ell me, Constable," said Inspector Nolan as he examined a piece of seaweed that had lodged behind the corpse's ear. "Was Reverend Longmire naturally bald?"

 "Why that's one of the oddities of this case," the officer replied as she examined the shaven cranium. "The vicar was famous for his shock of red hair."

"Like he was on fire," added the funeral director, a wizened little man who had apparently forgotten to fish his dentures out of a glass this morning. "He was a flamer, he was."

"An interesting coinage," Nolan mused.

Constable Rock helped him to cover the body of the former vicar of the island with a plastic sheet. "You'll find out soon enough that the vicar, at least this side of the Bristol channel, was not universally admired. Rather the reverse, I'm afraid."

"They applied the razor a bit too high, if you ask me," grumbled Mrs. Puffin, the tiny wife of the mortician, as she hobbled into the morgue with a duster blazing. Her apron was a veritable arsenal of cleaning fluids, brushes and applications with which she began to squirt, spray and scrub as she made her way about the metal trolleys, basins, and tools of her husband's grim profession.

"That's enough, Maude," said her husband peremptorily, but whether he meant her comments or the cleaning was unclear.

 "He was a braggart, he was. And lazy too. There's nothing worse that sloth, if you ask me," she affirmed, raising a dust brush on high. "And that's just the beginning of the man's catalogue of sins. With Mr. Longmire, they fitted the devil with a white collar."

Inspector Nolan turned to the youthful constable with the bright jade green eyes. She too had red hair, he surmised, from the wisps that had slipped from under her helmet. "What else is odd about the case so far?"

"He was found bobbing in the tide on the West coast of the island. Beneath an outcropping called Devil's Slide. Somehow, I don't think that was entirely coincidental."

"Highly ironic, at least," said Nolan.

"Highly fitting," said Mrs. Puffin with a nod.

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