“Stand by, and we’ll be down there in a quarter of an hour,” said Sergeant Moon. “Don’t leave him alone, but don’t let anyone touch anything.”
“No, that’s taken care of—the vicar’s keeping an eye on him.”
And Dave went to join him. The Reverend Andrew was examining everything in the south porch with appalled but fascinated eyes, as closely as he could without disturbing anything. He wasn’t a native, and he was young enough and innocent enough to find life in Middlehope a little wanting in action—being excluded by his office from about nine-tenths of what action there really was. He would have been horrified if it had so much as entered his mind that he could be glad of a murder; but here was one on his doorstep whether he wanted it or not, and it was impossible not to feel a decided curiosity, and even a certain distinctly pleasurable excitement.
“Desecrated!” he said, looking over his shoulder at Dave from his precious door. “This means we shall have to get it reconsecrated all over again.”
“A pity we can’t just do the same for him,” Dave said drily. He couldn’t take his eyes from the misshapen head and the jagged stone with its stained edges. He thought of fragments of hair and skin adhering, to make the manner of the assault certain, and of fingerprints to identify the hand that had held the weapon. But no, not from that stone, not a hope! It was a bright, whitish lump, full of mica crystals, without a smooth surface anywhere on it. More likely, perhaps, to have abraded the attacker’s fingertips when he struck with it, and collected some sample of skin or blood tissue that might lead to him by another way. There was a police forensic laboratory in Birmingham; the full treatment would be available within a couple of hours at the most.
The thought was at once reassuring and chilling, as though the valley had already been invaded by the apparatus of unlawful death, as indeed it had from the moment the stone was plucked out of the grass. No going back now. Dave had never felt himself so much a native. He also felt, to tell the truth, a little sick, but no one looking at his dour, quiet face would have realised it.
If he had ever entertained any idea that the law moved slowly and sleepily in these parts, he was soon disabused of it. Sergeant Moon and one of his constables came rattling down the valley from Abbot’s Bale in the sergeant’s old Ford within thirteen minutes, slipped the car inside the vicarage drive, and arrived without alerting the village. The relief and security Dave felt at the very sight of the big sergeant was illuminating; after all, he was only Middlehope at all by marriage, but of his membership in the islanded community here there could no longer be any doubt. He might have been there since before Eliseg’s grandson set up the memorial pillar to him, over in Wales. He even walked and talked like a Middlehope man. Easy to see why he never wanted to move away, not even for promotion. What did he want with promotion, when he was already, after his fashion, a minor prince?
“Ah,” said the sergeant, considering the body of the photographer from Birmingham with the same gravity and calm with which he daily summed up the weather prospects at the edge of winter, and estimated his commitment in case of isolation. “Stranger. Didn’t I see him last Sunday? With a camera?” It was not really a question, unless to himself, and already provided with its answer. Dave said nothing, not yet. When the sergeant wanted anything from him, he’d ask for it.
“You found him, Dave? Statements come later, now just tell me.” Sergeant Moon knew every soul who belonged in his domain, and could call them all by their first names.
Dave told him, slowly and accurately, with times. He knew when he’d left home, he knew how long it took to drive a car round into the vicarage garage and walk back here. “I know who he is—or at least I know who he said he was. He brought his car in to our place yesterday morning with damaged steering, and gave me his card. He said he might stay overnight. I had the car ready last night, but I didn’t think anything when he didn’t come for it, after what he’d said. His name’s Bracewell. And you’re right, he was here on Sunday covering the service. He was in ‘The Sitting Duck’ that evening. That’s all I know about him. Except that he was interested in that door—more than most, I mean. As if he thought he was on to something special about it, and thought he might get a good story out of it. I don’t know how, he didn’t say.”
For Dave it was quite a speech. The sergeant patted his shoulder vaguely, and digested, with no vagueness at all, what he had told him. The Reverend Andrew hovered, with nothing to do but confirm the circumstances that had brought him there.
And then, within three quarters of an hour of the discovery of the body, the whole apparatus suddenly went into top gear. The succession of events was bewildering. First came the valley police doctor, hurtling in preoccupied and surly to kneel beside the dead man, touch him delicately, probe half-heartedly for a temperature (the body was full clothed for an autumn night) and think better of it. Let the pathologist worry about the precise time of death—not that it would be very precise in the circumstances!—when he got here from Comerbourne. The doctor confirmed the indisputable fact of death, cast one significant glance at the all too obvious matter now darkening and drying on the stone, and withdrew in businesslike fashion to his practice. He had a lot of patients waiting and a lot of territory to cover afterwards, and the sergeant had caught him just at the opening of his surgery.
Hard on his heels came a police van from Comerbourne with the photography team, and a car containing a detective constable as driver, one detective sergeant, Chief Inspector George Felse, and Dr. Reece Goodwin, the hospital pathologist who bore the blessing of the Home Office in these parts. Detective Superintendent Duckett, the head of the county C.I.D., had been in his car somewhere on the way to consult his Chief Constable about something quite different—a matter of certain local bank frauds—when Moon’s call came through, and thus fate dropped the case into George’s hands from its inception. Duckett might well be along later, when the message reached him. Moon, to be truthful, rather hoped not; he got on better with George.
“I shouldn’t have said it,” owned George resignedly. “Soon found a way to fetch me back, didn’t you?” He looked the scene over for a moment in silence, and arrived at the vicar and Dave, still patiently in attendance.
“Dave Cressett here found him,” said Moon practically. “He’s a busy man, with a garage and filling station to look after, and not two minutes away when wanted. Now if the vicar here could loan us a room as office, that would be the most convenient arrangement for everybody.”
The Reverend Andrew, appalled and delighted, was willing to make over half of his monstrous vicarage to them if required, and said so. Nothing half as interesting as this had happened to him since he came to Mottisham, and the prospect of a front seat on the investigation was dreadfully attractive.
“All right, Jack, you get a preliminary statement from Mr. Cressett, and I’ll see him later on.”
Dave looked back curiously as he was ushered, with Sergeant Moon, back into the vicarage gates, crossing the main road, where now the infallible grape-vine had already assembled a small and watchful audience, conversing in pregnant whispers. The team of photographers circled and aimed and manoeuvred round the porch, focusing the body, the weapon, the outflung hand and broken head. Dr. Goodwin, a round, bounding, energetic man who appeared fifty and was actually pushing sixty-five, was on his knees beside the corpse. And one more car was just arriving, and decanting the forensic scientist from the laboratory in Birmingham, last of the team to put in an appearance.