Suddenly alert, Redfyre paused in his advance to take in the scene. Snapper was now tugging at the sleeve of the man’s overcoat. Redfyre recognised the uniform of the wanderer. A second- or thirdhand, worn-out, ex–army greatcoat. Warm, reasonably waterproof and a good stand-in for a sleeping blanket. The wearer of this useful garment was stretched out on top of a low-lying marble-topped grave with his head resting against the headstone. His feet, clad in heavily darned socks, offered themselves to the newly risen sun, heels together in a mocking V formation, one lividly white big toe sticking through to strike a discordant note of pathos. A pair of resoled brogue shoes had been lined up at the base of the stone with the care of a child going to bed. Or would that be a soldier’s careful routine gesture? The man’s face recalled that of a waxen effigy, time-darkened ivory, skin tight about the bones, the mouth slightly smiling. Though on approaching, Redfyre thought—perhaps a grimace? His hands must have been crossed over his chest until Snapper in his eagerness had leapt up and snatched one down to his level for an affectionate nuzzling.

Idiotically, Redfyre’s first thought was, Lord! How do I tell the poor little animal his new friend is a goner?

“Come away, lad!” he said, scooping up the dog. “He can’t hear you.” He took out the lead and tethered him, grumbling, to the yew tree, then proceeded to investigate the tomb sleeper.

No pulse. Dead. Cold body. He judged the man to have been dead for some hours, perhaps even days. It was entirely possible for a bloke to have had a heart attack, realised that his moment had come and laid himself out to wait for death on an available and entirely appropriate piece of marble, Redfyre reasoned. His knowledge of the process of decomposition had been acquired over four years fighting in Flanders fields and was reliable, but he now entrusted such professional decisions to men in lab coats with thermometers and microscopes. He was most probably contemplating a death by natural causes that would lead to a five-minute enquiry by a bored coroner and a quiet shovelling away, unnamed, in a pauper’s burial ground.

He sniffed the air above the body. A keen sense of smell was a trait the inspector shared with Bernard Spilsbury, the Home Office pathologist so revered by the CID. Not that it needed to be particularly keen to distinguish two sharp scents against the green background of mayblossom and sun-warmed grasses. Alcohol. Fruity alcohol rather than whisky or ale . . . brandy, perhaps? And, less pungent, the inevitable smell of rotting lilies, reeking of death.