Bull had written the word in his notes.
GHOSTMASTER?
He had underlined it twice.
Eleanor placed the page beside Marris's account. Bull had been trying to identify whoever controlled the network, rather than merely the people who used it.
According to Marris, it had begun as an informal escape route. People in shipping, ports, Customs, law and banking contributed what they could. Someone under threat could be moved and given enough of a new identity to begin again.
The same arrangements could serve someone escaping prosecution.
By the nineties, there was considerable money to be made. Hart had taken over what Hale helped build.
The bell cipher had begun as a game among ringers and antiquarians connected with the network. Later, it became a means of passing instructions. The inscriptions remained in their towers, while the people using them carried the transcriptions they needed.
Eleanor looked at the question mark after Bull's word.
"He was close to finding Hart."
"Yes," Relf said.
"That gave Hart a reason to want him dead."
"It did. It doesn't tell us what happened."
He put the recording transcript on the table.
"Marris says the final pull was a mistake."
"Do you believe him?"
"I'm checking his account."
"If he's telling the truth, Bull's death was an accident."
"His fall may have been."
She looked up.
"What do you mean?"
Relf took another report from the file.
"The post-mortem."
Eleanor read it without speaking.
The head injury had been severe. The original assessment described survival as unlikely without rapid intervention. It did not say death had been instantaneous.
"He may have lived for several minutes," Relf said.
"Possibly."
"Could he have been conscious?"
"Intermittently, perhaps. This alone won't tell us."
"Could anything have been done?"
"I want to review the findings properly before answering that."
She turned back to the injury description.
Marris had left believing Bull was dead. That was his account. They had not established whether anyone entered the tower afterwards.
"What else have you found?" she asked.
Relf laid out photographs of a partial shoe impression near the church door.
It differed from Marris's boot tread and appeared smaller. The marks had been recorded during the original examination but had drawn little attention among the many traces left by people using the church.
"The examiner thinks it may be recent," Relf said.
"How recent?"
"Not precisely enough to place it that evening."
"And whose?"
"We don't know."
He showed her the next item.
A dark wool fibre had been recovered from a splinter of timber beside Bull's body. It did not match the clothing examined from Bull or Marris.
Eleanor studied the photograph.
"Could have been there before."
"Yes."
"But you want Weller's clothes."
"And his shoes."
She sat back.
"Suppose Marris left, then told someone what had happened."
"Weller?"
"Or someone who passed it on."
Relf nodded.
"Hart would have known Bull had found something. He might have gone to see what Bull had with him."
"That's one possibility."
"And found him alive."
Neither spoke for a moment.
Eleanor returned to the post-mortem report. A second visitor was still only a possibility. So was intervention in the death. But the interval after the fall could no longer be left unexplored.
Relf's telephone rang.
He answered and listened, reaching for his notebook.
"Where?"
He wrote down the reply, then stood.
"They've found Weller's car."
"Where is it?"
"Dungeness."