Seven Anomalies by Ten

A house that's been modified for two hundred years isn't hiding things by accident. At some point, someone made a decision." — Detective Sergeant Alexander Stout

The convoy reached Jeffries Manor at oh-seven-fifty, three vehicles tracking the curve of the elm-lined drive in close formation — Stout's unmarked sedan, the Forensic Science Service Tasmania van, and the first of the search team vehicles. Two more would follow within the hour, carrying the additional personnel and equipment that the superintendent's office had authorised overnight.

The morning was Tasmanian winter at its most particular. Frost still held the lawns despite the sun that had cleared the eastern ridgeline half an hour ago, its low angle casting long shadows across the grounds and turning the manor's sandstone facade the pale gold that the stone only achieved in the first hours of winter light. The air carried that dense eucalyptus quality that clung to fabric and hair, cold enough to show breath, still enough to hold sound further than it should travel. Jeffries Manor resolved through the bare elms as the drive curved — not materialising from darkness but sharpening from distance, the Georgian proportions gaining detail with each metre of approach until the building occupied its full scope against the winter sky.

Stout pulled in beside the cordon tape that still marked the forecourt and sat for a moment before opening his door. He'd reviewed the property files. He'd studied the aerial photographs. He'd read Charlie's scene notes and O'Neil's preliminary report and the architectural plans that Ellen had sourced from the council archives at some point during the small hours. But photographs and plans were interpretations of a place, not the place itself, and Stout had learned years ago that the first unmediated impression of a site told you things that no amount of preparation could substitute for.

The manor looked back at him. Fifty acres of grounds stretching away in three directions — the formal gardens to the south, their geometric shapes softened by frost; the bush rising to the east and north, dark, dense, the canopy still holding yesterday's silence; and the drive curving back through the elms towards the gate and the public road beyond. The house itself occupied its position with the settled authority of something that had been here since 1817 and intended to be here long after this investigation had filed its final report and moved on.

He got out. The gravel announced him the way it announced everything on this property — with the quiet, distinct crunch that carried further in the winter air than it had any right to.

Dr Eva Harrison was already at the van's rear doors, unpacking evidence cases and issuing instructions to her team without looking up from the inventory she was checking against a clipboard. Thirty-two, slight build, dark hair pulled back tight enough that it pulled the skin at her temples, she inhabited her workspace the way surgeons inhabited operating theatres — every tool in its expected position, every step mapped before it was taken, her hands finding what they needed before her eyes confirmed the location. Her father had spent his career studying how criminals behaved. Eva had spent hers studying what they left behind, and the discipline that Albert Harrison had applied to theory, his daughter applied to surfaces, fibres, and the silent testimony of physical evidence.

"Staging area here," she said, still not looking up from the evidence case. Her voice carried the same quality as her inventory checks — no wasted words, no softening, every syllable doing work. The kind of voice that junior technicians learned not to question and senior detectives learned to respect. "Clean zones running from the van to the shed, from the van to the manor entrance. Nobody crosses a boundary without PPE and sign-in. Nobody."

Stout acknowledged this with the nod of a man who understood that Dr Harrison's protocols were not suggestions and that her authority over evidence integrity was, within her domain, absolute. They'd worked dozens of scenes together over the years — Hobart was too small and major crime too frequent for their paths not to have crossed regularly — but two cases stood out: the Kingston double homicide in 2016, where Harrison's fibre analysis had secured a conviction that the circumstantial evidence alone couldn't have carried, and the Huonville assault series last year, where her trace work had linked four separate attacks to a single offender within forty-eight hours. She didn't cut corners. She didn't accept approximations. She processed scenes the way she painted, he'd been told — with a patience that could look obsessive until you saw what it produced.

"The shed is sealed?" he asked.

"Constable Whelan maintained the cordon overnight. I've confirmed it's intact." She straightened, met his eyes for the first time. "We'll process the shed first. Full documentation, trace evidence, prints, biologicals. Then outward — the immediate forecourt, the approach paths, the garden areas flagged yesterday."

"The ruins in the bush?"

"After the primary scene. O'Neil's team can escort us once they've re-established the perimeter. The heritage assessor was requested for nine but she's coming from Launceston — earliest is midday." She paused. "I've also arranged for ground-penetrating radar. The unit's committed to a site in Bridgewater until early afternoon. We'll have it by two at the earliest."

Stout noted this. Harrison had been briefed on the ruins and the linear depression, and she'd drawn the same operational conclusion he had — that whatever lay beneath the surface of this property warranted the kind of equipment that looked through soil the way forensic lights looked through darkness, revealing what the visible world preferred to conceal.

The other vehicles were arriving. O'Neil's team — four officers in two marked cars, plus Rogers in her own vehicle — pulled in along the drive and started unloading search equipment, the boot lids going up in sequence, the gear bags and marker kits and handheld radios distributed between officers who'd read their assignment packets on the drive out and were already sorting themselves into their four-person formations. Mackenzie and Thompson arrived together, Thompson carrying the thick folder of architectural plans, Mackenzie with the survey equipment they'd need for the interior sweep.

The manor's front door opened.

Louise Jeffries stood on the threshold.

She wore the same composure she'd worn yesterday, but a night's worth of processing had changed its texture. The professional control was still there — the straight posture, the direct gaze, the expression of a woman who'd spent twenty years in financial analysis and understood that surfaces communicated as much as substance. But beneath it, something had hardened. She'd been told last night, by Thompson, that the investigation would continue today. She'd expected officers. She'd expected questions. What she saw instead — the forensic van, the search teams, the white suits and evidence cases and marker flags being sorted on the gravel of her forecourt — was something she hadn't expected, and the recalibration showed in the slight tightening around her eyes and the way her hands found each other at her waist, the fingers interlacing in a gesture that looked composed and was actually a brace.

Stout crossed the forecourt towards her. Wilson walked beside him, carrying the folder that contained the formal warrant documentation.

"Mrs Jeffries." Stout's voice carried the same tone he'd used throughout the morning briefing — unhurried, direct, the words chosen for what they accomplished rather than how they sounded. "I'm Detective Sergeant Alexander Stout. I've been assigned to lead the investigation into Detective Jenkins' disappearance. Thank you for your continued cooperation."

Louise regarded him the way she'd regarded Charlie yesterday — reading the data, assessing the variables, determining what this new entry in the equation meant for her position. "Sergeant Claiborne indicated he'd be returning this morning. With reinforcements for the grounds search." The emphasis on grounds was precise. She'd been told the search would continue outside. She was establishing the boundary she believed applied.

"Sergeant Claiborne has been reassigned. I'm his replacement." Stout didn't elaborate. Didn't explain the personal leave, didn't offer context that would invite questions he wasn't prepared to answer. He nodded to Wilson, who stepped forward and opened her folder.

"Mrs Jeffries, I'm Detective Wilson. I'll be conducting your formal interview this morning." Wilson's voice found the register that the moment required — warm enough to invite cooperation, steady enough to make clear that the invitation was also a formality. "I also need to inform you that a search warrant has been issued for Jeffries Manor and all structures on the property."

She presented the document. Louise took it. Her eyes moved through the text the way they'd move through a balance sheet — not reading for meaning but scanning for scope, for boundaries, for the specific language that determined what was being claimed and what was being permitted. She reached the end in under ten seconds.

When she looked up, the composure had thinned. Not broken — Louise Jeffries didn't break in front of strangers — but thinned to the point where what lay beneath was visible. Not fear. Anger.

"You're searching my home."

"The warrant covers the house, all outbuildings, and the grounds," Stout confirmed. "You and Mrs Thelma Jeffries are entitled to remain on the property during the search. You are not required to leave."

"How considerate." The words carried an edge that cut beneath their surface politeness. Louise's gaze moved from Stout to Wilson to the forensic van to the officers deploying across the forecourt, taking in the full scope of what had descended on her property — on the Jeffries property, the family home, the two-hundred-year-old estate that bore her husband's name and that was now being treated as something to be opened, examined, and catalogued by people in white suits carrying evidence bags.

"I'll be contacting my solicitor," she said. "And my husband."

The mention of Tom landed the way she intended it to. Not as information but as warning. Tom Jeffries was in Melbourne. Tom Jeffries sat on boards. Tom Jeffries had connections that reached into the institutional architecture of this state in ways that a search warrant, however properly obtained, might find themselves tested against. Louise wasn't threatening. She was promising. And the promise carried the weight of a woman who'd spent two decades watching her husband's name open doors that other names couldn't find.

"That's entirely your right," Stout said. His voice didn't change. His posture didn't shift. He received the promise the way he received all information — noted, filed, assigned its appropriate weight and nothing more. "Detective Wilson will be available whenever you're ready for the interview. We'll work around your schedule as far as the search allows."

Louise held his gaze for a moment longer. Then she turned and walked back inside without another word, the manor's front door remaining open behind her — an invitation or a concession or simply the acknowledgement that closing it would change nothing about what was coming through it.

Wilson looked at Stout. "She'll call Tom first. The solicitor second."

"Let her."

Matthews reached the first floor at eight-fifteen.

The west wing corridor was quiet — the particular quiet of a large house's upper floors in winter morning, when the walls had absorbed the overnight cold and the heating hadn't yet penetrated the furthest rooms and the sounds from outside arrived muffled and remote, filtered through stone and timber before the building admitted them to its interior spaces. His footsteps on the corridor runner were soft but audible.

Thelma's door was the last on the left. Closed. Matthews knocked twice, moderate force.

"Mrs Jeffries? My name is Senior Constable Matthews. I'm with the Tasmania Police. I'd like to speak with you this morning, if you're willing."

Silence. Then: "Where's Charlie?"

The voice was old, thin, but carrying beneath its fragility something the fragility hadn't reached. Not confusion. Not the variable lucidity that Claiborne's notes had described. This was direct.

"Sergeant Claiborne isn't available today, Mrs Jeffries. I've been assigned to—"

"I didn't ask if he was available. I asked where he is."

Matthews absorbed the correction. He'd been briefed on her condition. What he was hearing through the closed door didn't match the briefing.

"Sergeant Claiborne has been reassigned. I'm here on behalf of Detective Sergeant Stout, who's leading the investigation. We're hoping you might be able to help us with some questions about the property and—"

"I told Charlie I'd talk to him. To him. I didn't promise to talk to the police. I promised to talk to Charlie."

The distinction was absolute. Thelma Jeffries had not offered her cooperation to an institution. She'd offered it to a person — someone she'd met and assessed and, through whatever calculus operated in her ninety-one-year-old mind, deemed worthy of receiving what she'd held for so long. The institution's decision to replace that person was the institution's problem.

"Mrs Jeffries, I understand you'd prefer to speak with Sergeant Claiborne. Unfortunately—"

"Young man." The voice cut through the door and the professional phrasing and arrived in the corridor stripped of everything except its meaning. "I've lived in this house for seventy years. I've watched people come and go through that front door — policemen, politicians, businessmen, people who thought they had the right to ask questions and receive answers simply because they knocked. I've survived all of them. I'll survive this too." A pause. "You seem like a perfectly pleasant person. But I don't know you. And what I have to say isn't for strangers."

Matthews stood in the corridor after the silence closed over her final words. The door remained shut. Behind it, a woman who might hold the key to understanding this property's history — and possibly its connection to Karl Jenkins' disappearance — had drawn a line that no badge or warrant could cross. The line wasn't professional. It was personal.

He keyed his radio. "Matthews to Stout."

"Go ahead."

"Mrs Thelma Jeffries is declining to be interviewed. She'll speak with Claiborne only. No one else."

The radio held its silence for four seconds. Then: "Understood. Stand by on the first floor. Assist Thompson and Mackenzie with the interior sweep."

Matthews clipped his radio to his belt and looked at the closed door one more time. Behind it, Thelma Jeffries waited — not for the investigation to reach her, but for the one person she'd decided to trust.

A person who was currently on personal leave, unable to return.

The shed yielded nothing.

Harrison's team processed it over ninety minutes — full protocol, every surface documented, every potential contact point examined, the interior subjected to the kind of attention that could detect a single fibre on a concrete floor or a partial print on a corrugated wall. They worked in silence, the white suits moving through the small space, pausing, photographing, swabbing, moving again. Stout observed from outside the cordon, watching through the open door.

He'd seen forensic teams process hundreds of scenes. He knew what a discovery looked like from the outside — the pause, the flagged hand, the colleague called over to witness the documentation before anything was touched. He saw none of it. The team moved from entrance to far wall and back, and the movements were steady and uninterrupted and produced nothing that broke their rhythm.

Harrison emerged at nine-twenty, stripping her gloves.

"The shed is clean." No hedge. No qualification. "No biologicals. No trace evidence consistent with recent occupation. No prints beyond what you'd expect from routine use. The dust distribution is—" She stopped. Chose her word. "Undisturbed."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning the dust layers show no disruption pattern consistent with a person entering, moving through, or exiting the structure in the last forty-eight hours." She met Stout's eyes. "According to every physical indicator I can measure, nobody has been inside that shed in days. Possibly weeks."

The last confirmed sighting of Karl Jenkins placed him crossing the forecourt towards the shed. Sarah Lahey had seen him approaching it before she'd closed the manor's front door. Nobody had witnessed him enter. And now forensics was telling Stout that perhaps he never did.

"Expand the perimeter," Stout said. "Process the forecourt next. Every metre between the manor entrance and the shed."

Harrison nodded and returned to her team. The shed stood behind its cordon tape, its green corrugated walls offering nothing, its interior declared empty by the most rigorous analysis available — and yet somehow, impossibly, the last place a detective was seen alive.

By nine-thirty, the interior search had begun producing its own complications.

Thompson and Mackenzie started on the ground floor, working from the 1817 plans outward through the successive modifications, comparing what the documents showed with what the building contained. Measure each room's internal dimensions, compare to the recorded measurements, flag any discrepancy. In a building that had been continuously occupied and modified for two centuries, some discrepancies were expected — walls thickened by replastering, rooms subdivided, spaces repurposed.

What they found exceeded the expected margin.

"The west wall of the library is forty centimetres thicker than the 1817 plan indicates," Thompson reported over the radio at nine-forty. "The 1923 modification records show an extension to the south, but nothing accounts for the additional wall depth on the west side."

Stout, stationed in the foyer where his command post was being established, marked the anomaly on his copy of the plans. "Flag it. Continue."

Ten minutes later, Mackenzie: "Ground floor corridor between the kitchen and the study. The floor level drops three centimetres over a span of two metres, then rises again. It's not subsidence — the joists are level. Something beneath the floorboards is creating an uneven surface."

"Flag it."

The flags accumulated. By ten o'clock, Thompson and Mackenzie had documented seven structural anomalies on the ground floor alone — wall thicknesses that didn't match any recorded modification, floor irregularities suggesting subsurface features, and in the rear hallway leading to the service entrance, a section of wainscoting mounted on a different backing material than the panels on either side, as though it had been removed and replaced using timber from a different source.

None of it constituted evidence of anything criminal. Old houses carried the accumulated modifications of generations, each one layering changes over the last. But seven anomalies on the ground floor — in a building with two additional storeys and a roof space and cellars that hadn't yet been examined — suggested a property whose physical structure contained considerably more than its records acknowledged.

Thompson radioed again at ten-fifteen. Her voice had changed — not alarm, but the careful tone of someone reporting something they wanted to make sure was heard correctly.

"Sarge. We're in the study. Rear of the ground floor, overlooking the gardens."

Stout knew the room. He'd read Charlie's notes about it — the room where the first William Jeffries had vanished in 1821. "Go ahead."

"The fireplace. The surround is Georgian, original to the house. But the hearth has been modified. The stonework at the base doesn't match — same sandstone, different cut, different tooling marks. And the floor immediately in front of it sounds hollow."

The word arrived in the foyer and sat there.

Hollow.

"Don't touch it," Stout said. "Photograph and document. I'll send Harrison up."

He lowered the radio. Around him, the equipment of a modern investigation — laptops, evidence logs, communication arrays — hummed and blinked inside a building that was revealing, room by room, that its surfaces bore only a passing relationship to what lay beneath them.

Outside, through the open front door, O'Neil's team was assembling at the garden wall, preparing to re-enter the bush and begin the systematic grid search that would take them back to the ruins and along the linear depression leading north. Without the heritage assessor or the GPR, their work this morning would be observational — documenting, photographing, following the depression's bearing through the thickening bush to see where it led above ground while they waited for the equipment that would tell them what lay below.

Stout's phone buzzed. A text from Wilson: She's called her solicitor. Solicitor arriving within the hour. She's also made three calls to Melbourne. All unanswered.

Three calls to Tom. All unanswered. The man Louise had invoked as a warning less than an hour ago — unreachable. In Melbourne, supposedly, in closed-door meetings with overseas investors. The same explanation his secretary had been providing since yesterday.

Stout filed this alongside everything else the morning had produced. The forensically impossible shed. Thelma's refusal. The structural anomalies multiplying through the ground floor. Louise's anger and her husband's silence. O'Neil's ruins in the bush. The hollow floor in front of a fireplace in a room where a man had vanished two hundred years ago.

None of it connected. None of it explained. And none of it stopped accumulating.

His radio crackled. Harrison: "Forecourt processing is underway. I'm sending two of my team to the study — Thompson flagged the fireplace?"

"She did. Full workup."

"Understood." A pause. Then, in a tone that Stout had never heard from her before — not uncertainty, but something adjacent to it, something that a scientist reached when their instruments returned data that their training hadn't prepared them to interpret: "The shed results are confirmed. I ran the trace analysis twice. That structure has not been entered by a human being in recent memory. Whatever happened to Detective Jenkins, it didn't leave a single physical indicator that he was ever inside those walls."

The line went quiet.

Stout looked out through the foyer at the shed, visible across the forecourt. Small. Green. Corrugated. A structure that forensic science had just declared empty of any evidence of human presence, standing on the same property where two centuries of people had been walking into spaces and not coming back out.

His phone buzzed again. Wilson: Solicitor ETA forty minutes. Louise refusing to begin without representation. Thelma situation?

Stout typed: Thelma won't talk. Claiborne only. We work around it.

He put the phone away and turned back to the command post, where the morning's findings were beginning to accumulate on the evidence board — photographs, measurements, anomaly flags, Harrison's preliminary report on the shed. Each one a fragment of something the investigation hadn't yet learned to read.

The morning was three hours old. The day stretched ahead, carrying more questions than the one before it, and offering, so far, no answers that the physical world was willing to confirm.