The killing of Adrian Boyde by Dan Padgett is the second death bound up with the secret of Dan Padgett’s parentage. Boyde’s priestly obligation to keep a confidence left him unable to tell the police what he knew; his attempts to reach Padgett instead put him in danger. Padgett later called the attack impulsive, but the gloves he carried and the circumstances of Boyde’s final visit make that explanation difficult to accept without qualification.

Background and the Secret

After Nathan Oliver’s murder, Boyde appears to have suspected Padgett. He had heard a confidence from Martha Padgett, Dan’s mother, and could not disclose it as a confessor. When Boyde found Puffin Cottage empty on Saturday morning, however, he had encountered a fact that he could have reported to the police without revealing what he had been told. He did not do so. The account raises the possibility that he instead saw his role as persuading Padgett to confess and thereby recover his soul. It also leaves open whether Boyde understood how dangerous that choice had become.

The sequence gives the killing a particular moral tension: Boyde’s silence was not simply inaction. His professional and spiritual duty constrained what he could say, while his decision to approach Padgett exposed him to the person he suspected. Dalgliesh’s later reconstruction suggests that Boyde went to Puffin Cottage on Monday night in a final attempt to reach him. The possibility that Boyde sensed he was being followed remains uncertain; the narrative frames it as a question rather than a confirmed perception.

The Attack and Padgett’s Account

In his account, Padgett said the attack was impulsive. He claimed that he took off his jacket and picked up the stone before following Boyde into the Combe Island Chapel. Padgett described Boyde as kneeling, then rising to confront him; he also said Boyde neither tried to escape nor attempted to protect himself. Padgett interpreted this as a sign that Boyde wanted to die, but that is Padgett’s reading of Boyde’s conduct, not an independently established explanation.

The evidence of preparation sits uneasily beside the claim of spontaneity. Padgett had gloves, which were among the nursing equipment left in his cottage. Their presence suggests that he came prepared, even as his account casts the killing as an immediate response to events. The contrast does not, by itself, settle every detail of the confrontation, but it undermines the neatness of Padgett’s version. Kate Miskin later recalled Boyde’s mutilated face while entering Puffin Cottage to search for evidence, a reminder that the violence had consequences beyond the competing explanations of how it began.

Discovery and Investigation

Boyde’s death became entangled with the investigation into Oliver’s murder. Kate Miskin and Benton had to decide whom to treat as a suspect while resisting the assumption that every death on the island had necessarily been committed by the same person. Their working list for Oliver’s killing included Padgett, alongside several other people, while they debated whether to keep others under consideration. That wider inquiry did not erase the distinct question posed by Boyde’s death: what had brought Padgett and the priest together, and why had Boyde gone to him despite the risk?

The danger of the secret became more apparent as the investigators pieced together Boyde’s choices. He could not repeat a confession, but he could have reported the empty cottage; instead, he may have persisted in trying to make Padgett speak for himself. The theory that this final effort led to his being silenced connects the murder to the earlier secret without turning the inferred motive into a certainty. When Mrs. Burbridge asked Kate whether Padgett had murdered Adrian, Kate did not answer her directly; she told those present to remain calm and follow instructions. The question marks the moment when suspicion became immediate danger for the people around her.

Significance

Boyde’s killing reveals how a duty intended to protect private confession can become perilous when the person holding the secret tries to intervene. His silence may have preserved the confidence, but it also left the police without information that could have directed them toward Padgett sooner. The account does not settle whether Boyde knowingly risked his life or believed he could still persuade Padgett; it places those possibilities beside the concrete signs of preparation and the fatal outcome.

Padgett’s explanation that Boyde wanted to die also shifts attention away from the violence he himself committed. Against it stands the reported presence of gloves, along with the possibility that he killed Boyde to keep the secret from reaching the police. The killing thus does more than add another death to the case: it shows how Padgett’s response to exposure could turn a confidant’s attempt at persuasion into a reason to silence him.