Twisted Root - Anne Perry [29]
"Differently?" Monk said quickly. "What do you mean? In what way were they scuffed?"
"All on the knees, as if he’d crawled quite a distance some time before he died."
"Trying to escape?" Monk asked.
Robb chewed his lip. "Don’t know. It wasn’t a fight. He was only struck the one blow."
Monk was startled. "One blow killed him? Then he crawled before he was struck? Why?"
"Not necessarily." Robb shook his head again. "Doctor says he bled inside his head. Could have been alive for quite a while and crawled a distance, knowing he was hurt but not how bad, and that he was dying."
"Then could he have fallen forward and caught himself one severe blow on an angle of the box? Or even been down and kicked by one of the horses?"
"Doctor said he was struck from behind." Robb swung his arms out to his right and brought them sideways and forward hard. "Like that... when he was standing up. Caught him on the side of the head. Not a lot of blood—but lethal."
"Couldn’t have been a kick?" Monk clung to the last hope.
"No. Indentation was nothing like a horse’s hoof. A long, rounded object like a crowbar or pole. Wasn’t a corner of the box, either."
"I see." Monk took a deep breath. "Have you any idea who it was that killed him? Or why?" He added the last as an afterthought.
"Not yet," Robb admitted. He looked totally puzzled, and Monk had a swift impression that he was finding the case overwhelming. Already the fear of failure loomed in his sight. "He was hardly worth robbing. The only thing of value he had was the coach and horses, and they didn’t take them."
"A personal enemy," Monk concluded. The thought troubled him even more, for reasons Robb could not know. Where was Miriam Gardiner? Had she been there at the time of the murder? If so, she was either a witness or an accomplice—or else she, too, was dead. If she had not been there, then where had Treadwell left her, and why? At her will, or not?
How much should he tell Robb? If he were to serve Miriam’s interests, perhaps nothing at all—not yet, anyway.
"May I see the body?" he asked.
"Of course." Robb rose to his feet. Identification might help. At the least it would make him feel as if he were achieving something. He would know who his victim was.
Monk thanked him and followed as he went out of his tiny office, back down the stairs and into the street, where there was a stir of air in the hot day, even if it smelled of horses and household smoke and dry gutters. The morgue was close enough to walk to, and Robb strode out, leading the way. He jammed his hands into his pockets and stared downwards, not speaking. It was not possible to know his thoughts. Monk judged him to be still in his late twenties. Perhaps he had not seen many deaths. This could be his first murder. He would be overawed by it, afraid of failure, disturbed by the immediacy of violence which was suddenly and uniquely his responsibility to deal with, an injustice he must resolve.
Monk walked beside him, keeping pace for pace, but he did not interrupt the silence. Carriages passed them moving swiftly, harnesses bright in the sun, horses’ hooves loud. The breeze was very light, only whispering through the leaves of the trees at the end of the street by the Heath. The smell of the air over the stretch of grass was clean and sweet. Somebody was playing a barrel organ.
The morgue was a handsome building, as if the architect had intended it as some kind of memorial to the dead, however temporarily there.
Robb tensed his shoulders and increased his pace, as if determined not to show any distaste for it or hesitation in his duty. Monk followed him up the steps and in through the door. The familiar odor caught in his throat. Every morgue smelled like this, cloyingly sweet with an underlying sourness, leaving a taste at the back of the mouth. No amount of scrubbing in the world removed the knowledge of death.
The attendant came out and asked politely if he could help them. He spoke with a slight lisp, and peered at Robb for a moment before he recognized him.
"You’ll be for your coachman again,"