Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End (6 page)

Nothing could have been more open or more practical. She handed him the freedom of the house and of all her husband’s papers and records, as though they were now nothing to do with her. As though, in fact, she felt the whole load of this house, this business, this association, lifted from her, and was undertaking the final chore of handing over to someone else with the greatest equanimity. The end of an employment. Rather an abrupt end, but the times were such that sudden redundancies were commonplace.

It occurred to him as he was leaving that there was even a note of curious anticipation in her practicality, rather as though the redundancy did not come amiss to her, almost as though she already had some other and more congenial situation in mind. It sent him away wondering how accurate his judgement of her had been, and how good an actress she could be at need. For there was no blinking the fact that Rainbow had not projected the image of a successful marriage so much as that of an efficient working partnership, and the lady had a field of admirers as long as Middlehope itself, besides the outsiders from Rainbow’s world. Now just how do all these hopeful swains stand, George wondered, now she’s a widow?

Sergeant Moon and Detective-Constable Barnes, who was a Middlehope man himself, were making the rounds of the nearest houses to the church, in search of someone, somewhere, who would admit to having seen, or heard, or even thought, anything during the past twenty-four hours. They were both guileful and resourceful men, well versed in the ways of their neighbours, and they made every approach obliquely, with mild deception in every phrase. But neither of them was surprised to find that the news had flown before them, even though no curious onlookers had had to be chased away from the churchyard. However deviously they circled the real reason for their enquiries, just as deviously the interrogated counter-circled, well aware of what had happened to Rainbow, and impervious in the armour of ignorance. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody knew anything.

‘Which could well be true,’ admitted Barnes, comparing notes after an hour’s activity. ‘Because I reckon this was timed well on, round about ten if not after, and it would be dark, and there aren’t any houses so near that one heavy, dull fall, with no after-sounds, would get people rushing out to see what had happened. But no bones about it, the result would be the same if nine or ten of us had seen him shoved over the parapet.’ It was the measure of his entrenched loyalties that even in a police matter he said ‘us’ and not ‘them’, a fact which Sergeant Moon perfectly understood.

As for the choir, there was no way of getting at the boys until they were home from school and under the guardianship of their parents, and the men, scattered at work between upland farms, small craft workshops, and the factories of Comerbourne, had better also be left until evening. When, of course, they would say they went straight home after practice, and knew nothing further about anything connected with Rainbow. Still, they had to be asked.

In the post-mortem room at Comerbourne George watched what he had grown used to after many experiences, but would much rather not have had to watch. Mortality was an abstract idea, having its own solemn dignity, if not beauty, but even mortality disintegrated under the hands of Reece Goodwin, and there, but for the grace of God, went every one of us, identity and all, into sample-jars and dog-meat. The fact that the remains would undoubtedly be reassembled as decently as possible, and far beyond what would have been thought possible, hardly mitigated the harshness of this dissection. And yet it was meant for the protection of those still living, and the provision of justice towards this one, dead, and he had learned to accept it. To be the pathologist was quite a different discipline. The more impossible the task of extracting information from the material provided, the more enthusiastic did Reece Goodwin become. But this one was fresh and relatively simple, and he had to draw his ardours from its few subtleties.

‘Now this,’ he said didactically, probing round the head of the corpse with delicate, passionate fingers, ‘presents a very interesting problem. This head wound, you can see, is so situated that it cannot possibly have arisen in the course of impact after his fall. It lies low at the back of the skull, and is long and narrow and deeply indented, and was clearly inflicted before death, though probably very shortly before. It might well have been enough to cause death, if these multiple injuries received in the impact hadn’t intervened. If they really did intervene! He was not dead, or even unconscious, when he fell or was hoisted over the coping, for this stuff we’ve isolated from under his finger-nails, and these markings on his palms, are certainly traces of stone-dust – we’ll go into the kind! – and fine mosses. He was still able to claw at safety.’

‘And he couldn’t have made any such motions after his fall?’ George asked.

‘After his fall he was most definitely dead. Once for all. In fact, what is particularly interesting, though he was alive enough to try and cling to the stone at the top, he may very well have been dead before he hit at the bottom. One rather hopes he was.’

‘One does,’ agreed George drily. The thought that Rainbow might have made his exit in the mild autumn night between assault and violation, in mid-air, was curiously calming. Almost like being taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, or by liberal-minded angels. If heaven was Rainbow’s destination? It did seem, to put it moderately, rather excessive. There should have been a sort of commercial limbo.

‘These obvious multiple injuries, though they did spatter the neighbouring stones, actually shed very little blood. I can’t tell you whether the head wound caused his death, or the impact. My guess would be, he was as good as dead when he landed, but it is a guess. I’ve got a lot of work to do on him before I can be more precise.’

‘Then the head wound is the only one that can’t have been either self-inflicted, or the result of the fall?’ George insisted.

‘That’s right, it can’t, and it’s the only one. Somebody hit him from behind, fairly low at the back of the skull. And with fell intent, and a long, narrow and very solid instrument. The marvel is that he was conscious enough to claw at the parapet as he went over, after such a clout. But take it from me, he was. He did.’

‘Would there have been much bleeding?’

‘I doubt if there was time. Seems to me it was a fast bash, and a heave over the edge. But you may find traces where it happened.’

‘Then there may also be matter useful to us, still in the wound. Any notion yet of what kind? Fragments of rust, wood splinters, stone dust?’

‘You’ll have to wait for the forensic boys to tell you for certain. Any amount of specimens here for them, as soon as I’ve certified them all. But I’d say, probably stone. Loose bit of coping up there? Edge of a tile? They did an extensive restoration job on the church last century, you said, there could be all sorts of fragments lying around up there.’

‘I’m heading back there now,’ said George. ‘Any idea about timing? It was a fine, mild night to be lying out, shouldn’t be anything freakish about the temperature factor.’

‘He was dead before midnight, I’m certain. Medically it could even have been as early as eight, but you’re going to be able to cut down on that end from evidence. I’d say most probably it happened between nine and ten.’

‘And the vicar left him, still at the organ, about half past eight. Say a couple of hours for everybody in the valley to account for himself. And either they’ll all have alibis,’ prophesied George, ‘or else none of them will. They stand or fall together up in Middlehope.’

He drove back to Abbot’s Bale with the tea-time traffic, to confer with Sergeant Moon at the parish hall before joining Detective-Sergeant Brice at the church. Moon’s report was exactly what he had expected.

‘I’ve seen all the boys, they all say they went straight home after practice, some of ’em together part of the way, naturally, where they live close. They’d all heard about him being dead, of course, not a hope of the grape-vine failing, up there, in or out of school. No question of shock or surprise, they already knew. All very quiet, very demure, a bit subdued, with a lot of excitement bubbling inside. They aren’t sorry, but they are sobered. None of ’em liked him, but this never entered their heads, whatever else they wished him. The men, Barnes is going the rounds now. But the result will be the same.’

‘And nobody else has turned up a useful fact? Nobody in the pub heard anything? No regulars who failed to show?’

‘Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody knows anything. And nobody has to issue orders, or even set the example. They all wanted rid of him, and generally speaking they’ve all got open minds about the rash soul who took steps about it. The consensus of opinion seems to be that the situation wasn’t as desperate as all that, and this action is unjustifiably drastic, but all the same… Well, you know yourself, alibis are meaningless in Middlehope. When threatened, they close ranks. For all you know,’ said Moon generously, ‘it could be anybody. It could be me!’

‘Interesting!’ said George. ‘Was it?’

‘Well, no, it wasn’t. But then,’ pointed out the sergeant reasonably, ‘we’d all say that, wouldn’t we?’

‘Come on,’ said George, ‘let’s go and see if the church is any more informative.’

St Eata’s church – a local dedication which occurred in several of the hill villages – dated back to Saxon times, but nothing much of Saxon workmanship was left above-ground, and even the succeeding Early English had largely been patched, built on to, and defaced in several later ages, even before the ambitious nineteenth-century renovation was undertaken. The fabric had ended up as slightly top-heavy neo-Gothic, with the upper part of its old tower rebuilt and made more lofty, with a new battlemented surround. It still had a respectable congregation, and so had escaped the horrid fate of being declared redundant. Its one unchallenged excellence was its organ, an early masterpiece lovingly rebuilt.

‘Any amount of people go in and out here most days,’ said Detective-Sergeant Brice, looking up from the nave towards the organ pipes, towering above the left-hand side of the chancel. ‘I thought we should have to spend half our time keeping folks out today, but only the vicar’s been near. It’s as though the place has been tabu from the time they saw us move in. Not that this part has anything much to tell us. It’s different once you get up above, where hardly anyone ever goes. We’ve marked several details for you.’

‘The organ first,’ said George.

Rainbow’s music-case was still lying on the organ-bench, unfastened, sheet music fanning out from it. George looked round at the demigod’s view of the church from this angle, and up at the correctively awesome vista of pipes. Organs are designed to prostrate the onlooker with humility before their vastness and beauty, and exalt their handlers into daemonic self-glorification. But here everything was neat, placid and undisturbed; here there had certainly been no sudden assault, no life and death struggle. The floor was clean, every surface dustless, everything in order.

‘Right, now the tower.’

Down to the body of the church again, and along to the west end, to the curtained alcove and the narrow stairway that led to the bellringers’ room. This, again, was regularly used and scrupulously cleaned, no dust to trap intruding footprints. The looped ropes of an eight-bell peal dangled motionless, their padded grips striped spirally in red, white and blue cotton, like barbers’ poles. A fair amount of light came in from Gothic lancets. In one corner an open-treaded stairway, broad, solid and safe, slanted upwards into a narrow, dark trap above. George climbed, and emerged into a sort of attic limbo below the still invisible bells. A stout, boarded floor, roughly finished, an enclosing scent of old timber, and a sense of being suspended in half-light between two worlds. In the far corner another step-ladder, still with broad treads, pursued its upward way. Here people seldom came, and very few of them. Here there was dust, moderately thick, peacefully still, with the furred neatness of undisturbed places.

‘Here it gets more interesting,’ said Brice. ‘Look here, on this first stair. More than one set of feet has trodden up the middle, mostly the prints are overlaid and scuffed, but here there’s one left foot that stepped well to the side of the tread, and the mark’s quite clear. We’ve followed all the tracks up. This one just doesn’t seem to occur again, unless he very carefully trod always in the middle where the dust was already disturbed. It looks as if somebody got this far, and then changed his mind.’

‘And there are two sets of tracks beyond?’ asked George.

‘Two detectable. Could be more, but definitely two. But not this one. Or never distinct beyond this point.’

The soft dust, securely settled, had taken an excellent impression. An old shoe, trodden down at the heel, unevenly weighted, and with a distinct crack across the sole. A print that suggested a smallish foot in an over-large shoe, the foot of an older man who liked his comfort, and clung to the old friends that ensured it.

‘You’ve isolated and copied everything above that might be useful? Right, up we go!’ But even so George trod carefully, up into the dimly-lit bell-chamber, smelling of clean, dry must, and haunted by monstrous, still bronze shapes in the gloom. A large area of floor here, and only a runged ladder continuing the ascent. There was also a quantity of debris stacked in corners, left behind from the renovations, carved stones so weathered that the carving was almost obliterated, bits of voussoirs half worn away with corrosion but retaining a shape someone hadn’t wanted to throw away. All too massive to provide handy weapons, but the suggestion was there. And there were two huge but sadly decayed wooden chests, one with a disjointed lid propped back against the wall, and layer below layer of discoloured papers spread in some disorder within. George crossed to look more closely, for though age and damp had marked the contents in brownish ripples, only some of them were filmed with a layer of dust, and even that only superficial, and some of those half-uncovered below were perfectly clear of dust. The lid had not been thus open long, the contents had been only recently disturbed. He read titles of Victorian magazines,
Ivy Leaves, Harmsworth Magazine, Musical Bits
, and the modest headings of parish magazines. And some older,
Gentleman’s Magazine, The Grand
, as far back as the late eighteenth century. The floor beside the chest was trodden more or less clear of dust, dappled with treads so that no clear print was visible.