I dismissed the thought as another occurred in its stead. I turned to Kite. ‘Where’s your parish hall?’
The central meeting place of Atlixco would, I knew, be close by. This was where the parish’s elders gathered, where its records were kept – every birth, marriage and death entered on screenfold books made of stiff bark paper – and where its officials, including the police, would have their headquarters. He indicated a long, low stone building at the far corner of the plaza, right next to the canal.
‘How come none of you heard anything?’
‘You may well ask! The answer is, we were all at the House of Song, singing to celebrate the war god’s day.’ I remembered the snatches of song that had come to us in the night, after the midwives had left. ‘By the time I was back here it was nearly daybreak. The traders were setting up in the market, and Handy and his son were wandering around in a daze. It seems no-one else had seen or heard a thing, apart from you three, Flower Gatherer – wherever he is – and whoever attacked you.’
‘And one other,’ I said. In answer to his questioning look I added: ‘Remember the women thought there were two men following the procession. They got part of a cloak from one of them – a three captive warrior’s cloak.’
Kite looked thoughtful. ‘Red Macaw’s a three-captive man,’ he recalled.
Handy looked up then. ‘Red Macaw didn’t have anything to do with this.’
We all stared at him.
‘What makes you say so?’ I said. ‘He was very anxious to be here yesterday. Practically begged you. Why, though?’
For the first time since I had seen him that morning, Handy became animated. He rounded on me, trembling, and raised his voice: ‘He just wouldn’t, that’s all. I told you not to ask about him, Yaotl.’ He turned to the policeman. ‘Whatever else he might have done, I’m sure he wouldn’t have done this.’
Kite met his gaze. Then he said slowly: ‘Well, I don’t know. I assume whoever took your wife’s body was after a charm for a sorcerer or a warrior. And Red Macaw…’
‘I’m telling you, this has nothing to do with him! We don’t even know that it was his cloak!’ The commoner was sweating and his hands were shaking with tension. The policeman watched him the way a man might watch a trapped snake thrashing about as he waited for the best moment to stoop and grasp it behind the head; but he said nothing.
I wondered aloud: ‘What about Flower Gatherer?’
‘What about him?’ Kite asked.
‘Did he run away? Could he have anything to do with what happened to the body?’
Spotted Eagle snorted loudly. ‘Why would he do anything like that? He’s her brother-in-law!’
Kite was watching me, saying nothing until I had begun to find his unblinking scrutiny unnerving. Finally he said: ‘You’d better answer the young man’s question.’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘I’d never met him before last night. He didn’t seem all that keen on what we were doing, though. Maybe he resented being dragged into the funeral and seized the chance to get his own back.’
‘He was attacked as well,’ Kite pointed out.
‘It could have been faked. Set up to make him look like a victim as well.’
‘So where is he now?’ the youth demanded. ‘What did he do with… with what he took? What’s he going to say to my aunt when he comes home?’
‘I don’t know!’
The policeman intervened. ‘The trouble is, Yaotl, or whatever your name is, I’d thought of your theory already, but there’s no reason why her brother-in-law would have done anything like that. What the thief took were charms for a sorcerer or a warrior, that seems pretty clear. Flower Gatherer was neither of those. He was just a peasant, and married to the woman’s sister. The boy’s question is a good one. How’s Goose going to react if she thinks her husband was behind this?’
‘Is he likely to care?’ I responded. ‘Maybe he’s not planning to come home at all. What other possibility is there?’
‘You could have done it,’ Spotted Eagle said shortly.
‘What?’ I gasped, so shocked that I could barely get the word out.
‘It seems to me,’ Kite said calmly, ‘that there are two possible explanations for Flower Gatherer’s disappearance. I think he ran away, like the rest of you. Either he ran fast enough, in which case he’ll be back eventually, or he didn’t, in which case he’s dead.’
I frowned. ‘But if that’s so, where’s his body?’
‘You tell us,’ spat Spotted Eagle.
I had to suppress a sudden, hysterical impulse to laugh in the young man’s face. Fortunately I remembered what had happened when I had done that before. ‘You think I did something to Flower Gatherer, and then dug Star up? That’s ludicrous! Why would I have done a thing like that?’
‘How should we know?’ replied the youth. ‘I don’t know anything about you. Why wouldn’t you have done it?’
I sighed. ‘So where would I have put the man’s body? What did I do with your mother?’ I appealed to the lad’s father. ‘Handy, you know me. You don’t really think I had any part in this?’
He could not look at me. For a moment his glance fell, perhaps involuntarily, on his wife’s body. He turned away with a shudder. ‘I don’t know what to think any more.’
‘The slave used to be a priest,’ muttered Spotted Eagle sullenly. ‘He could have done it. He knew what we had to do last night and why it mattered. He knows all about charms and how to make them…’
‘No I don’t!’ I was genuinely shocked. ‘I was a priest, not a sorcerer.’
‘What if he went away,’ the young man went
