instructed the two diggers to take care.

Diamond, too, stepped closer and peered in. The depth was a little over four feet. ‘Difficult to see. You want some lighting on a day like this.’

Wigfull didn’t respond.

The spades were definitely scraping on the bedrock. One of the diggers climbed out and the other asked for a rake. It was increasingly obvious that nothing so bulky as a corpse was buried there. Diamond stepped away from the trench and took a few paces across the field. ‘There’s another hole here, by the look of it,’ he reported.

‘We know,’ said Wigfull with ill-concealed annoyance. ‘There are three, at least.’

‘I’ll see if I can find some more for you.’ Why, he thought after he’d spoken, did Wigfull bring out the worst in him?

In a penitent mood, he took a slow walk around the boundary of the late Farmer Gladstone’s land, in truth not looking for more evidence of recent digging. The methodical Wigfull could be relied on to find anything suspicious. Instead, he mused on the purpose of the holes. If they weren’t used to bury things, what were they for? A search? There was the stock story of the recluse who leads a frugal life and secretly has a hoard of money that he buries. Had someone heard of the old man’s suicide and come shifting earth on the off-chance? Three trenches suggested rather more confidence than an off-chance.

The neglected field was a conservationist’s ideal, the hedge bristling with small trees and shrubs, with mud- slides showing evidence of badgers along the far side. He stopped and looked over the hedge at the deep ploughing that presumably indicated someone else’s land. What had the neighbours to say about old Gladstone? he wondered. And had they noticed anyone digging on his land in recent days?

Having toured the field, he approached the house, which was open. The SOCOs had long since collected all the forensic evidence they wanted, and now it was in use as a base for the police. Some attempt had been made that afternoon to get a fire going in the range. He used the bellows on the feebly smouldering wood and soon had a flame, though he doubted if it would give much heat to the kettle on top. The range stood in what must once have been the open hearth, and the section where they had started the fire was intended for coal, but he didn’t fancy exploring the outhouses in search of some.

Here, as the fading afternoon gave increasing emphasis to the flickering fire, he felt a strong sense of the old man shuffling around the brown matting that covered most of the flagstones, seeing out his days here, cooking on the range, dozing in the chair and occasionally stepping outside to collect eggs from the hen-house, or to wring a chicken’s neck. His bed was against the wall, the bedding amounting to a pair of blankets and an overcoat. Thanks to the work of the SOCOs, the place was very likely cleaner at this minute than it had been in years.

The chair – presumably the one the body had been found in – stood in a corner, a Victorian easy chair with a padded seat, back and wooden armrests. He saw the chalkmarks on the floor indicating the position it had been found in. There, also, were the outlines of the dead man’s footprints and of a gun.

A shotgun is not the most convenient weapon for a suicide, but every farmer owns one and so do many others in the country, so the choice is not uncommon. Methods of firing the fatal shot vary. Gladstone’s way, seated in the chair, presumably with the butt of the gun propped on the floor between the knees, and the muzzle tucked under the chin, was as efficient as any. With the arms fully extended along the barrel, both thumbs could be used to press down on the trigger. The result must have been quick for the victim, if messy for those who came after. Diamond looked up and noticed on the ceiling a number of dark marks ringed with chalk. He recalled the rookie constables in their face masks assisting the police surgeon and was thankful that his ‘blooding’ as a young officer had not been quite so gruesome.

For distraction, he crossed the room to a chest of drawers and opened the top one. An immediate bond of sympathy was formed with the farmer, for the inside was a mess, as much of a dog’s breakfast as Diamond’s own top drawer at home. This one contained a variety of kitchen implements, together with pencils, glue, a watch with a broken face, matches, a pipe, a black tie, some coins, a number of shotgun cartridges and thirty-five pounds in notes. The presence of the money was interesting. This drawer, surely, was an obvious place any intruder would have searched for spare cash. The fact that it had not been taken rather undermined his theory that the digging outside had been in search of Gladstone’s savings, unless the digger had been too squeamish to enter the cottage and pick up what had been there for the taking.

The lower drawers contained only clothes, so old and malodorous that the sympathy was put under some strain. He closed the drawer, blew his nose, and looked into the cottage’s only other room, a musty place that could not have been used for years. It was filled with such junk as a hip-bath, a clothes-horse, a shelf of books along a window-ledge, a wardrobe, a roll of carpet, a fire-bucket and other bits and pieces surplus to everyday requirements.

Diamond sidled between the hip-bath and a bentwood hat-stand to get a closer look at the books, all of which had suffered water-damage from a crack in the window behind them. They told him little about the man. There was a county history of Somerset and two others on Somerset villages; an Enquire Within Upon Everything, several manuals on farming; one on poultry-keeping; and a Bible.

When he picked the Bible off the shelf, the cloth cover flapped away from the board where the damp had penetrated. A pity, because it was clearly an antique. In the end-paper at the front was inscribed a family tree. It went back to 1794, when one Gabriel Turner had married Ethel Moon. Gabriel and Ethel’s progeny of nine spread across the width of two sheets and would surely have defeated the exercise if a later architect of the tree had not decided to restrict further entries to one line of descent, ending in 1943, when May Turner married Daniel Gladstone in St Mary Magdalene Church, Tormarton.

So far as Diamond could discern from the handwriting and the ink, all the entries had been made by two individuals. It appeared that the originals had been inscribed early in the nineteenth century, with the object of listing Gabriel and Ethel’s family; and the later entry was post-1943, to provide a record of May’s link through the generations with her great-great-grandparents. Daniel, presumably, was the suicide victim.

Sad. Now the old farmer would probably be buried in the church where he and his bride had married over half a century ago. Even more touching, the Bible also contained a Christmas card, faded with age, and inside it was a square black and white photo of a woman with a small girl. A message had been inscribed in the card: I thought you would like this picture of your family. God’s blessing to us all at this time. Meg.

Odd. He turned back the pages to check. The writing was clear. Daniel Gladstone had married May Turner, not Meg.

A second marriage? If so, the message seemed to suggest that it was a marriage under strain.

Hearing someone enter the cottage, he replaced the Bible and its contents where he had found it. John Wigfull heard him and looked through the door, his hair and moustache glistening from exposure to the mist.

‘Digging around?’

‘I thought that was the order of the day,’ Diamond answered.

‘We’ve given up. It’s too dark to see a damned thing and the mist is coming down.’

‘You’re right. I was getting eye-strain looking at his books,’ said Diamond. ‘Not much of a reader, apparently. What an existence. No papers, no telly. I’m not surprised he decided to end it. Did you find any personal papers?’

‘There was a deed-box. I’ve got it at Manvers Street. Birth certificate and so on. It establishes clearly who he was. We can’t trace a next of kin, so a health visitor will have to do the formal identification for us. At least Social Services were aware of his existence. Not many round here were.’

‘You’ve talked to neighbours, then?’

‘They scarcely ever saw him. There was some friction. I think the fellow on the next farm made several offers to buy him out when he stopped working the land, but he was a cussed old character.’

‘Aren’t we all, John?’

Wigfull was reluctant to bracket himself with the farmer or his rival. ‘What I was going to say is that no one could stand him for long. He married twice and both women divorced him.’

‘Any children?’

‘If there were, they didn’t visit their old dad.’

Diamond explained why he asked the question. He picked the Bible off the shelf again and showed the Christmas card and photo to Wigfull.

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