“You’re kidding!” TJ exclaimed.
“With dignity, of course,” Haddon added.
“We could bury him right in the compound,” Arlo volunteered, earning a surprised glance from Haddon. It was not common for Arlo to address the director without having been spoken to first. “In the northeast corner, where Lambert used to bury his garbage. Nobody uses it anymore.”
“Do I understand you to be volunteering for the assignment?” Haddon asked.
“I-I only meant that I agree with you.”
“I can’t begin to tell you,” said Haddon, “what a source of comfort that is to me.”
Jerry, who had been going quietly through his pipe-lighting ritual, exhaled a lungful of fragrant smoke and shook out the match. “Dr. Haddon, we’ve got a corpse right in our backyard. We don’t know who he was, we don’t know how he died, and we don’t know what he was doing here. The police have to be called. There’s no two ways about it.”
Haddon wavered. Despite the coolness he dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “I take your point, Jerry,” he said with surprising mildness, “but I hardly see any hurry-”
“And don’t forget, Ragheb knows all about it.”
“And if Ragheb knows, everybody knows,” TJ said.
Haddon opened his mouth to reply, closed it again, and arrived at a decision he didn’t like. “Yes, all right, you’re probably right,” he said, wearily passing a hand over his eyes. The Scotches had finally caught up with him. “We’ll call them from the house.” He made a frustrated little gesture with the flashlight, pointing the way for their return. They went back the way they’d come, with Haddon in the lead and Arlo bringing up the rear.