, didn't he?' He began to chip regretfully at said floor to extract what he could. It wasn't ideal, the residual blood, but it was going to have to do.

Teddy said, 'Or someone else did.'

Jem raised an eyebrow. 'You reckon we should be looking for a Mrs Halliwick?'

'No,' said Teddy. 'I just mean…Look, you remember that god-awful Sergeant that harangued Kitty all those years ago at the Christmas Party?'

'Sure,' said Jem, but only vaguely because he was even now dusting floor and skirtingboard to lift what other evidence he could.

'You broke his nose.'

'I gave him a nosebleed,' said Teddy. 'Not the same thing. But the point is, if Kitty had murdered him over the horderves and found me to confess to afterwards, I wouldn't have arrested her, I'd have said where's the body, what have you done with it and how can I help.'

'Ah,' said Jem. He sat back on his heels. 'So you think we have conspiring Taggarts, trying to make sure they make good on what the jurors couldn't? Kill the man that really killed Dick Taggart?'

'Or murderous Mansels conspiring to off the people that did for Colin,' said Teddy. 'Take your pick. Incidentally, d'you reckon the Super should be on this case?'

'No,' said Jem. 'But if his old Inspector did put the fix on Mansel – well, it's a point of honour, isn't it?'

Teddy groaned. 'I suppose,' he said. 'Guess I was hoping you'd say something else, Doc.'

'All I know,' said Jem, rising and surveying the scene, 'is if Geordie's superior did dob Mansel in, and your Murderous Mansel theory holds, then someone had better stick a watch on the former Inspector Lawson. Because our Mansel murderer will be after him sooner rather than later, I expect.'

Benwick had boxes of evidence waiting for them back at the station house and had partially sorted it according to who he felt should be handling what. This involved a large quantity of what he dubbed 'The Messy Stuff,' and pawned off on Jem. Poking and prodding revealed the gun Colin Mansel had reportedly fired, a handkerchief with the dead Taggart's blood on it, also property of Colin Mansel, deceased, and an assortment of flattened, battered bullets.

It smelled musty, of confined space and years of festering storeroom shelves. Jem made an oblique note to harangue the person in charge of storing evidence and explain about how stuff degraded with time, but he didn't think anyone would listen, not really. They were all plodding on as best they could.

Body number seven was found floating in the duck pond. Tuesday found it, and this should have surprised no one, because body seven, formerly juror Gregory Alnwick, was in pieces. Specifically he'd had his tongue and hands severed.

'This is vindictive,' said Benwick, needlessly. 'Even by the standards of our murderer.'

'Our murderer,' said Geordie ruefully, 'knows his Cicero.'

'Sir?' said Teddy and Benwick as one.

'How he died,' said Jem. 'The Romans cut off his tongue and his hands to make a point.'

'The point being...?' asked Teddy, rubbing at his forehead.

'They didn't think much of his speeches,' said Jem. 'Neither did I, personally, but…'he shrugged. Geordie made an effort not to laugh. Benwick snapped his fingers and said, 'That fits!'

Several heads swivelled Benwick-wards. Benwick nodded enthusiasm. 'Yes, it does, see, because one of those articles Kitty pulled from the archives said how Alnwick was instrumental in swaying the jury. It was almost hung but then Alnwick said something that persuaded the people who were swithering.'

'Christ,' said Geordie.

'We have got,' said Teddy, 'to crack on with this. Benwick, where are those things the Doc wanted from Halifax?'

'Coming,' said Benwick. 'Honest. There's a lot of clear blue water between here and Halifax, you know. These things take time.'

'That's my line,' said Jem and patted the constable reassuringly on the back. 'And normally,' said Jem as an afterthought, 'this is where I'd poke about under Alnwick's nails in case of a struggle but we've hit a logistical snag in the lack of hands, so unless Tuesday finds them…'

*For the purposes of this story, I am throwing accuracy out the window and asserting that Agatha Christie's famous muder mystery about some people on a remote island was always called And Then There Were None. Anything else doesn't bear repeating.