destroyed.”
And there had been more than enough time for Taylor to have hidden whatever it was, on his way back to Mumford before he was summoned by Sam Hubbard.
When Constable Forrest arrived, Rutledge turned Taylor over to him, and warned him to have a care on their way to Cambridge. “He’s killed once,” he reminded the man.
He watched them leave, and Mrs Dunne, who had come to the door as the doctor was being taken away, bit her lip to hold back tears.
Rutledge walked to the house next but one to speak to Taylor’s wife, and it was a bitter duty. Her face drawn and pale from suffering, she said only, “It’s my fault. My fault.” And nothing would dissuade her. In the end, he had to tell her that her house would have to be searched. She nodded, too numb at that moment to care.
He left her with Mrs Dunne, and went to tell Mrs Gravely that he had found Sir John’s killer.
She frowned. “I’d never have believed the doctor could do such a thing. Not to murder Sir John for a heathen superstition. Poor Mrs Taylor, I can’t think how she’ll manage now.”
He left her, refusing her offer of a cup of tea. Then, just as he was cranking the motorcar, she called to him, and he came back to the steps where she was hugging her arms about her against the cold wind.
“It keeps slipping my mind, Mr Rutledge, sir! And it’s probably not important now. You asked me to keep an eye out for anything that was missing, and I wanted you to know I did.”
“Is there anything? Besides the reliquary?” he asked, surprised.
“Oh, nothing so valuable as that.” She smiled self-consciously, feeling a little foolish, but no less determined to do her duty. “Still, with the old dog dead, and Sir John gone as well, I never noticed it missing until yesterday morning. It’s the iron door-stop, the one shaped like a small dormouse. Sir John used it these past six months or so, whenever Simba needed to go out. To keep the door from slamming shut behind them, you see, while he walked a little way with Simba, or stood here on the step waiting for him. He never cared for the sound of a slamming door. He said it reminded him too much of the war. The sound of the guns and all that.”
Rutledge thanked her and drove to Cambridge to ask for men to search the sides of the road between Sir John’s house and Mumford.
As they braved the cold to dig through ditches, and push aside winter-dead growth, Rutledge could hear the doctor’s voice again.
You’re the policeman. Tell me.
Three hours later, he drove once more to Cambridge to do just that. A few black hairs still clung to the dormouse’s ears, and on the base was what appeared to be a perfect print in Sir John’s blood.
Dead of Winter
Richard A. Lupoff
From the aftermath of the First World War to events leading up to the Second World War. As with the previous story, the following is based on certain characters and events that really happened. It concerns Nazi activities in the United States in preparation for the war effort in Europe.
Richard A. Lupoff is as well known for his science fiction as for his crime and mystery novels. His first book was a study of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure (1965), and Lupoff became something of a master of adventure himself, but never with anything formulaic. Such books as One Million Centuries (1967) and Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971) rang the changes within science fiction, whilst Into the Aether (1974) was one of the early works of steampunk. A number of his books have been pastiches or tributes to some of Lupoff’s favourite authors, such as Lovecraft’s Book (1985), and readers will, of course, recognize the origins of his detective, Caligula Foxx, in the following story. Another Foxx story, “Cinquefoil” will be found in Lupoff’s collection Killer’s Dozen (2010).
Almost anyone would have been embarrassed to answer the doorbell wearing Buck Rogers pyjamas. Andy Winslow, however, felt no shame. His attitude was that anybody who sounded the brass gryphon knocker on the front door of Caligula Foxx’s house on West Adams Place had better be prepared for whatever sight he encountered. Especially if said caller arrived on a Sunday morning and sounded the knocker at the ungodly hour of – Winslow checked his Longines wristwatch and decided – well, it