He placed his hands ostentatiously behind his back, stepped into the shed, and peered at the stake, both through and over his glasses. And then he pulled out a magnifying glass to reinspect the wood. He paid particularly close attention to the areas where the bark still clung.
“Probably holly,” he said, as he stood up. “Very light color, close-grained. I’d say Ilex opaca—the American holly. Is that significant?”
“ ‘Out upon merry Christmas!,’ ” I declaimed. “ ‘What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer.’ ”
The chief and most of the other bystanders were looking at me as if they thought I’d suddenly lost my mind, but Michael joined in on the rest of the quote.
“ ‘If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with “Merry Christmas” upon his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.’ ”
“A Christmas Carol!” Dad exclaimed. “Of course!”
“Christmas Carol?” the chief echoed. “Like ‘The Holly and the Ivy’?”
“It’s a quote from Dickens’s book, A Christmas Carol,” I explained. “Something Scrooge says.”
“So you think the murderer was making a statement about Christmas, not about Mr. Doleson’s character?” the chief asked. He was scribbling frantically in his pocket notebook.
“No idea,” I said. “Maybe it just struck the killer as appropriate. After all, Scrooge was a miser, and Mr. Doleson was no philanthropist.”
“I still think you should look at the local occult community,” Dr. Smoot muttered.
“Or maybe the murderer just thought he was being clever,” Horace said. “Using a weapon that fit in with the theme of the Christmas parade.”
“Holiday parade,” I said, out of reflex. “You know what it does prove?”
Chief Burke frowned, but paused his scribbling and looked up at me warily.
“This was premeditated,” I said. “The killer had to cut that stake from a holly tree and sharpen it. Or at least deliberately bring it here.”
“It’s not something connected with the parade?” the chief asked.
“Most of these people can’t be relied on to march in the right direction,” I said. “Do you think I’d trust any of them with sharp sticks? No, sharpened holly stakes are not a part of the parade.”
“Didn’t think so,” the chief said. “But you never know. Dr. Smoot, perhaps you could—”
“Right,” Dr. Smoot said. “Get on with it. You need to work the scene.”
“If there’s anything I can do to help,” Dad said. He sounded so wistful.
“The more eyes the merrier,” Dr. Smoot said. He reinserted his fangs and ducked back into the shed.
“Excellent!” Dad said, following him.
Okay, Dr. Smoot was an absolute loon, but he’d just made Dad’s day—possibly his whole year—so he was all right in my book.
The chief didn’t even protest when I sidled up to stand beside him and peer through the open door of the shed. I almost wished I hadn’t. Thanks to the several powerful lights that Horace had rigged up to illuminate the scene, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A long brown feather sticking out of the pool of blood that had collected on the floor.
I pointed it out to Chief Burke.
“Is that significant?” he asked, frowning over his glasses at the feather.
“We’ll collect it, in any case,” Horace said. “But you’d expect to see a few feathers in a chicken coop.”
“Yes, but this shed isn’t a chicken coop—never was,” I said. “It’s a pig shed. And I cleaned it pretty thoroughly before I dragged the sleigh in here to dry. I didn’t want any leaves or feathers or other stuff to land on the fresh paint. I think I’d have noticed an enormous feather like that floating around.”
The others looked at the feather with new interest.
“Dr. Langslow, you’re the birder,” the chief said. “Any thoughts on the feather?”
“Hmm. . . .” Dad said. He whipped out his magnifying glass again and began studying the feather. Horace turned his flashlight so Dad would have more light, and I stuck my head inside the door, so I could watch. I winced when I realized what I was seeing.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you too much,” Dad said. “It’s not a native species, I can tell you that. Some kind of commercial feather, I suspect.”