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By Root 575 0

caught by a series of small glass-walled cages, beside a dissecting table. There was a series of leeches in stoppered jars, none of them as big as the specimen in Wells’s photograph, but all so large they were indeed unable even to sustain their characteristic tubular forms; they lay against the thick glass at the bottom of their jars, in evident distress. Among the higher animals imprisoned here there were mice, but of an unusual morphology, with remarkably long and spindly limbs. Some of the mice, indeed, had trouble supporting their own weight. I remarked on this to Holmes, but he made no comment.

Holmes, Wells and I stepped over the crater’s cracked lip and walked around the wrinkled aluminium of the capsule’s hull. The fall had been, I judged, no more that ten feet – a drop that seemed barely enough to injure, let alone kill a man – but it had been sufficient to compress the ship’s entire structure by perhaps a third of its length.

“How terrible,” Wells said. “It was in this very spot – suspended under the glittering hull of Brimicombe’s moon ship itself – that he bade us dine.”

“Then perhaps you have had a lucky escape,” said Holmes grimly.

“The workmen have cut the capsule open.” Tarquin indicated a square rent in the wall, a shadowed interior beyond. “The body was removed after the police and the coroner studied the scene. Do you want to look in there? Then I will show you where Bryson and I were working.”

“In a minute,” said Holmes, and he studied the corpse of the fantastic ship with his usual bewildering keenness. He said, “What sort of man was Ralph? I see evidence of his technical abilities, but what was it like to know him – to be related, to work with him?”

“Among those he worked with, Ralph stood out.” Tarquin’s face was open and seemed untainted by envy. “When we were children, Ralph was always the leader. And so it remained as we entered adult life.”

Wells remarked, “I never knew if you liked him.”

Tarquin’s eyes narrowed. “I cannot answer that, Bertie. We were brothers. I worked for him. I suppose I loved him. But we were also rivals, throughout life, as are most brothers.”

Holmes asked bluntly, “Do you stand to benefit from his death?”

Tarquin Brimicombe said, “No. My father’s legacy will not be transferred to me. Ralph made out his own will, leaving his assets to his wife; and there is no love lost between the two of us. You may check with the family solicitors – and with Jane – to verify these claims. If you are looking for a murder motive, Mr Holmes, you must dig deeper. I will not resent it.”

“Oh, I shall,” muttered Holmes. “And Ralph Brimicombe is beyond resenting anything. Come. Let us look in the capsule.”

We stepped over the shattered concrete to the entrance cut in the capsule wall. A small lamp had been set up, filling the interior with a sombre glow. I knew that the body – what was left of it – had been taken away for burial, but the craft had not been cleaned out. I dropped my eyes to the floor, expecting – what? a dramatic splash of blood? – but there were only a few irregular stains on the burst upholstery of the aviator’s couch, where Ralph had been seated at the moment of his extinguishing. There was surprisingly little damage to the equipment and instrumentation, the dials and switches and levers evidently meant to control the craft; much of it had simply been crushed longways where it stood.

But there was a smell, reminiscent to me of the hospitals of my military service.

I withdrew my head. “I am not sure what I expected,” I murmured. “More – carnage, I suppose.”

Tarquin frowned thoughtfully; then he extended his index finger and pointed upwards.

I looked up.

It was as if a dozen bags of rust brown paint had been hurled into the air. The upper walls and ceiling of the ship, the instruments, dials and switches that encrusted the metal, even the cabin’s one small window: all were liberally coated with dried blood.

“Good Lord,” said Wells, and his face blanched. “How did that get up there?”

Tarquin said, “The coroner concluded the vessel must have rolled over as it fell,