The forensics team had gone off in their van, leaving a disdainful whiff of exhaust fumes in the front hall. Strafford went to the foot of the staircase and leaned over, with his hands braced on his knees, to examine the carpet. Yes, there were pinkish stains in the pile, all the way up. They were very faint. The housekeeper had done her best, but as he told himself, blood is thicker than soap and water. He grinned. Soap and water. He rather liked that.
He climbed the staircase, smacking a palm softly on the banister rail as he went. He was trying to imagine the priest reeling down these stairs with blood pumping out of the severed artery in his neck. Unless he had seen or at least heard his assailant coming, he must have been amazed. Who would dare to kill a priest? Yet someone had.
Crossing the landing, he stepped into the short enclosed passageway that led along to the next, long corridor and the bedrooms giving off it. In the carpet here also there was the trace of a bloodstain, this one large and circular. So this was the spot where he had been stabbed. It had been done from behind, surely, since he was a big man and would have defended himself against an attacker coming at him directly with knife in hand.
Did that mean it was someone who had been in one of the bedrooms, waiting for him to pass by? – or was there another way to get in here, another entrance from outside? These old houses were always confusing, from the piecemeal alterations that had been made to them over the years.
He walked on, and sure enough, here was a French window and outside it an ancient spiral staircase made of iron and painted black, and rusted in places to a filigree as delicate as lace. He examined the window catch. It hadn’t been forced. From the look of it, the window hadn’t been opened in years.
He heard voices from an open doorway behind him. He went into the room and found Jenkins and Colonel Osborne standing by a rumpled bed. The room was small and the bed was big, and the mattress had a hollow down the middle of it. The only other furniture was a chest of drawers and a rush-seated chair. The priest’s cassock hung on the back of the door, like the flayed black pelt of some large, smooth-skinned animal.
‘Anything here?’ Strafford asked.
Jenkins shook his head. ‘He got up at some point in the night – Harry Hall puts the time of death between three and four a.m. – dressed himself, even put his clerical collar on, left the room, and didn’t come back.’
‘Why would he have put on his collar if he was only going to the lavatory?’
‘WC’s in the other direction, down at the end of the corridor,’ Colonel Osborne said, pointing with a thumb.
‘Then what do you think he was doing?’ Strafford asked.
‘Can’t say,’ Osborne replied. ‘Might have been going down for another nip of Bushmills. I gave him a nightcap to take up here with him when he was turning in.’
Strafford looked around. ‘Where’s the glass?’
‘Didn’t see it,’ Jenkins said. ‘He would have taken it with him, if he was going down for another, then dropped it maybe when he was attacked.’
Strafford still hadn’t taken off his trench coat, and he was holding his hat in his left hand. He looked about the low, cramped room once more, then walked out.
On the landing, Colonel Osborne sidled up to him and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Care to stay for lunch?’ he muttered. ‘Mrs Duffy is on her way back from her sister’s, she’ll fix up something for us.’
Strafford glanced over his shoulder at Jenkins, who was just then coming out of the bedroom behind them. ‘Does that include my colleague?’
Osborne looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, I thought your chap might shift for himself. There’s the Sheaf, down the road. Decent enough place, I’m told. Sandwiches, soup. They might even rise to a plate of stew.’
‘Is that the Sheaf of Barley? That’s where I’ll be staying tonight.’
‘Oh, but we could have offered you a billet here.’
Strafford smiled at him blandly. ‘Two billets, I take it you mean.’
‘Eh?’
‘One for me and one for Sergeant Jenkins.’
The older man sighed irritably. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said shortly. ‘Tell Mr Reck – he’s the landlord at the Sheaf – that you’ve come from here. He’ll look after you. But you will have lunch with us, yes?’ He cast a dark glance in Jenkins’s direction. ‘The two of you.’
‘Thank you,’ Strafford said. ‘Very kind.’
Here again was the shadowy passageway between two corridors where the priest had been stabbed. Strafford stopped and peered about in the gloom. ‘We need to find that whiskey glass,’ he said. ‘If he was carrying it and dropped it, it must be here.’ He turned to Sergeant Jenkins. ‘Get those two galoots you have guarding the front door on to it, it’ll keep them from falling asleep. The glass probably rolled under something.’
‘Right.’
Strafford looked upwards. ‘Is there usually a bulb there?’ he asked, pointing to an empty socket, which was set inside a shade hardly bigger than a teacup and made of what might have been human skin, stretched and dried and translucent.
Colonel Osborne examined the socket. ‘Should be a bulb, yes, of course there should. Didn’t notice it was missing.’
‘Someone removed it, then?’ Strafford asked.
‘Must have, since it’s not there.’
Strafford turned to Sergeant Jenkins. ‘Tell those two to look for a bulb, as well as the glass.’ He gazed up at the empty socket again and put a finger and thumb to his chin. ‘So it was planned,’ he murmured.
‘What’s that?’ Osborne asked sharply.
Strafford turned to him. ‘The murder. It must have been premeditated. That should make things a little easier.’
‘Should it?’ The Colonel looked baffled.
‘A person acting on impulse can be lucky. He’ll strike out without thinking, and afterwards everything looks natural, because it is. But a plan always has something wrong with it. There’s always a flaw. Our job is to find it.’
There was a commotion below, shouts, and a dog yelping. A draught of cold air came sweeping up the stairs, followed by the sound of the front door slamming. ‘Hold on to him, for God’s sake!’ someone bellowed angrily. ‘Mrs Duffy will have a fit if he puts muddy paw marks on the carpets.’
Strafford and the two men with him leaned over the banister and peered down into the front hall. The stable boy, Fonsey, was there, with his mop of red hair and his leather jacket. He was struggling to restrain a large and very wet black Labrador retriever by jerking violently at its leash. At the door, taking off a pair of leather gauntlets, was a young man in a checked overcoat and a hat with a feather in the band. His wellington boots were muddy, and stuck with dabs of melting snow. A long staff with a shepherd’s crook was leaning against the hall table. He removed his hat and gave it a vigorous shake. It was his petulantly commanding voice they had heard.
‘My son,’ Colonel Osborne said to Strafford, and then called out, ‘Dominic, the police are here!’
The young man looked up.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he called.
At sight of the Colonel, Fonsey let go of the dog and lumbered hurriedly to the front door and was gone. The dog, suddenly losing interest in being excited, splayed its large paws and shook itself thoroughly, throwing off a spray of snow-water in all directions.
Colonel Osborne led the way down the staircase. ‘Dominic,’ he said, ‘this is Detective Inspector Strafford, and – and his assistant.’
‘Jenkins,’ the sergeant growled, spacing out the syllables. ‘De-tec-tive Ser-geant Jen-kins.’
‘Sorry, yes, that’s right,’ Colonel Osborne said, colouring a little. ‘Jenkins.’
Dominic Osborne was classically handsome, with a long straight jaw, a slightly cruel-looking mouth and his father’s flinty blue eyes. He glanced from one to the other of the two detectives, and a corner of his mouth twitched, as if he were seeing something funny.
‘The long arm of the law,’ he said with arch sarcasm. ‘Who’d have thought it, here in Ballyglass House?’
Strafford studied the young man with interest. He wasn’t as cool as he was pretending to be, and his voice was strained behind its languid tone.
The dog was sniffing at Strafford’s shoes.
‘Come along,’ said the Colonel to the two detectives, rubbing his hands. ‘Let’s see if that lunch is ready.’
Strafford leaned down and scratched the dog behind its ear. The animal wagged its tail and let its tongue hang out in a friendly grin. Strafford smiled. He had always liked dogs.
From the start there had been something odd about this case, in a way he had never encountered before. Something had been niggling at him, and suddenly now he realised what it was. No one was crying.