"Actually, I think he's a policeman, too." [21/???] [Midsomer Murders]
"Actually, I think he's a policeman, too."
ACT III
"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."
-Franz Werfel
Chapter 20: Trying to Keep Pace
The cup of tea he always took in the early morning was usually soothing. Before departing for a typical day of questions and-hopefully-answers, it was a moment of calm. This morning, Barnaby was not tasting it as he drank it quicker than usual, the hot and milky liquid burning his throat. It was too soon for indigestion, but his stomach was churning with acid.
Most mornings, his quiet ritual was performed in the kitchen whilst the day's paper lay across the table, offering up the latest news and gossip; the latter was too often mistaken for the former. Today, he gulped the tea in his study once it cooled slightly, hidden from the fresh sunlight and already in a darkening mood as he sat at his desk and ignored the paper. He was unprepared to face his wife or daughter after the previous day. And there was his stomach again, burning and angry. If they wished to indulge in madness, Barnaby intended to let them do so on their own; too many other things required his attention.
Though he had never expected it to be enjoyable on the whole, yesterday had descended into something more like a mystery novel than real life. Dame Agatha Christie might appreciate the elements: a funeral, a missing heir, and finally a severed hand that, it was all but certain, had very recently received blood and nourishment from that missing heir. As far as working days went, it had been normal in length, if not following the normal schedule. While waiting at the morgue, though, he had wondered if it would ever end-or at least if his sergeant would ever arrive.
The white wall of the morgue was cold against his back-even through his jacket-and the place stank of disinfectant. Well, perhaps stank was the wrong word, but the scent was ubiquitous. His arms crossed over his chest, Barnaby folded the fingers of each hand into his elbows. Awareness of the chill and the smell always faded after a time, and he had long ago stopped grumbling to himself about it. A warm morgue would reek of decay, a wretched smell that traveled together with the loss of evidence. All other things equal, he preferred the morgue as it was.
As far as cases went, this was not an auspicious beginning. At the moment, he had-officially-only a missing person to investigate. But no one would believe it to be just that, not with a single, cleanly severed hand on one of Bullard's slabs. Suzanna Chambers had both arrived at and departed from the morgue already, remaining just long enough to glance at the hand and hopefully identify it. Barnaby had not spoken to her since they had both seen that hand lying on the leaf litter, grey and spattered with mud. She had ducked into the examination room and left without a word, though Bullard must have gotten a few out of her.
Something about her was troubling him, though the suspicion was nebulous and vague, an idea he could not force into any particular shape. It had begun in her kitchen behind the hotel as she rummaged through the piles of folders and files. Evelyn Pope and her niece-Clarice Opperman-had been obviously concerned by Gregory Chambers' absence, but Suzanna Chambers had been merely annoyed, ready to fling pages about looking for a particular note or report regarding the hotel. And then in the wood, knowing full well that her husband had not been seen since the morning, her expression had still been free of the worry he had expected. The worry had been clear, but it was...wrong, somehow, as though it was an inappropriate worry.
Hardly enough to be going on, really. But it remained there, both scenes playing themselves through his mind as he stared across the morgue, tracing the edges of the concrete blocks in the wall. They were scrubbed and almost brilliantly white-sterile and flat-and the metal counters and sinks and tables set before them gleamed. Even the tiled floor gave off a chill, though this one did not touch the skin.
Barnaby had checked his watch twice-he allowed approximately five minutes between those glances-and was ready to look a third time before Troy's footsteps and the movement of the latch on the morgue door shattered the silence, the final silence of death. "You took your time," the chief inspector said, pushing his shoulders away from the frigid wall.
"It was the traffic, sir," his sergeant answered, stepping forward to avoid the swing of the door on its smooth, automatic hinges.
"This late in the day?"
"I got caught behind an accident," Troy said quickly, his eyes running around the room. Like every officer in Causton CID, the man was familiar with the morgue-Bullard's domain, a kingdom of the dead awaiting interrogation. And like almost every one of them, Barnaby knew Troy hated it.
Not without reason, of course. Even the most hardened investigator sometimes paled at the sight of a body laid open, skin and flesh peeled away to reveal the secrets of organs, the paths of knives, and the trajectories of bullets. "I had to call Bullard in to take a look at things," Barnaby added, finally checking his watch once more. The hour hand had passed eight already, forecasting another late night.
"I know, sir." The man was fidgeting, shifting from one foot to another, one hand rising to adjust the knot in his tie. A hand with twitching fingers that only ceased when his arm fell back to his side.
"I don't want to keep him here longer than I have to," Barnaby said, his eyes drawn away from Troy as the door to the examination room now opened, and Bullard emerged in his green scrubs and hat. "George."
Still standing in the doorway, the pathologist was almost amused as he waited. Barnaby was uncertain of Bullard's age-that was an especially inappropriate question to ask a work colleague-but the man exuded a youthful enthusiasm for his work. It was probably another reason so many officers were put off by this place, the man's relentless good humor in the face of death. "You two always get the strange ones," Bullard said.
"Seems that way," Troy said quietly.
"Never by choice," Barnaby interjected, taking the first step to follow Bullard.
The examination had been swift but thorough; after all, how long did it take to tease out the secrets of a single hand? The pathologist had not been called to the wood-the scene had already been disturbed by the sharp-nosed dog and SOCO had documented what remained-and so had turned his attention to the lone limb some time ago when it had been delivered to the morgue.
"I hope not." Bullard's hand was pressed to the outer edge of the metal door, still waiting for them to enter the examination room itself. "You'd probably have some explaining to do to the Chief Superintendent."
"Luck of the draw."
"I bet no one else complains." A grin broke through the older man's lined face. "There's not much to say now, Tom, but this was no accident."
"Severed hands usually aren't," Troy murmured, now following the pathologist as well.
"Yes, thank you, Troy," Barnaby said as Bullard walked away from the door, the chief inspector stepping neatly over the threshold from one set of cold scrubbed tile to another. If nothing else, he could always count on Troy to state the obvious. And bloody hell, why was he so quiet?
"Might be one if there's a combine harvester involved," Bullard added. "But you don't need to worry about that possibility with this one."
The rubber soles of Bullard's shoes were silent, but Barnaby and Troy's clicked on the tile; the sound might drive the men and women of Causton's morgue mad over the course of a day, interrupting the otherwise silent world they inhabited. The room was more than half empty-almost plain-but for the lights mounted on a stand beside the examination table in the center of the room. Both were necessary, providing two key portions of any investigation: the autopsy and its documentation. In the glare of the lamp, the gleaming metal table was nearly barren, the flat papery white sheet atop it tiny in comparison to the available space. Another lay over it, concealing a small mound.
Just a hand.
Bullard looked at the hidden shape for a brief moment as he pulled the sheet back, the hand lying palm down. "Mrs. Chambers identified the ring on the finger as his." In the harsh, artificial light, the skin was not quite so grey, but the fingers were bloated from the lowest joint to the dirt encrusted nails, and the sudden end of the wrist was almost comical. Dissection here was the norm; rarely did bodies come to Bullard after already meeting the knife.
Bending forward a little, Barnaby peered at the extremity, though just out of the corner of his eye he could see Troy still standing straight. Turning his head slightly, Barnaby caught his sergeant's ill expression and ashen complexion. Almost understandable-it was hardly a pleasant sight-but not tolerable.
"We'll have to wait for fingerprints for a definite ID," Bullard continued, fixing Barnaby with a direct glance, "but there's little doubt we're looking at the right hand of Gregory Chambers. So, my guess is that the hands were removed to hamper identification. Probably the head as well. Somehow, this got left behind."
"It couldn't have been severed during the course of the murder itself, could it?" Barnaby asked, lifting his chin.
"I don't think so." With an extended finger, Bullard pointed to the wound, tracing its obvious path through the bones and tendons. "It was a hacksaw that was used."
Troy spoke again, his voice still low. "Not a classic murder weapon."
Barnaby suppressed a quiver of irritation. Always the obvious, and it remained one of his sergeant's most significant stumbling blocks in any investigation. How could you expect to see through a criminal's lies when you only saw what you were supposed to see? Then again, Troy's ability to hide his own thoughts was often spotty. Too frequently, Barnaby knew, even those trained to know better saw themselves reflected in the others before them. "Well, thank you, George," Barnaby finally said, straightening his back.
Bullard was made for his profession, somehow able to smile again as he draped the white cover over the hand once more as Barnaby and Troy walked away, silent until the door to the examination room swung closed behind them. In the anteroom, they paused, Troy thrusting his hands into his pockets.
"This will be a mess, sir," Troy said finally, "if we have to look for another hand, a head, and the body."
"It does complicate matters," Barnaby said, closing his eyes to consider the limited evidence again. One hand, cleanly severed though not thoroughly drained of blood. And the timing: murdered in the hours before reading the will. Why then, why not any of a hundred other moments? Another time and place must have been possible-and if not, what were they to make of that? "Well, at least we know one thing already."
"What?"
Opening the door to the hallway outside of the morgue to a sudden burst of tepid, blessedly unsanitized air, Barnaby continued. "We're looking for someone cold-blooded who is familiar with anatomy."
Troy caught the door, closing it with his hand rather than allowing it to slam itself shut. "You think he's done this before? Like a serial killer, sir?" His face twisted with a suppressed smile of disbelief.
"I doubt it. Don't think I had a moment to tell you this, but remember it, Troy. Gregory Chambers was an employee of a hotel with a large estate. An estate with gamekeepers."
Troy's brow furrowed as they walked, mounting one set of stairs after another, drawing ever closer to the surface of the earth with its now faded sun and stifling warmth. "That would make sense." He paused as they traversed the final corridor before emerging into mid-evening's twilight. "But it's a jump from animals."
"That is very true," Barnaby said, already searching for his car keys. "Do you have another idea?"
"Uh-no, sir," Troy said. "Not yet."
"Cleanly severing a hand with a hacksaw..." Doing so that close to the murder, the body would still have been warm, felt almost alive. "Nerves of steel, too."
"There must have been a hell of a lot of blood."
"Probably." Barnaby slid a finger along the car key in his hand, then the one to his house, then back to the car. Another long night, certainly. He knew Joyce had stopped hearing his apologies years ago, though he always offered them as a matter of course. "We won't get much more done here tonight, Troy." He heard Troy's quick inhalation, what must have certainly been relief, soon to be short-lived. "Best to get out to the hotel, though. We'll start to set up the interviews for tomorrow. I'll meet you there."
The car park was not quite abandoned-CID never truly emptied at any time on any day-but each automobile was easier to pick out, and Barnaby recognized Troy's immediately, several stalls away from his own sedan. He had taken a few steps to his car before he noticed the silence behind him and turned back.
Troy had not moved from the door, like he intended to become an obstacle for another man or woman hoping to leave. What Barnaby had thought was a washing out by the glare of the morgue lamps still remained, and the pale skin revealed a face that was neither unhappy nor disappointed, but...resigned.
"Something on your mind?" Barnaby asked, slipping the key into the driver's door of his vehicle.
Troy shook his head and finally took a first few steps across the tarmac as he searched for his keys in one of his jacket pockets. "No, sir."
That, Barnaby thought as he lifted his cup, was rubbish. Even without another word of explanation from Troy, Barnaby knew very well that there was never a moment now when nothing was on his sergeant's mind. Troy had been, as expected, later getting to the hotel than the traffic had warranted, if only by a few minutes. The phone call the man must have made before leaving-similar to the one Barnaby himself had made upon turning off his car's engine in the hotel car park-must have been brief. A simple apology about the late evening.
His own had been made to Joyce, and Troy's? To Cully, of course.
Taking another sip of his tea, the chief inspector shuddered; it was now stone cold. As he stood, Barnaby turned his face up for a moment. The house around him remained silent; after all these years, he was still the earliest riser in his household.
In the kitchen mercifully empty, he hastily switched the kettle on. He had brought the paper with him, and as the water began to hiss and gurgle, he glanced over the headline again. "Hand Found In Midsomer Magna," it read. Then below, in smaller letters, "Identity Still Unknown". That much was good, at least. Though little doubt was left, Barnaby was loath to feed the vultures of the Echo more than necessity demanded, especially when the details they craved had yet to be written in a police file.
The kettle clicked and turned itself off, and Barnaby flung a new teabag into his cup, pouring the hot water over it with care. As the liquid darkened, he turned his attention back to the article, scanning the text. "Police still in the wood...No other body parts discovered...No information released as yet..."
At least they got that right, Barnaby thought, digging a spoon from the drawer to remove the paper sachet from his newly born tea. One could count on the local rag for many things, but accuracy was not one of them. After adding a dollop of milk and small spoon of sugar to his cup, Barnaby retreated again to the safety of his study.
Sitting once more, the green shape caught his eye. On the corner of his desk, wearing a thin layer of dust, the bloody cactus sat innocently as it always did, its leaves still drab green beneath the glistening coat of sharp needles. At least Troy's attempt at a housewarming gift had been well meant. After almost a year, Barnaby still found the thing as useless as the first day he had seen it. What good was a plant that simply wanted to be ignored? Surely no real gardeners wanted plants that were so self-sufficient?
A sip from this new cup of tea was scalding, and Barnaby set it aside for a minute to cool, his gaze still on the cactus. His first thought had been to dispose of the thing after a few weeks of polite upkeep. Cully had appeared none too fond of it either, but Joyce, for whatever reason, had insisted upon both its remaining in the house and its banishment to that far corner.
Barnaby knew his wife well-after almost thirty years, how could he not? But for the past few weeks, she had been a source of near confusion for him. And there was no use in saying anything about it.
When he finally opened the front door after close to a dozen hours away from home, Joyce was in the sitting room with a paperback novel, more than half of the pages tucked behind the fingers of her left hand. "Hello, dear," she said, looking up when he closed and locked the door. "You finally made it?"
The sound that escaped his throat was deep and almost disgusted, and he shuddered with the exhaustion as well.
"That bad?" she asked, sliding to the next cushion on the couch.
"Dismembered bodies are never good, Joyce." He did not sit but almost collapsed into the space she had created for him. The front room was only half-lit by the lamp now at his side, and the shadows before him mutated from the vague, bulky shapes of tables and chairs and bookshelves into a man he had never met and whose face he had yet to see even in a photograph-Gregory Chambers. Strange, that, the man's wife and his colleagues neglecting such a simple action. But now the shadows transformed into a grotesque imitation of the man with his severed hands and head sitting neatly on his abdomen, and then to another hidden face about which even less was known. The murderer.
With a final glance at her book-the page number, Barnaby assumed-Joyce let the covers fall closed. "You found something besides the hand?"
"No, it's still all we've got..." His voice faded. The hand? Midsomer was a small county and news traveled quickly, but never so late in the evening. And, more to the point, who knew who could mention such things? His own phone call to Joyce had been void of that sort of information, had really only been a comment about how late he would be arriving home. Of course.
"Did you tell Evelyn yet?" she asked.
Barnaby ignored her question for the moment. SOCO, Bullard, the witnesses, and the police. He pressed the heel of his hands to his eyes, rubbing at the weight of the past several hours. That short list made the answer obvious.
"Tom?"
"How long was Troy here?" he asked, dropping his hands to his thighs. Every limb was heavy.
"I don't know," she answered quietly, letting the small book fall to her side.
"Joyce..."
"He was here when Woody dropped me off," she said after a moment.
"And when was that?" Barnaby formed each word cautiously, not wanting the irritation to give way to naked anger.
"I don't know for certain." She touched his hand, rubbing her smaller fingers over his knuckles, finding and releasing a few patches of tension. "Seven or so, I think."
"Ah." Until the last few, none of his daughter's rehearsals could run that long. So, he decided, there must have been an extended dalliance over tea or coffee after it ended. Those were occurring far too often for his liking.
"They were just talking about the rehearsal, Tom," Joyce added, now wrapping her hand around his.
"Of course."
"He put in a lot of work helping her-"
"I know," Barnaby said quickly. By god, did he know!
"And it's very kind of him to bring her home every evening."
"Call it 'kind' if you want to."
Her hand left his, and she reached for her book again. "I don't know when they arrived," his wife said, pushing herself forward like she was ready to stand, to finally go to bed, "but they were eating dinner when I got in."
Barnaby had to repeat the word and he sat straighter. "Dinner?"
She rose, glancing back at him in the dim light. "Just the leftover bœuf bourguignon."
"Dinner..." he said again, needing to repeat it once more to begin to understand it. Not just coffee in the back garden after hours of reading lines-he could categorize it as merely a gracious gesture and a moment of madness-but dinner!
"At least it's out of the fridge." She was almost amused. Again.
One of his wife's culinary experiments had vanished-but for everything else going on, he would have thanked Troy for the respite. As it was, he held back an oath before muttering, "I'm not going to say anything."
Shifting her book to her other hand, Joyce reached out for his to help him stand as well. "I know it's late," she said as he fought his aching muscles to gain his feet, "and I'm not sure what I've got, but do you want something to eat?"
Barnaby forced a smile as a growl of hunger rose in his throat. "Of course, dear," he said, trying not to imagine what else remained in the refrigerator.
That was all Joyce would hear him say about this: nothing. Anything else drew an irritated glare, a disapproving sigh, or yet another reminder that Cully could make her own decisions. He was well aware of that, for her adolescence had ensured it. Yet...
Barnaby shuddered as he tried to finish the second cup of tea; it was almost cold again. Might as well be off, he thought, pushing back his chair. His stomach grumbled, demanding something more than tea as he picked up the cup. Though he was to meet Troy at the hotel, it was early enough to drop in at the station for both a spot of breakfast in the canteen and any reports that might have been finished.
Another hour or two, then, before he clapped eyes on his sergeant again. Another hour or two for the growing annoyance-no, anger-to remain on the edge of his mind instead of fighting for attention. It would fade as the details of the case came in, as all parts of his life did, but for the moment, there was not enough information in the world about Gregory Chambers and the other denizens of the Easterly Grange Hotel to distract him.
As he swirled the cup in his hand, the milky brew spun in a whirlpool that rose along the sides, once or twice threatening to spill over the lip. His foot tapping impatiently-eager to be gone, to focus on the case-Barnaby stretched out his arm and dumped the remaining tea into the cactus's pot.
Down to the dregs and the tiny pool of half-melted sugar.
ACT III
"For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible."
-Franz Werfel
Chapter 20: Trying to Keep Pace
The cup of tea he always took in the early morning was usually soothing. Before departing for a typical day of questions and-hopefully-answers, it was a moment of calm. This morning, Barnaby was not tasting it as he drank it quicker than usual, the hot and milky liquid burning his throat. It was too soon for indigestion, but his stomach was churning with acid.
Most mornings, his quiet ritual was performed in the kitchen whilst the day's paper lay across the table, offering up the latest news and gossip; the latter was too often mistaken for the former. Today, he gulped the tea in his study once it cooled slightly, hidden from the fresh sunlight and already in a darkening mood as he sat at his desk and ignored the paper. He was unprepared to face his wife or daughter after the previous day. And there was his stomach again, burning and angry. If they wished to indulge in madness, Barnaby intended to let them do so on their own; too many other things required his attention.
Though he had never expected it to be enjoyable on the whole, yesterday had descended into something more like a mystery novel than real life. Dame Agatha Christie might appreciate the elements: a funeral, a missing heir, and finally a severed hand that, it was all but certain, had very recently received blood and nourishment from that missing heir. As far as working days went, it had been normal in length, if not following the normal schedule. While waiting at the morgue, though, he had wondered if it would ever end-or at least if his sergeant would ever arrive.
The white wall of the morgue was cold against his back-even through his jacket-and the place stank of disinfectant. Well, perhaps stank was the wrong word, but the scent was ubiquitous. His arms crossed over his chest, Barnaby folded the fingers of each hand into his elbows. Awareness of the chill and the smell always faded after a time, and he had long ago stopped grumbling to himself about it. A warm morgue would reek of decay, a wretched smell that traveled together with the loss of evidence. All other things equal, he preferred the morgue as it was.
As far as cases went, this was not an auspicious beginning. At the moment, he had-officially-only a missing person to investigate. But no one would believe it to be just that, not with a single, cleanly severed hand on one of Bullard's slabs. Suzanna Chambers had both arrived at and departed from the morgue already, remaining just long enough to glance at the hand and hopefully identify it. Barnaby had not spoken to her since they had both seen that hand lying on the leaf litter, grey and spattered with mud. She had ducked into the examination room and left without a word, though Bullard must have gotten a few out of her.
Something about her was troubling him, though the suspicion was nebulous and vague, an idea he could not force into any particular shape. It had begun in her kitchen behind the hotel as she rummaged through the piles of folders and files. Evelyn Pope and her niece-Clarice Opperman-had been obviously concerned by Gregory Chambers' absence, but Suzanna Chambers had been merely annoyed, ready to fling pages about looking for a particular note or report regarding the hotel. And then in the wood, knowing full well that her husband had not been seen since the morning, her expression had still been free of the worry he had expected. The worry had been clear, but it was...wrong, somehow, as though it was an inappropriate worry.
Hardly enough to be going on, really. But it remained there, both scenes playing themselves through his mind as he stared across the morgue, tracing the edges of the concrete blocks in the wall. They were scrubbed and almost brilliantly white-sterile and flat-and the metal counters and sinks and tables set before them gleamed. Even the tiled floor gave off a chill, though this one did not touch the skin.
Barnaby had checked his watch twice-he allowed approximately five minutes between those glances-and was ready to look a third time before Troy's footsteps and the movement of the latch on the morgue door shattered the silence, the final silence of death. "You took your time," the chief inspector said, pushing his shoulders away from the frigid wall.
"It was the traffic, sir," his sergeant answered, stepping forward to avoid the swing of the door on its smooth, automatic hinges.
"This late in the day?"
"I got caught behind an accident," Troy said quickly, his eyes running around the room. Like every officer in Causton CID, the man was familiar with the morgue-Bullard's domain, a kingdom of the dead awaiting interrogation. And like almost every one of them, Barnaby knew Troy hated it.
Not without reason, of course. Even the most hardened investigator sometimes paled at the sight of a body laid open, skin and flesh peeled away to reveal the secrets of organs, the paths of knives, and the trajectories of bullets. "I had to call Bullard in to take a look at things," Barnaby added, finally checking his watch once more. The hour hand had passed eight already, forecasting another late night.
"I know, sir." The man was fidgeting, shifting from one foot to another, one hand rising to adjust the knot in his tie. A hand with twitching fingers that only ceased when his arm fell back to his side.
"I don't want to keep him here longer than I have to," Barnaby said, his eyes drawn away from Troy as the door to the examination room now opened, and Bullard emerged in his green scrubs and hat. "George."
Still standing in the doorway, the pathologist was almost amused as he waited. Barnaby was uncertain of Bullard's age-that was an especially inappropriate question to ask a work colleague-but the man exuded a youthful enthusiasm for his work. It was probably another reason so many officers were put off by this place, the man's relentless good humor in the face of death. "You two always get the strange ones," Bullard said.
"Seems that way," Troy said quietly.
"Never by choice," Barnaby interjected, taking the first step to follow Bullard.
The examination had been swift but thorough; after all, how long did it take to tease out the secrets of a single hand? The pathologist had not been called to the wood-the scene had already been disturbed by the sharp-nosed dog and SOCO had documented what remained-and so had turned his attention to the lone limb some time ago when it had been delivered to the morgue.
"I hope not." Bullard's hand was pressed to the outer edge of the metal door, still waiting for them to enter the examination room itself. "You'd probably have some explaining to do to the Chief Superintendent."
"Luck of the draw."
"I bet no one else complains." A grin broke through the older man's lined face. "There's not much to say now, Tom, but this was no accident."
"Severed hands usually aren't," Troy murmured, now following the pathologist as well.
"Yes, thank you, Troy," Barnaby said as Bullard walked away from the door, the chief inspector stepping neatly over the threshold from one set of cold scrubbed tile to another. If nothing else, he could always count on Troy to state the obvious. And bloody hell, why was he so quiet?
"Might be one if there's a combine harvester involved," Bullard added. "But you don't need to worry about that possibility with this one."
The rubber soles of Bullard's shoes were silent, but Barnaby and Troy's clicked on the tile; the sound might drive the men and women of Causton's morgue mad over the course of a day, interrupting the otherwise silent world they inhabited. The room was more than half empty-almost plain-but for the lights mounted on a stand beside the examination table in the center of the room. Both were necessary, providing two key portions of any investigation: the autopsy and its documentation. In the glare of the lamp, the gleaming metal table was nearly barren, the flat papery white sheet atop it tiny in comparison to the available space. Another lay over it, concealing a small mound.
Just a hand.
Bullard looked at the hidden shape for a brief moment as he pulled the sheet back, the hand lying palm down. "Mrs. Chambers identified the ring on the finger as his." In the harsh, artificial light, the skin was not quite so grey, but the fingers were bloated from the lowest joint to the dirt encrusted nails, and the sudden end of the wrist was almost comical. Dissection here was the norm; rarely did bodies come to Bullard after already meeting the knife.
Bending forward a little, Barnaby peered at the extremity, though just out of the corner of his eye he could see Troy still standing straight. Turning his head slightly, Barnaby caught his sergeant's ill expression and ashen complexion. Almost understandable-it was hardly a pleasant sight-but not tolerable.
"We'll have to wait for fingerprints for a definite ID," Bullard continued, fixing Barnaby with a direct glance, "but there's little doubt we're looking at the right hand of Gregory Chambers. So, my guess is that the hands were removed to hamper identification. Probably the head as well. Somehow, this got left behind."
"It couldn't have been severed during the course of the murder itself, could it?" Barnaby asked, lifting his chin.
"I don't think so." With an extended finger, Bullard pointed to the wound, tracing its obvious path through the bones and tendons. "It was a hacksaw that was used."
Troy spoke again, his voice still low. "Not a classic murder weapon."
Barnaby suppressed a quiver of irritation. Always the obvious, and it remained one of his sergeant's most significant stumbling blocks in any investigation. How could you expect to see through a criminal's lies when you only saw what you were supposed to see? Then again, Troy's ability to hide his own thoughts was often spotty. Too frequently, Barnaby knew, even those trained to know better saw themselves reflected in the others before them. "Well, thank you, George," Barnaby finally said, straightening his back.
Bullard was made for his profession, somehow able to smile again as he draped the white cover over the hand once more as Barnaby and Troy walked away, silent until the door to the examination room swung closed behind them. In the anteroom, they paused, Troy thrusting his hands into his pockets.
"This will be a mess, sir," Troy said finally, "if we have to look for another hand, a head, and the body."
"It does complicate matters," Barnaby said, closing his eyes to consider the limited evidence again. One hand, cleanly severed though not thoroughly drained of blood. And the timing: murdered in the hours before reading the will. Why then, why not any of a hundred other moments? Another time and place must have been possible-and if not, what were they to make of that? "Well, at least we know one thing already."
"What?"
Opening the door to the hallway outside of the morgue to a sudden burst of tepid, blessedly unsanitized air, Barnaby continued. "We're looking for someone cold-blooded who is familiar with anatomy."
Troy caught the door, closing it with his hand rather than allowing it to slam itself shut. "You think he's done this before? Like a serial killer, sir?" His face twisted with a suppressed smile of disbelief.
"I doubt it. Don't think I had a moment to tell you this, but remember it, Troy. Gregory Chambers was an employee of a hotel with a large estate. An estate with gamekeepers."
Troy's brow furrowed as they walked, mounting one set of stairs after another, drawing ever closer to the surface of the earth with its now faded sun and stifling warmth. "That would make sense." He paused as they traversed the final corridor before emerging into mid-evening's twilight. "But it's a jump from animals."
"That is very true," Barnaby said, already searching for his car keys. "Do you have another idea?"
"Uh-no, sir," Troy said. "Not yet."
"Cleanly severing a hand with a hacksaw..." Doing so that close to the murder, the body would still have been warm, felt almost alive. "Nerves of steel, too."
"There must have been a hell of a lot of blood."
"Probably." Barnaby slid a finger along the car key in his hand, then the one to his house, then back to the car. Another long night, certainly. He knew Joyce had stopped hearing his apologies years ago, though he always offered them as a matter of course. "We won't get much more done here tonight, Troy." He heard Troy's quick inhalation, what must have certainly been relief, soon to be short-lived. "Best to get out to the hotel, though. We'll start to set up the interviews for tomorrow. I'll meet you there."
The car park was not quite abandoned-CID never truly emptied at any time on any day-but each automobile was easier to pick out, and Barnaby recognized Troy's immediately, several stalls away from his own sedan. He had taken a few steps to his car before he noticed the silence behind him and turned back.
Troy had not moved from the door, like he intended to become an obstacle for another man or woman hoping to leave. What Barnaby had thought was a washing out by the glare of the morgue lamps still remained, and the pale skin revealed a face that was neither unhappy nor disappointed, but...resigned.
"Something on your mind?" Barnaby asked, slipping the key into the driver's door of his vehicle.
Troy shook his head and finally took a first few steps across the tarmac as he searched for his keys in one of his jacket pockets. "No, sir."
That, Barnaby thought as he lifted his cup, was rubbish. Even without another word of explanation from Troy, Barnaby knew very well that there was never a moment now when nothing was on his sergeant's mind. Troy had been, as expected, later getting to the hotel than the traffic had warranted, if only by a few minutes. The phone call the man must have made before leaving-similar to the one Barnaby himself had made upon turning off his car's engine in the hotel car park-must have been brief. A simple apology about the late evening.
His own had been made to Joyce, and Troy's? To Cully, of course.
Taking another sip of his tea, the chief inspector shuddered; it was now stone cold. As he stood, Barnaby turned his face up for a moment. The house around him remained silent; after all these years, he was still the earliest riser in his household.
In the kitchen mercifully empty, he hastily switched the kettle on. He had brought the paper with him, and as the water began to hiss and gurgle, he glanced over the headline again. "Hand Found In Midsomer Magna," it read. Then below, in smaller letters, "Identity Still Unknown". That much was good, at least. Though little doubt was left, Barnaby was loath to feed the vultures of the Echo more than necessity demanded, especially when the details they craved had yet to be written in a police file.
The kettle clicked and turned itself off, and Barnaby flung a new teabag into his cup, pouring the hot water over it with care. As the liquid darkened, he turned his attention back to the article, scanning the text. "Police still in the wood...No other body parts discovered...No information released as yet..."
At least they got that right, Barnaby thought, digging a spoon from the drawer to remove the paper sachet from his newly born tea. One could count on the local rag for many things, but accuracy was not one of them. After adding a dollop of milk and small spoon of sugar to his cup, Barnaby retreated again to the safety of his study.
Sitting once more, the green shape caught his eye. On the corner of his desk, wearing a thin layer of dust, the bloody cactus sat innocently as it always did, its leaves still drab green beneath the glistening coat of sharp needles. At least Troy's attempt at a housewarming gift had been well meant. After almost a year, Barnaby still found the thing as useless as the first day he had seen it. What good was a plant that simply wanted to be ignored? Surely no real gardeners wanted plants that were so self-sufficient?
A sip from this new cup of tea was scalding, and Barnaby set it aside for a minute to cool, his gaze still on the cactus. His first thought had been to dispose of the thing after a few weeks of polite upkeep. Cully had appeared none too fond of it either, but Joyce, for whatever reason, had insisted upon both its remaining in the house and its banishment to that far corner.
Barnaby knew his wife well-after almost thirty years, how could he not? But for the past few weeks, she had been a source of near confusion for him. And there was no use in saying anything about it.
When he finally opened the front door after close to a dozen hours away from home, Joyce was in the sitting room with a paperback novel, more than half of the pages tucked behind the fingers of her left hand. "Hello, dear," she said, looking up when he closed and locked the door. "You finally made it?"
The sound that escaped his throat was deep and almost disgusted, and he shuddered with the exhaustion as well.
"That bad?" she asked, sliding to the next cushion on the couch.
"Dismembered bodies are never good, Joyce." He did not sit but almost collapsed into the space she had created for him. The front room was only half-lit by the lamp now at his side, and the shadows before him mutated from the vague, bulky shapes of tables and chairs and bookshelves into a man he had never met and whose face he had yet to see even in a photograph-Gregory Chambers. Strange, that, the man's wife and his colleagues neglecting such a simple action. But now the shadows transformed into a grotesque imitation of the man with his severed hands and head sitting neatly on his abdomen, and then to another hidden face about which even less was known. The murderer.
With a final glance at her book-the page number, Barnaby assumed-Joyce let the covers fall closed. "You found something besides the hand?"
"No, it's still all we've got..." His voice faded. The hand? Midsomer was a small county and news traveled quickly, but never so late in the evening. And, more to the point, who knew who could mention such things? His own phone call to Joyce had been void of that sort of information, had really only been a comment about how late he would be arriving home. Of course.
"Did you tell Evelyn yet?" she asked.
Barnaby ignored her question for the moment. SOCO, Bullard, the witnesses, and the police. He pressed the heel of his hands to his eyes, rubbing at the weight of the past several hours. That short list made the answer obvious.
"Tom?"
"How long was Troy here?" he asked, dropping his hands to his thighs. Every limb was heavy.
"I don't know," she answered quietly, letting the small book fall to her side.
"Joyce..."
"He was here when Woody dropped me off," she said after a moment.
"And when was that?" Barnaby formed each word cautiously, not wanting the irritation to give way to naked anger.
"I don't know for certain." She touched his hand, rubbing her smaller fingers over his knuckles, finding and releasing a few patches of tension. "Seven or so, I think."
"Ah." Until the last few, none of his daughter's rehearsals could run that long. So, he decided, there must have been an extended dalliance over tea or coffee after it ended. Those were occurring far too often for his liking.
"They were just talking about the rehearsal, Tom," Joyce added, now wrapping her hand around his.
"Of course."
"He put in a lot of work helping her-"
"I know," Barnaby said quickly. By god, did he know!
"And it's very kind of him to bring her home every evening."
"Call it 'kind' if you want to."
Her hand left his, and she reached for her book again. "I don't know when they arrived," his wife said, pushing herself forward like she was ready to stand, to finally go to bed, "but they were eating dinner when I got in."
Barnaby had to repeat the word and he sat straighter. "Dinner?"
She rose, glancing back at him in the dim light. "Just the leftover bœuf bourguignon."
"Dinner..." he said again, needing to repeat it once more to begin to understand it. Not just coffee in the back garden after hours of reading lines-he could categorize it as merely a gracious gesture and a moment of madness-but dinner!
"At least it's out of the fridge." She was almost amused. Again.
One of his wife's culinary experiments had vanished-but for everything else going on, he would have thanked Troy for the respite. As it was, he held back an oath before muttering, "I'm not going to say anything."
Shifting her book to her other hand, Joyce reached out for his to help him stand as well. "I know it's late," she said as he fought his aching muscles to gain his feet, "and I'm not sure what I've got, but do you want something to eat?"
Barnaby forced a smile as a growl of hunger rose in his throat. "Of course, dear," he said, trying not to imagine what else remained in the refrigerator.
That was all Joyce would hear him say about this: nothing. Anything else drew an irritated glare, a disapproving sigh, or yet another reminder that Cully could make her own decisions. He was well aware of that, for her adolescence had ensured it. Yet...
Barnaby shuddered as he tried to finish the second cup of tea; it was almost cold again. Might as well be off, he thought, pushing back his chair. His stomach grumbled, demanding something more than tea as he picked up the cup. Though he was to meet Troy at the hotel, it was early enough to drop in at the station for both a spot of breakfast in the canteen and any reports that might have been finished.
Another hour or two, then, before he clapped eyes on his sergeant again. Another hour or two for the growing annoyance-no, anger-to remain on the edge of his mind instead of fighting for attention. It would fade as the details of the case came in, as all parts of his life did, but for the moment, there was not enough information in the world about Gregory Chambers and the other denizens of the Easterly Grange Hotel to distract him.
As he swirled the cup in his hand, the milky brew spun in a whirlpool that rose along the sides, once or twice threatening to spill over the lip. His foot tapping impatiently-eager to be gone, to focus on the case-Barnaby stretched out his arm and dumped the remaining tea into the cactus's pot.
Down to the dregs and the tiny pool of half-melted sugar.