“Which is?”
“That Reverend Benedict Underwood is himself the killer, and he never intended his book to turn up.”
Archie’s eyes widened. “Good God.”
Sebastian drained his glass in one long pull. “We need to know where Reuben Dickie found that damned book.”
“I’ll get it out of him first thing in the morning,” said Archie. “Even if I have to beat it out of him.”
But it was just after dawn the next morning when a cottager collecting firewood in the wasteland along the river found Reuben dead.
Chapter 47
Tuesday, 10 August
Reuben Dickie lay sprawled facedown at a gravelly bend in the Teme, his arms flung wide, the side of his head a pulpy, bloody mess. More blood soaked the back of his smock where a jagged slice in the worn cloth showed a gaping, purple wound in the pale flesh beneath. He was close enough to the water’s edge that one hand bobbed with the movements of the river as pond skaters flitted around his stiffening, puffy white fingers.
“Looks like he was stabbed in the back and had his head bashed in,” said Archie, his face grim and slicked with sweat as he batted at the flies buzzing around them.
Sebastian crouched down beside the body. “Someone obviously wanted to make quite certain he was dead.” Reuben’s one visible eye stared back at him, wide and filmed with the beginnings of decay. From the distance came the slow, mournful echo of the funeral toll. The vicar had decided to go ahead with Emma Chandler’s funeral despite the discovery of yet another murder, which meant that Constable Nash wouldn’t be along until he’d finished his duties as bell ringer and sexton.
“How long do you think he’s been dead?” asked Archie, making no move to come any closer.
Sebastian yanked off a glove to touch the dead man’s cheek. “A while. He’s cold.”
“What I don’t understand is, why would a killer go through the trouble of carefully staging Emma Chandler’s death—and the others before her—to look like suicides or accidents, only to now start shooting people or bashing in their skulls?”
“Because once we’d figured out Emma’s death wasn’t a suicide, there really was no point anymore, was there?”
“I suppose not.” Archie cast an uncomfortable glance around. “Was he killed here, do you think?”
“It looks like it. But then, I’m no expert. The gravel strikes me as rather convenient.”
Archie shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“No footprints.”
“Ah. Yes.” Archie stared across the river at a flock of geese that had been turned out into a recently harvested field. Later, cows would be set to graze on the stover, and later still, sheep. In the spring, the dung and the roots would all be plowed under in preparation for the planting of a new season’s crop.
After a moment, Archie said, “Who would want to kill Reuben? I mean, yes, he could be damnably annoying. But he was essentially harmless.”
“Whoever killed him obviously didn’t think so.”
An oilskin satchel lay half-hidden beneath the dead man’s body, and Sebastian carefully eased it free. “Ever see Reuben with anything like this?”
“No.”
“Then I think we know where he got it.”
The satchel opened to reveal a lady’s plain black reticule, a selection of drawing pencils, two erasers, and a large sketchbook.
“Good God,” said Archie, his hands falling to his sides. “It’s Emma Chandler’s.” His gaze met Sebastian’s. “Could Reuben have killed her after all?”
“If he did, then who killed Reuben?”
Archie huffed a startled laugh. “Ah. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Sebastian opened the sketchbook to find himself staring at a peaceful, idyllic watercolor of the village green. “I think it more likely that Reuben came upon Emma Chandler’s body sometime late Monday night or early Tuesday morning, before young Charles Bonaparte found her.”
“And simply took her satchel? What a ghoulish thing to do! Was the book with it, do you think?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if it was—and he did take the satchel from her body—it certainly explains why he didn’t want to say where or when he’d found the vicar’s book.” Sebastian flipped several pages in the sketchbook and stopped at a somber charcoal drawing of the churchyard.
“What it doesn’t explain is why he was killed.”
“And here I was thinking the second sketchbook had disappeared because its contents would somehow implicate Emma’s killer,” said Hero. They were in their private parlor at the Blue Boar; Sebastian had laid Emma’s sketchbook open on the small round table beneath the window.