“Ah...” The doctor raised a finger to the side of his nose and considered. He took a close look at the wound.
“Could be. Aye. Something at least two inches in diameter at the thick end. A stake—you might be right.”
He looked suddenly over his shoulder at the inspector. “Why? Have you found one?”
“Heavens, no.”
The doctor sighed and busied himself with his bag. The catch snapped shut. He walked to a sink and began washing his hands.
“As a matter of fact,” he called, “I once saw a wound very similar to that one. The fellow hadn’t been in a river, though. They’d pulled him out of a stockyard.”
He turned off the tap and glanced around. “Hell, isn’t there even a towel in this place?”
Purbright pointed to a paper towel-dispenser farther along the white-tiled wall. “Stockyard?” he repeated.
“Aye, he’d been gored,” said Fergusson. “By an Aberdeen Angus.”
The inspector stared ruminatively at the corpse. He bent down and examined an area of the throat a few inches to the left of the main wound. The flesh was bruised and close scrutiny revealed a number of small, irregular gashes. “What do you make of that, doctor?”
Fergusson thrust his head into partnership with Purbright’s. He pouted, unimpressed.
“Superficial cuts and abrasions. Bodies do get knocked about on their travels, you know.” He straightened, reached for his bag.
“No, wait a minute.”
The inspector took a pencil from his pocket and indicated with its point what appeared to be a bright red incision at the edge of the damaged area.
“I took that to be blood, but of course, it can’t be—not after a longish immersion in water. Try tweezers.”
“Hey, this isn’t the PM yet, laddie. You’ll get me shot.” But Fergusson, intrigued himself, produced a small pair of forceps and investigated.
The scarlet line proved to be the edge of a hard object embedded in the flesh. The forceps gripped and began to withdraw it.
Fergusson dropped the find into a small porcelain dish. It was a curved fragment, about half an inch long, of very thin ruby-coloured glass.
The bells of St Lawrence’s had just begun to make their second major assault of the day upon the ears and vestigial consciences of Flaxborough when six policemen, accompanied by a policewoman, sat down to consider plans for the investigation of the death of Bertram Persimmon. It was six o’clock.
A big rectangular table had been pulled into the middle of the CID room. At its head sat the chief constable, wearing half-moon spectacles that gave him an air of school-masterly sapience. Purbright was at the opposite end of the table. The two longer sides were occupied by Detective-Sergeant Love, Detective-Constables Harper and Pook, and Sergeant William Malley, the Coroner’s Officer.
The policewoman was Sadie Bellweather, and she sat a little apart from the others, with a shorthand notebook on her knee.
On the farther side of the room a tea chest had been up-ended to serve as a display plinth. It bore the bull’s-head mask which Purbright had retrieved for the occasion from a locked compartment in the lost property cupboard.
The chief constable spoke first.
“There are just a couple of points I think we should be clear about before we go any further, gentlemen. Firstly, there is no doubt, I take it, that the body is that of Mr Persimmon?”
“That’s so, sir,” confirmed Malley, a very large man indeed, whose matching store of amiability had not been noticeably diminished even by the disruption of his Sunday evening. “Mrs Persimmon has been down to the hospital already and identified him.”
“And the inquest?”
“Formal opening and adjournment in the morning, sir.”
Mr Chubb looked straight down the table to Purbright.
“You’ve seen the body, of course—as I have—and your opinion is that Persimmon could not possibly have received that injury by accident. Am I right?”
“Let me put it this way, sir. I find it quite impossible to visualize an accident that would have had precisely the results that we’ve seen here. The wound is consistent with the man having been gored. But it would be asking a lot from coincidence to suppose that he had happened to be on the brink of the river at the time. There are other factors which I shall mention shortly, and they do fit in with a picture of deliberate violence on somebody’s part.”
“In short,” said Mr Chubb, “we are faced with a case of murder.”
“Murder or manslaughter, sir. The distinction need not trouble us at this stage, as you rightly point out.”
The chief constable was still pondering this mysterious compliment when Purbright got up and walked over to the tea chest.
All looked towards the bull’s head, Mr Chubb with cold appraisal, Malley stolidly, Love and Harper craning like tourists anxious to get their money’s worth, Pook indifferently, and Policewoman Bellweather with that rigidity of mien with which she had trained herself to confront all things unusual or distasteful, from a motor accident to a rashly proffered penis.
Purbright stationed himself by the mask like a lecturer.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you what I can about this thing without your coming any nearer. Forensic are sending someone over, and there will be hard words if we are caught handing it around.
“The curator of the Fish Street Museum, from which you’ll remember it was stolen a couple of years ago, says that it was used—or rather that others, of which this is an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century copy, were used—in religious celebrations of a kind that the press likes to call fertility rites. You could say it had associations with paganism—magic—witchcraft, if you prefer—but my main concern at the moment is with its physical properties.
“You can take it from me that this is an extremely durable article. Webster, the curator, thinks it is oak under all the varnish. The horns are actual bull’s horns, but they have been set in the wood at an upward rather than a forward angle. The carpentry is excellent: neither horn has worked loose even after God knows how many years. Both horns are sharp.
“This harness”—Purbright pointed to the broad leather straps—“would cross round the chest and keep the thing on pretty firmly.
“The mask would float with the help of a little trapped air. Which is why it is here now and not at the bottom of the river where I suspect someone either excessively optimistic or simply in a hurry thought it would end up.”
Sergeant Malley took from his mouth the empty pipe he had been sucking and signalled with it his desire to ask a question.
“You feel confident, do you, inspector, that Persimmon was killed with that thing?”
“Absolutely.”
Malley nodded and blew, like a gentle whale, while he formulated his next question.