“Yes. She was painted like a Parisian tart.”
“When I wiped them off her face, I found burns under her nose and around her lips.”
“Chloroform,” Barker stated. “It burns the skin.”
“Indeed. There was no facial burning in the other cases according to our records, but I still believe chloroform was used, though not directly on the skin. It might have been in a folded handkerchief. I assume the killer had either changed his method of capturing his victims or perhaps the girl struggled and came in contact with the chloroform itself. But then, as I continued the postmortem, another theory occurred to me. Perhaps Miss DeVere was sensitive. I believe she had a reaction to the chemical used.”
“Why do you think that?” Barker asked.
“Because she had a reaction to something else. It’s all here.” He began rustling through the papers. “No, I think it would be best if you saw it on the corpse itself.”
Oh, no, I thought, as we were taken to another room and directed to a still form on a table. The resident lifted back the sheet, exposing the girl’s face. It truly was a girl’s face now, not a child painted to look like an adult. Her skin was clear and pale, and there was a purpling of the upper lip, a smudge like a thumbprint. Then, like a stage magician doing a trick, Dr. Trent whisked away the sheet.
There was a purpling across her entire torso. It formed lines across her body from the right hip to the throat, down to the left hip, from there across to the right shoulder, back to the left shoulder, and down to the right hip again, lines forming the shape of a star. The first thing I thought when I saw the marks was that she had been used in some sort of witchcraft or unholy ritual.
“Do you know what might have left these lines?” Barker prodded.
“It had washed off in the tide, but I found traces of it. It was common whitewash. I believe she had a reaction to the lime. Her skin was so sensitive it left the marks behind, you see.”
“What are these random marks on the stomach?” I asked.
“Those are very interesting. They are burns also, but not like the others. They left a residue. Wax. Candle wax, to be precise. And this thin mark just under the breastbone is a bruise. She was struck by something small there, no more than a few centimeters long. It can’t have hurt her much. Death was due to manual strangulation, like the other girls.”
“May I?” Barker asked. He reached forward and placed his thumbs on the bruises where her killer’s thumbs had been, then slid his fingers around. Whoever the killer was, he had hands smaller than my employer.
“He took a souvenir, like the others,” I noted.
“Yes, the index finger on the right hand at the first knuckle. It was a clean cut, shears of some sort, I would say. The wound was not ragged.”
The slight pressure of Barker’s fingers on the corpse’s neck was enough to force a small sigh from the corpse’s cold lips. The three of us sprang back, but it proved to be a normal reaction. All the same, Dr. Trent settled the sheet around her, unconsciously tucking it in as if she had been merely asleep. Barker continued to regard her while I copied notes from the file into my notebook.
“Has Inspector Swanson read your report?” Barker asked.
“No, sir, not yet.”
“That’s a mercy, at least.”
“Might we borrow that report?” I asked.
Trent shook his head, and Barker looked at me. “Why do you ask?”
“I thought it might give us something to bargain with.”
Signing out at the morgue desk, we walked several streets to the Basin Docks and counted seagulls. I bought a penny loaf from a street vendor, and we spent the next half hour breaking it into bits and tossing it into the water while the gulls cartwheeled and dived after them.
“Ho’s?” he asked, clapping the crumbs from his fingers.
We weren’t more than a few streets from the tearoom where Barker’s Chinese friend conducted business and collected information.
“I could not eat, sir.”
“No food. Just tea.”
Barker and I walked along the waterfront until we found ourselves in the narrow lane leading to the anonymous door, and then we went down the stairs and under the Thames before finally fetching up in Ho’s establishment. As usual, it was filled with a secretive crowd. The smoke from several cigars and the smell of food made me nauseous, but after a cup of tea, I felt a little better.
Ho came out of the kitchen and regarded us from under hooded eyes. Perhaps “regard” is too positive a word. He is large and squat, with brawny naked arms covered in tattoos, and an apron tied around his thick waist. He has a shaved forehead and earlobes full of rings that hang to his shoulder. I felt like a cockroach he was deciding how to squash. Then he spoke directly to me, which is almost unprecedented.
“You boxer now.”
Ho could speak English flawlessly, but the more malevolent he feels the more pidgin English he uses.
“Yes,” I said. “I had a challenge given me. But how did you know?”
Ho shrugged, which was the closest I’d get to an explanation. He turned to Barker. “Girl is dead. That makes several, right?”
Barker nodded.
“These girls’ blood cries out from the grave. You must find this man.”
“I am trying.”
“Try harder.”
I cannot believe the things Ho says to Barker and gets away with. If I’d said that to him, I’d have found myself on the ground with the heel of his boot between my collar stays. With Ho, the remark merely merited a slight rise of the eyebrows.
“Help me, then.”
“What do you need?”
“I believe a group of some sort is practicing satanic rituals in London-young English maidens sacrificed on an altar as a spectacle for others.”
“Ritual,” Ho repeated. “You mean devil worship. Christian, one God, one devil, neh? I must consult archives. Come.”
He led us through the kitchen into his office, which is dominated by a desk with the legs sawn off. As we sat on the cushions in front of the desk, he moved behind to a wall with a giant silk tapestry covered in dragons and demure Chinese maidens. He pressed a spot and a small door opened in the center of the tapestry. Then the Chinaman pulled out a ledger and settled himself behind the desk. He opened the book and began scanning pages, moving from top to bottom, for it was written in Chinese.
“Give me more information first,” he said.
“The girl was found yesterday, so presumably she was killed on Friday. Friday seems a fitting day for a Satanic ritual. I don’t believe these are serious occultists, however. More likely they are rakes amusing themselves with halfclad maids while a great deal of alcohol is consumed.”
Ho nodded and began to study the ledger as I shifted on my pillow. I could never get comfortable cross-legged. European limbs are not built for such positions. In the kitchen behind us, the cooks and waiters bawled out orders to one another in Mandarin or Cantonese.
“Two young English come in here two Fridays ago,” Ho said, looking down at his ledger. “Both had been drinking. One said, ‘His lordship throws quite a party.’ Other says, ‘Too much flash-bang and rituals for my taste, but the girls were choice.’ Then they place order and talk of other things.”
“‘His lordship,’” Barker murmured, “that doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“Sorry,” Ho said, with a look that said he was not sorry at all. “I will start asking men to please speak in full sentences and identify those of whom they speak.”
“Do your waiters listen in on every conversation?” I asked.
“Only ones that seem important,” the Chinaman replied, giving me what I call his dyspeptic-Buddha expression.
“What do you do with the information?” I said, ignoring Barker’s warning look.
“Whatever I think best. Most of the time, nothing. Sometimes tell, sometimes sell.”
“To whom do you sell it?”
“Alla time question man. Who? What? When? Where? Shi Shi Ji, send this boy to a temple. Teach him to listen twice, talk once. Maybe never!”