A Red Herring Without Mustard

“I expect she takes it for her arthritis,” Dogger said, and went back to his hammering.

“Gaaak!” I said, making a face. “I hate the smell of the stuff.”

But Dogger was not to be drawn out.

“Isn’t it odd,” I plowed on, “how nature puts the same pong in the liver of a fish as it does in a weed like the stinking goosefoot, and in the willow that grows by the water?”

“Stinking goosefoot?” Dogger said, looking up in puzzlement. And then: “Ah, yes, of course. The methylamines. I’d forgotten about the methylamines. And then …”

“Yes?” I said, too quickly and too eagerly.

There were times when Dogger’s memory, having been primed, worked beautifully for a short time, like the vicar’s battered old Oxford which ran well only in the rain.

I crossed my fingers and my ankles and waited, biting my tongue.

Dogger removed his hat and stared into it as if the memory were hidden in its lining. He frowned, wiped his brow on his forearm, and went on hesitantly. “I believe there were several cases reported in The Lancet in the last century in which a patient was recorded as exuding a fishy smell.”

“Perhaps he was a fisherman,” I suggested. Dogger shook his head.

“In neither case was the patient a fisherman, and neither had been known to be in contact with fish. Even after bathing, the piscine odor returned, often following a meal.”

“Of fish?”

Dogger ignored me. “There was, of course, the tale in the Bhagavad Ghita of the princess who exuded a fishy odor …”

“Yes?” I said, settling back as if to hear a fairy tale. Somewhere in the distance, a harvesting machine clattered away softly at its work, and the sun shone down. What a perfect day it was, I thought. “But wait!” I said. “What if his body were producing trimethylamine?”

This was such an exciting thought that I sprang out of the wheelbarrow.

“It would not be unheard of,” Dogger said, thoughtfully. “Shakespeare might have been thinking of just such a complaint:

“ ‘What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish: a very ancient and fish-like smell.’ ”

A chill ran up my spine. Dogger had slipped into the loud and confident voice of an actor who has delivered these lines many and many a time before.

“The Tempest,” he said quietly. “Act two, scene two, if I’m not mistaken. Trinculo, you’ll recall, is speaking of Caliban.”

“Where do you dig up these things?” I asked in admiration.

“On the wireless,” Dogger said. “We listened to it some weeks ago.”

It was true. At Buckshaw, Thursday evenings were devoted to compulsory wireless listening, and we had recently been made to sit through an adaption of The Tempest without fidgeting.

Other than the marvelous sound effects of the storm, I didn’t remember much about the play, but obviously Dogger did.

“Is there a name for this fishy condition?” I asked.

“Not to the best of my knowledge,” he said. “It is exceedingly rare. I believe …”

“Go on,” I said, eagerly.

But when I looked up at Dogger, the light in his eyes had gone out. He sat staring at his hat, which he held clutched in his trembling hands as if he had never seen it before.

“I believe I’ll go to my room now,” he said, getting slowly to his feet.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I think I will, too. A nice nap before dinner will do both of us good.”

But I’m not sure that Dogger heard me. He was already shambling off towards the kitchen door.

When he was gone, I turned my attention to the wooden tea chest he had been nailing shut. In one corner was pasted a paper label, upon which was written in ink:

THIS SIDE UP - Contents - Silver Cutlery - de Luce - Buckshaw

Cutlery? Had Dogger packed the Mumpeters in this crate? Mother and Father Mumpeter? Little Grindlestick and her silver sisters?

Is that why he’d been polishing them?

Why on earth would he do such a thing? The Mumpeters were my childhood playthings, and the very thought of anyone—

But hadn’t Brookie Harewood been murdered with one of the pieces from this set? What if the police—?

I walked round to the far side of the crate: the side that Dogger had turned away from me as I approached.

As I read the words that were stenciled in awful black letters on the boards, something vile and sour rose up in my throat.

Sotheby’s, New Bond Street, London, W.C., it said.

Father was sending away the family silver to be auctioned.

NINETEEN

DINNER WAS A GRIM affair.

The worst of it was that Father had come to the table without The London Philatelist. Instead of reading, he insisted upon solicitously passing me the peas and asking, “Did you have a nice day today, Flavia?”

It almost broke my heart.