The Corpse with the Sapphire Eyes

by Cathy Ace

  “I want to see the body, Mrs. Jones,” said Siân firmly.

  “Alright, alright, don’t get your knickers in a twist. It doesn’t bother me one way or the other if you want to see it, my dear. So long as you’re respectful with it. He was married to my Rhian, after all. Though why you’d want to, I don’t know. Still meant something to you, did he, after all that time?”

  “No, he did not,” said Siân angrily.

  “So you won’t be sorry he’s dead then?” said Dilys slyly.

  “Why would I be?” Siân tried to sound unconcerned. It didn’t work, which worried me.

  Dilys pounced. “Did you do it? Did you push him to get your own back on him for something? I bet you wouldn’t have minded doing it. Mind you, I think you’d be in a queue.”

  What an interesting comment.

  Involuntarily my eyes followed Mrs. Jones’s gaze toward Siân. “Kangaroo caught in headlights” came to mind as I saw her startled expression, but that seemed an unfair representation of my sister’s choice to become an Australian.

  “Of course I didn’t,” Siân spluttered. She was defensive when she continued, “I didn’t even know he was here, at Castell Llwyd. And even if I had, why on earth would I want to kill him?”

  “You tell me,” said Mrs. Jones. “I bet it’s a good story. Probably got a sad ending, if I know anything about him. Break your heart, and take your money, did he? You wouldn’t be the only one. Settled down for a few years after he married my poor Rhian, he did, and I thought she’d tamed him, or at least that he’d changed. But I know what I knows. There, I’ve said it now.”

  I butted in. “You haven’t said anything, Mrs. Jones, though you’ve implied that your son-in-law was an inveterate womanizer with sticky fingers to boot. Is that what you’re saying, outright? That someone might have wanted to kill him for one, or both, of those reasons.”

  “Better ask her,” said the cook, nodding at Siân. “I can tell by her face she knows what I mean.”

  As Bud and I looked at Siân, she blushed to the roots of her highlighted and perfectly bobbed hair. “I didn’t know he was here,” she bleated, her eyes downcast.

  “Well, if you two believe that, you’ll believe anything,” the sharp-tongued cook let loose. “When this one drove into the grounds, she parked her car in the stable block. Am I right?”

  Siân nodded.

  “Those windows over there?” She waved an arm toward the row of shallow panes just above eye level in the wall, which were as black as the night beyond them. We all nodded. “This kitchen’s in the original part of the castle, the medieval part they used as the foundations for the pretend-Norman monstrosity the first Cadwallader built. Those windows might only be small, but they are at ground level outside. No one notices them, but I can see out very well, all round, and I see what I sees. What do you think of that, then?”

  “So what did you see?” I asked. The woman’s oblique insinuations were getting on my nerves.

  “That’s for me to know.” She tapped a finger on the side of her impressive nose. “Walls have ears,” she added.

  I tried to not let my exasperation show. “Mrs. Jones, are you saying you saw my sister Siân with David Davies earlier today?”

  “No, she didn’t,” shouted Siân.

  Successfully defusing an increasingly tense situation, Bud quietly demanded, “Could you tell me where to find the body of David Davies?”

  Dilys Jones sniffed as she replied, “Go round the corner there, down the corridor, into the back kitchen. We put him up on the big table; you can’t miss him. There’s a light inside the door. Turn it off when you leave, then I suppose you’ll all have to troop back through here again, because I won’t have you going up the down stairs. You have to go up the up ones. Go on with you, I’m going back to bed. Got to be up at the crack of dawn to get the breakfast done. Turn off all the lights, right?”

  We followed her grumpily delivered directions, and found ourselves in yet another black, massive room. Once again, ancient fluorescent tubes crackled to life when Bud flicked a switch. It was immediately evident that the space was used to house unwanted items of all sorts, from broken stepladders to buckets with no handles and mops with mere stumps for heads, as well as boxes filled with supplies for the kitchen. Mrs. Jones had been correct in her assertion that we wouldn’t be able to miss the resting place for her son-in-law’s body—it lay on an impressively large wooden table in the middle of the cluttered room. The outline of the corpse beneath a white sheet made me think of the old Frankenstein movies. It was a very eerie sight.

  “Right,” said Siân determinedly, “let’s have a look at him,” and she pulled back the sheet with a flourish.

  As the dust from the table swirled about us, I heard Siân gasp. “It’s him. He’s hardly changed at all,” she whispered. “Older, of course, but he’s still . . . oh my God, it’s really him. David is dead.”

  Siân began to shake. I could tell she was grappling with some very strong emotions. I realized that maybe she’d made a valid point when she’d said we hardly knew each other as adults. I didn’t have a clue about the nature or the depth of relationship that had once existed between my sister—my own flesh and blood—and the lifeless corpse in front of us.

  I tried to put an arm around Siân, but she pushed me away and moved to the end of the table where she gripped its edge. Having been rejected by my sibling, I thought it best to take in what I could about the body. An obviously broken neck; a badly scraped and cut chin; hands knocked about, maybe from trying to save himself as he toppled. I completely removed the sheet and took a look at the rest of his body. His clothes—a pair of old jeans and a polo-necked gray sweater—were grubby and dusty, but they also had what looked like coal dust on them. His jeans were very creased at the bottom, and rolled up to a couple of inches above his black dress shoes, which seemed an odd choice of footwear. Turning over his hands, I noted that both palms were rough to the touch and also bore traces of black dust. On closer examination I spotted what seemed to be a rust mark across his jeans. I bent forward and sniffed.

  “Cait—stop it!” hissed Bud.

  Siân seemed to snap out of her reverie. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked sharply.

  I sighed as I explained, “I thought this was a rust mark, but it doesn’t smell like iron. I wondered if . . .”

  “What are you doing now, Cait?” Bud sounded puzzled, as I pulled at David Davies’s jeans.

  “Help me pull up the legs of these a bit farther, will you?” I asked Bud as I did my best alone. Rigor hadn’t set in, but it still wasn’t easy.

  “What on earth for?” he asked. “I don’t think you should be doing this. Just let the body be. This is nothing to do with us.”

  Bud was acting in a very un-Bud-like manner.

  “Come on, Bud, I just want to check something. Please, give me a hand?”

  Bud sighed and looked cross, but he helped anyway.

  “Look!” I said, maybe a little too triumphantly. I pointed at a mark that ran across the front of both of the dead man’s legs. “What do you think did that?” The mark was slightly pink, about half an inch wide, and appeared on each of his shins, a few inches above the top of his short, black dress socks.

  “Oh no,” said Bud, and he cursed under his breath.

  “Strewth,” exclaimed Siân. “It looks like something might have knocked across his shins. It could have made him fall down the stairs.”

  I nodded.

  Siân looked thoughtful. “It’s not my area really, but there might have been blood pumping around his body long enough for those marks to have formed. We did quite a lot of work on cadavers in training, and you’d be amazed how badly bruised up they can be, even when whatever caused the bruises happened very shortly prior to death.” She looked at the grim expressions on our faces, and added, “Or maybe you two wouldn’t be so surprised?”

  All three of us were quiet for a moment.

  “He might have got those
marks weeks ago,” said Bud half-heartedly.

  I replied calmly, “They aren’t old bruises, Bud, and you know it. There’s none of the discoloration that comes with that age of injury. It’s not my main area of knowledge either, but I, too, have done a fair bit of work with bodies, of the living and the dead, and these are fresh marks. Look—if you get close, you can just see where the skin is broken in a few places. That’s raw. I know I’m no expert, but we must mention it when the authorities arrive, whenever that might be.”

  “You’re right, of course,” said Bud miserably.

  “Now let’s have a look at the rest of him,” I said. “Come on, help me roll him, will you?”

  Bud held back. Weird.

  “I’ll help,” said Siân, and between us, we managed to lift his shoulders enough for me to see some more marks on the back of his sweater.

  “They could be anything,” said Bud. Too quickly.

  Siân and I both glared at Bud as we lay the body back down. Siân gave me a sheepish look, and I knew I had to step up.

  “Bud, those marks couldn’t be ‘anything.’ They are, quite clearly, two handprints, in coal dust, on the man’s back. On the back of a man we’ve all been thinking—hoping—accidentally fell down the stairs. What on earth are you playing at, Bud? A mark on the front of his shins, which might suggest he was tripped. Two handprints on his back, which might suggest a push. This man’s body is almost screaming that foul play was involved. So why are you insisting that he fell?”

  Bud sighed. “Because I want him to have fallen, Cait. You’re right when you say I’ve been hoping he fell. I don’t want this to be a suspicious death, or a possible murder. I just want it to be an accident, and nothing to do with us. I’m sorry, Siân. I don’t know what this man once meant to you, but I am putting Cait first. It’s our wedding weekend, and I need this to be just an accident.”

  I softened. Bud’s entire life had been dedicated to seeking justice. I realized how hard this was for him, and I shared his anguish.

  “I love you, Bud, and I, too, wish it could have been an accident. But I don’t think it was. I don’t believe any of us think it was—not anymore. And we must act on that. We all agree on that, don’t we?”

  Bud and Siân nodded.

  The silence closed around us, broken only by the humming of the lights that shone on the remains of a man I had never met, but whose death, I suspected, was about to ruin my wedding.

  Naw

  I WAS FINISHED WITH THE body. It had told me all it could with its clothing on, so we respectfully replaced the sheet. The three of us made our way back into the working kitchen, which was marginally less cold than the abandoned one. Bud and I resumed our seated positions on the edge of the kitchen table, and Siân took the only chair in the room.

  “This is bad,” said Bud, echoing my own thoughts. “A man falls down a staircase and breaks his neck. It’s very sad, but it might not be so very unusual. However, now that we’ve seen the marks on him, I’m concerned that moving the body might have contaminated a possible crime scene.”

  I replied thoughtfully, “I wonder if they’d have left the body where it fell if the authorities had been able to promise they’d be here in a timely manner. What do you think?”

  Bud shrugged. “Everyone here is so bizarre it’s hard to know.”

  I mused quietly, “We know that his not being ‘officially’ removed led to his relocation, and, to be fair, the table out there is a pretty good spot to choose, if you have to leave a body lying around overnight that is. It’s out of the way, not posing a health hazard, and, as we know, it’s as cold as a refrigerator out there.”

  “That’s true,” said my sister unhappily. “He should keep for a while in there at least.”

  Rather than dwell on the unpleasant effects of decomposition, I said, “We cannot ignore what we’ve seen. Give me five minutes, and I’ll be back.”

  Bud quietly called, “Cait, where are you going?” but I ignored him.

  I returned to the kitchen disappointed, and announced, “There are several things to consider. First, there is the coal dust on his hands, and on his jeans, which were rolled up. Then there’s that mark on his legs. The coal-dust prints on his back were bigger than my hands, but smaller than yours, Bud, which might be an interesting fact. I would like to know where he’d been to get himself that grubby, and what it was that caused his broken skin. My initial thought was that some sort of rod hit his shins, but I couldn’t see any marks on the up stairs—where Dilys said she found his body—to indicate that a stick, or a rod of any sort, had been wedged across the steps. There’d have been a mark visible somewhere on one of the two walls, I’m sure of that. The walls are painted in cream—a very impractical color for the purpose, I’ll grant you, but useful for us on this occasion. The marks on his legs were too thick to have been made by string, twine, or even wire, which would have cut into his flesh more. In any case, something like that would have had to have been affixed to each side of the stairway somehow. But there aren’t any stair rails; there are just those ropes looped along the walls, so there isn’t anything to attach a string, or something like it, to. Oh—what about those rope-loops?”

  “Hmmm,” said Bud thoughtfully. “Maybe one of those . . . No. No, it wouldn’t work. If one had hung down and caught his ankle, or something like that, then maybe. But that’s not where the marks are.” I nodded, still thinking things through. “Of course,” Bud continued, “he could have been hit across the legs, rather than walking into something, but the marks made a straight line. How could a person get that low down to hit two legs in a straight line about six inches off the ground?”

  Siân was sitting in silence, chewing her nails. She seemed more than a little distracted. She didn’t even take any notice when Bud jumped down from the table and crouched, waving his arm across his body at the height he had specified.

  “To hit someone across both legs, in a straight line, at this height,” he said, “you’d certainly have to be positioned to one side of the person you were hitting, which would allow a stick, or a weapon of some sort, to make a straight line, as David had on his legs.” His motions made that much clear. “Otherwise, the thing in your hand wouldn’t make contact with both legs equally.”

  “But that would be impossible, Bud,” I replied, since Siân clearly wasn’t interested. “The stairs have a wall on each side, and while they are wide, they aren’t that wide. Besides, why would you run down a flight of stairs into someone crouching on one of them? You’d wait for them to move.”

  “He might not have seen someone crouching on a step. The light down here at the bottom might not have been turned on, and it was dark by then. That could make you miss things.”

  “Granted it might make you miss your footing, Bud, but I think you’d see a person as at least a lump of something on the step. Besides, like I said, the stairs aren’t that wide—a person would have to be tiny to have been able to be on a step beside David as he descended. And invisible.”

  “So we’re looking for a skinny ghost or an invisible leprechaun of some sort then?” mused Bud. He smiled in Siân’s direction, and I could tell he was trying to get her to engage, but she didn’t.

  “As you know very well, leprechauns are Irish. In Wales we have the bwca,” I said.

  Bud smiled wanly. “Go on then, tell me, what’s a bwca?”

  I settled my shoulders. “It’s like a brownie, or a sprite. It wants to be helpful, and it will be if you thank it for its work with a bowl of milk or cream, but if you annoy one, it’ll become mischievous. It’ll thrown stones and break things, or knock on the walls or doors to confuse you, or pinch you as you sleep, or steal your clothes. Maybe there’s a bwca in the castle and it tripped David Davies.” I grinned cheekily. “Mum used to call me a ‘little bwca’ when I was naughty. Siân too. Two ‘naughty little bwcas,’ we were. Remember, Siân?” Nothing.

  Bud remained silent as I recalled my mum’s face with a warm smile. I rallied. “A b
wca is related to the bucca of Cornwall and Devon, or the American tommyknocker. The knocking association comes from mining, when men working underground would hear creaking before a cave-in. They came to think of a knocking sound as a forewarning of disaster. Stephen King wrote a book called The Tommyknockers, though that’s really more of a science-fiction book. Very similar to Quatermass and the Pit, in fact, which happens to be one of my favorite movies. Made in 1967. Love it, though I’ve never seen the original TV series. Have you seen it? The movie, I mean.”

  Bud shook his head. “Quite how you manage to get from leprechauns to 1960s science-fiction movies in more or less one breath is beyond me. Your brain must get very hot, sometimes. But, putting all other information aside, I just wanted to point out to you how difficult, if not impossible, it would have been for a person to deliver a blow to the front of David Davies’s legs, in the manner in which his body presents. There must have been a device he walked into, set at that height across his path, for him to have gotten that mark. Agreed?”

  I nodded. “Or he might have done it before he was on the stairs,” I added. “Maybe he just happened to walk into something, getting the marks, a couple of moments before he fell down the stairs, and we’re giving too much significance to the stain on his jeans, and the mark on his legs.”

  “We?” said Bud. “You’re the one doing that, Cait. I’m just helping you see it’s not possible for a bar to have been hit across his legs while he was on the stairs. I think your new theory is much more likely.”