Chapter Seventeen
The afternoon flashed past. Charlie paced about the perimeter, looking for anything he might have missed during his preliminary examination. He found frustratingly little, and eventually he came to assist Horner and me, carting wheelbarrows full of dirt down the hill while we dug and swept the site. I had only just started exposing the upper jawline, when the sun began to sink beneath the treetops on the far side of the valley. I strained my eyes, trying to brush out the contours of a few more mighty teeth before we lost our light completely. Horner had been right about the ideal conditions of the dig, but I felt like I had barely made any progress at all. It was maddening to think how much of the skeleton still lay waiting beneath the soil.
Only when Hugo Brisbee came to coax us from the site with the offer of a hearty meal did I realize that I had seen nothing of Jackaby all afternoon. Brisbee welcomed us into the farmhouse, and as we crossed through toward the kitchen, I spotted my employer in the parlor. He was holding a pair of slim glass tubes side by side, turning them in the light of the lamp. One was filled with something dark, the other with something pale that rattled about against the glass.
“Good evening, Mr. Jackaby,” I said, stepping in to join him. “We were about to sit down to supper. What’s that you’re looking at?”
“Graveyard dirt,” he answered without turning, “acquired from Mrs. Brisbee’s plot.”
“Can graveyard dirt tell you anything?”
“Not enough. The soil is unsatisfied,” he said, “and so am I. Mr. Brisbee seemed to need a moment alone, so I paid a visit to the funeral parlor while we were on the grounds as well. I found the mortician away, so I let myself in. They were preparing another body. Denson. Male. Fifty-seven. I find two sudden and unexpected deaths by mysterious malady a mite suspicious, particularly in so small a town. From the look of things, the late Mr. Denson succumbed to his supposed illness the same night as our farmer’s wife died. He lived alone, however, and was not discovered until more recently. He had traces of the same aura. It is becoming unmistakably familiar. He bore the same mark as well, just beneath his collar. Livor mortis has added a good deal of discoloration, so it seems the injury has once again been overlooked. The medical examiner in this little town is deeply disappointing. In the interest of giving the deceased some justice to take to the grave, I liberated a rear molar before he could be entombed.” He gave the second vial a little shake, and it rattled.
“You stole a dead man’s tooth?”
“He made no objection. It is my hope that I might glean something useful from a closer study. Much of the essence of a living thing is distilled in its teeth. Did you know that? It’s why the tooth fairies are so fond of them.” He held the vial up reverently. The thing was slightly yellowed, its root a dirty pink.
“Have you found anything distilled in Mr. Denson’s molar?” I asked.
Jackaby scowled. “There is something infuriatingly familiar here, but identifying it is like trying to pick out the smell of a clover in a bouquet of roses.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll have better luck at the dig site tomorrow,” I said. “Horner showed me what went missing, and it turns out it’s a tooth we’re after there as well. Not one you could fit in your little vial, either—the thing must be the length of my forearm.”
Brisbee came to fetch us, and the vials disappeared into Jackaby’s coat. We filed into the dining room, where Charlie and Mr. Horner were already sitting down to eat. As we helped ourselves to fresh greens and steaming cuts of pork, Brisbee leaned in toward Jackaby.