"Scrooge was no gentleman," the doctor muttered, seeming to take bitter pleasure from turning the corpse over so it was face-down in grimy, soupy slush. "He was a vulture, a scavenger, a carrion-eater. And if you're wondering why a true gentleman like myself would need the piddling extra pounds per annum a coroner's warrant offers, then look no further. Scrooge was nearly the ruin of me, and it is a fine Christmas gift indeed to find his ruin before me now. If I could take him home and hang him upon my tree, I tell you I would."
Charhart roughly rolled the body in the icy sludge again, as if it were a cut of meat he was breading with flour. He stared down at Scrooge's dead face for a moment, not so much examining the body, it seemed, as pausing to appreciate it. Then he stood and began wiping his hands with a hankie he produced from his pocket.
"I've seen enough," he announced. "I'm going home."
"Surely you're not done already?" Bucket protested.
"Most assuredly I am. Ebenezer Scrooge was trampled to death, and I intend to file a certificate to that effect the day after tomorrow. There remains nothing further to occupy me here."
"Oh, but questions remain, Dr. Charhart, questions remain," Bucket clucked. "Mr. Scrooge was acting in a most peculiar manner before he was killed. He was euphoric-hysterically so. I spoke with him myself, and were there mistletoe about, I do believe he would have kissed me. I wonder if you detected anything that might account for such uncharacteristic jollity?"
Charhart straightened to his full height, straining for the maximum altitude from which to peer down disdainfully upon the detective. "Exactly what sort of something are you suggesting?"
"Well," Bucket said, and he cleared his throat and leaned in closer, continuing in a conspiratorial whisper. "When I talked to Mr. Scrooge, I noticed upon him the scent of opium smoke."
Charhart responded with a mocking guffaw that he cast down upon Bucket like Zeus hurling a lightning bolt from Olympus.
"You did not!" the doctor cried.
"I did," Bucket responded calmly.
"Stuff and nonsense!"
"No, Dr. Charhart."
"Rubbish!"
"I don't believe so, Dr. Charhart."
"Poppycock! Tommyrot! Fiddle-faddle! Flapdoodle!"
Bucket waited patiently for Charhart to finish.
"If you hadn't been so eager to dunk the body in gutter-wash like a scone in tea, you might have smelled it yourself," the detective said mildly.
"Ebenezer Scrooge took but one pleasure from life, Bucket-the continual accumulation of wealth. To suggest anything to the contrary is purest humbug! Now if you are through insulting me, I will be on my way."
Bucket held up a fat forefinger and pushed it out before him like a candle to light his way. "One final question, Dr. Charhart: As you knew Mr. Scrooge, perhaps you could tell me where I might find his family. After all, we can't leave his body here in the street."
"You can throw it in the Thames for all I care!" Charhart thundered. "As for Scrooge's family, he never spoke of any save a single nephew-Fred Merriweather. A merchant of some sort. Resides in Pimlico, I believe. And that's the last thing I have to say upon the subject of Ebenezer Scrooge. I would wish you a good night, Bucket, except I don't see why I should wish for you what you've denied me."
Charhart spun on his heel and began striding quickly into the fog.
"Thank you, Dr. Charhart!" Bucket called after him. "A very happy Christmas to you and yours!"
Charhart didn't look back.
"Police Constable Dimm," Bucket said, turning to peer up at the ambulance driver. "Why don't you come down and help Police Constable Thicke get Mr. Scrooge stowed away? It seems you'll be paying a call in Pimlico!"
Dimm, a congenitally lethargic man who could barely muster the necessary vigor needed to continue breathing, began climbing down with such painstaking sluggishness an observer would have been forced to watch him for quite some time to be certain he was moving at all. This suited Bucket just fine, actually, for he had other business to attend to while Dimm and Thicke tidied up the gutter.
The detective walked towards the sign reading "SCROOGE & MARLEY" and made use of the doorway beneath it. The door was open wide, and gray tendrils of icy fog had swept into the office to curl themselves around desks and chairs like the clutching fingers of some colossal shade.
Bucket sniffed at the air, hoping to reassure himself that the scent he'd caught on the old man's clothes had been no pipe-dream of his own. But it wouldn't have mattered now had Scrooge been smoking two opium pipes while burning incense and boiling cabbage. The odors would have been long dissipated by the flow of air from outside. Indeed, Scrooge's office now smelled like the nearby London streets-which is to say, like factory smoke, horses and the unwholesome effluvia of a million souls living in close quarter.
His nose finding little to investigate, Bucket turned the job over to his eyes. After giving the rooms before them a thorough examination, they reported back thusly:
– Scrooge employed a solitary clerk, and the old man made no exception from his stinginess to accommodate this underling's comfort. (An empty coal scuttle, overflowing work desk and high, rickety stool were shoved into one, cell-like corner.)
– Scrooge was as parsimonious with his trust as he was with his coal. (The ledger books arrayed upon a shelf at the back of the office were shut tight with leather clasps and padlocks.)
– Scrooge's tight fist squeezed its owner nearly as hard as it squeezed the rest of humanity. (Scrooge's own work area was only slightly less dismal than the clerk's, and the old man had conducted his affairs by candle light rather than part with the extra coins necessary for the purchase of lamp oil.)
– Scrooge had been "burning the candle at both ends" at the very moment his sanity flickered out. (His aforementioned desk candles had melted completely, leaving tracks of yellow and brown wax slithering across the wood to pool around the edges of an open ledger.)
– And finally, Scrooge had most definitely not been smoking opium on the premises. (There was no pipe in sight.)
Aside from the streams of wax flowing across the desktop, Scrooge's office was a perfectly orderly (if exceptionally dark and dingy) place of business, and there was nothing to suggest it doubled as an opium den. Yet, while Bucket could be labeled agnostic on many another matter, his faith in his own senses never wavered. He was one of a new breed: a "detective." One who detects. And he had smelled opium on the old man.
So when Dimm stepped inside to glumly announce that the body was ready for "home delivery," Bucket had an announcement of his own to make: He would be accompanying Dimm to the residence of Scrooge's nephew, Fred Merriweather.
"A happy Christmas to you, Police Constable Thicke!" Bucket called out as the ambulance rolled away.
"And to you and the missus, Inspector Bucket!" Thicke replied with a hearty wave. "And to you, too, Dimm!"
"Oh, yes," Dimm grumbled. "What could be merrier than spending Christmas Eve playing hansom cab for a corpse?"
"Cheer up, Police Constable Dimm! At least you won't spend the night walking a beat like poor Police Constable Thicke back there."
Dimm would have rolled his eyes had he the energy to do so.
"Sure you wouldn't rather ride inside, sir?" he muttered instead. "Warmer."
Bucket shook his head. "From what I understand, the old gentleman would make more congenial company now than ever he did in life. Nevertheless, I prefer to surround myself with more, shall we say, animated companions." The detective paused to glance at Dimm, who sat beside him as hunched and still as a gargoyle, his only movement an occasional flick of the reins he held loosely in his limply hanging hands. "Not that I'm entirely certain you qualify as such, Police Constable Dimm. You seem so uncommonly torpid, even by your own languorous standards, I almost wonder if this ambulance carries two cadavers this evening."