Last Respects

tension all round.

He looked across at Detective Constable Crosby. He didn’t want his assistant’s tension lowered any more.

“Have you got a note of that, Crosby?” he barked unfairly.

Miss Collins said, “It can’t osmoregulate, you know, Inspector.”

Sloan didn’t know and said so.

“True estuarine species can,” declared Miss Collins.

Sloan did not enjoy being blinded with Science.

“Gammarus pulex, Inspector, is a good example of a biological indicator.”

Sloan said he was very glad to hear it.

The pathologist leaned forward eagerly and said, “So Charley here…”

“I’m not at all sure that I can tell you its sex,” said Miss Collins meticulously. She raised her head from considering the water creature and asked clearly, “Is sex important?”

Sloan stiffened. If Crosby said that sex was always important then he, Detective Inspector Sloan, his superior officer, would put him on report there and then… murder case or not. Detective Constable Crosby, however, continued to be absorbed by half an inch of wriggling crustacean and it was Sloan who found himself answering her.

“No,” he said into the silence.

He felt that sounded prim and expanded on it.

“Not as far as I know,” he added.

That sounded worse.

He lost his nerve altogether and launched into further speech.

“In this particular case,” he added lamely.

Miss Collins looked extremely scientific. “Gammarus pulex enjoys a curious sort of married life.”

As a quondam bobby on the beat Sloan could have told her that that went for quite a slice of the human population too.

“But,” she carried on, “you don’t get the really intricate sex reversal as in—say—the Epicarids.”

Sloan was glad to hear it. If there was one thing that the law had not really been able to bend its mind round yet, it was sex reversal.

“Can you eat it?” asked Detective Constable Crosby.

Miss Collins gave a hortatory cough while Sloan had to agree to himself that food did come a close second to sex most of the time. She shook her head and said, “Its common name of freshwater shrimp is a complete misnomer.”

In the end it was Sloan who cut the cackle and got down to the horses. “What you’re trying to tell us, miss, is that this… this… whatever it is… is a freshwater species, not a sea one.”

“That’s what I said, Inspector,” she agreed patiently. “Gammarus pulex can’t live in sea water and that’s what makes it a good biological indicator.”

“So,” said Sloan slowly and carefully, “the body didn’t come in from the sea.”

“I don’t know about the body,” said the biologist with precision, “but I can assure you that Gammarus pulex didn’t.”

“Are you telling me,” asked Sloan, anxious to have at least one thing clear in his mind, “that it—this thing here—would have died in sea water then?”

“I am,” she said with all the lack of equivocation of the true scientist on sound territory covered by natural laws.

A little hush fell in the laboratory.

Then Sloan said heavily, “We’d better get our best feet forward then, hadn’t we?”

Perhaps in their own way policemen were amphipods too.

Or amphiplods.

Gammarus pulex scuttled sideways across the bottom of the glass vessel as he spoke.

He’d have to prise Crosby away from that jar if he watched it much longer. He was practically mesmerized by it as it was.

“We’ll have to go up river,” Sloan announced to nobody in particular. He turned. “Come along, Crosby.”

Detective Constable Crosby straightened up at last. “We might find some Dead Man’s Fingers, too, sir, mightn’t we?”

“Alcyonium digitatum,” said Dr. Dabbe.

“Not in fresh water,” said Miss Collins promptly. “Dead Man’s Fingers are animals colonial that like the sea- shore.”

Sloan didn’t say anything at all.

Police Constable Brian Ridgeford was confused. He had duly reported the finding of the ship’s bell to Berebury Police Station and had in fact brought it back to his home with him. Home in the case of a country constable was synonymous with place of work. His wife was less than enchanted when he set the bell down on the kitchen table.

“Take that out to the shed,” commanded Mrs. Ridgeford immediately.

Ridgeford picked it up again.

“What is it anyway?” she asked. “It looks like a bell to me.”

“It is a bell,” he said. That sounded like one of those childhood conundrums that came in Christmas crackers.

Question: When is a door not a door?

Answer: When it’s ajar.

When was a bell not a bell?

When it was treasure trove. Or was it only that when it—whatever it was—had been hidden by the original owner with the intention of coming back for it? Not lost at sea. He would have to look that up. He felt a little self- conscious anyway about using the words “treasure trove” to his wife.

“It’s a ship’s bell,” he said lamely.

“I can see that.”

“It’s stolen property, too, I think.” He cleared his throat and added conscientiously, “Although I don’t rightly know about that for sure.” Unfortunately when he’d telephoned the police station he’d been put through to Superintendent Leeyes. This had compounded his confusion.

“Dirty old thing,” she said, giving it a closer look.

“I think it could be lagan as well.”

“I don’t care what it is, I’m not having anything like that in my clean kitchen.” She looked up suspiciously. “What’s lagan anyway?”

“Goods or wreckage lying on the bed of the sea.”

She sniffed. “I’m still not having it in here.”

“Mind you,” he said carefully, “in law things aren’t always what they seem.” Being in the police force gave a man a different view of the legal system. “In law an oyster is a wild animal.”

“Get away with you, Brian Ridgeford.”

“It’s true. A judge said so.”

“Oh, a judge.” Brenda Ridgeford hadn’t been a policeman’s wife for very long, but long enough to be critical of judges and their judgements.

“Sat for a day in court they did to decide.”

“The law’s an ass, then,” she giggled.

“An ass is a domestic animal,” said her husband promptly.

She gave him a very sly look indeed. “So’s a wife or have you forgotten?”

In the nature of things it was a little while before the ship’s bell was moved out to the shed and Brian Ridgeford was able to concentrate on his duties again. These centred on finding the two boys who had taken the