The phone rang while I was driving back to the station. It was Raymond. I knew what he was going to tell me. “It’ll be in the report, of course, Barbara, but I thought you’d appreciate advance warning: Adrian Mansfield was dead before he was stabbed. Toxic poisoning. Rather fashionably, a cocktail of drugs and drink? He died in the boat.”
“So he wasn’t murdered?”
“Well, no – not if we assume he wasn’t forced to ingest the alcohol and drugs. You can’t murder a corpse, though it’s fairly obvious that whoever stabbed him intended to kill him.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Oh, dear. Have I over-stepped the mark? I think I’m trying to say that the person who stabbed him thought they were killing him. Are you telling me I’m wrong?”
I said, “Maybe they were trying to make a suicide look like a murder.”
“Yes, of course,” he said immediately. “Sorry, Barbara, enlighten me – why would anyone want to do such a thing?”
“I just told you, Raymond: to make a suicide look like a murder; to mortify the suicide’s philosophical vanity. Whoever did this wanted to rob Adrian of grandiosity. That explains the placard round his neck.”
“Yes, all right, Barbara. I’ll take your word for it. You do sound quite appallingly sure of yourself.”
“Do we know when he died?” I asked. “Roughly.”
“Around five in the in the morning, I would say, Barbara. Perhaps he wanted to go out to the sound of the dawn chorus.”
I said, “That would certainly fit with the Romantic tableau he tried to leave of himself. Thanks, Raymond.”
He said, “You are, as always, very welcome, Barbara.”