A tallish, wooden stepladder, the only one in the barn that she could see, caught her eye, and she walked towards it, gamely ignoring the way her heartbeat started to pick up.
It still bore the telltale dark smudges of fingerprint dust, where someone had tested it at the time, but she could tell at a glance that the wood was too rough and splintered to have been of any use. No fingerprints would have been available to confirm – or otherwise – that the dead boy had handled it.
But presumably he had, for this was the ladder that David Finch had climbed, with a length of rope fashioned into a noose, just before his death. What on earth had been going through his mind when he’d found the ladder and opened it out into its triangular structure and placed it so carefully beneath the beam? Surely he must have wondered about the afterlife – if God would forgive him for what he was about to do?
She paused, wondering why she was suddenly taking it for granted that David had killed himself.
Perhaps …
Although it was dim inside the barn, with most of the sunlight filtering in through the ill-fitting gaps in the wood and from the partly open door, Trudy’s keen eyesight had her quickly bending down in front of the ladder, checking the fourth rung from the bottom. Her heartbeat was now kicking into overdrive, but due to excitement now, rather than trepidation.
Yes, she was right! She’d thought she recognised the telltale signs!
‘Dr Clement quickly!’ she called over her shoulder excitedly. ‘Come and look at this! Is that what I think it is?’
‘Woodworm,’ Clement said, some moments later. ‘Definitely woodworm.’ They were both looking at the tiny pinprick holes that peppered the wooden frame. He’d taken the ladder to the doorway, to better see what he was looking at, but he had no doubt.
‘But it’s especially bad just here … see, it’s all along this rung.’ She reached out tentatively to touch it, and gave it some gentle pressure. ‘It feels spongy! Dr, do you think this would have taken David’s weight?’
Clement eyed the rung thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘Some tests will need to be made.’
‘I’d better let DI Jennings know right away. He can send someone to collect it,’ she said. She only hoped he’d send PC Rodney Broadstairs to do it. Rodney liked to lord it over her. Big, blond and good-looking, he thought he was the station’s golden boy. And annoyingly, he probably was. Certainly the Sarge and the Inspector gave him far more interesting work than ever came her way. She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t resent him a bit, and it would serve him right to be used as nothing more than an errand boy for once!
‘If they find out it is too rotten to have taken David’s weight, Superintendent Finch will be pleased,’ Clement agreed. ‘It would make it less likely that his son killed himself.’
‘Unless he used something else to climb up,’ Trudy said. ‘Although there doesn’t seem to be anything else he could have used,’ she immediately contradicted herself.
Clement, who’d seen the crime scene photographs, agreed. Although there had been bales aplenty with which the dead boy could have made a stack, none of them had been found anywhere near the hanging body. Only the overturned ladder.
‘If he didn’t use the ladder … if nobody used the ladder,’ Trudy said slowly, looking from the ladder to the rope hanging from the rafters, ‘then that must mean …’
‘Somebody probably put the rope around his neck and hauled him up. Then tied the other end off around the base of the plough after he was dead.’
Trudy shuddered. ‘So it would have to be someone strong? To take his dead weight, I mean?’
Clement frowned thoughtfully. ‘Not necessarily. If someone did it that way, they could use all their own weight to haul him up. A fit and strong woman – or a heavy woman – could have done it, I think.’
Chapter 8
They left the scene of David Finch’s demise in a quiet, sombre mood. Back at the farmhouse there was now some sign of movement, but only courtesy of a few red hens, who were scratching about near an outhouse and clucking desultorily.
Trudy knocked on the door, but as she suspected, the sound only echoed eerily inside, and nobody answered the summons.
She turned and shrugged at Clement, who was standing by the car, and as she watched, he slipped behind the wheel. Climbing into the passenger seat beside him, she said, ‘Into the village?’
Clement nodded.
The Dewberry farm was one of three that surrounded the village, lying on the western side, and it took only a minute or so to drive into the village proper. It consisted of one main street, entitled Freehold Street, with several smaller lanes leading off it that no doubt looped and meandered about and eventually re-joined the main street at some point further on.
It boasted the usual: a square-towered Norman church, built of greyish stone, with an accurate church clock, a village primary school with a plaque stating that it had been funded by a local lord back in the mid-1880s, and a single pub.
They found the pub by following the main road to where it diverged to form a not particularly square-shaped village square. Surrounded on three sides by a mixture of thatched and tiled cottages, on the fourth side was the pub, The Horse and Groom, and a long, low building that looked as if it might serve as a makeshift village hall. The pub was
