“I didn’t. There was much truth in there but, even for me, the one lie stood out.”

“The heels?”

“That’s right. One detail that speaks volumes. You weren’t here, Adam, when Phoebe died?”

“No. She was nailed down in her coffin and the Trueloves were presiding by the time I got here. That was a different world, pre-war. None of the right questions asked. Not even a police autopsy. A shameful, self-inflicted death, they reckoned. Better shovelled underground sharpish. A maidservant. Not worth investigating and annoying the Trueloves for. Not with her ladyship in a delicate condition.”

“But this Goodfellow, or whoever he was …” Joe hesitated.

“You can call him Goodfellow, right enough. I checked him out, years ago. That is his name. Robert Goodfellow, ex-army, a.k.a. Robin, Mischievous Sprite of the Forest.”

“Well, our sprite describes graphically a very sure way of drowning someone. Holding the heels up forces the head down. It has the advantage of cutting off the screams as well as filling the lungs. He either did, in fact, as he says, see James Truelove holding her under or …”

“She had a fear of water—I told you—she would never have gone in the moat, not even for a swimming lesson with the young master. He bloody did it himself! Tried to force himself on her, I expect. She wasn’t having any of his nonsense and threatened to tell me … He decided to silence her. Swine!”

Hunnyton lanced the corpse with a steel glare. Delivering a second death. Joe thought that if anything of Goodfellow’s mischievous spirit was still hanging about the place, it would run screeching straight into the jaws of hell for shelter before meeting that implacable eye.

Limited in his movements to the area of two pages of the Daily Mirror, Joe had to suppress his urge to clap a comforting hand on Hunnyton’s shoulder. “Well, you won’t have to swing for him, Adam, and I’m glad of that. Look, I think I know who might have something to tell us about the drowning. Someone who was close about at the time. Leave it to me. By the way, I’ve instructed Styles and Mrs. Bolton to keep the guests away from the wood, so you’ll get a clear run at this when the CID crew arrive. By the time they get here, the company at the Hall—and the whole village apparently—will be gathered to enjoy the jollifications on the front lawn.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course. The Parade of Horses. Worth seeing, Joe, if you’ve got the time and stomach for it.”

“It’s the parade of humans I wouldn’t miss for anything. I don’t forget I’m down here to tease out the puzzle of Lavinia’s death. About which Goodfellow is sinisterly silent. Don’t you think? He throws a distorted light on an ancient murder but drops not a hint of the recent one in his letter.”

“Eager to get off and pack? Not the world’s most fluent writer—he wasn’t about to embark on a further chapter?”

“Hard to believe he had nothing to say. If that chap had had mud to hand I don’t think he’d have hesitated to throw it.”

“You’re right. There was a little something he was keeping in reserve. You’ll see! Extra blackmailing ammo? He’s skilled in the use of hanging threats over people. Not too much, not too little. Push a man just far enough and no further. The ones who get away with it, the ones who never turn up on our books are the clever ones, the ones who are so close to their victims they can judge their every reaction and have the restraint never to demand more than can be borne. Like the East African farmers who live on their beasts’ blood—always allow the victim to recover and thrive before you open up his vein again. In connection with which—you might like to cast an eye on Goodfellow’s outbuilding before you go.”

“Outbuilding? He has a latrine somewhere about the place I suppose?”

“Well he was only human. It’s carefully camouflaged and architect-designed in keeping with the main building. You’ll find it twenty yards northeast of the rear. Have a rummage around. Here, put these gloves on. Oh, and you may want to hold your sensitive nose.”

A smaller, simpler version of the pine cabin stood, door closed, hidden from all eyes by a thick screen of hawthorn bushes and tangled ivy. A shed any man would have liked to install in his back garden, at first sight. Joe opened the door and entered gingerly. On the left was, indeed, an army-style latrine of the best continental porcelain. Scrupulously clean and scented with hanging bunches of lavender. A large enamel water jug stood by ready for service. On the right another door opened into an allotment holder’s heaven. A potting bench ran the length of the cabin, seed trays, used, cleaned and awaiting the next sowing stood in piles, gardening and woodworking tools were fixed on racks on the walls. An old, horsehair-stuffed armchair was still dented from Goodfellow’s last occupancy, a pile of Men Only and Liliput magazines lurked underneath.

It was the range of wooden shelves with their pigeon-holed compartments that took Joe’s eye. The kind of fitting you could see in any pharmacy, it had probably been bought in at a farmers’ auction. Some of the compartments had a name inked in on their surface. Joe read names of herbs—hartshorne, white willow, marshmallow … One of them seized his attention. It had a piece of writing paper torn from a police notebook stuck on it with a piece of elastoplast. “Look in here, Sandilands! This drawer was slightly open when I entered. The only one.”

The drawer must have been airtight. The smell of the contents would have been held in check. Joe decided to leave a detailed inspection of the scrapings of black residue to Hunnyton’s forensic boys and merely noted that essence of something deeply unpleasant lurked within. It brought instantly to mind the smell of the offering Lady Truelove had been trying to make to Lucifer. He slammed it shut. Lavinia had sent her maid with Goodfellow’s hand-written prescription for spices to the chemist but the second formula, the one she had used along with the toad’s bone with such disastrous consequences, had come straight from this workshop.

Joe put his head round the door. “Got the message! How are you doing, mate?”

Hunnyton sighed and looked down at his notebook. “It’s hopeless! Joe—can I be frank?” He looked up at Joe with a wry smile. “If you were the officer in charge of this bloody case you’d have to arrest yourself! I think you know what I’m saying.”

Joe stepped inside and kicked the door shut. He ignored the newspaper doormat and went to stand directly in front of Hunnyton, challenging him, eye to eye.

“No. I don’t. I think you’d better elucidate for me, Superintendent.”

Hunnyton swallowed and turned away, unable to withstand the challenge of his superior officer’s response. “Oh, come on, Joe. You must see it!”

CHAPTER 20

Hunnyton waved his notebook under Joe’s nose as though it had suddenly caught fire and he was about to get his fingers burned. “Every word of my notes reflects procedure done by the book. You can read it for yourself and tell me what conclusion any sane man would come to. Any judge, any jury. Any Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner. Why don’t you give it a go?”

The true enormity of the embarrassed half-accusation hit Joe and, for a moment, sent his mind reeling.

Gathering himself, he began to speak slowly and carefully. “No trace of an interloper, as far as it goes, but you have a considerable amount of evidence of my passage through. I have a firm alibi for the seven o’clock shot but, as you say, death did indeed not occur until after that time. A mischief-maker—no, let’s say simply a scrupulous reader of the notes—might conclude that the second shot it was that did for him. Seven forty. The pathologist may well conclude that later time to be the actual time of death. I couldn’t fault him. Though I would expect the usual umbrella statement of ‘at a time between six and nine.’ I claim to have been the target of that shot myself but where’s the evidence of that? It went skying into the trees. I take off back to the Hall where I am observed to arrive by one or two witnesses, covered in blood and hurrying to change my clothes. Suitably clad for church, I return to the scene of the crime an hour later to check on the progress of the detective I have myself alerted. How am I doing?”