“But he’s been moved. What does it matter now? He was hit from behind. We already know that.” Piers frowned. “What are you thinking, Mr. Pitt? What do you know now that we didn’t then?”
“Please look at his neck.”
“That blow wouldn’t break it.” Piers was puzzled. “But if it had, how does that alter anything?”
Pitt looked down at the body and nodded very slightly.
Piers obeyed. There was a very slight moment of reluctance, the knowledge of who it was he was touching so professionally, then he placed his fingers on the skull and moved it gently, then again, exploring, concentrating.
Pitt waited. The cold seemed to eat into him. No wonder meat kept well here. It was not far above freezing, if at all. The damp from the ice seemed to penetrate the flesh. The taste of dead things filled his mouth and nose.
The lanterns burned absolutely steadily. It was totally windless, almost airless in there.
“You’re right!” Piers looked up, his eyes wide and dark in the uncertain light. “His neck is broken. I don’t understand it. That blow shouldn’t have done that. It’s in the wrong place, and at the wrong angle.”
“Would that blow at the back have killed him?” Pitt asked.
Piers looked unhappy. “I’m not absolutely certain, but I don’t think so. I don’t see how it could.” He swallowed, and Pitt could see his throat jerk. “There would be no way of knowing if he was dead when he slid under the water ….”
Pitt waited.
“I could find out if there is water in the lungs. If there isn’t, then the broken neck killed him and he was already dead before he went under.”
“And the blow at the back?” Pitt asked again.
“I might be able to tell from that if it happened when he was alive, or dead, by the blood and the bruising. The bathwater washed the outside clean, of course.” Piers seemed hunched into himself, his face shadowed starkly in the lanternlight. “But if I … if I did a postmortem examination … at least … I don’t know if I … I am really qualified to give an opinion. I couldn’t in court, of course …. They wouldn’t accept my judgment.”
“Then you had better be very careful how you treat the evidence,” Pitt said with a bleak smile. “It could make a lot of difference, one way or the other.”
“Could it?” Piers sounded disbelieving.
Pitt thought of Justine, of Doll, and of Lorcan McGinley.
“Oh, yes.”
“I can’t do it here,” Piers said grimly. “I can’t see, for a start. And I’m so cold I can’t hold my hands still.”
“We’ll use one of the laundry rooms,” Pitt decided. “There’s running water and a good wooden scrubbing table. I don’t suppose you have any instruments with you?”
“I’m only a student.” Piers’s voice was tight and a little high. “But I’m very nearly qualified. I take my final exams this year.”
“Can you do this? I don’t want to send for the village doctor. He won’t be trained for this kind of thing either. To send to London for someone I would have to do it through the assistant commissioner, and it will take too long.”
“I understand.” Piers looked at him unwaveringly in the lanternlight. “You think it was my Uncle Padraig, and you want the proof before he leaves.”
There was no purpose in denying it.
“Can you work with the best kitchen knives, if they are sharpened?” Pitt said instead.
Piers flinched. “Yes.”
Carrying the body from the icehouse was a miserable and exceedingly awkward matter. It must not be handled roughly, or damage might be done which would destroy the very evidence they were looking for. Geville had been a large man, tall and well built. To place him on a door would make him impossibly heavy for Pitt, Tellman and Piers to carry unassisted.
“Well, we can’t get anyone else,” Tellman said tartly. “We’ll have to think of another way. I’ve seen enough of these servants to know what would happen if we used a footman. We’d be branded ghouls or resurrectionists by tomorrow morning.”
“I’m afraid he’s right,” Piers agreed. “We could try boards. There’ll be some in one of the outbuildings, like the ones they used for the study window.”
“We’d never balance him on boards,” Pitt dismissed the idea. The thought of struggling along the passageway in the half dark trying to keep a corpse from falling off a plank was grotesque. “The door is the only thing.”
“It’s too heavy!” Tellman protested.
“Laundry basket,” Piers said suddenly. “If we’re really careful how we put him in it, we won’t disturb the evidence.”
Pitt and Tellman both looked at him with approval.
“Excellent,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll fetch one. You get him ready.”
* * *
It was after eleven o’clock by the time Tellman stood by the laundry door, which naturally did not lock, and Pitt watched as Piers Greville very slowly began cutting into the body of his father, holding Mrs. Williams’s best kitchen knife in his right hand. The ordinary lights were turned up as high as they could go, and there were three extra
