Now, I must tell you about Otto.

Otto arrived with a clipboard, a pair of waterproof waders, and the kind of calm that only comes from spending most of one's life underwater.

He was an otter, and he had been called to investigate the village fountain.

The fountain had stopped that morning. Not dramatically — no explosion, no gush, no fountain-related spectacle of any kind. It had simply stopped. One moment it was flowing; the next, it wasn't.

Pip and Whisker Ferret had been nearby at the time. They had been sitting on the fountain steps, watching the water.

And then there was no water.

"Ah," said Pip.

"Yes," said Whisker.

Robin Redbreast had also been watching. Robin is always watching.

"BREAKING," he announced, with the air of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment. "FERRETS SILENCE BELOVED FOUNTAIN. Village deprived of water. Eyewitness accounts available. Exclusive to BirdTok."

Constable Bartholomew Badger arrived with his notebook and a new theory. He circled the fountain twice, examined a biscuit wrapper near the ferrets with his magnifying glass, and wrote four things in his notebook.

"Circumstantial evidence," he said, "is mounting."

Otto said nothing. He had already lowered himself into the inspection chamber beneath the fountain and was working quietly in the dark.

I sat on the wall and thought about what I knew.

The fountain pipe runs beneath the old cobblestones and up through the base. The inspection chamber is accessible only from the channel below. And the channel mouth — I had noticed — was blocked.

Not with leaves. Not with mud. With pinecones.

Four of them, arranged with some precision. The kind of precision you'd use if you wanted to stop a fountain without anyone noticing until morning.

Otto emerged, slightly damp, holding four pinecones.