“He’s dead. Definitely. And judging by the depth of that”—Findlay nodded at the indentation in the back of the corpse’s skull—“he was dead within seconds of being struck.” Findlay paused, head tilting as he studied the wound. “He was hit with something entirely unforgiving. Something heavy. You might want to look around.”
Stokes turned and looked at his men.
O’Donnell saluted, and the other two nodded, and the three fanned out, searching through the thick summer grass.
Stokes returned to Findlay. “Anything else?”
Findlay rocked back on his heels, then blew out a breath. “This is more an educated guess, but I’d say he didn’t hear his assailant approach. He was distracted.” Findlay raised his gaze to the tree trunk and, with his head, indicated a large hollow about six feet from the ground. “He might have been poking around in there.”
Penelope bustled over to look, and Barnaby followed.
Penelope was too short to see inside the hollow, but Barnaby peered in easily enough. “There’s nothing in here but leaves and twigs.”
From beside them, Richard said, “Monty was shorter. I doubt he would have been easily able to see inside, not unless he went up on his toes.”
“Or he felt inside.” Penelope demonstrated, then retrieved her hand, frowned, and brushed debris off her fingertips.
“Guv!” O’Donnell called.
They turned to see the experienced sergeant deeper in the orchard.
He pointed at something in the grass. “Looks like this might be the weapon.”
The rest of them waited by the body as Stokes strode across, ducking beneath branches heavy with fruit to where his sergeant stood. Morgan and Walsh, deeper in the orchard, ceased theirsearching and started back, eager to see what O’Donnell had found.
On joining O’Donnell, Stokes halted and stared downward, then he bent and carefully picked up what appeared to be an iron stake. After examining the stake’s end, Stokes nodded to his men and carried the stake back to Findlay.
As Stokes approached, those about the body saw tufts of light-brown hair and other matter crusted along a section of the stake.
Findlay grunted, got to his feet, and reached to take the stake from Stokes. Findlay squinted at the encrustation, then hefted the stake. “This’ll be it.” Stepping across the body’s legs, Findlay lowered the stake and held it just above the corpse’s caved-in skull. It wasn’t hard to see that the hair color and fineness matched that of the body and that the indentation in the skull held a similar shape to the edge of the stake. Findlay raised the stake. “I’ll take measurements back at the morgue, but I don’t think you need to search further. This is the murder weapon.”
Barnaby eyed the stake. “Could a woman have wielded that?”
Findlay’s brows rose. He weighed the stake, then looked at Penelope.
She sighed and rounded the body and took the stake. She raised it easily enough.
“Wait!” Findlay ducked around to stand behind her. “Now, slowly lower it.”
She complied.
Once she was holding the stake horizontally, Findlay grunted. Reaching around to retrieve the stake, he looked at Stokes and Barnaby. “Clearly, any woman could have lifted the stake. But given his height”—Findlay nodded at the corpse—“only a woman of at least average height could have struck that blow.” He turned to smile at Penelope. “For instance, Mrs. Adaircould not have been the murderer. The angle of the blow would have been more vertical.”
Penelope sighed. “Sadly, saying someone must be taller than me won’t narrow our suspects list much at all.”
The men smiled.
Barnaby caught Findlay’s gaze and arched his brows. “Would our murderer have had blood on their hands or clothes?”
Findlay lightly shrugged. “It’s possible.” He looked at the corpse, then at the length of the stake. “That said, I think it’s unlikely. I think the victim collapsed under the blow. It was quite ferocious, so I tend to think you’re looking for a man. However, the victim fell forward, and most of the bleeding you see occurred after he hit the ground, so any splatter at the moment the blow connected would, I judge, have been minimal, and the length of this stake means the murderer was standing a good yard away from his victim.”
“All right.” Stokes looked up from his notebook. “Time of death?”
Findlay glanced at Richard. “With the body being outside, exposed to warmer temperatures, it’s difficult to be accurate, but if he was last seen in the house at just after nine o’clock and he was found dead at around ten, then that window—say between nine and ten o’clock this morning—is consistent with what I see.”
Stokes grunted. “Good enough.” He looked at the others. “So we have our murder weapon, the scene of the crime, and the hour during which the murder occurred.”
Barnaby observed, “I can’t remember when we’ve had so much to work with, straight off the bat.”
