Murder at Maddleskirk Abbey Read Online Free

skin, a moustache and short beard the colours of which matched the straggles of hair poking through his cap.
    The body had a thick, plain white sweater, a coloured shirt beneath it with its collar showing, and sturdy plus-four style corduroy trousers fastened with Velcro below the knee just above long thick red socks. On his feet were a pair of well-used hiking boots of soft tan-coloured waterproof material, not leather. If this death was not natural there would need to be a forensic examination of the earth and other materials clinging to his boots and clothing. That might tell us where he had come from. In his pockets there could be documents to provide his identification, home address or a contact point, but due to the need to preserve the scene, I did not search him or his pockets.
    Without disturbing his clothing, I could not see whether his body bore tattoos or other marks, there was no hiker’s stick beside him or haversack or back-pack of any kind. There were no binoculars and no map hanging around his neck in its waterproof covering. I estimated his age at around fifty but his hat prevented me from seeing whether he had a bald patch.
    ‘I’m going to touch him,’ I told Father Prior. ‘I know he’s been examined by Father Bowman but I need to be sure in my own mind that he’s dead, not merely faking death or lying unconscious. Mistakes can be made.’
    Maybe I was arrogant in doubting Father Bowman’s diagnosis but I needed to be sure, so I moved closer to the coffin and touched the man’s cheek and then tested his pulses on both wrists. He wore a cheap wrist watch that showed the correct time and there were no rings on his fingers.
    ‘Stone cold and no pulse,’ I commented. ‘But that’s not surprising in here. So, yes, I’m sure he’s dead, Father Prior but I can’t guess the time of death.
Rigor mortis
is present but thatis never an accurate guide especially in a cold place like this. Father Bowman was correct but we do need to have him examined more thoroughly.’
    In the brief silence that followed, I could hear the choir of monks in the church directly above us. They were rehearsing a Gregorian chant,
Veni Creator Spiritus
, a tenth-century hymn to the Holy Spirit. It produced a highly emotive moment. I took a deep breath and moved closer to the body shining the torch into the coffin to see whether any of his belongings had fallen down the sides. I could not see anything but the corpse and, as I looked at the head area, I realized why his hat bore a strange red design: it was soaked with blood.

CHAPTER 3
    N EITHER OF US spoke for a few moments, not really comprehending what we were looking at, then I said somewhat inanely, ‘This is just what we didn’t want, Father Prior.’ I indicated the bloodstained hat and the pool of thick blood in the head-well. The blood had apparently oozed from beneath the recumbent head. ‘We are probably looking at a murder victim.’
    He peered into the coffin and said, ‘He couldn’t have clambered up here and tripped, could he? Fallen in, banged his head in the process?’
    ‘And then lain down to fold his arms neatly across his chest?’ I issued a long and heavy sigh. ‘No, Father, I’m afraid we have a suspicious death on our hands. This looks like a very serious head wound and there are no weapons here to suggest it was self-inflicted. Didn’t Father Bowman notice the blood?’
    ‘No, he can’t have done, otherwise he’d have told me. It was a very cursory examination, Nick, merely to determine whether he was alive or dead. A trained police doctor wouldn’t have missed something as obvious as that.’
    ‘Probably not, but I must say doctors have been known to miss such things. I recall one who failed to spot that a man had been shot in the back! It was pure chance I spotted this. A self-inflicted fatal wound at the back of the head would be impossible to achieve, except perhaps with a pistol shot. If that had happened, the weapon would be here.