Page 5 of The Dead Come to Stay
“Whose?”
“She didn’t know—or didn’t say. The mobile service isn’t great out there.”
“Out where?”
“Oh. She was walking the trail from town. You can give the talk, right?”
Jo swallowed tea. Spur-of-the-moment presentation on Gertrude Jekyll.Couldshe? Obviously; she’d done most of the research for the brochure and could quote a few of the sources verbatim. ButRoberta found a body and would be delayedneeded to be processed at some point, alongsidethe police had been informed.
And of course, in Abington,policemeant James MacAdams.
“Great,” she said, and meant nothing of the sort.
Chapter 3
Detective Chief Inspector MacAdams stood at the edge of a weedy ditch. Below, marbled patches of black dirt, gray mud and bent grass turned to soup from the previous night’s deluge. The town medical examiner, Eric Struthers, stooped to take a closer look at the body.
A man, dark haired, lay face down in the wet earth. No coat. No bag. A bit of a tumbled-over look, as if he’d rolled into position. Not especially remarkable, except for the gash in his skull, visible even from where MacAdams was standing.
Eric blinked up at him. “I’m going to need a hand getting out of here, James,” he said.
MacAdams braced one foot against the gravel and the other on the firmer bank before giving Struthers a good tug. His boots pulled free with a bone-sucking sound.
“Cold and stiff,” he said, scraping mud.
“Meaning?”
“Warm and stiff, three to eight hours. Cold and stiff, eight to thirty-six. I can tell you more after I get him to the lab.” He peeled off his glove and looked to the sky above him. “Weather plays a role. Warm now but was cold and wet last night. Butsince rigor mortis hasn’t worn off yet, it’s safe to say he hasn’t been here more than twenty-four hours. Maybe even as early as last night.”
“Any chance it was a hit-and-run?” MacAdams asked dubiously. Struthers gave him a plastic smile.
“Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. I’ll know more after we get him under the lights, but in the absence of broken bones, torn clothing or tire marks? I’d say murder.”
Of course.MacAdams turned his attention to the bright horizon; the sun had come up against a cloudless sky, all hint of storm forgotten. The Jekyll Gardens opening was no doubt off to a glorious start.
“Ah-hem, Detective.” Roberta Wilkinson stared at him through her yellow-lamplight glasses and struck the ground with her walking stick for emphasis. “Idohave somewhere to be, you know.”
“I’ve taken a statement,” said Detective Sergeant Sheila Green, MacAdams’s partner, waving a notepad over the shorter woman’s gray-white head.
“I’ll get Uniform to drop you at the, ah...”
“Jekyll Gardens,”Roberta barked, sniffing the air with a stately my-kin-were-born-to-the-land frown. “Forget it. Came this far. I’ll just walk. Though I take ityou’llbe late.”
There was a nearly 100 percent chance that he wouldn’t make it at all, despite being dressed for it. He didn’t say so, and Roberta hadn’t waited for a reply anyway before she started down the road.
“She takes right to roam very seriously,” Green said, slapping her notebook against her left palm. “Started this morning from the Mill, nine o’clock sharp. Took the trail up over the stiles, but apparently part of it was flooded, so she came up this way to the road.”
MacAdams nodded. There were two lanes: one that led directly to Jo’s cottage and the gardens, and one that ran along the walking path.
“She walked right past him. Then called us.”
It had been spotty, a crackling voice cutting in and out, though MacAdams was more surprised by the fact Roberta Wilkinson owned a mobile than that she’d managed to get a signal. He’d been halfway through breakfast.
Green closed the notebook. “Nothing else of use, frankly. Didn’t see anyone, no sign of cars or other walkers, etc. If Roberta hadn’t been along, there’s no telling when we might have found him.”
“It would be a quieter Saturday if she hadn’t,” MacAdams said dryly.
“Sir? I think he might still have ID on him,” a uniformed police officer shouted from the ditch. Three of them were attempting the task of getting the body onto a gurney. The lad picked something up from the ground below.
