3. THE MANSION

They meet Professor Styx

“What do we know about this Professor, sir?” asked Sergeant Stone as he carefully navigated the country lanes leading to the eighteenth century mansion where the corpse on the pathology slab apparently hailed from. There had been no other women of her age reported as missing and they had nothing else to go on while they were waiting for DNA results.

“Only what I read in that magazine,” admitted Inspector Wasp. “He proclaims to have perfected a form of treatment of some kind that makes the human body immortal. I don't believe it myself, but, well, open minds and all that, Stone.”

“If our corpse is his wife there’s precious little immortality there, sir,” said his sergeant.

“If, sergeant, if,” chided Wasp. “I took a look at her and she does bear a striking resemblance to the woman in the magazine photograph, and we all know how these editors can airbrush things in and out of pictures so that a camel becomes a mouse, so I’ve got an open mind. Look, this is the turning, to your right, man...”

Sergeant Stone swung their car into the road indicated by his Inspector, grateful that their speed was slow enough for him to be able to make the turning without ending in the far hedge.

Up ahead their could see a wall that surrounded what looked like a sizeable building. Apparently built in the middle of nowhere, it stood alone in a landscape that was farmland leading down to the canal, that cut from left to right as they drove along.

“This must be the place,” grunted the Inspector.

“It’s like a fortress!” exclaimed Sergeant Stone. “Who on Earth needs a gated place out here? There’s nobody likely to want to break into it for miles in every direction!”

“Maybe it’s the canal and an army of narrow boats that’s put the wind up him… but I get your point,” grunted Wasp.

They pulled up by the only gate they could see. A small and inconspicuous plaque announced in stained verdigris on tarnished brass that it was the home of Professor and Mrs Reuben Styx.

“This is the place,” pointed the sergeant. “I guess we have to announce our presence. I hope there’s someone in!”

He went up to a solitary bell push and pressed it. They were too far from the building for any sound from the bell to be audible to them, but after a long minute a voice crackled from a speaker set into the wall, asking who was there.

“Police,” replied Stone, annoyed that he and his boss were expected to wait outside what seemed to him to be unnecessary fortifications when they could be getting about their business and going.

A further long minute passed, and then the gate swung open and they were able to drive through it and down a long drive towards a monstrously large house.

“Talk about ugly,” muttered Wasp, “I’ve seen some elegant piles in my life, piles that you might almost call beautiful, but this place … it might as well be a jail, for all the beauty in its brickwork.”

The building was, indeed, far from attractive. It presented a huge expanse of facade that was almost completely red bricks with disproportionately small windows set in it, widely spaced so they must have allowed inadequate lighting to any rooms they served. The front entrance did have a porch of sorts, but again, it was out of proportion with the rest of the building, being barely big enough to be called a porch at all, and it only served to emphasise the ugliness of the building.

“I wouldn’t fancy calling this place home,” said Stone quietly. Even in the car and still at a distance from the mansion he had the feeling that he might be overheard. The house emitted that sort of vibe, one of threatening permanence in a world filled with the temporary.

“I wonder what manner of twenty-first century man is happy to call it home,” agreed Inspector Wasp. “It strikes me … the place looks to be so huge that the Professor’s wife might get lost in a forgotten wing and not be missed for days!”

They parked as close to the front porch as was deemed polite by the sergeant, and climbed out of the car.

Before they reached the door itself it swung open, and a man stood there, smiling in a humourless way. He had the kind of appearance they expected of a professor, being almost completely bald and with an almost cartoon-like large brow together with a face that gave the appearance of being so narrow that its features were squashed together.

“Well, officers, to what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, though the expression on his face suggested mild irritation rather than pleasure.

“It’s a delicate matter, sir,” Inspector Wasp told him, “may we come in?”

“I suppose so, if you have to.” The reply was curt, the smile and its artificial bonhomie evaporating suddenly.

They were led into a small reception room, one that would have been more in scale had the building been considerably more modestly proportioned.

“Well, officers, what is it?” he asked.

Inspector Wasp didn’t feel uncomfortable very often, but he did now. His problem was the simple fact that they had a corpse that looked almost exactly like the professor’s wife as photographed for a magazine. He had no evidence that the deceased was anything to do with the man in front of them, just an increasingly uncomfortable suspicion that she might be the lady of this huge house.

“Your photo was on the cover of a science journal,” he began.

“Oh, that! Is it an autograph you’re after?” The slightly twisted smile reappeared for a moment on their host’s face.

That irritated Wasp. He wasn’t the kind of man to want to collect anyone’s autograph, though once, as a lad leaving school he’d collected the autographs of his teachers because that’s what everyone else did. But that was ages ago and now he couldn’t have put his hands on the autograph book without wasting a great deal too much time searching.

“We’re on police business,” he said, “tell me, is your wife around?”

The professor frowned. “I should think so,” he admitted, “she must be somewhere. This is a large house and we don't live in each other’s laps!”

“Could we see her, sir?” asked the Inspector.

“What on Earth for?” grunted the professor.

“This is awkward,” murmured Wasp, and he turned to his sergeant. “Shall we?” we asked unnecessarily, but Stone read it as a kind of code for you take over.

“The thing is, sir,” he said, “we have a very drowned lady, dead as a dodo as you might say, and she is the spitting image of the lady on the magazine cover, the lady described as your wife!”

© Peter Rogerson 05.09.19