Free The Glimpses of the Moon by Edmund Crispin Page B

her shoe in the grit at the lane’s edge. But at the time she was thinking in terms of accident, not of assault,and in any case the spectacle of Routh had shocked her into temporary unawareness of everything else. With considerable courage she walked forward and stood over him. She had done well in school at First Aid, and after all, this sort of thing was what First Aid was
for
, so perhaps -
    She bent to feel for his pulse: nothing. Watched for his breathing: and nothing. Wild thoughts of attempting the Kiss of Life flitted through her mind. But if there was bad brain damage, the Kiss of Life wouldn’t do any good, would it? Besides, she didn’t believe she could possibly force herself to try it. Not possibly. It would mean letting her hair fall on to that congealing horror, and pinching the squat white nose shut, and feeling inside the mouth to make sure the tongue didn’t fall back and block the air passages. No, not
possibly.
Besides—
    From behind the screen of crippled trees, someone who was looking on suddenly uncontrollably giggled.
    As the new pattern slipped clear and complete into her understanding, like a replacement transparency in an epidiascope, Anna May turned and ran, heart racing, throat dry, rubber soles throwing up little spurts of white dust as they flip-flopped frantically on tarmac worn smooth and slippery with age. Nearest, as it happened, was her own home, and when it came in sight she slowed a little, looking back.
    No one.
    Puffing up the path and through the front door, Anna May found herself instantly in the middle of a whirlwind of flailing palms; her parents were particularly incensed with her that evening - her being so late having delayed the start of an outing of their own - and the few disjointed words she managed to blurt into the hubbub were interpreted by them as an ill-judged attempt to tell them about something she had been watching on television. Bawling in unison, they condemned her supperless to bed. And for the time being Anna May didn’t persist. In her present confused state she obscurely felt that it might be safer to keep quiet. Mr Routh was dead all right - nothing anyone could do for him now. Also, he was good riddance to bad rubbish. Let him lie, while she latched her bedroom window and locked her bedroom door and sat down to think things out calmly.
    By the following morning she had done this - and more importantly, by then her parents had become relatively approachable again. Expecting more slapping when she repeated her story, Anna May instead found herself fallen on with loud protestations of affectionate anxiety. She must see a doctor, see the police, eat another piece of toast and marmalade, be given a bicycle. The senior Busts then rushed off together to Bawdeys Meadow.
    But the body had been found earlier on.
    When they saw what had been done to it, both the Busts fainted.
3
    The body had been found round about 6.30 a.m., eleven hours after death, by a farm labourer called Prance who was passing Bawdeys Meadow on his way to work. It had been moved from the copse to the meadow proper, and Prance, glimpsing it through a hole in the hedge, had climbed up on to the bank to get a better view of it.
    Fortunately Prance was an extremely phlegmatic man.
    The meadow here sloped down to the hedge quite steeply, so that the effect of what Prance saw was that of a five-piece infant’s jigsaw puzzle assembled with the usual infant incompetence on a tilted green-baize table. In death, Routh was divided. Moreover, although in death, as in life, his trunk remained central to his anatomy, other parts of him had been re-dealt. Briefly, both his legs and both his arms had been first cut off, and then, in relation to the rest of him, swapped: his thighs now sprouted from his shoulders (the toes of his shoes pointing uphill), while his arms - neatly disposed in parallel, with the palms of the hands flat on the grass - appeared to be attached to either side of