your day,' he said quietly. As he was telling her his story, he handed her Rudolf's identity card. She stared at him for what seemed to be an age, uncomprehending, and then her coffee cup crashed to the floor.
Conversation stopped, and all heads swiveled in their direction. In the silence that had fallen over the room, it took Fitzduane a moment to realize that the pool of hot coffee was slowly soaking into his socks.
It was not necessary for Fitzduane to return to the scene of the hanging, and he knew it, yet back he went. He felt proprietorial toward Rudolf. He had found the body, so in some strange way he was now responsible for it.
Perhaps a half dozen of the faculty went with Fitzduane to the old oak tree. Rudolf still hung there. Fortunately for the nervous onlookers, the body had stopped swaying in the wind and now hung motionless.
Fitzduane was aware that in all probability some of the people present had some previous experience with death, even violent death. Yet the hanging, with all its macabre history and connotations of ritual punishment, had a very particular impact. It showed on their faces. One teacher who could not contain himself could be heard retching behind the trunk of a sycamore tree. The sound seemed to go on and on. Several others looked about ready to join him.
A long aluminum ladder was brought up at a run by two fit-looking young men. The sight of them reminded Fitzduane that pupils at Drake spent a great deal of their time in outdoor activities. In a casual conversation some years earlier, one of the lecturers, since departed, had remarked, “We try to exhaust the buggers. It's the only way we can keep them under control.”
Many of the students, Fitzduane recalled, came from troubled, albeit rich backgrounds, and a good number were old enough to vote, to be conscripted, or to start a family. Doubtless some had. All in all, it seemed a thoroughly sensible precaution to keep them busy rushing up and down cliff faces and being blown around the cold waters of the Atlantic.
They waited in the gloom of the forest to one side of the old oak tree until the police and ambulance arrived. It took some time. There was no police station on the island. The nearest was at Ballyvonane on the mainland, some fifteen kilometers of potholed road away. There were attempts at conversation governed by some unspoken rule that the hanging itself should not be discussed. Fitzduane, standing slightly apart from the group as befitted the bearer of bad news, chewed on a piece of long grass and made himself comfortable against the supporting contours of a not-too-damp outcrop of rock.
He was curious to see what the police would do. A man was dead, and dead from violence. There had to be an investigation. There wouldn't be one in El Salvador, here bodies were dumped unceremoniously on rubbish dumps by death squads, or in Cambodia, where so many millions had been slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge that one extra body was of no significance. But this was home, where violence was rare and different, more caring standards prevailed.
Two guards arrived: the local sergeant – well known to Fitzduane – and a fresh-faced youngster not long from the training barracks in Templemore by the look of him. Their heavy blue uniform trousers were tucked into farmers' rubber boots, and their faces were shaded and impassive under dark blue uniform hats. The sergeant, Tommy Keane, had his chin strap in position and was puffing slightly.
It would be untrue to say that there was no examination of the scene of the incident; there was. It lasted perhaps sixty seconds and consisted of the sergeant's padding around the tree a couple of times, staring up at the hanging body as he did so, his boots leaving a perfect trail of cleated prints in the soft ground, obscuring with official finality any previous marks.
Fitzduane's gaze drifted back to the body. It's feet, limp and slightly parted, were shod in surprisingly formal dark brown shoes polished to a military gloss. He wondered if Rudolf had spit-shined his shoes that morning – and if so, why?
The ladder was placed against the tree. The sergeant tested it a couple of times, placed the young guard at the foot to hold it securely, and climbed. He removed a bone-handled folding knife from the pocket of his uniform raincoat and opened the blade.
Knife in hand, he surveyed the gathering. Silhouetted in that way above the body, he reminded Fitzduane of a print he had seen of an eighteenth-century execution.
'Hugo, give us a hand,' said the sergeant. 'Let's cut the lad down.'
Automatically Fitzduane moved forward and stood just under the corpse. There was the brief sawing sound of the blade against taut rope, and the body fell into his waiting arms.
He clasped it to him, suddenly more disturbed than he would have thought possible at the absolute waste of it. The torso was still warm. He held the broken body, the head disfigured and hideous, flopping from the extended neck. He would often think of that moment afterward. It seemed to him that it was the physical contact with that once-so-promising young body that forced him into the resolve not to be a bystander, not to treat this death as one more item in a long catalog of observed violence, but to find out, if at all possible, why.
Other hands joined him, and the moment when he had the dead boy in his arms alone was over. They prepared to set the body on the ground; a thick plastic bag had already been laid out. As Fitzduane lowered the shoulders onto the protecting surface, a long moan emerged from the hanged boy's bloodstained mouth.
They all froze, shocked, unwilling to contemplate the same unpalatable thought: Had Rudolf von Graffenlaub been quietly strangling while they all stood around making awkward conversation and waiting for the police?
The long, low moan died away. It was a sound that Fitzduane had heard before, thought it was nonetheless unsettling for that. 'It's the air,' he said quickly. 'It's only the air being squeezed out of his lungs as we move him.' He looked around at the circle of greenish white faces and hoped he was right.
Half an hour later he sat in front of the sergeant in the library of DrakerCollege, which had been commandeered as an interview room for the occasion, and made his statement. He looked at the mud drying on the guard's heavy boots and the crisscrossing of muddy footprints on the inlaid floor. Standards were dropping.
'You don't look great, Hugo,' said the sergeant. 'I'd have thought you'd be used to this kind of thing.'
Fitzduane shrugged. 'So would I.' He smiled slightly. 'It seems that it's different on your own doorstep.'
The sergeant nodded. 'Or the last straw.' He puffed at an old black briar pipe with a silver top over the bowl to protect it from the wind, and from it emanated the rich aroma of pipe tobacco. He was a big, heavyset man, not many years from retirement.
'Tommy,' said Fitzduane, 'somehow I expected more of an investigation before the body was cut down. The immediate area being roped off. An examination by the forensic people. That sort of thing.'
The sergeant raised a grizzled eyebrow. His reply was measured. 'Hugo, if I didn't know you so well, I might be thinking there was just the faintest tincture of criticism in that remark.'
Fitzduane spread his hands in a gesture of apology. 'Perish the thought,' he said, and fell silent. The look of inquiry remained on his face.
The sergeant knew Fitzduane well. He chuckled, but then remembered the circumstances and reverted to his professional manner. 'Don't go having any strange thoughts, Hugo. The site round the tree had been well trampled by you lot before we ever showed up. Anyway, I've had thirty-four years in the Guards, and I've seen my share of hangings. They've always been suicide. It's just about impossible to kill someone by hanging without leaving signs, and there are easier ways of committing murder.'
'Was there a note?'
'No,' said the sergeant, 'or at least we haven't found one yet, but the absence of a note means nothing. Indeed, a note is an exception rather than the rule.'
'Any idea why he might have killed himself, then?'
'Not specifically,' said the sergeant. 'I've quite a few people to see yet. But the ones I've spoken to so far said he was very intense, very moody. Apparently there were some difficulties with his family in Switzerland. He's from a place called Bern.'
'It's the Swiss capital,' said Fitzduane.
