“Straightaway, sir,” Robb said, practically jumping out of his chair. He uncovered the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry, miss, we’ll have to ring you back on that.”
“What’s up, Mike?” Gideon asked.
“Not your concern,” Clapper snapped without turning around to look at him.
Robb paused at the table that held the two different kinds of headgear. “Which hat, sir?”
“Screw the effing hats,” Clapper snarled, striding toward the front and roughly motioning for Robb to follow. At the door he turned back to Gideon with a parting growl. “If you go out, make sure you pull the effing door good and shut after you.”
Gideon, deciding that further conversation with Clapper at this point was not in his best interest, silently watched them go.
On a guess, he thought, I’d say that call was from Exeter.
But in fact the call had come from Star Castle, and the man who had made it stood waiting for them in the fog, at the base of the age-worn stone staircase, hands delicately folded in front of his discreet little paunch, as Robb pulled the van up in the grassy parking area at the entrance to the castle.
“I am Mr. Kozlov’s majordomo,” the pasty, dark-suited man with the pencil mustache said. “My name is Mr. Moreton. You’ve come about the unfortunate deceased gentleman. You’ll want to see Mr. Kozlov. I’ll take you to him.” He turned to precede them up the stone steps. “If you’ll be so good as to follow me.”
“No, we don’t want to see Mr. Kozlov, we want to see the unfortunate deceased gentleman,” Clapper said.
A very slight lift of his eyebrows showed that Mr. Moreton considered this a contravention of etiquette, but he acceded without dissent. “Certainly.” He continued majestically up the steps before them.
They followed him across a short stone bridge that crossed a dry moat, then under the “ER 1593” carved into the great lintel, and through the castle wall onto the grounds. Robb, if Clapper remembered correctly, had toured the place not long before, when it was open to the public as part of some anniversary having to do with the accession of Charles II-or was it the execution of Charles I?-but it was the first time Clapper had been inside. Yet it was Robb who looked with curiosity at the historic walls around them. Clapper didn’t go in much for history.
Once through the massive entryway they continued single file on a narrow pathway, perhaps five feet wide and paved with granite blocks, that ran between the fifteen-foot-high stone retaining wall-the inner wall of the ramparts-and the castle building itself, forming a deep, claustrophobia-inducing passageway around the building and apparently serving as a storage area for dustbins, gardening equipment, piles of stone for repairing the retaining wall and the paving, pottery shards, and similar odds and ends. A few heavy outpipes, waste pipes of one kind or another, ran from the building into the rampart’s wall, about ten feet above the passageway. Higher up, the top of the castle disappeared into the fog, making the well of the passageway seem even deeper and more tunnellike.
“You wouldn’t know the name of the unfortunate gentleman, would you?” Clapper, a step behind Moreton, asked.
“Mr. Joel Dillard, a member of the consortium. The doctor arrived about twenty minutes ago. He’s in the kitchen now, if you wish to-”
“Twenty minutes? You took your time calling the police, didn’t you?”
“Mr. Kozlov didn’t think it was a police matter. A simple fall. But Dr. Gillie said, in a case like this, where there’s been a violent death, the police must be notified. We certainly didn’t intend to violate the law. If we have, please accept-”
“All right, all right,” Clapper said gruffly. There were only three doctors on the island and all of them served both as deputy coroners and as police surgeons. Davey Gillie was one of the better ones, probably the very one Clapper himself would have called to the scene to make out the death certificate, as procedure required for any sudden death, suspicious or otherwise.
“Next time something like this happens-” Robb began, as they turned the first corner of the building. They were still in the well of the passageway.
“Next time!” Mr. Moreton cried with feeling. “Let’s hope there’s no next time!”
“Next time, call 999,” Robb went on gently. “That’s the best thing to do.”
Not necessarily, Clapper thought. In this case it was probably better that he hadn’t. Once he called this in to headquarters, there would be a crime-scene team, and very probably a couple of detectives, out from Truro within the hour to look things over, and the fewer paramedics and technicians and such that had been mucking around, stepping in the blood and all, the better.
“You found the body?” Clapper asked Mr. Moreton as they turned the second corner.
“No, our housekeeper, Mrs. Bewley.”
“Don’t let her leave. We’ll want to talk with her.”
“Yes, of course.” He slowed and stopped at the next corner. “The gentleman… the remains… are just beyond. Is it all right if I don’t-”
Clapper pointed to a nearby door. “Go in there and wait. That’s the kitchen, is it?” He’d seen Davey Gillie at a table, writing.
“Yes, sir, the kitchen,” Moreton said gratefully, scurrying for the door. “Shall I get Mr. Kozlov?”
“Get Mrs. Bewley. No, wait, get them all. Everyone in the house. Ask them to wait in the kitchen as well.”
Mr. Moreton nodded and opened the door.
“Thank you, Mr. Moreton,” Robb called, earning a sullen glare from Clapper.
The two policemen turned the corner together, but Clapper then stopped at once, putting out his arm to stop Robb as well. “Now that’s what I call a bloody mess,” Clapper said disgustedly.
“Good God,” a shaken Robb whispered.
Joey Dillard’s body lay sprawled, partly on its back, partly on its side, on the stone paving, one blackened, dulled eye open, the other one half-lidded. One foot, shoe-less, was propped awkwardly against the retaining wall, the leg that went with it twisted unnaturally under him. A bent, broken pair of glasses hung pathetically from one ear. There was a great deal of blood, matted in his hair and soaked so heavily into his sweatshirt that most of the logo on it, something about Ethical Treatment, couldn’t be read. More blood coated the paving, tarry and congealed.
“He’s been here a while, I’d say, sir,” Robb said as professionally as he could manage, despite the quaver he could hear in his own voice. “You can see one of his eyes, and the cornea’s just about opaque, so that’s two to three hours at a minimum, and the blood is well on the way to drying. I’d say eight to twelve hours.”
“My goodness,” Clapper responded meanly, “did they teach you all that hard stuff at Bramshill?” He raised his eyes toward the still invisible roof of the castle. Robb thought he was merely rolling his eyes, but no; Clapper was looking for something. “You’ve been here before. What’s up there?”
“Up there?”
“No, down here,” Clapper snapped. “If I say ‘up there,’ what else can it mean but ‘down here’?”
Robb gulped. This was as vinegary and dyspeptic as he’d ever seen Clapper, and his resentment and anger were starting to get the better of the awe in which he generally held the Great Man. Well, almost. But what the hell was the ferocious old bugger’s problem this time?
“Well, there’s not really anything up there, Sarge,” he said neutrally. “See about twenty-five, thirty feet up, where the stone facing ends, and then there’s another floor, set back a little, with shingles on the outside? That’s the third floor-where all the guest rooms are, I think.”
This time Clapper really did roll his eyes, making it clear that the information he was hearing wasn’t what he wanted to know, and Robb hurried nervously on. “Well, at the top of the stone facing up there, just above the level of the windows, there’s a sort of walkway all around the outside, under the eaves. You get out onto it from the third floor by walking up five or six steps and going out this little door-”