Beau Death

by Peter Lovesey

The students were already closing their notebooks and preparing to leave. Pity anyone so obtuse as to prolong the session.

  “You may speak,” he said.

  It happened.

  The offender was the same student in the football shirt who had spoken at the beginning. Perhaps he hoped to redeem himself. Anyway, he had his hand raised.

  “Please,” Waghorn said to the room in general. “There is a question.”

  Groans.

  “Have the courtesy to remain in your seats.” Then to the questioner, “Yes?”

  “Could it have been a sword?”

  “Could what have been a sword?”

  “The sharp instrument.”

  After a moment, Waghorn said, “Conceivably. Why do you ask?”

  “Didn’t they carry swords in those days?”

  “In which days?”

  “I don’t know—the eighteen-hundreds?”

  Somebody else said, “The seventeen-hundreds, dumbo. The clothes are definitely seventeen-hundreds.”

  Diamond said, “I have it on good authority that the frock coat is typical of about 1760.”

  “There you have it from the police,” Waghorn said. “Far be it from me to question their information. However . . .” He walked to the clothes rack and lifted a smaller evidence bag from the rail and held it high for all to see the pair of once-white underpants inside. “I don’t believe they wore Y-fronts in 1760, not with the Marks and Spencer label.”

  9

  Clenching and unclenching his fists, Diamond remained in the lecture theatre with Dr. Waghorn. All the audience had left and so had the technicians.

  “Is it some kind of student hoax?”

  “The pants?” Waghorn said. “I don’t see how it can be. They were under the breeches, in position around the pelvis when I separated the clothing from the bones—and must have been when the skeleton was first revealed in the loft.”

  “You don’t think they could have been put on afterwards?”

  A shake of the head. “Impossible. Haven’t I made clear already that a skeleton without flesh is disarticulated? This one was only held in place by what remained of the clothes. Any idiot trying to dress it in pants would need to strip off the breeches first and the whole structure would disintegrate.”

  “All right. What would an eighteenth-century man be wearing? Some kind of drawers?”

  “For pity’s sake, superintendent. I’m a forensic anthropologist.”

  “The clothes don’t interest you?”

  “That’s an impertinence. Didn’t I make a point of bringing them all to the autopsy and showing everyone the bloodstaining?”

  “You just said you’re an anthropologist. Let’s say ninety-five percent of your attention was on the bones. What the victim was wearing was secondary. I’m not blaming you.”

  “It sounds suspiciously like it.”

  “You took off the pants and put them aside.” Picturing the scene, Diamond had a new thought. “Did you have an assistant working with you?”

  “I did. It’s normal.”

  “The young woman with the clothes rack?”

  “Becky. But I trust her absolutely. She wouldn’t stoop to the sort of trick you’re suggesting.”

  “She put the clothes in evidence bags and hung them on the rack? Yes? And where was the rack kept overnight?”

  “This is absurd.”

  “I’m serious. The pants must have been introduced by some joker.”

  For that, Diamond was given a look as if he’d messed the floor. “The lab is kept locked. I am scrupulous about security.”

  “I need to speak to Becky.”

  “She’s worked with me for three years.”

  “I don’t care how long. I must get to the bottom of this.”

  Waghorn smirked. “The bottom decomposed a long time ago.”

  “Where can I speak to Becky?”

  “She’s at her break now. I don’t want her interrogated.”

  “It’s got to be done. You’ve uncovered a murder and it’s going to be investigated whether it took place fifty years ago or two hundred and fifty.”

  He sighed like a slashed tyre. “Very well, but I hope you’ll treat her with more civility than you’re treating me.”

  “You haven’t gone out of your way to be helpful.”

  “It’s not my job to come up with an explanation.” The smug little man had no idea how close he was to being thumped.

  “You must have known days ago about the Marks and Spencer label and you said bugger all about it until it was forced from you by that student asking a question.”

  “Today I was conducting an autopsy, superintendent, a serious procedure. Can you imagine the reaction from a roomful of students if I showed them the pants at the beginning?”

  “I’m not talking about today. It was bloody obvious something was wrong, yet you didn’t pick up the phone.”

  Waghorn shrugged as if such obligations were beneath him. “I was preparing the skeleton for the autopsy table. You have no idea how demanding that is.”

  Diamond shook his head. “The press are going to make us look like clowns. Right now your students are spreading it about on social media.”

  “I can’t help that. It’s public knowledge now.”

  An alarming possibility had hammered Diamond’s brain ever since the autopsy ended. “Suppose this isn’t a stunt. We’ve all assumed up to now—or at least I did and so did my team—that the skeleton is a piece of history from 1760 or thereabouts. Could we be mistaken?”

  “Of course.” Waghorn gave a sniff that was the nearest thing to an apology he would concede.

  “Not good enough,” Diamond told him. “I need your advice here. How old are these bones? Is this a modern man?”

  “By modern, you mean since Y-fronts were invented? When was that?” Waghorn took out his smartphone and worked it rapidly with his latex-covered thumb. “Chicago, 1935. I don’t know when they got into M&S, but it wouldn’t have been long after. We could be speaking of sometime in the last eighty years, then.”

  “This is ludicrous,” Diamond said. “Can’t you tell?”

  “It’s not easy determining the time since death. I can’t say merely from looking at bones whether they go back twenty years or two hundred.”

  “There are tests, aren’t there? Carbon dating?”

  “That’s an archaeological measure in thousands of years. It wouldn’t help us. The best hope would be to look at the levels of nitrogen and amino acids remaining. This would be an indication of how far the bones have deteriorated. They lose proteins as time passes.”

  “Are we talking decades, hundreds of years, or what?”

  “Decades, possibly, but the test is still far from accurate. Other factors come into play.”

  “It’s a skeleton, for God’s sake. How long does it take for a corpse to be reduced to bones?”

  Waghorn lifted his shoulders and pulled a face. He didn’t like being pinned down. “In our climate, and if it isn’t buried or in water, as little as one to two years. But let’s not forget where it was. A loft space can get exceedingly hot in the summer months and that would accelerate the process. The clothing may delay it a bit.”

  “So we could even be dealing with a twenty-first century murder?”

  “Except for the style of clothes.”

  “He could have liked dressing up in eighteenth-century gear. I’ve heard of stranger things.”

  “This is getting beyond me,” Waghorn said.

  “Me, too,” Diamond said. “But it can’t be ignored. Those tests you were talking about. We’d better get them under way.”

  “They’re not cheap.”

  “My gaffer will have to worry about that.”

  “There is one test we can run quite soon, using ultraviolet light
. Fresh bones fluoresce. Under UV a cross-cut of one of the long bones will glow pale blue around the hollow part and the thickness of the ring of colour is a good indication of the timespan. The fresher the bone, the thicker the band of light.”

  “Go for it, then,” Diamond said. “How soon can we get results?”

  “That isn’t up to me.”

  “Somehow, I thought that was what you’d say.”

  “And did you interview the technician?” Georgina asked Diamond when he reported back. She’d come in late to work after taking an early taxi to Bannerdown to collect the car and drive it to the Mercedes garage to get the lamp bulb replaced. Needing a trouble-free, quiet morning today of all days, she’d walked into a hornets’ nest in CID.

  “Becky?” The big detective was mired in gloom. All his theories were shafted. The failure was the most galling in his long career.

  He forced himself to speak about Becky. “I was impressed with her. Waghorn was so taken up with his damned bones that he failed to see there was anything wrong with the clothing. Becky knew straight away that they were Y-fronts and found the Marks and Spencer label.”

  “This was when they were preparing the skeleton for the autopsy table?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she drew the label to his attention?”

  “She did. Takes her job seriously. I can’t see her as the weak link. She’s well drilled in continuity of evidence.”

  “You said Dr. Waghorn was preoccupied with the bones?”

  “He doesn’t see the pants as his problem.”

  “He’s right. The problem is ours, God help us,” Georgina said. “It’s been mayhem here. The press have been demanding a statement since the autopsy finished this morning. Some mischief maker tipped them off.”

  “That’s no surprise,” he said. “The autopsy room was full of students with their smartphones.”

  She wasn’t listening. “So I’ve called a press conference for five this afternoon for you to update our media friends.”

  Just when he was thinking his life couldn’t get any worse. “A press conference? Today?”

  “Give them the facts, Peter. Better than having them make things up—which they’re well capable of doing. And they want a picture of the pants. It’ll be all over the newspapers tomorrow and it won’t be pretty.”

  He’d never thought of Y-fronts as pretty.

  “I see the look on your face,” Georgina went on. “We can’t duck this. Long experience has taught me not to make enemies of that lot. They’re already annoyed that they weren’t allowed on site when the skeleton was hoisted from the loft.”

  “They still got their pictures.”

  “Once they get a sniff of a story they don’t go away. Prepare a statement. I don’t want you doing this off the cuff.”

  “The problem with a statement is knowing what to state,” he said. “My first thought was that the pants were a stunt.”

  “University students?”

  “Highly likely. But Dr. Waghorn won’t have it. He insists the skeleton would have fallen to bits if anyone tried putting the pants on it. If he’s right, we’ve got a totally different case on our hands.”

  “He can’t be right, or the whole thing is nonsense.”

  “That was my first thought, ma’am.”

  She eyed him warily. “But you’ve had a second one?”

  “I have.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “I’m now regarding it as a case of murder.”

  “That’s no surprise. The stab marks and the bloodstains.”

  “The pants could make it much more recent than we were led to believe. A twenty-first-century job.”

  Georgina took a sharp breath and said nothing.

  “Waghorn says he can’t tell from the state of the bones how long it is since the victim died.”

  “It’s a skeleton, for God’s sake. It can’t be all that recent.”

  “Above ground, the soft flesh breaks down quite quickly. Even in our climate we could be talking about as little as two years. Hot air trapped in the loft.”

  “I need a paracetamol,” she said, reaching for her handbag. “I’ve had a headache all morning and you’ve made it a whole lot worse.” She dipped her hand in and came out with the packet of painkillers and the visiting card she’d been given by Sally Paris. She’d dismissed the card from her mind because she had no intention of following up the chance meeting of the evening before. She hoped Diamond hadn’t noticed.

  “The speed of decomposition came as a shock to me,” he was saying.

  “Do you honestly believe this?”

  “I’m trying to keep an open mind. He’s arranging tests.”

  “At our expense, no doubt.” Georgina took a bottle of water from her desk drawer and poured some into a cup. No one should see the ACC drinking from a bottle. She swallowed two tablets and washed them down.

  “The tests will tell us,” Diamond said. “We need to know.”

  “But if they prove the bones are modern we have to explain why a modern man was wearing old-fashioned clothes.”

  “It’s a mystery.”

  “What’s happening with the clothes? Are they still up at the university?”

  “I’ve arranged for them to be collected.”

  “Good.”

  “We can run our own tests.”

  “Peter, you keep talking about tests.”

  He could almost hear the calculator working in Georgina’s head. “We need answers.”

  “Surely if this is a modern crime there’s a more cost-effective way of dating it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Y-fronts. I can’t say I have much experience of men’s undergarments,” she said. “Are they worn much these days?”

  He’d rather be walking on red-hot coals than talking underwear to the assistant chief constable. “They may not be as popular as they once were, but they’ve never gone away. It’s the support.”

  “I’ll take your word for that. Will it help the case if we show them to the media?”

  His eyes doubled in size. “Help the case? How?”

  “Somebody may see a picture in the paper and recognise them.”

  “With respect, ma’am, I don’t think this is a good idea. Everyone knows what Y-fronts look like.”

  “Not everyone,” she said in a pious tone.

  “These are in poor condition,” he said. “Holes and stains.”

  “I see.” She thought about that for a while before saying, “What we do is show the press a similar pair.”

  This was catastrophic. “You want me to appear at a press conference and hold up a pair of pants? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?”

  She was indifferent to his pain. “What’s your problem, Peter?”

  “This whole damned case has been a gift to the gutter press from the start,” he said. “They won’t treat it seriously.”

  She raised her forefinger as if she’d seen the light. “Well, why don’t we get hold of one of those mannequins? I don’t mean a person. The fibreglass things they use in the underwear department in Jolly’s.”

  She’d got this idea and she had to be dissuaded—fast.

  Desperation was driving him now. “I suggest we offer them a press kit with some official photos.”

  “Will that be enough?”

  “Photos of the real pants. Much better.”

  “As you wish,” she said. “Just get it done as soon as possible and make sure I get a copy.”

  She wanted her own picture of the pants. Wisely he passed no comment.

  John Wigfull, the civilian press officer, had been tasked with notifying everyone that a statement about the Twerton skeleton would be made at 5 p.m., reasonable timing for the morning papers and the late evening newscasts.


  Diamond gave Leaman the job of putting together the press kit including photos.

  “Have we given up on Beau Nash?” Leaman asked.

  Diamond wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “But you definitely want a picture of the actual Y-fronts in the press kit?”

  A tight-lipped, “Yes.”

  “With respect—”

  “When anyone uses that phrase to me, John, I know they mean the opposite. Just get it done.”

  “No problem.”

  Thanks to the paracetamol, Georgina’s headache was gone. Surely it hadn’t been a hangover? She preferred to think the stress of the past twenty-four hours was responsible. Dealing with Diamond on a daily basis was stressful enough and the added worry of leaving the car on a public road overnight had been too much. Thank goodness no one here at Bath Central knew what had happened.

  She picked the visiting card from her desk and was about to bin it when she saw something that made her hesitate.

  The name on the card was Lady Sally Paris.

  Lady?

  How easy it is to make assumptions. In her wildest dreams she wouldn’t have supposed the Good Samaritan of the night before had been a titled person. She’d introduced herself as Sally, which had sounded friendly and informal. But she had said something about the chauffeur having the night off. Georgina wasn’t used to mingling with the aristocracy, but now it had happened she was already having second thoughts about throwing away the card. People like that can be helpful contacts. Networking was the way to get on these days.

  The embarrassment of last night needed to be put in a new context. Nobody of Lady Sally’s status in society was going to think a couple of G&Ts were grounds for dismissal from the police. Lords and ladies were knocking them back all the time. What had seemed a potential scandal a few hours ago was laughable now. After all, Georgina reflected, elevating herself to the level these people operated from, one had done the responsible thing and stopped driving. Any alcohol was out of one’s system by now.

  One would take up Sally’s invitation and arrange to visit her at Charlcombe.

  Shortly after 4 p.m. came a call from Dr. Waghorn.

  “Something new?” Diamond said, trying not to sound too eager. He’d learned to play his cards cannily with this smart alec.