of these are quite valuable.” Moretti held up a nondescript-looking book bound in a faded green, brushing the silvery-white dust left by SOCO off the cloth cover. “First edition of Nicholas Nickleby, 1839, with the original etchings and frontispiece. Probably worth a bob or two.”
“A bob or two?” Liz crouched down beside him.
“A thousand pounds or two,” Moretti replied. “Until the place is cleared, we’ll have to keep a police guard on it. Word will get around.”
“Wow!” Liz looked at the books around them and picked up a leather-bound volume. “What’s this?” Moretti took it from her.
“Looks like a book about James Gillray, with some very nice steel engravings — he drew satirical cartoons, Falla. He had eclectic tastes, our hermit.” Moretti gestured at a scattering of ancient Penguin paperbacks with their distinctive orange, black and white covers, the little penguin standing in a white oval alongside the titles. “Do we know if he left a will?”
“Jimmy didn’t mention it, but I don’t think that was a priority. Everything was left in place, except the rope. Jimmy took it back to Hospital Lane. He’d been cut down — the hermit, I mean — by the time I got here.” They both looked up at the exposed beam, surrounded by the pink batts of insulation.
“We’ll need to find out if there’s a will. The death will soon be reported in the Guernsey Press, and possibly some lawyer in town will come forward. Though he doesn’t seem to have been a lawyer type of person.
“Let me tear myself away from these,” Moretti swept a hand over the books on the floor, “and take a look around. Not that there’s much else to look at.” He stood up, brushing the dust from his hands.
There was indeed little else in the hermit’s hideaway. The place was lined with sturdily constructed bookcases that looked homemade, and the only attempt at decoration were the shards, bottles and pieces of driftwood placed on top of them. Some of the shards were arranged on the narrow ledge beneath the one small window in the roundhouse. On the floorboards were a couple of woven wool rugs that also looked homemade, the colours faded to a blur. There were blankets and a threadbare quilt on the truckle bed that could have been easily moved closer to the fire when necessary. An ancient hipbath stood close to the fireplace, a towel draped over the higher end. A camp stove, a kettle, a few pots and pans and pieces of cutlery on a trestle table alongside a loaf of bread and some cheese, an overripe banana and an orange, some canned goods, a packet of tea. Another table was loaded with magazines, and there was a battered armchair covered in a threadbare fabric Moretti remembered from his childhood, called moquette. There was a space left on one of the bookshelves for a small pile of neatly folded clothes, and there was a well-worn pair of felt slippers near the armchair.
“Was he wearing boots, Falla, did you notice?”
“Yes, Guv, and an overcoat. One of the boots had fallen off.”
“As if he’d just come in. Hmmm.” Moretti looked up at the pink surface above him. “Interesting choice of ceiling material. Makes the place feel quite —” He paused.
“Cosy,” Falla supplied for him.
“Almost.” Moretti stood up. “I need to talk to the postman. Did you ask him to come in to the station to make a statement?”
“Yes, Guv. I told him it could wait until today, but he may have been in this morning. Want me to check if he’s been?”
“Go ahead.”
While Falla used her mobile, Moretti walked around the hermit’s hideaway. Cosy, yes, almost: a refuge for a man of some education and learning, and ample means, apparently, for the books that were his passion. For Moretti, sanctuary was in the sound of Sidney Bechet playing “Petite Fleur,” Miles Davis playing “Tempus Fugit,” Oscar Peterson playing anything.
Why had Gus Dorey chosen to live this way? Had the world been for him too much, late and soon? Had he found the getting and spending laid waste his powers? Not hard to understand, thought Moretti. Drifting down the years the words came back to him.
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, have glimpses that would make me less forlorn …
“Guv.” He realized Falla was speaking to him, holding out her mobile. “It’s Sergeant Jones. He’s interviewing Gord Martel right now.”
“Sorry, Falla. I was thinking of Wordsworth.”
He took the mobile from her. “Sergeant Jones, Moretti here. I have a question for you to ask Mr. Martel about Gus Dorey. Did he smell?” He heard the question posed, and the postman’s indignant reaction. “I take it that’s a no? Thanks, Sergeant — yes, that’s all.”
He handed the mobile back to Falla, who was looking at him quizzically. “You have a question yourself, I think?”
“I was going to ask you where Wordsworth came in, but that’ll keep. Did he smell, Guv?”
In answer Moretti walked across to the shelf with the small pile of clothing, and picked up a shirt.
“There’s no public laundry for miles, and this stuff is impeccably laundered. There’s no way that was washed under the coldwater pump outside, near what looks like his vegetable patch, and any iron would have had to be an old-fashioned non-electric one. I don’t see one, so I doubt he used the hipbath. Therefore —?”
“Either he went into town with his washing or —”
“Someone was doing it for him. And something else. If Dr. Edwards’s suggestion that this is an aided suicide is accurate, then whoever helped Gus Dorey was not after his worldly goods.” Moretti bent down and picked up the Dickens. “They had some entirely different motive.”
“Maybe he asked his laundry person to help him end his life.”
“And maybe his laundry person gave him no choice in the matter. Because, Falla, whoever threw these books around, it wasn’t Gus Dorey, who loved them. It was the mysterious other person who was in this room with him. And they were looking for something, probably while he hung above on a rope he couldn’t have tied by himself.”
At that moment, Moretti’s mobile rang. He answered it briefly, then looked at Liz Falla, who was staring up at the crossbeam by the fireplace.
“Duty calls. That was Chief Officer Hanley. We’re needed at the station. Aloisio Brown has arrived.”
“Who, Guv?”
“The brainiac, Falla. Let’s go and face the music, shall we?”
Chapter Five
Hugo Shawcross’s back was killing him. The phone call from Marie Gastineau had come as a complete surprise, sending him rushing to his laptop to put in an all-nighter. He couldn’t remember doing that since his student days. Mind you, he thought, if I am indeed one of the undead, last night should have been a walk in the park for me. Or perhaps a stroll in St. Martin’s Churchyard among the gravestones, hand in hand with La Gran’mère du Cimetière, the ancient menhir that kept watch at the gate. Over the thousands of years she had stood there, she must have seen a vampire or two, he thought.
He giggled and stood up abruptly, instantly regretting both actions. Not
