Death in the Age of Steam by Mel Bradshaw

the look of this weather,” he said. “I’m a hopeless sailor.”
    â€œHow are you on a horse?” asked Harris. “You’re more than welcome to Banshee.”
    â€œSo, I qualify for a loan after all,” the professor commented mildly.
    Harris smiled at the reference, which eluded Vandervoort.
    â€œI don’t know, really,” Lamb continued, “since your animal hasn’t yet made my acquaintance, whether I should feel quite safe without you there as well.”
    Harris agreed to go with him and set about shortening Banshee’s stirrups. Lamb meanwhile stood and watched the loaded dinghy—Whelan working the sheet, Vandervoort at the helm—head into open water. As the wind lifted the professor’s coat skirts and sent his grey curls scuttling away from the smooth crown of his head to cluster over his ears, he expressed apprehension that the oilskin package and all his camera equipment would be lost “at sea.”
    This risk appeared negligible compared to the ghastliness of transporting the limb by land, which it was in any event too late for Harris to propose. He helped the professor into the saddle and mounted behind him, reaching around his thick waist for the reins.
    â€œOn the row out,” said Lamb, “I managed to lose a perfectly serviceable beaver hat to the lake before there was any wind at all. I don’t know how I managed to cross the Atlantic—but, ever since I got off the boat from England, I’ve felt the great thing about Canada is that it’s not an island.”
    Returning to Toronto consumed the balance of the morning. Banshee was unused to carrying double weight, Lamb uncomfortable with any pace faster than a walk. Harris had a unique chance to question the country’s top forensic scientist and took especial care that no sudden movement should result in such an eminent cranium’s being dashed open against a rock.
    Lamb denied having ever met or seen Theresa. His curiosity and his official responsibilities were what had brought him out on the water so early on the Sabbath, a rather arbitrary day of rest in any case—if Mr. Harris didn’t mind his saying so. Not atall, Harris assured him. And Vandervoort? Lamb gathered that Vandervoort had had another case upon which he had been counting to secure advancement, but that that case had somehow fallen through. The inspector accordingly found himself in need of an alternative opportunity to shine.
    Harris was interested, and at the same time preoccupied by a more urgent question he was afraid to ask. A pricking at the back of his neck kept making him want to turn around. He couldn’t be sure he had searched the valley thoroughly enough. What if, in the bushes just beyond . . . ?
    â€œProfessor Lamb,” he blurted out, “could the woman whose arm this is still be alive?”
    â€œI’m no physician, but I doubt it. We don’t appear to be dealing with a surgical amputation.”
    Harris saw the green-clad figure pulled roughly from her horse by unknown hands. She twists loose, tries to run, but trips over the long skirt of her riding habit. Thrown flat in the marsh grass, she looks up. The axe arcs high and falls.
    It keeps on rising and falling.
    â€œAn attacker mad enough to inflict this wound would not have stopped there?” said Harris.
    â€œEven if he had,” Lamb replied, “the shock and loss of blood must have been fatal.”
    So further explorations could wait. The broad, blind expanse of the professor’s back was suddenly irksome. Harris ungratefully considered bundling his companion into a stagecoach in order to nurse alone the cooling embers of his hope.
    Lamb half turned in the saddle. “You referred to the deceased as a woman,” he said. “We can’t assume that.”
    Harris begged his pardon.
    â€œI may not be able to say for sure even after I get a chance to weigh the bones.