haring off after treasure trove somewhere.’ He might, for instance, have felt an urge to resort to the society of the Birmingham manageress, who was an efficient and accommodating blonde, appreciated as a mistress of long standing, but not socially equipped to figure as his wife. But that Barbara refrained from saying. ‘Thanks, anyway! Don’t worry about it!’
But the Reverend Stephen, once he had hung up, immediately began to worry, all the same, and there was nothing to be done but go and look for himself in the church and the organ-loft, to see if by any chance Rainbow had left his music there, or some other sign of his presence. Even healthy-looking men in their prime have been known to succumb to heart attacks without warning. He didn’t really expect anything of that kind. He was not, in fact, expecting to find, as he did, the church door unlocked. Rainbow’s music-case lying unfastened on the organ-bench, and a new voluntary still in place on the stand. That jolted him slightly. It was out of character for Rainbow to leave any of his possessions lying about. But there was no sign of the man himself anywhere in the church.
The vicar hardly knew why he found it necessary to walk all round the paths of his churchyard, since there was no reason whatever why even a Rainbow suddenly overtaken by illness should be lying helpless among the graves, when his music was still withindoors. But the Reverend Stephen was a thorough man, and circled his church conscientiously by the grassy path that threaded its way close to the walls. Under the tower the oldest gravestones clustered like massive, broken teeth, upright headstones leaning out of true, solid table-tombs grown over with moss in their lettering, and deep in long grass bleaching to autumn, because in such a huddle it was almost impossible to mow or even to scythe. The vicar turned the corner of the tower, and clucked mild annoyance, because somebody had thrown down what looked like some old, dark rags among the long grass, or else the wind had blown them there, or some playful pup dragged them in. Dogs were not frowned upon in St Eata’s churchyard. The Reverend Stephen looked upon them as among the most innocent and confiding, if rowdy, of God’s creatures.
He went aside from the path to remove the offence, and froze after two paces. The dark rags had gained a distinct shape, had matter within them, had sprayed the table-tomb and surrounding stones with a sparse, blackened rain. The shape was grotesque, as if someone had loosed a heavy press at speed upon a human form, and squashed it into fragments, as some nut-crackers reduce a walnut to splintered pulp. But there was still a discernible, even a recognisable, head. There was a face, upturned, open-mouthed, open-eyed. The fall that had shattered all other bones had left this identifying countenance unmarked, the back of the skull lolling in the thick verdure beneath it.
Rainbow had had every reason for absenting himself from his somewhat equivocal connubial couch. He stared at the October sky past the Reverend Stephen’s head, and seemed almost immune to the ruin of his body. There was even a look of desperate eagerness left glaring from his fixed features, as though he had died with his eyes upon the crock of gold.
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CHAPTER THREE
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The Reverend Stephen was a conscientious soul who knew all about the citizen’s duty where murder or mayhem were in question, or even the self-violence that could hardly be associated with Rainbow. He drew back from the appalling wreckage among the graves with great care, marking his path in case some other, less innocent, had also trodden here during the night, and went to call the police, whose job this clearly was. But he was so far adopted into the tribal structure of Middlehope that it never occurred to him to call anyone but Sergeant Moon.
Homicide might live in Comerbourne. Here in Middlehope Sergeant Moon was the official guardian of the tribe’s peace, to
Katherine Kurtz, Scott MacMillan