by Gary Dolman
“Actually I’m not so sure, Atticus,” countered Lucie. “Do you see? There is another wound to the neck, made I think by a different sword – a much lighter one.”
She pointed to a neat slit cut into the collar of his jerkin where the right shoulder joined the neck. It was heavily stained with darkening blood, already thickened into glutinous ooze with time and the dust from the hay.
Atticus regarded it with revulsion.
“So you think that is what actually killed him, Lucie?”
His wife nodded.
“I would think it the more likely. If he had died from having his heart torn out, then there would frankly have been very little need for this. I imagine that the blow to the neck was what initially killed or disabled him and then the murderer cut open his body…”
Her voice trailed away. “But we still don’t know why the hearts are being taken, or why he was impaled with this big sword. To ensure his death, perhaps?”
She shuddered slightly as she looked at it.
“It is very curious, Atticus, it is very curious indeed!”
“Look at these, Lucie.”
He pointed to the flat of the sword where the metal was inscribed with a series of strange and outlandish symbols.
“What are they? What do they mean?” Lucie asked.
“They are runes – ancient Norse characters. The Anglo-Saxons had their own version and I believe that is what these are. I recognise the first symbol: it’s called Tyr and it represents the letter ‘T’ and the next is ‘A.’”
He stared at the symbols, silently wrestling the meaning from each.
“‘Take Me Up,’” he whispered at last. He craned his head to peer at the obverse of the blade. “‘Cast Me Away.’ Lucie, it would seem that this sword is none other than Excalibur.”
They fell into a wake of deep silence as the horses below them shuffled and stirred. Then Atticus said, “I suppose we should call the detective superintendent. He will probably still be at the house with Sir Hugh.”
Lucie glanced down guiltily into the stables, almost as if Robson might already be there.
“We will, Atty, but perhaps not just yet. I think that before we do, we ought to take full advantage of being the first here. I will see if there is any fingerprint evidence on the sword hilt. If there is, we had better record it before the police disturb it and remove the opportunity from us forever.”
Atticus nodded and clambered gratefully down the ladder-way into the cool, fresher air of the stables below. He lifted his investigations bag from its rack on the back of his bicycle, then after a moment’s hesitation, he turned, reached down and unclipped his walking cane from its place below the crossbar.
“How long would you estimate the victim has been dead?’ he asked as he clambered back into the loft and gently laid the bag and the cane onto the smoothly worn floorboards next to her.
Lucie considered the question for a few moments.
“Not long, there is no sign of rigor mortis and the blood is not dried. I would guess an hour or two at most, certainly no longer than four hours.”
Atticus took out his pocket watch and angled it up to the light streaming in from the window.
“So death would probably have occurred between six and seven o’clock this evening. That gives plenty of time for our murderer to have made good his escape.”
He picked up his cane.
“Lucie, if you check for fingertip prints, I’ll make certain he really has gone. I’ll also see what other evidence he may unwittingly… or otherwise, have left for us.”
Lucie smiled anxiously and without conviction as she took the bag.
“You will take care, won’t you?”
He grinned equally unconvincingly and tapped the side of his cane with his finger.
Then he turned and applied his full attention to the hayloft.
It struck him immediately how neat and ordered everything was – something Atticus Fox could appreciate even in something as mundane as a loft of hay. The only caveats to this were a single stack of bales which had evidently been pushed from its place to scatter chaotically across the floor and the scuffed dust around them. Indeed it was on one of these bales that the body now lay impaled.
Atticus had the immediate impression of an ambush; that the dead man had been suddenly and overwhelmingly assailed by someone deliberately concealed behind the stack. But had that someone been surprised by the dead man, been forced to take to cover behind the stack, or had he lain there, armed with his two swords with deadly malice aforethought?
Could anyone be armed with two swords without having malice aforethought?
As her husband pondered these questions, Lucie Fox worked her ostrich-feather brush carefully and deftly on the hilt of the sword. It wouldn’t do to let the fine, grey fingerprint powder drop onto the victim’s wounds. She was rather helped by the fact that the sword was embedded so solidly into the hay bale and she reflected as she worked that whoever, or perhaps whatever, had wielded that great, two-handed sword, had used immense force to do so.
Suddenly anxious, she glanced around into the deep shadows that surrounded her. Atticus was there, deep in thought, silently drumming his fingertips on his chin. Of the killer however, there was no sign, either in the loft itself or in the stables below. The horses were pulling at their hay nets or dozing in their stalls seemingly quite oblivious to the deadly drama that had unfolded so recently just a few feet above their heads.
She turned to the sound of Atticus clattering across the bare boards towards her.
“There is absolutely no sign of anyone here, Lucie,” he reassured her as he crouched low. “And very little else in the way of evidence to help us pin down this brute.”
“I have been a little more successful,” she replied, triumph lifting her tone a little. “See here: I have been able to make out three distinct sets of fingerprints on the handle and this top part of the blade. Two of the sets are remarkably similar, although one of those shows heavy wear and some scarring. By their size, they must be the prints of grown men.
“The third set is quite different; it’s much smaller, such as might have been made by an older child or a woman. If it was left by a woman, it is most likely to have been a gentlewoman because there is very little evidence of wear to the pads.”
Atticus was delighted.
“That is excellent, Lucie. I’ll glue-up some paper to lift the prints if you would get out some of your glass plates to preserve them. We can begin to take prints from those close to the scenes of the murders and eliminate them from our suspicions or otherwise. This is good, hard evidence and we can move forward with this blessed investigation at last, before anyone else gets killed.”
As he worked to prepare the paper Atticus said, “Once we’ve got the prints safely preserved, we really had better inform the superintendent of this fourth killing and advise him of what we’ve done. Just because the police haven’t officially adopted the technique of fingertip print comparison yet shouldn’t stop Mr Robson from benefitting from the fact that we have. My word, Lucie, this is becoming more like the East End of London than a rural village in sleepy Northumberland.”
Chapter 29
When Atticus and Lucie Fox returned to the reassuringly inhabited presence of Shields Tower, they found the constables gone and presumably already on their way to arrest Michael Britton.
Sir Hugh Lowther and Detective Superintendent Robson were waiting indoors, relaxing in a pair of deep armchairs in the drawing room. Each had a generous measure of brandy in one hand and a large cigar in the other.
Sir Hugh stood abruptly as the Foxes followed a footman in. His ruddy face might have been from the brandy.
“Aha, Mr and Mrs Fox, you’re back. You took your time to stow your bicycles and no mistake, but no matter, no matter. May I offer you a glass of something to restore you? Robson and I are working our way through a very agreeable bottle of cognac and I can order tea or coffee for Lucie.”
Atticus stood
tall. “Sir Hugh, Detective Superintendent Robson, I regret to inform you of our discovery of yet another murder victim.”
One heartbeat became two. Sir Hugh glanced at Robson who was staring open-mouthed at Atticus, utterly stunned.
“Another murder?” Robson blurted at last.
“Another gift to the Fates and another blow for justice,” Urth corrected him.
Atticus nodded.
“Another murder – in the hayloft over Sir Hugh’s stables, not more than four and probably less than two hours ago. A man was stabbed to death and impaled on a sword. He has the usual wounds across his abdomen and if you would both care to put down your brandies and cigars, we will tell you more about it as we take you there.”
Several minutes and a hastened walk later, Atticus stood back to make way for Sir Hugh and the detective superintendent to enter the stables.
“We took the opportunity to take fingertip print evidence from the sword,” Atticus called as he followed Lucie through the broad doorway after them.
There was silence as Robson and Lowther climbed the ladder-way, followed by a single gasp from Robson. Then Sir Hugh’s face reappeared in the frame, and he was smiling.
“Damned good show, Fox,” he growled. “It’s almost over then; you’ll have your conclusive evidence and you’ll be able to prove who the murderer is now.”
His black stallion in its stall below whinnied as it recognised his voice.
“We don’t know for certain quite yet, Sir Hugh. To the present, we have only got so far as to identify the prints of three persons on the grip and the forte, which is the top part of the blade. We need now to—”
“I’m a soldier, I know what a damned forte is, Fox! But three sets of prints; how can there be three sets?” Sir Hugh’s expression had switched from delight to bewilderment.
“There are definitely three sets of fingertip prints: two sets left by men and one by a woman, likely a gentlewoman or perhaps a grown child. We need next to take fingertip prints from anyone who may have come into contact with the sword. That would include anyone, of course, we actually suspect of committing the murders. Then we simply compare them to the ones we’ve preserved from the scene on our little, glass plates.”
Robson’s disembodied voice called through the hatch. “Does this technique of fingerprint comparison really work, Fox?” It sounded keen with interest. “The constabularies are under some pressure to adopt it.”
Atticus climbed halfway up the ladder.
“Indeed it does work, Detective Superintendent, it works very well indeed. What are called the friction ridges of the fingertips adopt patterns unique to each individual. I believe it to be nothing less than the greatest breakthrough in the history of crime detection.”
“Indeed,” replied Robson. “I can see the fingerprints clearly in this grey powder that seems to be everywhere. You say there are three parties to the murder?”
“I say that my wife has identified three different sets of fingertip prints on the hilt and forte of the blade; I say no more. Three individuals at least have therefore handled the sword. Any one or more of those individuals could be the murderer. Conceivably, none of them may be; the prints may have been left quite innocently, although that is of course, quite unlikely.”
He looked up at Lowther who was staring distastefully at the transfixed corpse.
“Do you recognise the poor fellow, Sir Hugh?”
“Yes, tell him who it is,” Verthandi urged.
Lowther dragged his eyes away from the body and fixed them onto Atticus.
“Very well, yes, I most certainly do recognise him, Fox. He has worked here in these stables for nigh on thirty years. It is my head groom, an oaf by the name of Albert Bradley.”
An image of their bicycles, standing in a horse stall with nosebags full of oats hanging from their handlebars formed instantly in Atticus’s memory. He thought of the impish sense of humour behind the practical joke, and the contrast with the bloody, lifeless corpse sprawled above them was stark.
The shock pushed him to the top of the ladder.
Robson reached forward and tugged at the thick crosspiece of the sword. It was fixed and unyielding.
“The heart’s been removed again,” he said, “and this blade is in devilish deep. It looks as if this fellow, Bradley you say his name was, has stumbled back onto the hay bale and been run through with this sword? Ye gods, but it must have been some blow; it has quite nailed him to it!”
“We do not necessarily think so, Detective Superintendent.”
Lucie spoke for the first time as she too climbed the ladder. “We believe that the killing or disabling blow was actually the smaller wound to the base of the neck. The larger sword was inserted through the body and into the bale very soon afterwards.”
“But why would anyone want to do that?” Robson peered carefully at the neck wound. “It was a sword that was used to inflict this wound too by the look of it – only a lighter one with a thinner blade.”
He sighed in frustration.
“Another sword killing, Sir Hugh. We shall be having yet more silly rumours of King Arthur’s resurrection from the dead flying around the countryside. Your ancestor would have done better to have chosen a different site for the building of Shields Tower.”
Lowther grunted and then said, slowly and deliberately, “King Arthur be damned, Robson; I recognise that sword.”
“Yes, we noticed the blade has been engraved with runes. It would appear to be Excalibur.” said Atticus.
“Excalibur!” Robson exclaimed.
Sir Hugh looked across at Atticus, his sapphire-blue eyes burning with sudden intensity. “Exactly so, and I am certain, Fox, that I know its present owner.”
“Who is it, man?” Robson snapped.
“Michael Britton. It’s Michael Britton’s sword. I know it is his because I was the one who gave it to him. I recognise it from those marks on the blade. They’re ancient runes – Saxon runes – just as Fox has said.”
He turned to the Superintendent. “When your two constables get back with the madman, Robson, Mr and Mrs Fox can extract a copy of his fingertip prints. We will then be able to prove what I have been saying all along: that he is your murderer, your now five-time murderer!”
“Four-time,” Atticus corrected him.
“Four-time then! Damned insolent pedantry, isn’t four times bad enough? Four, five or whatever the blasted number is, Britton will finally go to the gallows where he belongs, with everyone knowing what he is, and we will all, at long last, be able to put this whole sorry business behind us and get on with the rest of our lives. Good day to you all.”
With that he turned, pushed roughly past Atticus and Lucie with a deadly look on his flushed face, and thundered down the ladder-way.
A few minutes after Sir Hugh had stormed from the stables, they heard the sound of more heavy, hobnailed boots clattering on the blue bricks of the stable floor. The faces of the two police constables peered sheepishly up at them from the shadows below.
“Good evening, sir,” said the one whom Atticus did not recognise, lifting off his helmet, “I was told at the house that the detective superintendent would be here.”
His expression showed that he dearly wished the detective superintendent was nowhere near and it was really quite odd to see a police officer seeming so nervous.
Atticus was about to answer when Robson’s voice boomed irritably from behind him.
“I’m up here in the loft. Well, have you arrested him?”
There was a long, strained silence. The local constable broke first.
“I regret very much that we have not been able to, sir. When we arrived at his cottage, he was already gone. It looks like he’s been away from there for some time. We could find no trace of him anywhere nearby.”
There was a whispered oath and Robson brushed past.
“Well you had both better begin to search farther away then,” he raged as he half-climbed, half-leaped down the ladder-way. �
�There’s still daylight left and even then it’ll be more than half-moon. Go back, find him and then arrest him. Do not under any circumstances come back anywhere near my sight without him. If you do, then if I don’t have your miserable guts for it, Sir Hugh Lowther most certainly will.”
“Did you find the Lance and the Platter?” Atticus called down.
The constables looked up, shamefacedly. Plainly they hadn’t.
Robson exploded again. “I have another dead man up there, damn you, constables. Albert Bradley, Sir Hugh’s groom of thirty years has been brutally killed with… with a brace of swords. That makes four murders altogether and two – two murders, no less – today! We still have a lunatic murderer abroad somewhere on the moors and to top it all, it appears that he is now armed with a bloody great lance.”
There was a pause.
“Well, Constables, what are you still standing there for?”
There was another beat of silence followed by an almost comically frantic mêlée as the two constables realised they had been dismissed and almost fell over themselves in their haste to escape.
Detective Superintendent Robson watched them as they all but ran out through the stable door. Then he turned, calm now and looked up towards Atticus and Lucie.
“Forgive me the outburst and the oaths, Mr and Mrs Fox, but it is imperative that we capture the madman before he can kill again. I will send for you both once we have him safely in our custody in order for you to lift his fingerprints as Sir Hugh ordered. If we can persuade a judge of the efficacy of the technique, then he can be hung or incarcerated as His Lordship feels inclined. Either way, the chief constable, Sir Hugh Lowther and the gentlemen of the press will all be appeased and we can all sleep a little more soundly in our beds.”
“Detective Superintendent,” said Atticus softly, “you forget that we discovered three sets of fingertip prints on that sword hilt. I’m afraid we shall require more than just the fingertip print evidence to prove Britton’s guilt, if guilty he is.”
Robson coloured. “I am well aware of that, Mister Fox” He laid heavy emphasis on the word ‘Mister,’ but the uncomfortable, perhaps guilty look in his eyes drew the force of his bluster.
