C. Harris - Who Buries the Dead

And Sebastian found he had no difficulty imagining either scenario.

Sunday, 28 March

The next morning, Sebastian drove out to Windsor Castle to find the Right Reverend Edward Legge pacing back and forth before the chapel steps, his full cheeks flushed with annoyance. The morning had dawned cool and damp, with a fine mist that drifted across the lower court and hung in the half-dead trees near the cloisters.

“I don’t know where the fool has taken himself off to,” snapped the Dean when Sebastian introduced himself and asked for the virger. “He wasn’t here for morning services. And I’m to meet with the Canons in less than ten minutes. He’s supposed to be there! The internment of Princess Augusta is this Wednesday.”

Sebastian studied the Dean’s plump, self-absorbed face. “Have you sent to make inquiries at his lodgings?”

“Of course I’ve sent to make inquiries,” said the Dean. “What sort of imbecile do you take me for? His wife claims he went for a walk and never came back.”

“When?”

“How on earth would I know?”

Sebastian shifted his gaze to a castle guard who was trotting across the court toward them. The Dean turned, following Sebastian’s gaze.

The guard was young and fresh faced and breathing heavily, and he had to pause to suck in a few gulps of air before saying with a gasp, “He’s dead, Reverend.”

Legge stared at him. “ Toop? Are you saying Toop is dead ?”

“Yes, sir. They. .” The young guard paused to swallow hard. “They found him down by Romney Island. In the river.”

“What did the fool do? Fall in and drown?”

“I don’t think so, sir. His head’s all caved in.”

A long, narrow stretch of wooded land in the middle of the Thames, Romney Island lay just below the old wooden bridge that connected Windsor to the town of Eton on the north bank of the river. That morning, a gap-toothed, tow-headed boy of twelve had rowed his skiff from Eton out to the island and was just dropping a fishing line into the water when he noticed the black cloth of the virger’s cassock floating amidst the exposed roots of a willow at the river’s edge.

By the time Sebastian reached the island, a constable and the keeper from the nearby lock had already hauled the sodden body up onto the gravel bank. The virger lay on his stomach, his arms sprawled stiffly out from his sides, his head turned so that one glassy eye seemed to stare at Sebastian in startled horror as he hunkered down beside the body. From the looks of things, the man had probably been dead a good eight to ten hours, although Sebastian could never remember if cold water sped up or slowed down the processes of death.

He looked up at the constable. “Do you know when he was last seen?”

The constable-a brawny, middle-aged man with a heavy morning stubble of dark beard-wiped the back of one hand across his nose and sniffed. “His wife says he took the dog for a walk last night around half past eight. Gone a good while, he was, before she realized he hadn’t come back. Had her sister visiting, and they was busy chatting, you see. Wasn’t till the dog come barkin’ at the door that she knew something was amiss.”

“How big is the dog?”

The constable looked at Sebastian as if that were just the sort of daft question one might expect from some bloody London lord they’d been ordered to cooperate with. “Little gray thing about the size of a cat. Why?”

If the constable couldn’t fathom the significance of the size of the dog, Sebastian didn’t have time to explain it to him. Then he realized the constable wasn’t thinking in terms of murder.

“The fog come up real bad just after dusk last night,” said the constable. “Looks to me like the virger must’ve taken his dog for a walk along the river, slipped, hit his head on somethin’, and fell in the river and drowned.”

“That’s certainly one explanation,” said Sebastian, studying the ugly gash on the side of the virger’s head. The water had washed away all trace of blood, although the wound had undoubtedly bled profusely; he could see shattered bone amidst the pulpy flesh. “If that’s the case, it shouldn’t be difficult to find the spot where he came to grief; his blood should be smeared all over whatever he hit.”

“I suppose so, my lord. But. . what difference does it make?”

“I’m afraid there’s a very good chance your virger had some help going into the river.”

The constable shook his head. “I don’t understand. Help from who?”

Sebastian pushed to his feet. “From whoever killed him.”

Sebastian’s desire to have the dead virger sent to Paul Gibson for autopsy was met with predictable resistance from Dean Legge.

“Send the body for a postmortem?” said the Dean with an indignant squeak. “All the way to London? When the fool simply tumbled into the river? What an unconscionable waste of funds.”

Sebastian kept his own voice calm and even. “I don’t think we’re dealing with an accident.”

“You can’t be serious. Who would want to kill a simple virger? No, no; I can’t authorize it. Even if a postmortem were necessary, Windsor boasts any number of competent medical men who are more than capable of performing the task.”

Sebastian stared off across the misty court and uttered those magic words “Jarvis” and “King Charles’s head.”

The Dean closed his mouth, turned a sickly shade of gray, and bustled off to make the arrangements without further argument.

The virger’s lodgings lay to the west of the chapel in that part of the castle known as Horseshoe Cloister. A quaint old house of timber framing filled in with brick noggin, it dated back to the fifteenth century, with delicate window tracery and a second story that jutted out over the ground floor.

Sebastian found Rowan Toop’s widow seated in a small but surprisingly fine parlor and surrounded by a bevy of somber-faced women who stared at him as if he were a crow who’d alit in the midst of a covey of mourning doves. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the grieving widow had simply buried her face in the depths of her black linen handkerchief and used her grief as a reason not to speak with him. Instead, she excused herself to the ruffled ladies and withdrew with Sebastian through a low door into an adjoining dining room.

“They mean well, I know,” she said, closing the door to the parlor with a sigh of relief. “It’s just that, sometimes, sympathy can be more oppressive than grief.”

It certainly appeared to be so in this case, Sebastian thought, studying her self-composed features and noticeably dry eyes. Either that, or the Widow Toop was extraordinarily successful at hiding her feelings.

She was a startlingly plain woman, built tall and as bony thin as her late husband. But she was better born, and lost no time in letting Sebastian know she was the daughter of one of St. George’s former Canons. She was also, he suspected, better educated and more intelligent than Toop. Yet it was not at all difficult to understand how she had ended up married to a mere virger. Intelligent she might be, and gently bred, but she had a most unfortunate face, with a small squashed nose and no chin and bad teeth.

She fixed Sebastian with a steady gaze. “You’re here because of the death of my husband?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “Rowan told me you’d been asking about the missing relics.”

“Can you tell me if he stayed home last Sunday evening? Or did he go out?”

The question didn’t seem to surprise her, although he noticed her gaze slid away. “He was out, yes.”

“Long enough to make it to London and back?”

She nodded quietly and went to fiddle with an expensive-looking silver epergne on the sideboard. Like the parlor, the dining room was small but exquisitely furnished, with a cabinet of fine French china and gilded sconces dripping cascades of faceted crystals. Some items were undoubtedly her own pieces, inherited from her mother, the Canon’s wife. But not all.