an interesting theory," Deborah put in. "But I always feel just a bit sorry for the gypsies. They seem to get blamed for everything, don't they?"
"That, little bride, brings me right on up to theory number two."
JoJo-bean blinked her apologies.
Gembler Farm was in excellent condition, a fact unsurprising since Richard Gibson had continued to work it throughout the three weeks since his uncle's death. Opening the well-oiled gates that hung between two stone posts, Lynley and Havers entered and surveyed it.
It would be quite an inheritance. To their left stood the farmhouse, an old building constructed from the common brown bricks of the district, with freshly painted white woodwork and frail clematis conscientiously trimmed and trellised over windows and door.
It was set back from Gembler Road, and a well-tended garden, fenced to keep out the sheep, separated the two. Next to the house was a low outbuilding, and, forming another side to the quadrangle that comprised the yard, the barn loomed to their right.
Like the house, it was constructed of brick with a heavily tiled roof. It was two floors high, with gaping windows on the second floor through which the tops of ladders could be seen.
Dutch doors were used on the ground level of the barn, for this was a building for tools and animals only. Vehicles would be kept in the outbuilding to the far side of the house.
They walked across the well-swept yard, and Lynley inserted a key into the rusting lock that hung on the barn door. It swung noiselessly open. Inside, it was eerily still, dim, musty, and overcold, too much the place where a man had met a violent end.
"Quiet," Havers observed. She hesitated at the door while Lynley entered.
"Hmm," he responded from the third stall. "Expect that's due to the sheep."
"Sir?"
He looked up at her from where he had squatted on the pockmarked stone floor. She was quite pale. "Sheep, Sergeant," he said. "They're in the upper meadow, remember? That's why it's so quiet. Have a look here, will you?" Seeing that she was reluctant to approach, he added,
"You were right."
She came forward at that and passed her eyes over the stall. At the far end was heaped a mouldly pile of hay. To the centre was a not overlarge pool of dried blood - brown, not red.
There was nothing else.
"Right, sir?" Havers asked.
"Dead on the bottom, if you'll pardon the expression. Not a drop of blood on the walls. I don't think we had any body-slinging here. No crime-scene arrangement done after the fact. Nice thinking, Havers." He looked up in time to see the surprise on her face.
She reddened in confusion. "Thank you, sir."
He stood up and directed his attention back to the stall. The overturned bucket upon which Roberta had been sitting when the priest found her was still in its place. The hay into which the head had rolled remained untouched. The pool of dried blood had scraping marks from the forensic team and the axe was gone, but otherwise everything remained as it had been originally photographed. Except for the bodies.
The bodies. Good God. Feeling like the fool Nies intended him to be, Lynley gaped numbly at the outer edge of the stain where a heelprint matted several black and white hairs into the coagulated blood. He swung to Havers.
"The dog," he said.
"Inspector?"
"Havers, what in God's name did Nies do with the dog?"
Her eyes went to the same heelprint, saw the same hairs. "It was in the report, wasn't it?"
"It wasn't," he replied with a muttered curse and knew that he was going to have to drag every scrap of information out of Nies as if he were a surgeon probing for shrapnel. It would be absolute hell. "Let's look at the house," he said grimly.
They entered as the family would, through an enclosed porch-like hallway in which old coats and mackintoshes hung on pegs and workboots stood beneath a single-plank bench along the wall. The house had gone unheated for three weeks, so the air was tomb-like. A car rumbled past on Gembler Road, but the sound was muffled and distant.
The hall took them immediately into the kitchen. It was a large room, with a red linoleum floor, dark ash cabinets, and brilliantly white appliances that looked as if they were still polished daily. Nothing whatsoever was out of place. Not a dish was out of a single cupboard; not a crumb lay on a single work top; not a stain marred the surface of the white,