‘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
