The Gloucester Mortuary dealt with most coroners’ cases in the area. O’Reilly paced the lobby. He had visited Leonard Derwinter the previous evening and asked him to meet here at noon.
Derwinter was already half an hour late. Another ten minutes and they would have to track him down. Understandably, he had been shaken, confused even, to a point where O’Reilly wasn’t sure how much the man understood of what he’d been told.
Snow had started lightly enough that morning but now it splatted in fat blobs against the glass doors. O’Reilly could feel the temperature going down.
‘Getting your exercise there, Detective?’ Steven Runcie was one of those pathologists who subscribed to the lighthearted approach, although he didn’t buy into the black humor some of the police used during post-mortems.
‘Hello, Doc,’ O’Reilly said. ‘I’m hoping to reduce your John Doe load by one.’
‘His place won’t have a chance to get colder,’ Runcie said with a grimace.
O’Reilly was glad to be left alone in the lobby once more. A lot of digging among the residents of Folly-on-Weir had finally revealed that there had been two Derwinter brothers. Edward, older than Leonard, went away to a boarding school in Yorkshire when he was seven or eight. No one knew much about the kid except that he never returned home to live.
Leonard should be able to fill in the blanks about his brother, who was rumored to be dead. Lamb was on the trail of when and where this had become the case, but there was what appeared to be deliberate vagueness on the topic.
‘Inspector? Sorry I’m late.’ Leonard Derwinter entered the lobby looking ruffled. ‘The roads are getting bad again and it’ll be worse tonight.’ His dark hair must have been raked through by his fingers many times and purplish scoring under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much.
They shook hands. Compact, fit-looking and wearing a well-cut tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers, almost the uniform of the Englishman of his class, he nevertheless had a Latin appearance. Lightly bronzed skin, a narrow face and generous mouth. Harassed, about summed up the impression he gave.
‘Before we do this—’
‘Let’s get it over with.’ Leonard, sliding his hands in and out of his jacket pockets, looked anxiously around the lobby. ‘I don’t see what help I can be, but of course, I’ll do whatever I can.’
‘I do need to ask you a few questions first,’ O’Reilly said, nodding to a corridor. ‘We can talk in private down here.’
A small waiting room, mostly never used, provided the chairs O’Reilly wanted. He waved Derwinter into one of them and remained standing out of habit.
‘First, there may be no connection between you and the corpse.’ He almost winced at the bluntness of it.
Derwinter shook his head but lost color beneath his tanned skin.
‘As I told you last night, this is the man who was found dead in the woods above Folly-on-Weir. There was nothing to point to his having anything to do with you until late yesterday when the hill and woods were searched. A ring was found in the woods. We still have to make an absolute connection between the body and the ring.’
Leonard rubbed his hands together until the palms squeaked. ‘You didn’t say anything about a ring. What ring?’
‘I thought you had enough to process last night, sir. Take a look at this but don’t take it out of the evidence bag, please.’
He took that bag from a Manila envelope and gave it to Leonard, who took it as he might a grenade minus its pin. O’Reilly sat on the edge of a chair that brought their knees close.
After as close a look at the ring as the plastic would allow, Leonard covered his eyes. ‘Where was it?’
‘Buried in brush in the woods.’ He noted the ring Leonard wore on the small finger of his right hand. ‘Is the crest yours?’
Leonard nodded. ‘But I don’t understand. Do you think the murdered man was wearing this?’ He looked up sharply. ‘Or the murderer? The only other one I know of, apart from mine, is the one my father wore. He took that off, oh, when I was in my teens, I suppose. He used his hands a lot and the ring annoyed him, he said, so it must be in with some other bits and pieces of his.’
This announcement caused more hope than it probably should. ‘In that case I’ll have you find that for us. We wondered if it had been stolen by the dead man.’
‘You can’t be sure he ever saw it.’
‘True. But in case you have seen him, and remember him, it could help a great deal.’ He had decided to save his questions about the brother, Edward, until after the viewing. It did appear that this family had a few unexplained details from the past. Hitting Leonard with too much all at once might be counterproductive. ‘Let’s do this.’ He led the way from the room.
The body had been taken from storage and wheeled into an area without any distractions. The folded-down sheet exposed Brother Dominic’s face, neck and upper shoulders but covered all but the start of the Y incision made by the pathologist.
O’Reilly watched closely as Leonard approached the gurney. Sadness wouldn’t have been the first expected reaction but it was clearly there. He pointed to the gaping wound in the throat. ‘That was made with a dart?’ he said.
‘We think so. The killer worked at it to make sure his victim wouldn’t be coming back from the dead.’
‘He was a monk, right?’
‘Yes. We have some confirmation of that from a reported conversation with the second monk, the one who talked to Alex Bailey-Jones.’
Derwinter shook his head. ‘Pointless.’
‘Do you know him?’
Silence fell and stretched. Leonard stared at the body and kept on staring.
‘What did your brother Edward call you when you were boys, Mr Derwinter?’ O’Reilly asked.
Leonard straightened. He stared at O’Reilly and frowned. ‘Edward? Why would you ask me that? I haven’t seen him since I was just a little kid. He’s been dead for years.’
Conjecture was right up there with leaps of faith, O’Reilly thought. He’d better step carefully. ‘Did he call you Lennie?’
‘Everyone did,’ Leonard said, his voice rising. ‘My family, or what there was of it. So what?’
‘Probably nothing. Do you recognize this man?’
Leonard looked uncomfortably close to breaking down. ‘I don’t know.’ He made as if to touch the face but drew back. ‘I want to see his hands.’
Without responding, O’Reilly left the room and found a technician who came and slid Brother Dominic’s arms from beneath the sheet. He crossed them over the waist. ‘Call me when you’re done,’ he said, and walked out again.
Leonard went to the left side of the gurney to look at the right hand, the hand where the ring finger was distorted into an awkward angle.
He took the hand in both of his and O’Reilly didn’t try to stop him.
‘I must have seen it but I don’t remember. I was too young. Father said Edward’s finger was broken when they closed the lid of our mother’s casket on it. He didn’t make a sound and no one noticed for days. Edward said he’d run away if they broke and reset it. He wanted it that way. Could it be like this if he grew up with something like that?’
O’Reilly shook his head. Either this man was one hell of an actor or he was devastated by the possibilities in front of him.