by Ellis Peters
‘Hmmm, that’s true. They’d hardly keep the organ out on the leads, would they? Well, now, let’s have a look, before the doc takes him away.’ And delicately he began to move round the rim of the scene, looking at grass-blades and the scarred mosses on the stones. Dr Reece Goodwin, a round, bouncing, energetic ball of a man, well into his sixties but looking fifteen years younger, was kneeling beside the body, touching and probing with spatulate fingers.
‘An odd chance, he fell with all the lower part of him on this table tomb and these two headstones, smashed himself to pieces from the waist down, but he came down head and shoulders in this thick tangle of grass and brambles. Nothing but superficial damage, scratches and impact grazes to the head. And yet he’s bled from the back of the skull, and I think we’re going to find there’s an indented wound here resting against nothing but all this cushiony vegetation. And he certainly never moved after he hit.’
‘Interesting!’ said George. ‘It looks as if you’ve got yourself a job this afternoon.’
Dr Goodwin bounded up from his knees, and scrubbed his hands vigorously. ‘So it seems! Right now I wouldn’t give you a precise cause of death, obvious though it may seem. Can I have him now?’
So that was that. A post-mortem was essential, and the shadow of murder was already looming as the shadow of the tower crept round to mark the passing of noon. A man falling by accident may certainly claw at the stones to try to arrest his fall. Even a suicide may change his mind at the last moment, and try to cling to the world he has set out to abandon. But in neither case is he likely to end up with his head the most intact part of him after the fall, cushioned in vegetation, and yet with an indented wound at the back of his skull.
They hoisted the rag-doll remains of Rainbow into a plastic sheet, packed him into a shell, and stowed him away in Reece Goodwin’s van for his journey to the hospital mortuary in Comerbourne. The vicar, hovering unhappily in the background, was almost relieved when he was asked if the police might borrow the parish hall as an incident room, and was left there with Sergeant Moon to make a formal statement, while Detective Sergeant Brice and Constables Reynolds and Collins began a methodical examination of the church from nave to tower, layer by layer, and George, ruefully shouldering the most distasteful duty left, went in person to break the news to Barbara Rainbow.
He was halfway up the drive, among the calculated spaces and tastefully positioned statuary, when it dawned on him that while the widow might be badly shaken by this death, possibly no one in the world would be really sorry. In his own business circles Rainbow appeared to have been watched, respected, envied and copied, but never actually liked. In this valley he had made himself not so much detested as dangerous, and not to be tolerated, like a disease. Middlehope would breathe more freely now that he was gone. And the spectacular Barbara?
She opened the door to him herself, in grey slacks and a silk shirt, her hair down round her shoulders; and her black brows, drawn together over eyes focused somewhere far beyond him, suddenly smoothed out in relief. She recognised him gladly. Recalling the party intimacy, she said: ‘George…!’ and even launched upon a genuine, if anxious, smile, and then she looked more closely, and grew cool and still, and certain of a thunderbolt. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry! That was presumptuous. It’s Superintendent Felse isn’t it? This is official.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said George.
‘Come in! As a matter of fact,’ she said, closing the door upon the world and leading the way into the small drawing-room where Rainbow’s grand piano stood, ‘I’ve just called the police down the valley. Do sit down! But you… you’re C.I.D, aren’t you? How could you be involved?’ The dark eyes were intent and guarded, and she was pale. Hardly any make-up, he realised, and as beautiful as ever. ‘I’ve been calling his shops, and his dealers, and everybody I could think of who might know his movements, ever since I called the vicar, early this morning. Nobody knows anything. So finally I called the police. But just the police. That wouldn’t come straight to you. You must have come into it some other way. And you do know something, don’t you?’
‘The vicar called Sergeant Moon,’ said George, ‘who called me. For sufficient reason.’
‘Yours is the criminal division,’ she said deliberately. ‘Are you suggesting there’s something criminal involved?’
It was an eventuality which had never occurred to him, though all too clearly it had to her. He could not believe that she was acting or prevaricating. The first thing that had occurred to her, when her husband vanished without trace, was that he had excellent reason for doing so. What she dreaded was something that would involve her loyalty. Not her integrity. Not her affection. George was suddenly sure that the news he was actually bringing would be very much easier to bear.
‘Not as you mean. No question of any criminal act on your husband’s part. After your morning call the vicar was naturally worried, and went to see if there was any suggestion to be found in the church. He found a situation which made him call our department at once. Your husband is dead, Mrs Rainbow. It looks as if he fell to his death from the church tower last night. I’m sorry to be the bearer of such news.’
He’d been right to go ahead bluntly with the fact. And the first thing he saw in her, or was almost certain he saw, was that she had never for a moment considered this possibility. Either that, or she was an actress right out of his experience. Her eyes flared wide open, her face blanched with shock, her hands, which had been bunched into doubled fists a moment before, lay loose in her lap. The second thing he saw, as she stirred slowly out of her stillness, was that she had glimpsed a marvellous light at the end of a long and still suspect tunnel. So that was all! He was dead, and she hadn’t killed him, or even willed his death. Simply, he wasn’t there any more!
‘Are you sure?’ she said in a muted, wary voice, letting the syllables slide out one by one as if they had to carry passports. ‘Arthur’s dead? But how could it happen? Why should he fall from the tower? Why should he even climb the tower? All he wanted was the organ, and the choir to go with it.’ The single virtue Rainbow had possessed hit her suddenly, she knotted her hands again, and rocked like a genuine widow. ‘He did care for music, you know! Only he never really felt it in his bones.’
His bones were in splinters from the waist down, and he was almost excessively dead. George experienced her brief, guilty, unloving pity, and understood it. She didn’t really owe very much.
‘You’ll want to ask me questions,’ she said reasonably. ‘Where is he? Do you need me to – to identify him, or anything?’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said George. ‘But you’ll understand that his death presents something of a problem, and we shall have to collect all the information possible that can shed any light on it. For instance, it seems hardly likely that he set out to take his own life.’
‘No, he never would,’ said Barbara positively.
‘The idea of an accidental fall presents difficulties, too.’
‘I understand,’ she said bluntly. ‘You can’t rule out the possibility that someone else had a hand in it. It’s all right, I know where I stand now. The marriage partner is normally the first suspect. You’ll want access to all his papers and accounts. You’d better have the key of his office now, everything in it is just as he left it. And you’ll want a statement from me, about his movements yesterday, and mine.’
‘I’ll send someone later to get a formal statement. Now just tell me. Things were as usual yesterday? He went to choir practice at the usual time? There was nothing out of the way in his manner?’
‘Everything was just the same as ever. He always walked to the church, it’s not far by the side gate. He went out at the usual time, and he told me he’d be late back, because he wanted to get in some practice after the choir left. That’s why I wasn’t worried until around midnight. He could easily have stopped in at the vicar’s afterwards, and sat talking about his plans for the season’s music. He intended some drastic changes.
They weren’t too popular with the choir. Some modern music is very ungrateful stuff for voices. I was here alone all the evening, and went to bed without waiting for him. Even when I woke up later, and found he still hadn’t come in, I can’t say I was really worried. He didn’t invariably consult me, or even warn me, before taking off on business at a moment’s notice. And besides, nobody could have started much of a hunt for him in the middle of the night. But when there was no telephone call this morning, and his car was still in the garage, I thought I’d better make some discreet enquiries. That was when I called the vicar, and since then I’ve called everyone I could think of, half a dozen dealers, both the shops, even Charles Goddard in Comerbourne, and John Stubbs down at Mottisham. And then you came. And that’s all. Oh, and I’ll give you his solicitor’s name and number. As far as I know, they hold his will.’
She was perfectly in command of herself and her situation now, and her composure in speaking of such details as her husband’s will was completely detached and impersonal, as though the disposal of his worldly goods had nothing to do with her, and could hardly affect her.
‘And what happens about the funeral arrangements? I suppose there has to be an inquest. And then will they release his body? I suppose I ought to call in a firm to take responsibility, in any case.’
‘It would be wise,’ George agreed. ‘I’d like the addresses of the shops. And I will take the office key, with your permission. We shall probably have to disturb you occasionally during the next few days, but we’ll try not to upset your life more than we have to. You have no servants living in the house?’
‘To vouch for my movements last night?’ she said with a faint, grim smile. ‘No, I’m afraid you’ll have to take, or doubt, my word for it. There are two girls who come in, mornings, and help out if I have a dinner-party. And a woman who comes in twice a week to clean. All from the village. I’ll give you their names, too.’
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.’