Unnatural Selection

EIGHT

Sergeant Clapper was awaiting him at the entry to Robb’s cubicle, leaning casually against the frame of the glass partition, sipping from a chipped mug of coffee and chatting with Robb, who was seated at his desk, sorting desultorily through the mess of files on it.

“Here’s the very man,” was his indisputably genial greeting. “PC Robb was telling me you might be coming in again about that bone of yours.” He was in uniform today: open-throated, short-sleeved white shirt with blue-and-gold epaulets decorated with chevrons; dark blue trousers; and heavy, polished black shoes.

“Well, yes, I thought that maybe there was a little more to talk about,” Gideon said.

“Indeed, yes. I was thinking the same thing. I was extremely interested in what you were saying yesterday, you know, but then we were interrupted by that…” He made a growling noise deep in his throat. “… that sodding telephone call, and when I came back you’d up and left, hadn’t you?”

That’s not quite the way I remember it, Gideon thought, but it didn’t seem meanly intended, so he let it pass with no more than a murmur. If that was the way Clapper wanted to recall it, that was fine with him.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Clapper went on, motioning Gideon to follow him to his own office, “and I’ve done a bit of checking in the-oh, coffee?” he said, pointing to the coffeemaker in the unoccupied cubicle.

“I’m about coffeed out, thanks,” Gideon said.

“A wise decision,” Clapper said, grimacing and placing a hand on his belly. “Kyle, you can come along too, lad,” he called over his shoulder. “I know you’re interested.”

Walking behind him, keeping pace with his slow, billowing stride, Gideon saw that Clapper was an even bigger man than he’d realized, matching Gideon’s six-one, but probably pushing 250 pounds. Not that much overweight, really. Brawny was more like it. Basically, he was a constitutionally thickset man to begin with, with an unusually broad thorax and a wide pelvis. He’d make an interesting skeleton, Gideon couldn’t help thinking.

His office was at the end of the little hallway, just past a door that said “Interview Room.” It was no larger than Robb’s cubicle but with real walls instead of glass partitions, and a door that opened and closed. There was the usual clutter here: charts and maps on the walls, and files scattered across the desk-but not a single one of the many plaques and commendations he had received, according to Robb, no framed copies of the magazine articles that had been written about him, nothing that would indicate he had ever been anything more than the constable sergeant in St. Mary’s.

There were a few old, framed photographs on the walls-groups of smiling constables with their arms linked, but apparently they’d been left there by his predecessor, inasmuch as none of them included Clapper. Or Robb, for that matter. On his standard-issue desk, in addition to the paperwork and a pair of reading glasses, were a logoed mug (Chirgwin’s Gift Shop) holding pens and markers, and a filigree-framed photograph (his new “girl-friend”?) facing away from Gideon. Two metal visitor chairs that matched one another but not the desk were wedged into the narrow space between desk and wall. There was a single waist-high metal bookcase with a few thick manuals in it, and on the top shelf the bag in which Gideon had brought the tibial fragment, apparently still containing the bone.

“Now, then,” Clapper said when they’d sat down-Gideon and Robb having had to angle their chairs to make room for their legs-“how long did you say the bone had been there?”

“Probably under five years.”

“Because, you see, I’ve been searching back through our local records for any outstanding mispers, and while-”

“Excuse me? Whispers?”

“Mispers, missing persons,” Robb explained.

“Yes,” Clapper said, “and while we have none on file here, the national misper register at the Yard turned up two possibilities-people that might, or might not, have disappeared during visits to the Scillies.”

“You’ve been doing your homework,” Gideon said. He knew that information of that sort-“might or might not, have disappeared during visits to the Scillies”-didn’t jump out of the computer at you. You had to dig.

“Not too hard when you know the ropes. But, you see, one is from eight years ago and one goes back twelve. You’re certain it couldn’t be either one?”

He saw that Clapper really was in a better mood today. Yesterday’s questions had been challenges, confrontations. These were genuine requests for Gideon’s opinion.

“No, I’m not certain at all,” Gideon said. “Consider it an educated guess, no more. There are a whole lot of variables that make it hard to pinpoint the time. For one thing, I’m not that familiar with climatic conditions here-moisture, temperature variation-”

“So it could be as much as twelve years old?”

“Yes, it could.” He’d certainly been wrong by that much and more before. “What do you have?”

“The eight-year-old one is… let’s see…” He shuffled a file into view on his desk. “… an eighty-eight-year-old woman from London with senile dementia who wandered away from her tour group somewhere between St. Ives and… what?”

Gideon had been shaking his head. “Not her,” he said. “First, I’m pretty sure it came from a man. Second, it’s not from an eighty-eight-year-old. The texture of bone changes with age-it gets all rough and pitted as you get older.”

“Really?” an entranced Robb said. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yes, and that tibia’s too smooth. It’s a younger person’s bone-”

“A young man’s bone, is it? Well, then, what would you say to a eleven-year-old lad who disappeared from his uncle’s…” Clapper’s face fell. “No, again?”

“No, again. Not that young. Sorry.” Gideon got up, brought the tibia back to the desk, and explained about epiphyseal union while a disappointed but moderately interested Clapper lit up a Gold Bond and Robb listened as if his life depended on it. “As you can see, the proximal epiphysis is completely fused to the shaft-not a trace of a line separating them. The age range for that to happen is sixteen-fifteen at the very earliest-to twenty-two or so. This absolutely can’t be an eleven-year-old’s bone. He’s in his mid-twenties at the earliest, and probably older than that.”

“Sixteen to twenty-two,” Clapper mused, “for that particular bone. You knew that off the top of your head, so to speak?”

“Sure.”

“You know the age ranges of all these different epiphyses?”

“Well… yes, I guess I do. All the ones used in ageing, anyway.”

“And they’re all different? Even the ones on opposite ends of the same bone?”

“Pretty much.”

Clapper, studied him, nodding, his head wreathed in smoke. “Fancy,” he said.

Gideon, not knowing what to reply, replaced the bone in the bag. “So where would you say we go from here, Sergeant?”

Clapper leaned back in his chair. “Well, now, that’s the question, all right, innit?” he said slowly. “We have here a fragmentary bone, the condition of which implies dismemberment, which in turn implies homicide-”

Gideon noted that this was accepted as a given; another difference from yesterday.

“-but we know of no one it could possibly belong to.”

“That seems to be about it.”

“Yes. So what I ask myself is, I ask myself, why couldn’t it have come off a passing ship, as so many other bones found on the beach have done?”

“Maybe it did. Personally, I’d have my doubts. No marine life encrustation on it. And from what I understand it was buried a couple of feet down. Pretty unlikely for that to have happened naturally, from shifts in the sand. So I’d have to guess he was murdered, cut up, and buried right here on the island.”

“But-” Robb hesitated until Clapper nodded his permission to continue, and then barreled ahead, the words pouring out. “But isn’t that a premature conclusion? The lack of encrustation would merely mean that the bone hadn’t lain in the ocean for a considerable period of time, isn’t that right?”

“Right,” Gideon agreed.

“Well, that wouldn’t necessarily mean it hadn’t come from offshore, would it? How do we know that it’s not from a passing yacht of which we have no knowledge? That someone wasn’t murdered and dismembered on a boat, then brought ashore onto the beach and buried-at night, I should think-after which the murderer simply went back to his boat and sailed away, with no one the wiser?”

Clapper began to answer, but changed his mind and let Gideon do it.

“I kind of doubt that, Kyle,” Gideon said gently. “If you’ve already killed someone at sea, and even dismembered him, why risk coming ashore with the body to bury it? Wouldn’t the safest, easiest thing be to simply dump the remains into the ocean? If they were already dismembered, they could be dumped separately, miles apart. The probability of any of them ever being found would be infinitesimal, much, much smaller than the chances of finding remains buried on a beach.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Robb mumbled, embarrassed. “Yes, you’re quite right. The murder would have occurred here, yes.”

Gideon expected Clapper to make one of his cutting remarks about the value of university education and modern police training, but he demonstrated once again that he wasn’t the Mike Clapper of yesterday by letting the chance pass. Instead, he thought it all over. He nodded slowly to himself. He pondered. He drummed his fingers on the desk. He was without a doubt one of the most deliberate people Gideon had ever come across. “I’ll be honest with you, Professor. Dismemberments are new to me. Never worked on one. So where would you say we go from here?”

It was the question he’d been waiting for, and he’d carefully considered his answer. “Look, I know this doesn’t look like much of a case-a single bone, and not even a whole one at that-but if you have one piece of dismembered body, the rest is very likely to be nearby.”

Clapper nodded, puffing away. “That’s probably so.”

“Right. The pieces were probably put in plastic garbage bags or something similar and stuffed into a car, then driven to the beach, almost certainly at night, dumped out of the bags, and buried.”

“Why take them out of the bags? To make things harder for the police in the event they were ever to be discovered?”

“Yes. The smarter ones do that. For one thing, if they’re left sealed in garbage bags, it takes much longer for them to skeletonize. Clues remain. For another, finding human body parts in a plastic bag-even skeletonized ones-is a pretty good giveaway that dirty deeds have been done. Whereas the occasional bone fragment or two can be overlooked.”

“As this one was,” Clapper said. He pondered some more. “So there our man was, with a boot full of human remains, in a great hurry to be rid of them, and he takes the time to remove them from their bags-and wouldn’t that be a filthy, miserable job?-before burying them. Even in the middle of the night, on a quiet beach, I’d say that takes a cool customer. The road runs quite near the beach up there, don’t you see.”

“I’d say so too. But cool or not, he would be in a hurry, and he wouldn’t want to risk driving around with what he had in his trunk any more than he had to. So the chances are good that the rest of the body is buried nearby. Would you consider doing some exploratory digging at Halangy Beach?”

Clapper laughed. “If I had a staff, I would. But there’s only young Robb and myself-which in effect means only young Robb, because I wouldn’t be much of a hand with a shovel anymore.”

“I’d be glad to pitch in too. There are signs to look for when you’re hunting for-”

Clapper held up his hand. “I have a better idea, Professor. If you’re free for the next hour or two, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. I think he might be just the chap to help us.”

“I’m free, all right.” Whatever this was about, Clapper was taking it seriously, and Gideon was pleased. And Robb had certainly been right: the big, jovial, animated man he was looking at was barely recognizable as the sarcastic, burnt-out cop of yesterday.

Clapper stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, looking as near to positively enthusiastic as Gideon had seen him. “That’s fine. Fancy a short, bracing walk to the harbor, followed by a jaunt over the bounding main in a luxury yacht?

“Nothing I’d like better,” Gideon said.

“Excellent.” He was already shrugging into the tunic that he’d taken from a hanger behind the door. “Kyle,” he said pleasantly on the way out, “get hold of Trus Hicks on the blower and tell him we’ll be on his doorstep in half an hour, will you? Tell him what it’s about.” He picked up one of the hats-the soft, military kind, not a helmet. “And ring up the cox to let him know we’re on our way to the boat, there’s a good lad. Going to St. Agnes, ain’t we?”

Clapper’s “luxury yacht” turned out to be a garish yellow-and-green, twin-hulled metal boat that served both as police launch and water ambulance for the islands. The cox-the pilot-was waiting for them, and as soon as they were aboard he started it up. Gideon was surprised at the 747-like roar and power of the twin jet-thrust engines. Within seconds they were out of Hugh Town Harbor and scudding south across the famously wicked currents of St. Mary’s Sound, heading for the island of St. Agnes with the boat’s prow a foot in the air.

“Wow,” he exclaimed, hanging on to the railing for dear life.

“We’ll have you there in three and a half minutes,” the pilot shouted with pride, leaning forward as if to coax yet a little more speed from it. “At full-tilt, we can get to just about any of the off-islands in under nine minutes.”

The launch had a small enclosed cabin for patients needing treatment or prisoners needing restraining, to which Clapper and Gideon retreated, partly because it was quieter than the deck, and partly because the wind had a bite to it from the thready mist that was beginning to form low over the water, in line with Robb’s earlier prediction of fog. Once seated on the wooden benches that ran around its perimeter, Clapper asked: “Ever heard of Truscott Hicks?”

“I don’t think so.”

Clapper seemed moderately surprised. “Know anything about cadaver dogs?”

“Dogs that locate bodies? Not much. I’ve been on cases where they’ve been used, but they’ve already done their work by the time I get involved.”

“Well,” Clapper said comfortably, popping the lid of his cigarette box and dragging one out with his lips, “you’re about to learn everything you ever wanted to know about them.” He lit up and took a drag. “And then some.”

The pilot’s estimate of three and a half minutes was on the money, but there was a twenty-minute holdup during which the launch was forced to putt back and forth offshore while the short, narrow stone quay was occupied by two farm tractors with flatbeds unloading the day’s deliveries-everything from milk and bread to a sofa (not new) and a television set (likewise)-from the daily supply ferry. When the unloading was finished, the tractors had chugged off in a dusty haze, and the ferry had backed out and departed, they pulled up alongside the quay and the pilot threw a rope over a nearby stanchion.

“We won’t be long, Ron,” Clapper said, climbing out onto stone steps worn concave by four hundred years of friendly visitors and unfriendly invaders. “Time enough for a pint at the Turk’s Head, if you don’t dawdle.”

The pilot nodded soberly. “I shall take your sage advice, Sergeant.”

The tide was at its highest, with a thin sheet of water sloshing over the uneven old stonework, so they had to watch their step. Gideon was again struck with Clapper’s stately man-on-the-moon walk. In an odd, elephantine way, he was extremely graceful, totally in balance. Maybe it was the low center of gravity that hippy, pear-shaped form gave him. At the foot of the quay, where they stepped onto the land of the one-square-mile island itself, there were a few metal signs tacked onto an unpainted shed. All except one were for family-run guest houses and bed-and-breakfast places (there were no hotels on St. Agnes, Clapper said); the other was an advertisement for where they were going:

Bed-and-Biscuit Canine Boarding Establishment

Lowertown Farm Road

Tel 422380

Minimum Stay One Week

Proprietor Mr. Truscott Hicks

“Truscott Hicks,” Clapper explained as they began walking up the path from the quay, “knows more about dogs than any man I’ve ever met. He was a famous dog trainer in the seventies. Wrote a few books, had his own show on the telly, gave courses all over the world, and so on. Well, about the time he got tired of that, his son-a copper up in Barnstaple at the time-told him about how they were starting to use dogs to detect firearms, explosives, drugs, and so on. Trus took an interest, took some courses on the Continent and on your side of the Pond, and made himself into a first-rate expert. First paid canine consultant of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, founding member of the Canine Forensics Association, and so forth and so on.”

They were passing the Turk’s Head Pub that he’d mentioned to their pilot (Turk’s Head being a common name for pubs, deriving either from a type of seafarer’s knot or, with more grim connotations, from the Crusades, depending on whom you asked) and a couple of men, sitting at an outdoor table over their pints, waved.

“See who’s here, Alf. What brings you to our fair part of the world, Constable Sergeant? A bank robbery? A triple murder? An anarchist plot to blow up the parsonage?”

“Just out and about enjoying the fresh air, lads,” Clapper said pleasantly. “Lovely day, innit?”

At the Turk’s Head they turned left off the road onto a footpath that skirted the low bluffs above the beach. “Shorter this way,” the sergeant said. “Now where was I? Well, I myself first met Trus, oh, about five years ago. I called him in on a case when I was…” He faltered. “Well, you see, this was-”

“When you were a detective chief inspector in Plymouth?” He was getting along well with Clapper, and he thought this might clear the air even more.

Clapper tucked in his chin but didn’t break stride. “Someone’s been talking out of school,” he muttered. “PC Robb, would that be?”

“He’s proud of you, and proud to be working with you, Sergeant. And I understand why. You’ve had a hell of a career.”

“And did he tell you why I’m spending the remainder of this illustrious career as a sergeant in the most remote outpost of England?”

“He implied there’d been, uh, differences with administration.”

Clapper laughed, not disagreeably. “I’d say that describes it.”

Gideon responded in kind with one or two humorous accounts of his own struggles with administration in the groves of academe, and by the time they arrived at another modest “Bed-and-Biscuit Canine Boarding Establishment” sign at the head of a curving lane, they had slipped without noticing into first names.

The lane curved down toward the water and ended at the front steps of a green-roofed, white farmhouse on a gorse-and heather-covered bluff, below which was a small, white beach strewn with driftwood and edged by grassy dunes. The small sign on the front door said, “Please ring and enter. Be sure to close door behind you.”

They did as instructed, finding themselves in a small foyer at the foot of a half-flight of stairs, and bringing instantly down on themselves a pandemonium of frenzied barking, yapping, and yipping-moderated by a single wise, resonant whooof -that seemed to come from every corner of the house. There followed the patter of many feet on wood flooring, and a pack of eight or ten small dogs-terriers, pugs, toy spaniels-threw themselves in what seemed like pure, noisy, gleeful ecstasy against the baby gate at the top of the stairs, barking away. A second later a huge Great Dane padded up behind them-the whoofer-and towered over them, adding his own deep voice to the chorus.

From down the hall came a soft, neutral voice: “Quiet.” Nothing authoritative or threatening, not really a command at all, just a courteous request, but the barking stopped the way a switched-off radio stops. “Sit.” And with an audible thump, as abruptly as if their back legs had been swept out from under them, every one of them went down on its haunches (the Dane accidentally sat on a Yorkie, which caused a brief commotion) and stayed there, heads smartly turned to the left, from whence the voice had come, as if posed for a cute doggie calendar photo.

A moment later, a mild-looking man of seventy appeared behind the dogs, preceded by the sweet, cloying odor of pipe tobacco from the ancient briar that was held loosely between his teeth. Gideon’s immediate impression was that he was looking at someone who was about as contented as a human being could get. With his gray, thinning hair, his polished-apple cheeks, his schoolish spectacles, and his not-so-expertly hand-knitted vest, in the neck of which the knot of a plain blue tie was visible, he might have been a retired Oxford don. From the way he smiled down at his charges, it couldn’t have been more clear that he was living his sunset years exactly as he wished to, surrounded by the companions of his choice.

He plucked the pipe from his mouth and smiled kindly down at them. “Mike Clapper! Sergeant Mike, the very man, as I live and sneeze. Come all this way just to cheer up his poor old mate, struck down by the cruel and remorseless hand of age.”

“Come on business, Trus,” Clapper said briskly.

Hicks rubbed his hands together. “Well, then!”

“Not that there’s any money in it for you, you understand.”

“The story of my life,” Hicks said with a sigh. “And this young fellow must be the renowned Professor Oliver, whose monograph on exhuming skeletal remains has been my bible on the subject for many years.”

“Thank you,” said a flattered Gideon. “Actually, it was more Walter Birkby’s monograph than mine. I was the junior author on that one.”

“Modest too. Very becoming. Come in, gentlemen.”

He unclicked the baby gate-the dogs stirred, but didn’t dash for the opening-and let the two of them in, and men and dogs followed him in a line down a hallway to a comfortable but undistinguished linoleum-floored living room with a matched set of 1960’s-style department store furniture. Hicks sat Gideon and Clapper on the sofa and, without asking, went to get them tea, while the dogs, each apparently with its preferred place, clambered into the seats or onto the arms of the chairs. Some curled themselves like cats over the chair backs. The Great Dane laid himself down, Sphinxlike, in front of the fireplace.

When Hicks had returned with the tea things on a tray and had squeezed himself into an armchair between three look-alike black spaniels, two of which clambered into his lap, Clapper briefly laid out the facts.

“One of those little cove beaches up north, eh?” Hicks said. “Those would be, what, a hundred, a hundred-and-fifty yards wide?”

“Something like that,” Clapper said. “No wider, anyway. Want to have a go?”

Hicks dug the bit of his pipe against his cheek. “Well, sand isn’t the easiest medium in the world, you know. It’s too porous, you see, too many ways for the scent to escape. You get a huge scent pool, and the dog has to work extremely hard to pinpoint. And then, of course, sand is notorious for shifting, so there’s the added problem of… mm…” The pipe bit went back in his mouth. Absently, he stroked the ears of one of the spaniels on his lap.

“You don’t think it can be done?” Clapper asked, his disappointment showing. Gideon imagined his own was showing too.

Out came the pipe. “Body’s been there a good five years, you say?”

“Probably less,” Gideon said. “More than one, though.”

Hicks pondered. “Well, that might be stretching things a bit, but yes, why not? We can certainly have a look-see. The dog will enjoy a run on the beach, in any case. What say we do it tomorrow morning?”

Gideon and Clapper readily agreed.

“Good-o.” Hicks thrust the pipe back into his mouth and got to his feet, spilling dogs onto the floor. “These you see are all guests and house pets. My old working dogs prefer living outside. Come and meet them.”

“Do you still have Heidi the Wonder Dog?” Clapper asked, getting out of his chair.

“Why, Mike, what a thing to say. Of course I still have her. I’d never give up Heidi. I’d never give up any of them.”

“Well, yes, I only wondered if-that is, I thought perhaps-”

“She’s alive and well,” Hicks said, “and no doubt eager to see you.”

When they left the room, the dogs started to scramble after them, but Hicks murmured, “Down. Stay,” over his shoulder, and down they went and down they stayed, after practically screeching to a halt.

“I just thought of something, Trus,” Clapper said. “The fog’s supposed to be worse tomorrow. Fog season, you know. Is that going to be a problem?”

“Dear me, no. For you and me, perhaps, but not for a dog. It’s smell they depend on, not sight. It might even make it easier, because moist conditions enhance scent. And then the dogs are happier when it’s cool.”

The three men walked through the kitchen and out the back door of the house, into an acre of grassy moorland that included an inviting pond and a couple of shady clumps of small elm and sycamore trees, all safely enclosed by a wire fence. Valhalla for dog heroes, Gideon thought.

There were four of them: a Doberman pinscher, two German shepherds, and a Border collie, and all of them came bounding over gracefully when Hicks made a clucking sound with his tongue. These were not like the yappers and yippers indoors, who had clamored for the attention of strangers. Three of the four had eyes only for Hicks. With their shapely heads turned adoringly up to him, they weren’t begging for food or even pleading for attention. All they wanted was the joy of his presence. The fourth, the Border collie, pranced around them, snapping gently at their feet to herd them together, as its genes demanded.

“This one’s Heidi, am I right?” Clapper said, bending to rub the ears of one of the German shepherds, which permitted the attention with the abstracted air of a pasha tolerating the devotion of a supplicant. “Hello, there, love,” Clapper said affectionately, and to Gideon: “It’s Heidi here that put an end to the biggest arson racket that Plymouth ever saw. What a nose on this old girl.”

“She did that, all right,” Hicks agreed. “It was Heidi that put us onto the lean-to where they’d stored their petrol-for setting their fires, you see, even though there’d been no petrol there for more than five months and it was completely open to the elements. Did it entirely on what vestiges of scent remained.”

“Amazing,” Gideon said. “Will we be using her tomorrow?”

Hicks stared at him. “What an idea. No, Heidi is an accelerant-detecting canine. No, no, we need a cadaver dog, or as we prefer to call it in these politically correct times, a human remains detection dog.”

“I didn’t realize they specialized to that extent.”

“Well, of course they specialize. How could a-” He was obviously shocked at Gideon’s ignorance, but polite-ness stopped him from expressing it. “For example, Kaiser here”-he kneaded the scruff of the other shepherd’s neck-“is strictly a water search dog. Keenest nose in existence for locating a body at the bottom of a pond, but wouldn’t know a cadaver in the open if he stumbled over it. And Trixie there-” At the mention of her name the Doberman shivered with pleasure and pushed her sleek muzzle into Hicks’s hand. “-well, this beauty has been known to hunt down an automobile with explosives in its boot after it had driven two miles through dense Torquay traffic.”

“Amazing,” Gideon murmured again.

“No, our expert tomorrow will be Tess.” He pointed at the midsized brown-and-white Border collie, which continued politely mock-nipping at their heels, presumably to keep them from wandering off and getting lost and thereby getting her in trouble. “Tess is a tried-and-true cadaver dog-pardon me, a human remains detection dog-inasmuch as she’s trained to find skeletons, and even single bones, as well as decomposing corpses. But she couldn’t track a lost hiker-a lost live hiker-to save her soul. Not her fault, of course; it’s the way she’s been schooled. She’s been taught to alert to nothing but human remains. She’ll even ignore animal remains.”

Gideon only barely caught himself before saying “Amazing” again. “Huh,” he said, “and I thought they were all just general-purpose tracking dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, with some specific training tacked on.”

“Good heavens, no,” Hicks exclaimed. “They’re not tracking dogs at all, never were. Tracking dogs require tracks, don’t you see. Either literal tracks or some specific scent article belonging to the person. And they generally require some specific starting point. But these ”-he used the stem of his pipe to jab at the animals-“are air-scent canines. They don’t look for an individual person or object but for a specific type of smell. They can start from anywhere, they don’t need scent articles, they-” His rosy cheeks turned a little redder. “Gentlemen, I beg your pardon. I’m boring you, I’m sure. It’s only that I don’t get a chance to talk about it very much anymore.”

“Ah, well, we’re bearing up,” Clapper said stoically.

“It’s extremely interesting,” Gideon said. “There’s a lot more to it than I thought.”

“Oh, that’s only the start,” Hicks said, recognizing Gideon as the curious scientist he was. “There’s a remarkable field of knowledge here. Come into the house for another cup of tea, or something stronger, if you like, and I will astound and edify you.”

“We’re for it now,” Clapper muttered crossly on the way back in.