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like pond weed around the head, I knew who this had been.
My thoughts were echoed in an imperious shout that would have had me in the
water beside the corpse had it not been for the strong arm of Andrew Budd.
 Who is it? The call came from high above, and I turned carefully and saw, to
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my amazement, Baring-Gould with half a dozen others, perched on the rim
looking down. There was a chair in back of him, I saw; he had travelled here
by the simple expedient of having himself carried, seat and all, in a
makeshift litter.
 It s Randolph Pethering, I called back, and began to shiver. Budd saw it,
and began to take off his coat, but I waved him away.  Keep it on, I ll just
get it wet. Can you get us a bit closer, please? We eased up until the prow
was touching the antiquarian s sleeve. He was only resting among the floating
twigs and leaves against the bank, not lying up on it, and looked to be
settling down into the water. Having said we must wait for the police
officials to supervise the removal of the body, I was hesitant to interfere,
but at the same time I did not wish them to be forced to drag this pit for a
sunken corpse, and after all, it was highly unlikely that the constables in
charge of recovering the body would pay the slightest attention to the
niceties of investigation, anyway. I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth
against the reaction of my ribs, and reached down my right hand to take hold
of the back of Pethering s jacket. Budd made an inarticulate protest.
 I have to do this, I told him.  He s about to sink in the water. Back us
away from the bank a little, please.
When the body was free from the rocks, I rolled him over, taking care not to
add any scrapes or marks to those he might already possess, and taking care
too not to let go of him lest he disappear into the depths. As I moved him,
however, I noted that this did not actually seem an immediate likelihood,
which was in itself interesting. Furthermore, his face when it came up to the
surface was dark with livor mortis where the blood had slowly settled after
death. Pethering had not died in the water, and he had not died in the last
few hours.
One side of the thin, pale hair was clotted with a brown bloodstain, and the
heels of his sturdy walking boots were heavily scuffed and thick with mud.
However, while I was hanging over the edge of the skiff and the body was
floating alongside, I could not learn a great deal more. It would have to wait
for a methodical examination on dry land, preferably by someone else.
 Can you reach his hat? I asked Budd, and as I waited for him to manoeuvre to
where he could bring the sodden thing onboard, I studied my surroundings. The
two steep, overgrown access ramps, on the west and the southeast walls; the
stream that Baring-Gould had diverted to fill his father s quarry splashing in
from the north, pushing this body down to the south wall along with the other
débris; a sad little boathouse, once cheerful; autumnal trees drooping over
the water and depositing their leaves; and a crowd now of at least twenty men,
women, and children watching with interest this under-dressed woman with a
corpse on the other end of her arm.
The ramp I had come down, in the south wall, had shown no drag marks; but then
again, its top was very near the drive to the curate s house. The western
ramp, on the other hand, though actually closer to the house, was more
sheltered, and I thought it likely he had been placed in the lake from that
ramp. One man could not have tipped him over the edge without a great deal
more damage to the body than there seemed to be. Two adults might have swung
Pethering and thrown him over, and if so, the launching site would have been
precisely where Baring-Gould and the others were standing. I sighed. Little
point to objecting, I supposed, but still:  Rector, could you have those
people move around to the other side? There could be footprints right there.
One of the women at his side leant over to repeat my message in his ear, and
in seconds the assembly was tiptoeing away from the gathering place, lifting
their skirts and eyeing the ground as if it were about to bite them.
Baring-Gould resumed his chair and he, too, migrated around the rim, where he
was joined by the pink-cheeked, helmeted forces of law and order in the person
of the local police constable. The voice of legal authority came, inevitably:
 Here, what are you doing down there?
I left Baring-Gould to explain and to assert his own, considerably more
ancient form of authority over the upstart with his shiny buttons and his
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shallow roots in the last century. I huddled in the boat, holding on to
Pethering s coat with my now-numb fingers (his collar would have been easier,
but I recoiled from brushing his cold flesh any more than I had to) and
watching the glowering, gesticulating constable, and I decided that there was
no point in maintaining an exactness in the investigative process. I was
satisfied that Pethering had not been placed where he was found, and as I
could not let go of him until he was unable to sink or to float off, it was
high time to hand him over to properly constituted authority.  Thank you, Mr
Budd. Back to the ramp, I think. Try not to hit him with your oar.
It was clumsy work, and after I tried, and failed, to keep Pethering out of
the oar s way, Budd turned the boat and sculled it backwards with short,
choppy strokes. At the ramp I let the constable drag the body up onto the
shore, leaving it half in the water. Now that he had possession of the thing,
he looked down at it in growing consternation, and did not notice at first
when I got back into the boat. When the corner of his eye caught the movement
of Budd pushing off, he protested loudly, more loudly than strictly necessary.
I tried to reassure him.  I m not going anywhere, constable. I ll be right
back. To Budd I said,  Take me over to the other side, please. I d like to
have a look at it before half the parish tramps it down.
The PC did not like this at all, and raised his voice to order us to return. I
can t think he imagined we had anything to do with the death, but for a man
more accustomed to drunken farmhands and petty break-ins than dead bodies, and
faced with a pair in a boat who delivered a body and now proposed to row away,
all he could do was to grasp hard onto the essentials and we were as essential
a thing as he could find. Seeing us making our way to the only other exit from
this pit, he turned on his heels and churned up the hillside and around the
rim. I saw him flitting behind the half-bare trees, and my heart sank at what [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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