Radcliffe Asylum, Oxford
T om Truckle didn’t quite grasp Inspector Dormouse’s visit. He stood behind his desk welcoming the sleepy detective, who’d just taken a long ride from London and still slept occasionally on the sofa in the room.
“Inspector Dormouse?” Tom Truckle said, shaking the man a little.
“Oomph.” The inspector sprang up on the couch. “I guess I fell asleep again.”
“You did,” Tom said impatiently. “I am really wondering why you visited if you intend to sleep between every couple of words you utter.”
“Can’t ever sleep at home,” Dormouse said. “Kids and their mother, not to mention the leaking tap that drips out of tempo.”
“I can send you my plumber, if that will help,” Tom said. “Now, if you don’t have something useful to tell me, could you please just leave?”
“No,” the inspector said, standing up and pulling his sleeves down. “You’re the only one who can help me.”
“Help you?” Tom walked back to his desk and sat. “What are you talking about?”
“I have important information that no one thinks is important, not even Margaret Kent.”
“Then maybe it’s not important.”
“Of course it is.” Inspector Dormouse yawned. “You will be interested, I’m sure.”
“Why so sure?”
“My information concerns Carter Pillar.”
Tom wasn’t interested yet. Though he wanted to know more about the Pillar, he sometimes preferred not to. The professor had been a headache when he was in the asylum, and Tom still had nightmares about the Pillar escaping his cell without anyone seeing him. How did he do it?
“What exactly do you know about the Pillar?” he asked the inspector.
“I know why he killed the twelve people.”
“Come on.” Tom puffed. “Don’t tell me the professor had a meticulously calculated reason to do this.”
“It’s stranger than you’d ever think.” Inspector Dormouse sounded awake and alert. “Did you know that the twelve men had something in common?”
Tom tilted his neck, interested.
“The twelve men the Pillar killed were using fake names,” Inspector Dormouse said.
Tom didn’t see how that played out. It seemed strange, but not something that would interest him. “Fake names, you say?”
“All of them,” the inspector said. “They changed their names sometime around the last five years.”
“Are you saying they did it at the same time?”
“In the same year.”
Tom itched his neck. The thought of popping another pill occurred to him, but he didn’t. This seemed to be going somewhere. “Is that all?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it was.” The inspector pulled out a long list of names and shoved it toward Tom. “This is a list with their names before they changed them.”
Tom put on his glasses and began reading. Most of the names were foreign, not English, but that was all. “If there is a catch about this list, I’m not seeing it,” he told the inspector.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” the inspector said. “Neither did I in the beginning.”
Tom grimaced, his face knotting, waiting for the inspector’s punch line, which didn’t come. Instead, he watched the inspector yawn and fall asleep while standing.
“Inspector!” Tom rapped upon his desk, thinking about those pills again.
“Ah.” The inspector woke, stretching like he’d been napping for an hour. “So where were we?”
“You said there is something special about the twelve men’s names before they changed them. What is it?”
“All those foreign names on the list are a translation to one name in English,” the Inspector said.
“One name?” Tom grimaced. “Are you saying the twelve people the Pillar killed shared one certain name—in different languages—then changed it to a fake one in the same year?”
The inspector nodded proudly.
“That’s odd,” Tom said. “Definitely interesting. But I don’t see how this exposes the Pillar’s reason for killing them.”
“Not when you know of the name they all shared in the past.”
“Is that relevant?”
“Most definitely.”
“What is that name?” Tom asked, not expecting the inspector’s answer.
It was such a strange answer that he had the inspector repeat it to make sure he’d heard it right the first time.
“Carter Pillar,” the inspector said. “The twelve men shared the name of Carter Pillar.”