Dr Eleanor Harcourt had promised herself that she would not look at a dead body for three weeks. She had made the promise somewhere on the M25 and repeated it with greater conviction when traffic stopped near Sevenoaks. She repeated it again the following morning over coffee and toast while looking through the dining-room window towards Romney Marsh.
It was a magnificent October morning. Mist lay in shallow banks over the levels. Beyond it the land appeared almost unnaturally flat, interrupted by the occasional tree, distant roofs and church towers that seemed to have been placed there to give the eye something against which to measure emptiness.
On the table beside her was an elderly paperback. Russell Thorndike. Eleanor had bought it second-hand years ago. Its spine was broken, several pages had come loose, and a previous owner had underlined occasional passages in pencil for reasons Eleanor had never been able to fathom. She was rereading The Adventures of Doctor Syn.
There were better and certainly more sophisticated books. Eleanor didn't care. Doctor Syn, respectable clergyman by day and something altogether different when darkness fell across Romney Marsh, had fascinated her since she was a girl.
This holiday had therefore acquired a purpose. No museums unless she felt like them. No medical conferences. No catching up with papers she ought to have read six months ago. Instead she had brought an Ordnance Survey map, Thorndike, walking boots and an unnecessarily expensive waterproof coat. She intended to find Syn's Marsh. Dymchurch first. Then perhaps the sea wall. Some of the old churches. Dungeness eventually.
She buttered another piece of toast.
"Not very cheerful."
Eleanor looked up. Mrs Fenner, proprietor of Marsh View House, was staring at the cover of the book.
"Depends what cheers you."
"Smuggling and murder?"
"Precisely."
Mrs Fenner gave her the look she had already discovered was reserved for guests who might require watching.
"More coffee?"
"Please."
Mrs Fenner picked up the pot.
"Police everywhere this morning."
Eleanor looked towards the window.
"Where?"
"Church."
The coffee stopped halfway to her cup.
"Which church?"
Mrs Fenner told her.
"What happened?"
"Someone's had an accident in the tower."
Eleanor waited. Mrs Fenner lowered her voice despite there being nobody else in the dining room.
"Killed."
Eleanor looked at her book. Then at the Marsh. Then back at Mrs Fenner.
"No."
"Sorry?"
"No."
Mrs Fenner looked puzzled.
"I am on holiday."
Detective Inspector Arthur Relf did not believe in complicated explanations when simple ones remained available. He particularly disliked complicated explanations before lunch. He stood in the ringing chamber with his hands in the pockets of an elderly raincoat and listened to Martin Vale explain the ropes for the third time.
"Seven knots," Relf said. "Seven down knots."
"Yes."
"The distinction matters"
"I'm sure it does."
Martin regarded him with open disapproval. Relf was sixty-seven, broad across the shoulders, silver-haired and possessed of a face which had spent forty years suggesting that whatever you were about to tell him was unlikely to surprise him. It was not entirely an affectation.
"After Sunday," Martin said, "all eight bells were down."
"So you've told me."
"And all eight ropes were tied with down knot."
"Including the tenor?"
"I tied it myself."
Relf looked towards the loose rope.
"Could Dr Bull have untied it?"
"Yes."
"Could he have gone upstairs?"
"Obviously."
"Could he have moved the bell?"
Martin hesitated.
"By hand?"
"If that's what he was doing."
"Difficult."
"Impossible?"
"No."
Relf nodded. There it was. People had an unfortunate tendency to die doing things that were difficult but not impossible. He had encountered the principle throughout his career.
"So Bull comes here. He unties the tenor, goes upstairs and examines the bell. For whatever reason, he moves it. He loses his footing."
Martin frowned.
"He knew better than to put himself there."
"Did he?"
"Yes."
"Then why was he there?"
Martin had no answer. Relf looked again at the faint marks on the floor. The scenes-of-crime officer had photographed them. Boot impressions, possibly. Or old scuffs. Or marks left by any one of the people who had occupied the chamber during the previous century. Relf had seen investigations ruined by people deciding what evidence meant before establishing whether it meant anything at all.
"Accident," he said.
Martin's expression hardened.
"You don't know that."
"No. Which is why we're here."
"But you think it."
"I think a man was found dead beside a large piece of moving machinery in a place he had no business putting his head."
"It isn't machinery."
Relf looked upwards.
"What is it, then?"
"A bell."
"Which moves by machinery."
Martin opened his mouth. Then closed it. Relf smiled faintly.
"One-nil."
Eleanor's resolve lasted until eleven thirty. At eleven thirty-two she was standing outside the church. She told herself she had come to look at the architecture. At eleven thirty-four an ambulance crew brought a covered body through the door. She turned away.
"Doctor Harcourt?"
She stopped. The voice belonged to a man emerging behind the stretcher. He was wearing a raincoat which looked as though it had been purchased during a previous government. She recognised him after several seconds.
"Arthur Relf."
He extended a hand. They had met twice before, both times professionally, both times over bodies in considerably less picturesque surroundings.
"I thought you'd retired."
"I tried it."
"And?"
"My wife objected."
"To having you at home?"
"Apparently I was reorganising things."
Eleanor looked at the ambulance.
"Accident?"
"Seems so."
"Seems?"
Relf studied her.
"You're on holiday?"
"Yes."
"So am I, theoretically."
"What happened?"
"A man fell in the belfry."
"From where?"
"Not far. Hit his head."
"On?"
"Bell frame, probably."
"Probably?"
Relf sighed.
"I can already see how this is going to go."
"I haven't said anything."
"You've said probably twice."
"That was you."
"Exactly."
Despite herself, Eleanor smiled.
"Who was he?"
"Adrian Bull."
The smile disappeared. She knew the name. Not personally.
"Historian?"
"You've heard of him?"
"I've read him."
Relf glanced towards the paperback protruding from her shoulder bag.
"Holiday reading?"
"Russell Thorndike."
"Never heard of him."
"Doctor Syn."
Relf's expression changed.
"Ah. Him."
"You've read it?"
"No."
"Then why 'ah'?"
"Because everybody down here has heard of Doctor bloody Syn."
He began walking away. Eleanor followed.
"What was Bull doing in the tower?"
"Being a historian, apparently."
"That isn't an activity."
"With historians I'm not convinced."
"Arthur."
Relf stopped.
"What?"
"What was he doing?"
"We don't know."
"Was he alone?"
"As far as we know."
"Was the church locked?"
"No."
"Any sign of anyone else?"
Relf looked back towards the church. For the first time his expression altered.
"Couple of marks on the ringing-room floor."
"What sort of marks?"
"Boots, perhaps."
"Perhaps?"
"There you go again."
"Recent?"
"Don't know."
"Near anything?"
"The tenor rope."
Eleanor said nothing. Relf noticed.
"Oh, don't."
"I haven't done anything."
"I know that look."
"What look?"
"The one pathologists get when something stops being straightforward."
"I don't have a look."
"You do."
He resumed walking.
"Accident, Eleanor."
Eleanor watched him go.
Then she looked upwards towards the tower.
The impressions beside the tenor rope were faint enough that one of the first officers had almost walked across them. There was little more than part of a heel, an incomplete forefoot and three angular marks in the dust.
They were photographed, measured and lifted as well as circumstances permitted.
For now they were merely two faint marks beside a rope.
And Arthur Relf thought Adrian Bull had fallen.