Doctor Who_ All-Consuming Fire - Andy Lane [86]
I couldn't say that I was sorry about his fate.
Holmes bent, took a firm grip on the back of Surd's head, and pulled. The results were startling. Surd's hair came away in his hand, revealing a naked scalp, crisscrossed with thick, worm-like scars.
'Interesting,' he commented dryly, and examined the hairpiece inside and out.
'A fine piece of work,' he murmured. 'Made by Meunier of Grenoble, if I don't miss my guess. What do you think, Watson?'
I opened my mouth to answer but as usual he wasn't listening. Instead, he sniffed at the wig, then spent some moments parting the hairs and subjecting the surface in which they had been woven to a close examination, as if he were searching for lice.
'Hmmm. Most instructive.'
Placing the wig into a pocket, he turned his attention upon the corpse itself, running his fine, sensitive fingers over the fissured skin of Surd's head.
'There's something about these scars that intrigues me,' he muttered, retrieving his magnifying glass and scrutinizing Surd's scalp from close range. His forefinger traced a path amongst the cicatrices: along for a few inches, then down towards the nape of the neck, across for a few more inches and finally up, arriving at the point he had left.
'They're too regular,' he finished.
Bernice gasped.
'But that's . .
'Impossible?'
'I was going to say "ingenious":
I could contain myself no longer.
'What are you suggesting?' I asked.
Instead of replying, Holmes removed a penknife from his pocket. Choosing a small blade, he placed its edge against one of the scars, as if he was going to make an incision.
'Surely surgery is my province?' I joked. Holmes did not smile.
The blade slipped too easily out of sight, as if a cut had already been made. Holmes twisted the knife, and I watched in astonishment as a section of Surd's skull, some four inches by three, lifted away in Holmes's hand.
'Voila,' my friend exclaimed. 'The perfect smuggler's hiding place.'
I gazed at the small, dark space thus revealed. It had been lined with velvet, now slightly stained by the cranial fluids, and stitched to the skin of the scalp. I presumed that the stitching had also sealed the gap in the dura and pia mater membranes. I estimated that about half of Surd's brain must have been removed to create the space.
'Fascinating,' Holmes murmured.
'Sick,' said Bernice. 'Are you seriously suggesting that the books were smuggled out of the Library inside the head of this ape?'
'The space is obviously not large enough to hold more than a few pages, tightly folded. Perhaps the books were smuggled out a piece at a time.
There is some collateral evidence to suggest this.'
'What evidence?' I asked.
'Do you not remember your interview with Mrs Prendersly? Did you not repeat to me her assertion that she had seen the shadow of a man eating books? I put it to you, Watson, that what she actually saw was Surd here inserting a small volume into this space.'
'And that was why she was . . . killed in such a terrible way?'
'Quite possibly, although she did repeat to you the chant that her husband had overheard and which, it transpires, is the, key to unlocking the dimensional gateway. I can imagine that Maupertuis would wish to silence anybody who knew that information. The question remains, however: how did Maupertuis determine that she knew anything?'
I tried to think, but I found that I could not look away from the gaping space in Surd's head.
'I cannot accept that Maupertuis would do this to his servant.'
'I admit that it is a length to which even the recently departed Professor would not stoop. Still, as a method of conveying stolen materials past guards it has its advantages.'
He frowned.
'But why stop there?' he asked himself. He reached beneath the body and gently eased it onto its back. Surd's face resisted the attempt for a few moments, finally