“There you are, Mr. Tompkins,” I said. “‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’“ I looked into the dog’s wide-eyed gaze and said, “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” A rattle followed by a low muttered curse came from the shadows beyond the arched doorway. From beyond it Watson emerged wearing the butchers apron stained from the waist down with tomato juice. He wasn’t wearing his tweed jacket and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled above his elbows. His hands were stained slightly with red, but the butcher knife in his right hand was coated with the stuff.
“Told you the jewels wouldn’t be in those cats, Holmes,” he muttered through hurt feelings.
“We had to look, old fellow.”
“Neither of them pulled through, you know. Wouldn’t’ve hurt anything to let me hop into the village and pick up some anesthetic from the chemist’s.”
“We were pressed for time, old fellow. Sorry to put you through that.”
He looked over the tops of his glasses at the assembly. “The owners of those cats are going to be quite distressed and it’s no fault of mine. I objected to all those procedures from the start. I want that on the record.” He snorted contemptuously at the butcher knife in his hand, which he began waving about. “Not even a proper scalpel. This thing’s dull as an old rake. Do a better job with a chain saw.”
“Couldn’t be helped, old fellow.” I reached out a hand and scratched the dog’s head. “Here’s the last one.”
The Labradoodle’s panting resembled a steam locomotive attempting to climb the South Face of Everest.
Watson’s eyebrows went up. “At least this one is big enough to hold the jewelry, Holmes.” He passed his thumb slowly over the knife’s edge. “Strange looking beast, there. What kind of breed is that?”
I held out a hand to Peter Blake. “You may have the honor, Mr. Blake.”
“Yes sir.” He looked at Watson. “This here, doctor, is a Labradoodle.”
“Labradoodle, you say? Well, there, stretch him out on the block boys and let’s see if we can’t separate his Labra from his doodles.”
“All right! All right! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” yelled the dog. “All bloody right!”
We watched as the dog sat back on its hind legs, pulled its forelegs to its sides, and a line appeared in the dog’s fine belly hair. The line parted starting at the top, and essentially unsealed spilling all of the missing jewelry into Peter Blake’s quick hands. Watson moved to my side.
“Congratulations, Holmes. You nailed Frank Statten.”
“Ah me,” I said as I shrugged. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you once again, old friend.”
He frowned, then one eyebrow slowly elevated. “I don’t believe it, Holmes. Not another catch and release.”
“With a condition.” I looked and saw I had everyone’s attention, including the Labradoodle’s. “Jewelry heist at Powderham Castle, right in the middle of a reception, famous guests, among them Lord and Lady Devon and the chief constable of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. The scandal would never do.” I looked at the dog. “Would it?”
He looked around, shifty-eyed. “No. No, the media would have a feast.”
“So it seems to me the best thing is to return the jewelry to its rightful owners, no theft, no scandal, no harm done.”
“That sounds cool.” The dog held up its right paw, extended a toe and wagged it back and forth. “But, call me Mr. Suspicious, I see a big fat fishhook with my name on it.”
“Whatever do you mean, sir?”
“In return for this generous offer, Mr. Holmes is it?”
“Yes.”
“In return, what’s Frankie Statten’s bill?”
“Why, I’m so glad you asked that question, Mr. Statten. We keep the jewelry, return it to its owners, and return you to your natural body in Exeter no harm done—”
“—And?”
“And that’s it. We keep your equipment, of course.”
“Equipment?”
“The bios.”
“All … Lolita. She ratted me out.”
“It’s only because of her you’re getting this deal, Frank,” I said. “We’ve detained her and she will be spending the rest of her life behind walls.” I pointed at the velvet-lined interior of his belly cavity. “We knew it was you all along because your gut was the last place there was to look. What about the deal?”
“You just let me go?”
“Once we get you back to Queen Street and Songbirds. Is that where you keep your natural?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need to be counseled on how much time you could draw doing things your way?”
“There has to be a catch.” The dog looked down and shook his head.
“Must be disappointing for you, too, Holmes,” said Watson to me, as Statten pondered the deal.
“Why do you say that, Watson? I would call this a most satisfactory conclusion to this matter.”
“Here you have a dog and you never got to say anything about the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.”
“Nighttime? There was no nighttime.”
“Wasn’t that what was curious?”
“Wasn’t what—I don’t quite see what you are driving at, Watson. I thought the curious incident was that the dog wasn’t barking.”
“Well, this dog wasn’t barking. Didn’t you find that curious?”
“Not in the least.”
He leaned back. “Not even a smidgen?”
“Dear fellow, this Labradoodle is an amdroid imprinted by a human impersonating a very well-trained, well-behaved seeing-eye dog. Why would he bark?”
“Well, I thought it curious.”
“Really.”