Murder of Adrian Boyde

Adrian Boyde’s murder is discovered by Adam Dalgliesh in the chapel on Combe Island. The body, covered by a green cope and lying near an improvised altar, makes the killing undeniable; the scene’s unusual objects immediately become evidence. The discovery also gives the investigation a painful personal dimension: Dalgliesh wonders whether, by watching more carefully the previous night, he might have seen the killer.

Discovery in the chapel

Feeling unexpectedly steadier in the fresh morning air, Dalgliesh walks from Chapel Cottage to the chapel. He has no memory of crossing the stretch of stone-littered grass between them. The chapel’s half-door is closed, and he pauses against it for support before looking up and seeing Boyde. The body lies on the stone floor, about a foot from the improvised altar. One hand protrudes from beneath the cope, while dark stains show through its green silk. A folding chair has been opened, and a long cardboard box rests on it with tissue paper spilling out.

The arrangement does not explain itself. The cope covers most of Boyde’s body, and the box and tissue paper suggest a connection between the garment and its placement, but the scene alone does not establish who brought it there or why. The chapel thus presents a death at once plainly violent and materially puzzling: the covered body, the altar, and the packaging are distinct elements whose relationship must be tested rather than assumed.

Confirmation and examination

Dalgliesh does not touch the body before putting on gloves. Shock drives him back to Seal Cottage, where he calls Rupert Maycroft and reports that Boyde has been murdered. When Maycroft asks whether the death might be an accident or suicide, Dalgliesh answers that he is sure it is murder and asks for everyone on the island to be brought together. He also summons Kate Miskin, telling her to commandeer the buggy and not to say anything to Jago Tamlyn. The discovery immediately shifts the situation from private alarm to a coordinated investigation.

Returning to the chapel, Dalgliesh searches the ground for marks. He finds no identifiable footprints on the sandy turf. His examination of the body indicates that rigor mortis is well established, leading him to conclude that Boyde must have died the previous night. The face has been severely damaged, and the condition of the body confirms the violence of the killing, but the evidence does not settle exactly where or how the attack began.

Dalgliesh considers several possibilities: the killer may have waited inside the chapel, watched from outside in the darkness, or followed Boyde after he left Combe House. These remain alternatives, not established reconstructions. Their uncertainty sharpens his regret. While he had been conferring with Kate and Benton-Smith, he might, he thinks, have noticed a second figure if he had stayed outside Seal Cottage longer and watched Boyde arrive home.

The cope and competing interpretations

Kate Miskin examines the body with Benton-Smith. She thinks Boyde probably died in the chapel soon after reaching home the previous night. Her initial reconstruction is that Calcraft could have thrown the stone, or whatever object was used, felled Boyde, and then continued the attack. She reads the violence as hatred or a loss of control, while recognizing that this is an interpretation of the scene rather than a settled account of the killer’s actions.

Benton-Smith focuses on the cope. If Boyde fell backwards, he reasons, the garment would have ended up beneath him rather than covering him; its position therefore suggests that someone else took it from the box and placed it over the body. He also notices the tissue paper but no string, a small discrepancy that makes the box’s role less straightforward. Kate likewise finds the cope’s presence unexplained and considers whether Mrs. Burbridge may be able to account for it. Their observations turn the garment from a striking detail into a line of inquiry, while leaving its purpose unresolved.

Consequences and significance

For Dalgliesh, the chapel is both a crime scene and the focus of an immediate sense of failure. He had no evidence that anyone else was at risk after Nathan Oliver’s death, and no basis to detain a suspect on vague suspicion; nevertheless, he feels the weight of Boyde’s death as something he must accept. The possibility that the killer was already at work while he spoke with his colleagues makes professional limits painfully concrete without proving that a different choice would have prevented the murder.

Kate’s response combines horror, anger, and pity, emotions she deliberately tries to control while examining the body. The investigators must now secure the scene, account for the cope and its box, and assemble the island’s residents. The chapel’s altar and the body’s covering give the discovery a grave, almost ritual appearance, but the investigation proceeds through practical questions: when Boyde died, how he reached the chapel, what was used against him, and who handled the garment. The scene confirms a new murder while withholding the answers needed to explain it.