And so he had begun on a work of landscape architecture that would rival or even surpass the spectacle of the ornamental lake, but speculation during the Railway Mania had scotched his fortunes. With most of his capital gone, what had been planned as a noble avenue of fountains, with Buckshaw as its focal point, had been abandoned to the elements.

Now, after a century of rain and snow, sun and wind, and the nocturnal visits of the villagers who came at night to steal stone for their garden walls, the Trafalgar Lawn and its statues were like a sculptor’s scrapyard, with various bits of stone cherubs, mossy Tritons, and sea nymphs jutting up out of the ground here and there like stone swimmers from a shipwreck waiting to be rescued from a sea of earth.

Only Poseidon had survived, lounging with his net atop a crumbling base, brooding in marble over his broken family, his three-pronged trident like a lightning rod, sticking up towards whatever might be left of the ancient Greek heavens.

“Here’s old Poseidon,” I said, turning to haul Gladys up yet another set of crumbled steps. “His photograph was in Country Life a couple of years ago. Rather splendid, isn’t he?”

Porcelain had come suddenly to a dead stop, her hand covering her mouth, her hollowed-out eyes staring upwards, as wide and as dark as the pit. Then she let out a cry like a small animal.

I followed her gaze, and saw at once the thing that had frozen her in her tracks.

Dangling from Poseidon’s trident, like a scarecrow hung on a coat hook, was a dark figure.

“It’s Brookie Harewood,” I said, even before I saw his face.

NINE

ONE OF THE TRIDENT’S tines had pierced Brookie’s long moleskin coat at the neck, and he swung slightly in the breeze, looking rather casual in his flat cap and scarlet scarf, as if he were enjoying one of the roundabouts at an amusement pier.

For a moment, I thought he might have fallen. Perhaps in an excess of alcoholic high spirits he’d been attempting to scale the statue. Perhaps he had slipped from Poseidon’s head and fallen onto the trident.

That idea was short-lived, however. I saw almost at once that his hands were tied behind his back. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

As I came round full front-on, the sun glinted brightly on something that seemed to be projecting from Brookie’s mouth.

“Stay here,” I told Porcelain, even though I could see that there wasn’t a chance of her moving.

I leaned Gladys against the lower of the three seashell bowls that comprised the fountain, then climbed up her tubular frame until finally I was standing on her seat, from which point I could get a knee up onto the rough stone rim.

The bowl of the thing was filled with a disgusting broth of black water, dead leaves, and mold, the result of a century of neglect, and it smelled to high heaven.

By standing on the rim, I was able to clamber up onto the fountain’s middle bowl, and finally the highest one. I was now level with Brookie’s knees, staring up into his unseeing eyes. His face was a horrid fish-belly white.

He was quite dead, of course.

After the initial shock of realizing that someone I had spoken to just hours before was no longer in the land of the living, I began to feel oddly excited.

I have no fear of the dead. Indeed, in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories. I’d had the good fortune of seeing several of them in my time; in fact, Brookie was my third.

As I teetered on the edge of the sculptured stone seashell, I could see clearly what it was that had glinted in the sun. Projecting from one of Brookie’s nostrils—not his mouth—was an object that first appeared to be a round silver medallion: a flat, perforated disk with a handle attached. On the end of it was suspended a single drop of Brookie’s blood.

The image punched out of the disk was that of a lobster, and engraved on the handle was the de Luce monogram.

D L.

It was a silver lobster pick—one of the set that belonged to Buckshaw.

The last time I’d seen one of these sharp-pointed utensils, Dogger had been rubbing it with silver polish at the kitchen table.

The business end of the thing, I recalled, ended in two little tines that stuck out like the horns on a snail’s head. These prongs, which had been designed to pry the pink meat from the cracks and crevices of a boiled lobster, were now lodged firmly somewhere deep in Brookie Harewood’s brain.

Death by family silver, I thought, before I could turn off that part of my mind.

A little moan from below reminded me that Porcelain was still there.

Her face was nearly as white as Brookie’s, and I saw that she was trembling.

“For God’s sake, Flavia,” she said in a quavering voice, “come down—let’s get out of here. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“It’s Brookie Harewood,” I said, and I think I offered up a silent prayer for the repose of the poacher’s soul.

Protect him, O Lord, and let heaven be bountifully supplied with trout streams.

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