She was dressed in a beautiful burgundy wax print with black velvet trim. She raised her voice above the din and beckoned to a boy a few meters away.

“Would you like some beer?” she asked Dawson.

“No thanks. How about some Malta?”

“Go and bring a bottle of Malta for him,” Elizabeth commanded the boy.

He obediently ran off.

She smiled at Dawson. “Are you all right? I saw you in the wake room, and you seemed uncomfortable.”

“I don’t do well at these kinds of things.”

“Sometimes it gets too much,” she acknowledged. “But traditions die hard.”

“Do you believe in all of it? Putting things in the casket, for instance?”

“It’s symbolic, that’s all. It means we care about her even to the point of her leaving us. Providing her with the things she liked.”

Something suddenly occurred to Dawson. “The cloth in the casket with the little Adinkra symbols-is that the yellow version of the blue one she was wearing?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Elizabeth said. “She loved that pattern, Inspector Dawson. She had a yellow, a blue, and a red. We didn’t want to put the blue one with her, so we chose the yellow because it’s so nice and bright.”

The boy came back with a bottle of half-chilled Malta, and Dawson thanked him. He took a couple of swigs.

“Elizabeth, I want you to do something for me,” Dawson said, raising his voice above the noise. “Can we go over there where it’s quieter?”

They walked a distance until the music was less intense.

“That’s better,” Dawson said. “I’m going to show you a diagram someone drew of what might be Gladys’s missing bracelet. Tell me if you think it looks like hers. Take your time. Don’t hurry to any conclusion.”

He took Nunana’s diagram from his pocket and gave it to Elizabeth. While she looked at it, he downed some more Malta, Heaven’s elixir.

“It had two rows of silver loops the way it’s drawn here,” Elizabeth said, tapping the paper with a manicured index finger. “It could be it. Who did this? Where did you get it?”

“I can’t say right now,” Dawson answered evenly. “Tell me this, if I stole a bracelet like this and I wanted to sell it quickly, where would I go?”

“The best place would be to one of the jewelry traders at the Ho market.”

“Would they buy one like this?”

Elizabeth nodded vigorously. “By all means, because the traders know how to shine it up and then sell it at a profit.”

“How many jewelry traders come to the Ho market?”

“Lots of them. I know a few. I can take you there after the funeral is over.”

“Thank you.”

“I have to go now,” Elizabeth said. “They’re going to close the casket, and then the service will start. Would you like to come?”

“I’ll be all right here, thank you.”

After some time the casket was brought out. Dawson watched the service from a distance. It was performed in both English and Ewe, using a microphone so people could listen if they weren’t in the seating area. It was hot even under the canopy, and people were fanning themselves somewhat uselessly with the funeral program. Older men wore the traditional style mourning cloth, while the young could not be bothered and dressed in shirts and slacks, some quite casually.

The service lasted forty-five minutes and went like clockwork. Finally, the pallbearers raised the coffin and a chorus of women began to sing and clap. An elderly woman with bare shoulders led the procession, pouring libation along the way. They would walk a short distance through Ketanu to the hearse that would take the coffin to the cemetery.

Dawson realized they were heading in the direction of his car, so he hurried to the Corolla and backed it well out of the way beside Elizabeth’s shop. He leaned against the trunk and watched as the long line of black-clad marchers moved forward like a giant millipede.

Just before the pallbearers passed the shop, the coffin seemed to veer off course. It was as though a magnet was attracting it, but then Dawson realized that two or more of the pallbearers were deliberately pulling the coffin to one side. He couldn’t understand what was going on. Some of the men lost their balance, and the coffin tilted and pitched. Cries of alarm went up: Don’t drop the coffin!

An older man stumbled and screamed, “What are you doing? Heh! What are you doing?”

Several funeral attendees ran in to help steady the coffin as a pushing and pulling match began. Members of the crowd began to shout and jeer, but then another cry gradually became prominent as a collective chant.

“Witch, witch, witch!”

As the coffin got closer to the shop, a fistfight broke out between two men. Elizabeth appeared, yelling at the pallbearers to get back on course, and several people jumped in front of her and began to scream the word in her face. She looked shocked and backed away. Witch! spread through the crowd like a firestorm.

Charles and three other men came to Elizabeth’s side to protect her. The coffin had swung and swayed back to its route. Dawson realized what had just happened. When a casket was drawn “mysteriously” toward a particular house, it was said that the person most associated with the dwelling had caused the death of the deceased through witchcraft. In other words, someone was trying to frame Elizabeth. It was an ugly, nasty turn to a funeral that had otherwise been proceeding smoothly. Who could have arranged this stunt?

The disruption died down, and the procession got back to normal. Elizabeth, not one to be intimidated, returned, head high, to her position near the front. About a minute later, a boy of about thirteen ran up to her and whispered in her ear. She was obviously puzzled as the boy pointed backward at something, and Dawson could see he was asking her to come with him in that direction.

She followed him and disappeared between her shop and the building next to it. Dawson circled around and looked down the length of the space between the rear of the buildings and the bush.

Elizabeth appeared with the boy, and waiting to meet her were a half dozen young men with sticks. Elizabeth turned to run. They pounced on her like a pack of hyenas and clawed her down. She held out her hand defensively as they began to club her.

Dawson opened the trunk of the car and got the cricket bat out. As he ran toward the melee, Elizabeth was trying to get up, but the youths struck her down again.

“Witch! Witch!”

“Beat her, beat her!”

She screamed as blows rained down. For a moment she got to her knees, but a strike to her head flipped her over sideways.

As Dawson got there, two of the youths shot away, but the others turned to fight. The first to come at Dawson got the cricket bat forehand and went down. The second got it backhand to the side of his head and a second strike square in the face.

Dawson moved forward to take care of another two, but they dropped their sticks and escaped.

“Elizabeth.” He knelt down next to her. “Are you all right?”

He lifted her head, and she groaned. A gash in her forehead was spurting blood. Her right forearm was bent, obviously broken as she had tried to defend herself.

Dawson ripped the bottom of his shirt and folded the length of cloth to press it firmly against Elizabeth’s forehead.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Hold on, all right?”

One of the youths was out cold; the other was groaning and attempting to get up. Dawson wasn’t worried.

Charles and four other men came running. They knelt down beside Elizabeth.

“I’m okay,” she said, but her face was creased with pain. Her forearm had rapidly swollen to the size of Dawson’s leg.

“She has to get to the hospital,” he said.

“Take her to Isaac Kutu,” someone suggested.

“No!” Dawson shouted angrily. He was sick of this. “You take her to the VRA Hospital now.”