The Penguin Who Knew Too Much(28)

“How do you do?” I said. “Can I help you?”

“We came about the body,” Barchester said.





Chapter 16

“What about the body?” I asked. “We’ve come to identify it.” “He's already been identified,” I said.

“Oh,” Rutherford said. “That seems highly irregular. But I suppose we can claim it for burial.”

“You’ll have to ask Chief Burke,” I said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t realize Dr. Lanahan was a relative of yours.”

Though it would certainly explain Lanahan's feckless behavior with the zoo.

“Dr. who?” Barchester said.

“Lanahan. Patrick Lanahan. That's who the body is.”

“I don’t see how that could be possible,” Rutherford said. “Who is this Lanahan person, and how did he come to be buried in our great-uncle's cellar?”

“He is—or was—the owner of the Caerphilly Zoo, and I have no idea how he came to be buried in the cellar. And it's our cellar now, so unless Dr. Lanahan's a friend or relative, I think it's really our problem.”

“But it wasn’t your cellar when he was buried there,” Barch-ester said. “Twelve years ago, it was Uncle Plantagenet's cellar.”

“And last night, when someone buried a body in it, it was our cellar,” I said. “Look, I think we must be talking about two completely different dead bodies here.”

Rutherford sighed the impatient sigh of a man trying to explain an elementary concept to someone who is proving unaccountably dense.

“We came about the body of our great-uncle, Dr. Plantagenet Sprocket,” he said. “We heard that you had unearthed a body in the basement, and we assumed that the remains of our unfortunate relative had finally come to light. Are you telling us that someone else has already claimed the deceased?”

“I don’t know about claiming, but someone else has already identified the body,” I said. “This Plantagenet Sprocket— you said he was your great-uncle, right? Married to Edwina Sprocket?”

“Yes,” Rutherford said. “The shameless hussy!”

“We never trusted her,” Barchester said, shaking his head. “Not from the minute he brought her home.” Which was pushing things a little—neither of them looked over forty, and Ed-wina Sprocket had been in her nineties when she died. Still, presumably he was using the word “we” out of solidarity with the distrustful Sprockets of generations gone by.

“How old was he?”

“When he met his untimely end—,” Barchester began.

“When he disappeared,” Rutherford corrected.

“Are you disputing that he met an untimely end?” Barchester said, turning to scowl at his brother.

“No, but it isn’t proven in a court of law,” Rutherford said.

“As you like,” Barchester said, through gritted teeth. “At the time when he allegedly disappeared and met his untimely end.”

“He didn’t allegedly disappear,” Rutherford snapped. “We know damn well that he disappeared. It's the untimely end that's alleged.”

“Was he in his thirties?” I put in, to cut short this typical Sprocketish bickering.

Both Sprockets turned to glare at me.

“Of course not! He was over eighty when he disappeared!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Our stiff's too young to be your uncle. In his thirties, according to the chief. And as I said, they’ve identified him already as someone else.”

“They’ve found the wrong body,” Rutherford said, shaking his head.

“It was the only body there to be found,” I said. “Now if there's nothing else you wanted... “ I gripped the doorknob, to suggest that perhaps it was time for them to leave.

“Where's Chief Burke?” Barchester said. “I think we need to talk to him about this.”

“Be my guest,” I said. “He's in the dining room.”

If I were a nicer person, I’d have warned them that the chief was trying to wrap up what had already been a long day and probably wasn’t in a good mood. They probably wouldn’t have paid any attention though. They marched over to knock on the dining-room door and were admitted by a yawning Sammy.

“I’m going to bed,” I announced to no one in particular.

I stumbled upstairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. After a look of longing at the still-disassembled king-sized bed leaning in pieces against the wall, I topped off the air in the inflatable camping mattress and strolled into the bathroom. Technically, the brightly colored snake in the bathtub wasn’t in my way, but odds were I’d have forgotten about it overnight, and I didn’t want to run into it when I stepped in to shower in the morning, so I relocated it to the tub in the hall bath. One of the guests would probably find it, but most of them hadn’t been invited to arrive this early anyway, so I didn’t see that they had much room to complain. Then I brushed my teeth and collapsed onto the air mattress.