The constable grinned. “Grand old lady. She got ‘er a meat suit'd break your heart, guv.” I couldn't help but smile. Dorothea Tay, my childhood fantasy love from afar. I had seen all her early plays and I still had the vids of all her movies. PC Lounds's face grew troubled. “DCI Stokes told me you're Interpollys and you're not to make arrests. That's my job."
"We are aware of the regulations.” I nodded toward the deep woods. “What do you think, Lounds?"
His bunchy little eyebrows arched. “Me?"
"You've read the file, you're a trained police officer, I'd like your take on it."
"Well, guv,” he began, slightly surprised at being asked, “only ones I know bring horseshoes to a fox hunt is horses."
"Constable Lounds, you will be pleased to hear that my superintendent agrees with your assessment. Do you know why your DCI Stokes discarded that theory?"
Lounds looked very uncomfortable. He glanced up at the still darkening sky, then shifted his gaze to me. “Off record, inspector?"
"Of course."
He pursed his lips and nodded once. “'Titled Lady Croaks Multimillionaire Hubby In Grisly Slaying’ makes a juicer headline than ‘Horse Kicks Rider.’”
As we walked deep beneath the cover of the trees off the lane, I could see a laser marker perhaps ten meters ahead. DS Shad came flying the other way, his landing pattern weaving between a succession of tree trunks, the touchdown right before us—a competently executed maneuver. Shad waddled over and said, “Not much left. What hasn't been taken away or trampled into the pine needles has been picked over by the wildlife."
"Can you make out where Bowman's body was found?"
"They have a Vader prang in place, but I didn't run it up.” He nodded toward the cleared lane. “Notice once you get away from that open run, there aren't any cameras or audio pickups?"
I nodded and followed as Shad lead the way, Constable Lounds bringing up the rear. Once we were next to the tree where the marker was attached, I asked Lounds to activate it. He took out a remote and did so, and a high-definition image of the deceased Miles Bowman appeared in its place on the forest floor two meters west from the base of the tree. He was on his left side, his head pointing southwest, body curled in a loose fetal position. The image was depicted wearing scarlet coat over cream-colored cravat, waistcoat, and trousers tucked into gleaming black riding boots, all of which had been marked with bloody hoof marks, the source of the blood being the deceased's scalp, face, and hands. “Full scan, Lounds,” I requested.
Lounds touched the remote and the image expanded to include everything within the prang's line of sight up to ten meters from the unit, which included several pairs of disembodied feet at the periphery: The scenes-of-crime officers awaiting clearance to approach the body. “I don't see Bowman's black velvet riding helmet,” I said to Lounds.
"Lady Iva had it in ‘er hand, guv."
"Be a good fellow and cycle the SOCS."
The scenes of crime sequence images cycled: Footwear impressions included all of the suspects, including Bowman's horse, as well as all of the other horses ridden by the suspects. A bloody horseshoe had been recovered from the ground near the body, and the shoe had come from Champion's right front hoof. A note: Champion's hooves had all been tested for blood and had come back negative, which would have been remarkable except when Champion had finally been recaptured, the nag was standing with all fours in a spring-fed brook.
I looked up at Lounds. “They didn't test the rest of the horse for blood spatter?"
The constable shrugged helplessly. “DCI Stokes's got ‘is bird—” He glanced at Shad. “Beg pardon, Sergeant."
"Forget about it,” answered the duck. Shad looked at me.
"Yes. It does appear to be left to us.” The beginning of raindrops hitting the needles above us announced itself. I pulled up my collar, took a holoanalyzer out of my breast pocket, and nodded at Lounds.
As he turned off the laser marker, we were momentarily plunged into relative darkness. I turned on the pen-sized analyzer, placed it in the receptacle on the laser marker to steady it, and controlled it with my portable. By default the analyzer first projected the aggregate images: All substances on the tree trunks not actually made of that type of wood. The tree trunks appeared mostly in shades of white and gray speckled with brown, red orange, lavender, and so on.
"A lot o’ stuff on them trees,” observed Lounds.
"Moss, lichen, animal waste, insects, and insect waste,” I said, filtering out the hundreds of thousands of colored speckles. I filtered out the bird droppings, rodent droppings, canine, and feline hair, urine, and excrement, as well.
"I hope that I shall never see a toilet filthy as a tree,” quipped Shad.
There was some equine as well as human blood on the tree nearest where the body had been. The tree was a twenty-centimeter-thick pine standing in front of a deadfall that was well into rotting its way back into the floor of the grove. The human blood was Bowman's. The analyzer DNA-matched the horse blood through the world amdroid database to Champion, Mile's Bowman's horse. There was equine hair, also Champion's. On three other tree trunks was human blood spatter in medium-velocity patterns. That blood, too, was Bowman's.
I ran the spatter forms and sequence, derived the impact angles, and determined the points and order of origin. It then projected a reconstruction of the blunt force impacts, and it was looking more and more as though a horse was our suspect. The blows that were struck, at least six of them, occurred in pairs, in that two blows were struck at a time, and with horseshoes. D. Supt. Matheson couldn't imagine Lady Iva getting into the muck to beat a man to death with a horseshoe. I was having difficulty, frankly, in imagining any human beating another to death, a horseshoe in each hand held such that the flat of the shoe struck the victim each time, rather than an edge, and that three times both hands were employed delivering blows at the same time.
"Guv,” said Lounds as he stifled a yawn, “need me?"
"I suppose you could stand a nap. Are all the vids in here?” I tapped my portable.
"They are."
"We have all you can help us with, then, Constable Lounds. Drive us to the lodge, and then you can take the car and go home with our thanks for all your assistance."
After an hour and a half in the lodge's walnut-and-leather-festooned club lounge watching the professional and amateur vids of the interrupted hunt, Shad and I were swamped with useless information. Time and time again we saw the six riders following the hounds as they led away from the thinned lane beneath the solid canopy, then twenty seconds later, all but one returning to the lane and pausing as the foxhounds milled around searching for the scent. The prey, Archie Quartermain, appeared several times during the run. We saw him on stationary cameras coming into the lane through the grove, running along it, and exiting as he raced toward the rise beyond the grove, no one following.
No one caught Miles Bowman's demise on camera. Lady Iva Bowman, indeed, had been the first to return to the spot off the lane, ostensibly looking for her husband, returning moments later with the Master's black velvet cap in her hand to cry out to Lord Talmadge, who was the closest to her. He called to the others, all of whom followed Talmadge and Lady Iva back to where Bowman's corpse was cooling.
Only three of the riders in the party had been carrying point-of-view vid cameras: Bowman, Talmadge, and Dorothea Tay. Miles's POV camera went dark as soon as his horse ran beneath the thick cover. No audio.
Talmadge's camera showed he was ahead of the Master when his own horse turned off the lane to follow the hounds, his camera going dark until he came out from beneath the thick cover and came up behind the staff riders back in the lane, where it appeared the hounds had lost the scent. Talmadge pulled his mount up behind Tay. Weatherly, Depp, and Flock then turned, supposedly in reaction to Lady Iva's call for help. He and the others followed Lady Iva back beneath the solid cover, where the images from his camera were so dark they were almost useless. Talmadge dismounted, then we could just make out the image of Lady Iva standing next to her husband's corpse.