There were no visible signs of violence. No blood, no torn clothing. Fights in defence of territory or simply drunken squabbles were the second-most-frequent cause of death, after disease, in the down-and-out fraternity. They left traces on the primary target—the face. Here was no broken nose, no black eye, no scratches or bruises. Redfyre turned his attention to the hands. He took hold of the right hand Snapper had been tugging at and inspected the knuckles. No signs of fighting. He checked the left. No broken bones or skin here, either. They were the hands of a hardworking man of middle years that he had expected, but oddly, they were clean, the nails freshly trimmed. The face had the austerity of one who was aware that death was close, but gave out the impression of peaceful acceptance. The eyes were fully closed. There was certainly no expression of horror—Redfyre had yet to encounter such in a corpse. He had begun to suspect that the dying eye roll of terror was no more than an invention of Victorian novelists. The face was well shaped—intelligent-looking, as far as one could judge. It would certainly not have appeared as an illustration in the pages of Cesare Lombroso’s L’uomo delinquente. Anthropological criminology was not a theory Redfyre subscribed to. He had known too many villains with the features of the Angel Gabriel and one or two plug-uglies with hearts of gold and morals to match. Nevertheless, this was a face he would have been pleased to have engaged with, if only it could have sprung alive again.

The professional policeman surfaced, and Detective Inspector Redfyre of the Cambridge CID went about his business in a methodical way, scribbling on the pad he always kept in his trouser pocket, noting first of all precisely the condition of the scrubby grass surrounding the gravestone. He dropped to his knees and crawled about, much to the fury of Snapper, who was not invited to join in the game, inspecting bent stems and establishing the route the man had taken to arrive at the stone. With the sequence of light shower followed by flood of spring sunshine, you could almost hear the grass surging upwards, repairing itself, standing straight. By lunchtime, Redfyre reckoned, the track would no longer be discernible.

Scarcely believing what he was noting, he got to his feet and took his bearings. He sighted along the barely visible path of disturbed herbage and spoke to the corpse. “Now, what the hell were you doing coming straight out of the back of Jude’s? The master’s garden, no less! Leading to the master’s lodge. Impressive friends you have! And which of them, I wonder, unlocked the door in the eight-foot-high wall so you could get through to die in here and ruin my Sunday?”

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Cambridge, Sunday, the 18th of May, 1924