Free A Dark and Stormy Night by Jeanne M. Dams Page A

death?’
    â€˜Where did you get the idea it was female?’ asked Alan. ‘The doctor says quite definitely not, and you know that’s one of the easiest things to determine.’
    â€˜Oh! I thought— but never mind. A man, then. Anything else? Age, maybe?’
    â€˜I can’t be certain,’ said Upshawe. He looked tired and distressed. ‘This isn’t my field – I’m a surgeon – but one learned a certain amount in anatomy classes. The man was past adolescence and not yet senescent – not yet old. There is no obvious arthritic degeneration. The femurs are relatively long; I think we can assume a man of above average height. Beyond that . . .’ He spread his hands. ‘An expert in these things would be able to tell you a great deal more.’
    â€˜Gideon Oliver,’ I murmured. ‘Where are you when we need you?’
    â€˜Who?’ said Upshawe and my husband simultaneously.
    â€˜Sorry. A fictional detective. A physical anthropologist. Never mind. Is there any way to tell about how long he’d been there?’
    â€˜Not for non-experts like us,’ said Alan. ‘There were some fragments of cloth, probably clothing, but as I don’t know how long it takes clothing to rot, that takes us no forrarder.’
    â€˜Nothing else, then? No billfold? Leather surely doesn’t rot as soon as cloth.’
    â€˜No, it doesn’t, usually. We did find bits of his shoes, but nothing that told us much – except that he went to his grave shod. It wasn’t easy to look, love. You understand we were actually down in the hole with the tree roots, very insecure footing and none too safe, if the tree had shifted. When we can get the proper equipment and personnel here, we’ll institute a search. Until then, we’re pretty well stuck.’
    Laurence Upshawe was looking a bit green. I glanced at him and said brightly, ‘Well, then, we’d better get to work on that drive.’ We moved back to join the work party, but before we could even pick up tools, Jim Moynihan stepped up, sounding irritated.
    â€˜What did you think? Who died? What’s going on?’
    â€˜We don’t know,’ said Alan. ‘A man, aged anywhere from the late teens to perhaps the forties. Tallish, probably. No identification.’
    Jim rolled his eyes. ‘Then what the hell do we do now?’
    â€˜If we were in any position to do so, we – you – would call in the police. They would bring equipment to get the skeleton up and out to a forensics laboratory, where every effort would be made to solve a number of questions – how the man died, how long ago, and naturally who he was.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, we can’t do any of that, can we?’ He gazed bitterly down the disaster area that used to be his drive.
    â€˜Not at present,’ said Alan with a sigh. ‘But as this is plainly a crime scene, we must do what we can. I will put a guard on the – one hesitates to call it a body – on the remains, and ask whatever questions I can think of. None of it is likely to be useful, but it has to be done.’
    â€˜And by what authority,’ asked Laurence, ‘do you take it upon yourself to ask these questions?’ He tightened his grip on the axe he had picked up.
    â€˜No authority at all,’ said Alan calmly. ‘But as we are isolated on our island, and I am the only representative of the law present, I considered that some questions were in order. Anyone may certainly refuse to answer.’
    Upshawe put the axe down, carefully. ‘Representative of the law?’
    â€˜Perhaps our host didn’t mention to you that I am the retired chief constable of Belleshire. I’m off my turf, this being Kent, but once a policeman, always a policeman. If I can gather any facts to lay before the real authorities when they can get here, it may make an investigation a bit easier. Don’t you