“Well, at least someone’s happy,” Dr. Beaufort commented. He nodded to the police photographer, who was hopping about the gravestones, eager, busy, in a world of his own. “It’s not every day you boys get a whack at an outdoor scene in full spring sunshine with a subject that looks like a Plantagenet king laid out on his funeral bier. Who’ve we got? King Richard the Lionheart without his crown and longsword? Very photogenic . . . is that a word?”

“I know what you mean!” Redfyre agreed, responding to the doctor’s flight of fancy. “My lads are more used to exposing their lenses to battered sides of meat on stormy nights down a dark alley . . . With this one, I looked for the embroidered cushion under the head, the pet whippet at his feet.”

“I’ll give your Man Ray over there a minute to indulge his artistic impulses before I swat him away,” Beaufort said, eager to make a start.

The pathologist on duty was the one Redfyre would have requested if requesting had been possible. Dr. Beaufort was every detective’s first choice. The doctor’s bag remained unopened on the ground by his side, and Redfyre knew it would remain so until he had looked about him and absorbed the bigger picture. Then out would come the rubberised gloves, the tweezers and the sample bags. He could have sworn Beaufort had undergone police training, so attuned was he to their requirements. Redfyre smiled to himself. On the many occasions the venerable pathologist had worked with Redfyre’s boss, Detective Superintendent MacFarlane, he would have been subjected to a regime of strict adherence to the Scotland Yard’s Detective’s Handbook.

Unhurried, the wise old eyes ranged around the graveyard, taking in the presence of tall, gangly Sergeant Thoday beating the bounds, returning to concentrate on the track through the grasses. “I say, Redfyre, have you noticed . . . ?”

“Yes, that was the first thing I asked the photographer to record. The sergeant is doing a preliminary sweep. We’ll have the uniformed lads down on their knees later for a fingertip search, should it be necessary.”

“You’re hoping I’m going to take one look and say, ‘Heart attack. Feel free to cart away and bury,’ I suppose.”

“Much depends on whether that gate is locked and where the key is. We can follow where it leads when we’ve had a closer look at the body. I hope you’re in the mood to talk aloud, in words of no more than five syllables and, above all—indiscreetly—as you work?”