“Now, I asked you to remind me of something,” Kingsley said.
“You did?”
Hammersmith looked up from the notebook. Behind the table, with its ghastly banquet, a gasogene bubbled quietly. The green liquid inside it cast a faint sickly glow over the immediate surroundings. An enormous jar on the back counter held a pair of thick rubbery babies, joined at the skull. A man’s face floated in another jar, the skin pulled taut with nearly invisible wires. Hammersmith could see the man’s eyelashes and upper teeth, all carefully preserved.
The girl, seemingly oblivious to the horrors surrounding her, was bent over her tablet of paper, a chunk of charcoal in one hand. Her light-colored hair shimmered with green highlights. Hammersmith felt seasick.
“Yes,” Kingsley said. “I distinctly remember asking you to remind me of something.”
“What was it?”
“I put it out of my head because you were going to bring it back up.”
“Oh.”
“Well, come on, man.”
“Sheer,” the girl said. “You mentioned the word sheer as you rolled the policeman over.”
Her voice was flat and soft, and she never looked up from her tablet of paper. Hammersmith moved closer and peered over her shoulder. She had sketched the body and was carefully noting the positions and sizes of Little’s wounds on her drawing. Hammersmith thought the likeness was amazing.
“Yes. Yes, thank you, my dear. That’s what you’ll be looking for, Hammersmith. The weapon.”
The doctor stared at Hammersmith, who shifted his weight to his right foot and licked his lips. He wasn’t sure what Kingsley wanted from him.
“The weapon?” Hammersmith said.
Kingsley smiled and nodded. “Just so,” he said. “Of course, it’s generally impossible to determine the type of instrument used in a stabbing death. I can often tell you how long a blade was, if there happens to be a secondary wound made by a hand guard. That sort of thing can point conclusively to the length of the blade.”
Hammersmith nodded, but he didn’t write in his notebook.
“But this,” Kingsley said, “this is a slightly different matter. First, you’ve no doubt seen for yourself that there are no incision wounds.”
Kingsley’s eyes gleamed in the room’s greenish glow, and Hammersmith didn’t see any point in correcting him. Hammersmith hadn’t noticed anything about the wounds because he had tried hard not to look directly at them. Kingsley went on.
“Every wound on the inspector’s body is a stab wound. No blade was ever drawn across his flesh. When we couple that fact with my theory that this was a first-time killer, it becomes remarkable. Was there no hesitation on his part, no stuttering of the blade before it plunged in? And there is ample evidence of a struggle, so why aren’t Little’s hands cut? We know he tried to stop his attacker.”
Kingsley indicated Little’s right hand, gesturing for Hammersmith to lean in for a better look.
“You see? But that is only our first clue as to the murder weapon. Now here…”
Kingsley swept his hand across the small table behind him until he found a short ruler. He measured several of the larger wounds. He set the ruler down next to the body and pried one of the wounds open with his fingers, bending over Little’s torso.
“Rigor should leave the body within the next few hours, and then I’ll be able to get in there and tell you more, but even now…”
He worked a finger deep inside the body and nodded to himself.
“As I thought. Here we have our second clue. Those wounds that measure the same width across-in other words, those that were inflicted late in the attack and were the deepest, using the entirety of the blade-those wounds taper within the body. Do you see?”
Hammersmith shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Kingsley sighed and frowned at Hammersmith. A teacher addressing a slow student.
“The weapon used here was shaped like a spade, sharp at its pointed end, but widening as it neared the handle. And it had no blade. Or, if it did have a blade, that sharp edge was covered or otherwise protected, which is why we find no slashes on the detective’s body, only stab wounds.”
“So he was killed with a spade? No, he was killed with a pair of shears, wasn’t he? That’s what you’re getting at.”
Kingsley beamed at him. “Exactly. The detective inspector was stabbed repeatedly with a pair of shears. They were closed at the time.”
He picked up the scissors he had used to cut Little’s shirt off and turned them around to hold them under the handles, bringing his hand down above the body in a stabbing motion.
“Like this,” he said.
Hammersmith wrote in the little black notebook, his pencil flying across the pages.
“So what do you think? We’re looking for a gardener perhaps?”
The doctor smiled. “No,” he said. “Well, yes, it’s possible, but I believe that if you couple the discovery of the shears with the needle and the two colors of thread that were found with the body…”
“Yes?”
“The killer was not gardening, but was sewing something right before the attack.”
“Of course. Sewing. Could it have been a woman, do you think?”
“It’s possible. A great deal of force was used, but a woman’s fury may sometimes increase her strength to an amazing degree.”
“So Little might have surprised his killer while she was darning something, or otherwise going about her household chores?”
“I’ve only just started examining the body, but I wouldn’t discount the notion. Though we musn’t forget that button you found. It would seem to point to someone who was making or repairing a piece of furniture.”
“A furniture maker?”
“Or an upholsterer, perhaps. It’s not definitive by any means. The button may have been in the bottom of the trunk before Mr Little was placed there. Or he might have grabbed at an upholstered chair as he fell, pulling the button off. There’s really no way to say.”
“It’s a clue, nonetheless.”
“I will try to have more results for you as soon as I can, but at the moment, we’ve narrowed the list of suspects to furniture makers, tailors, seamstresses, nurses…”
“Doctors.”
“Hmm. Yes, I suppose so. And virtually every housewife in London.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I’m afraid there are too many wives in the city to question them all, but I will recommend that someone pay a visit to Detective Inspector Little’s widow right away.”
“It’s a place to start.”
7
The house in Kentish Town at the edge of London proper was well beyond the salary of a Scotland Yard detective. It had been a gift from Claire’s parents, a belated wedding present, bestowed upon Mr and Mrs Day upon their move to London. Day hated it. He wanted to provide for his wife, not take handouts from his in-laws.
Day often wished, for his wife’s sake, that she had married a man who might provide for her in ways Day knew he never could. A man of wealth and taste and social standing. He knew that she had been wooed by better suitors than himself.
There had, as usual, been no available police wagons when Day had left the Yard, and so he had stood on the footboard of an omnibus for more than an hour. His legs hurt and the muscles in his left arm were sore from clenching and unclenching against the railing as the horses had clomped their way across ruts in the dirt and cobblestones.
When he arrived home, his forehead immediately beaded with sweat and he removed his hat and his jacket. The weather was unseasonably warm, but Claire had recently learned to light a fire and practiced the new skill every day. The parlor was stifling. Claire sat in a high-backed chair facing the hearth. When she heard the door, she dropped her sewing and ran to him.
“I’ve missed you today.”