The room was not at all the scene of beer-swilling debauchery he’d feared. No empty rum bottles. No floozy hiding under the bed. It was the well-ordered and austerely clean quarters of a military man. Cupboards holding heaven knew what were firmly closed. There were no dirty dishes or clothes lying about. Whatever he’d worn to the pub last night must be in the laundry basket. He’d been neatly clad in striped pyjamas before the shooting. His boots were lined up under the bed waiting for his feet. Joe’s exploratory fingernail run between the sole and the upper came away with not-yet-dry boot blacking. He must have attended to them on his return last evening.
Questions flooded into Joe’s mind. Had he killed himself? In London, the hopeless and destitute threw themselves off bridges and under tube trains. In the country, where guns were plentiful and despair rampant, self-inflicted death by game rifle was not uncommon. Why? If not self-inflicted—who? Would a man planning suicide have left the door ajar? Would he have polished his boots and tidied his room? It was not impossible.
Joe stemmed the rampaging flow of enquiry. That was not his task. This was Hunnyton’s backyard. The superintendent would, within the hour, set wheels in motion to launch an official police enquiry and have the place turned upside down, every item in it examined. But Joe would take a few precious moments to absorb his surroundings, to think and take note. He would take care not to move about unnecessarily himself. By dashing in to attend to the dying man Joe had already trodden in the blood that had run down his extended hand and pooled on the floor. His finger on the man’s neck would need to be accounted for in the report. His was the kind of presence that gave him a headache when he was conducting an enquiry. He thanked God that Hunnyton would be in charge.
With a jolt he remembered the offering he’d made to the goddess when he’d first passed this way. Lord! If the Cambridge police discovered the shining cap badge of a fusilier regiment tucked into the palm of Diana’s hand and they linked it with the regiment of a certain visiting man from the Met, he’d come in for much scorn and laughter and could waste hours of police time. He made his way to the statue intent on recovering it if it was still there. Cap badges had been a favourite thing to give out to girlfriends after the war. Some girls had them made up into brooches. Joe knew one young lady who’d collected a dozen. He’d scattered these flirty and fashionable tokens like birdseed when he came marching home. With one exception, they’d been accepted with grace and laughter. Dorcas had put hers back in his hand, he remembered, with a sigh of affected sophistication. He smiled. He’d quite expected the same reaction from the goddess. She and Dorcas had much in common, he’d always thought.
Diana had her back to the cottage and was twenty paces distant. He was almost upon her before he caught the glint underneath the pointed nose of her hound. Still there, thank God! But as he reached for it he saw that there was something else in the hollow palm. Held down by the brass token was a sheet of paper folded over and over into a small rectangle. On the outside fold was written “Sandilands.”
Joe put his cap badge back into his pocket and unfolded the letter.
He knew where he’d seen the writing before. “Not what you’d call educated is it?” Ben had said. In pencil, the carefully formed but rough lettering had spelled out a list of herbs. Here? A suicide note? Feeling foolish, Joe realised that the dying Virbio had tried with his last breath to send him in the direction of the statue of Diana to find this and had not been asking for a priestly intervention on his behalf to the goddess. As the blundering policeman had subjected him to the recitation of a barely remembered ode, Virbio’s final thoughts must have been unprintable.
Goddess excellently bright, perhaps. Copper laughably dull, certainly.
Not a suicide note, he was assuming. Explanations, recriminations, confessions, accusations, such notes were meant to be found and read. He’d come across them in plain sight on desks, tucked into pockets, tacked to the wall above the corpse, even, in one case, clenched between the dead man’s teeth. They were never secreted away.
Dejected and full of foreboding, Joe sat down on a log that seemed to have been put there for the purpose and scanned the document. The man’s spelling might not be up to much but he seemed to have plenty to say.
CHAPTER 19
When you read this, copper, I’ll be long gone. He’s not going to get away with it, your Lord and Master. I told him what would happen if he turned awkward and now he’ll learn I meant it.
He gave me my marching orders for Midsummer Day. That’s today. Got his London lawyer to send me the eviction papers. Didn’t have the guts to do it himself. No more billet. No more pay. Says he hasn’t the wherewithall. Likely tale, eh?