The Case of the Late Capybara by Cecilia Peartree

Author:Cecilia Peartree
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, smuggling, scottish, taxidermy, museums, edinburgh

Chapter 15

‘There’s two policemen here for you,’ said Colin’s voice. It wasn’t like him to use the phone. He would almost always just materialise in the doorway when you least expected him at all times of the working day.

‘Can you show them up - please?’

‘I’m not allowed to leave the front door. The professor told me. In case of intruders.’

No wonder the man was so grumpy this morning. He would hate being confined to the entrance hall. What was Howard thinking of? Max couldn’t recall him ever worrying about intruders before. It was more a case of panicking in case potential visitors couldn’t even find the museum, tucked away as it was off a courtyard among the Canongate tenements.

‘I’ll come down,’ said Max reluctantly, closing the copy of Vole Monthly that lay open on his desk.

The police officers were the same two detectives who had told him about the bloodstains and asked him to follow up on the capybara. On seeing them, he recalled that he had been meant to keep them informed about anything he discovered during the capybara quest. They had given him a card with a phone number to call. Fortunately he knew he hadn’t thrown it away, because he had used it as a bookmark when consulting a weighty volume called ‘Small Mammals of the Scottish Highlands’. The trip to Blair Atholl had been something of a missed opportunity when it came to studying them in real life.

‘Dr Falconer, I’m afraid we’ve established that the bloodstains in the case are human,’ said one of the officers once they were all seated in Max’s office with the door closed and they had refused any refreshments. ‘We’re getting the samples analysed further, and we should have some results before long.’

‘We just wanted to check whether you’d managed to track down the – animal – at all,’ said the other one.

Max sat back and wondered where to begin.

‘Well, we’ve tried out best,’ he said cautiously.

‘Wait – we’d better record this, Dr Falconer. It’s easier than taking notes.’

He told them about his and William’s visit to the conservation studio, and the disappearance of Tim Whittington, though he was almost certain they would know about his death by now, and then about the trip to Blair Atholl, the search for David Boyd, Fiona and the dog, and the appearance of the mysterious stranger.

‘I think the police up there are dealing with it,’ he concluded. ‘As far as I know there haven’t been any further incidents.’

The officers exchanged bemused glances. There was a pause.

‘Sorry we haven’t really made much progress,’ said Max to fill the gap.

‘You’ve covered a lot of ground, anyway,’ said the older detective. ‘I wouldn’t say you’ve made things much clearer, though… Did you ever meet this Tim Whittington?’

‘I’d never even heard of him before. We thought the conservation studio would do the work in-house. But when I think about it, that was probably an unrealistic expectation all along.’

‘So Mr Whittington could be connected to this case,’ said the younger one.

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