The Moor - Laurie R. King [87]
Davey Pearce was still at the top of his ramp, holding back his crowd of two very small children and studying all the activity with great interest. "Try to stop him from coming down the ramp," I called to him without much hope, and indeed, when the constable appeared at Pearce's side, he did not look open to reason. He pushed Pearce to one side and started down towards us.
However, I had reckoned without Baring-Gould. His old voice rang out with the authority of six centuries of landholders, John Gold the Crusader ordering his troops into battle with the Saracen. "Pearce, hold him there."
And Pearce, who was old enough to have the traditional ways built into his very bones, reached out through the thin veneer of governmental authority and laid a meaty hand on the constable, and he held him there. He sat on him, actually, with the beatific smile of licensed insurrection on his face.
Before I could climb out of the boat, Budd tapped me on the arm and held out his wool coat. I looked at the heavy pullover he still wore, and took the coat.
The sloping hillside before me must have been hellish for hauling up slabs of stone but it was no great obstacle for a strong person carrying the inert body of a small man across his shoulders, which is what the killer had done until he slipped on some wet leaves about halfway down. After that, he had dragged Pethering, which accounted for the marks I had seen on the backs of the antiquarian's waterlogged boots. At the edge of the water he had fumbled and splashed and no doubt got himself wet from the knees down, working to push the body out into the lake, before climbing back up to the rim (each step slipping slightly as his wet shoes hit the damp leaves) and making his way off.
Before I went to investigate his destination, though, I returned to the place where he had fallen, studying it with great care from all angles until I could visualise the man's movements precisely.
He had been carrying Pethering over both shoulders, I decided, left hand steadying his load, right hand out as a balance. When his right heel hit a patch of wet leaves and skidded out from under him, he thumped down on his backside, with Pethering landing on the ground in back of him. I could see clearly where the man's right foot had stretched out to leg's length, where his left heel had dug in, where his right hand plunged into the leaves in back of him, and where the seat of his trousers landed hard. The length of Pethering stretched out at cross angles, heels to the man's right hand, head to his left. The man got to his feet (no doubt brushing at his clothing in disgust) and went around to Pethering's shoulders to drag him off downhill the rest of the way to the water.
It was all remarkably clear, one of the most elegant examples of spoor I had ever seen, and I was very pleased with myself until I stood up, brushing off my own hands, and saw my audience stretched around the rim of the lake. They had been standing, stone still and silent, as I examined the ground, so intent on a precise re-creation of what had gone on here that I had duplicated the man's very movements, dipping into a fall, flinging a leg out to mimic the sliding foot, standing and brushing and hoisting and pulling—all of my movements small and controlled, mere shorthand, as it were, but nonetheless vastly entertaining. Even the constable beneath Davy Pearce lay silently staring at me. My face began