The second stack of papers on Day’s desk was for cases that seemed on the surface to be dead ends. Either there were no witnesses or the injured parties were criminals themselves or, in many cases, Little had hit upon a false trail and Day could not see from his scant notes where to go from there. At first, few case notes went into this pile, but it grew disproportionately larger as Day grew more tired and disillusioned.
The remains of a newborn baby had been found behind an apartment wall, again in Highgate. It wasn’t uncommon for a couple to hide the miscarried evidence of a tryst, but Kingsley’s preliminary examination had led him to believe that the baby was buried after it was born, which made it murder. The couple currently living in the flat didn’t seem suspicious, and there was no evidence that they’d ever had a child. Moreover, they’d brought the matter to police after discovering the tiny body, which would seem to point to their innocence. According to the landlady, there had been a young woman living in the apartment some years before, but Little had found no leads on her current whereabouts. Day initially put the file in the stack of cases to be looked into, but as the evening went on, he withdrew it and moved it to the “dead end” pile.
Many other cases joined it there…
A boy named Fenn had been stolen from his front yard while playing. There were no witnesses, and Little had made a notation indicating that he might make inquiries among local chimney sweeps to see if the boy had been nabbed as a climber. Day couldn’t see that Little had ever followed up on his own suggestion, and the case seemed hopeless considering how many children disappeared every year.
A prostitute had been cut and strangled to death in the East End, and Little had made an alarming one-word notation: Ripper? But there was nothing to indicate that Jack the Ripper had returned to haunt the city, and the modus operandi was entirely different. The woman’s purse had been stolen, never a motivation for Saucy Jack. The case was clearly unsolvable unless Day wanted to devote all his energy to it.
A third pile was for cases that might have some bearing on Little’s death. This was the hardest criterion to judge for, but it was the reason he and Blacker were there.
“I might have something,” Blacker said.
“Little’s killer?”
“I don’t know. Listen: This man, John Robinson, was found in his bathtub with his hands and ankles bound and his beard shaved off. The razor was also used to slit his throat and was then left in the washbasin, covered in blood.”
“Good Lord.”
“Indeed. The man’s whiskers floated all about him in the bathwater.”
“Was he shaved before or after he was killed?”
“I think that would be impossible to say except that … wait.”
Blacker paused to continue reading the notes Little had left behind.
“Kingsley cut the victim up and determined that Robinson was already dead when his throat was slashed.”
“How was he killed?”
“His lungs were full of water. He drowned.”
“So the killer slashed the throat of a corpse.”
“And here, your question is answered. Bits of his whiskers were found in his lungs as well. So he was shaved before he was drowned.”
“And he was drowned before his throat was cut.”
“Someone bound him, shaved him, pushed him under the water, and then cut him open from ear to ear with the same razor used to shave him.”
The two men looked at each other across the cluttered desk. Blacker’s eyes were wide with excitement.
“Did Little have a clue?” Day said. “Was he on the trail of the killer?”
Blacker went back to reading, moving quickly through the file, flipping pages over as he read. Day waited patiently. It didn’t take long. Little had left them only six pages of notes on the case.
“There isn’t a lot here. A bloody handprint on the bathroom tile and a smashed pocket watch that was stopped at midnight.”
“Bizarre.”
“And attention-seeking, don’t you think?”
Day nodded. “Quite. So if Little was close to finding this killer-”
“Even if he wasn’t. Whoever did this might have been watching Little, rather than the other way around.”
“And killed him.”
“Both bodies were ill-treated.”
“In different ways.”
“But strange ways.”
Day tapped on a stack of case files. “Let’s keep looking.”
“This is it, Day. Don’t you think so?”
“It could very well be. But we should sift through the rest of this just in case.”
Blacker pursed his lips and returned to the files in front of him, but he appeared reluctant, and Day could tell that he wasn’t really reading anymore. Finally Blacker stopped and leaned forward.
“I want to talk to Kingsley about this,” he said.
“As do I, but Kingsley is most likely home in bed.”
“True.”
“And if we can sort out the rest of these files, we can both go home to our own beds.”
“Point taken.”
The two detectives read in silence for a few more minutes.
“The killer may have changed his methods because he wasn’t able to lure Little near enough to a bathtub,” Blacker said.
“Pardon?”
“I can’t stop mulling it over, the possible connections between the two murders.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a reason Little’s desk was located far from mine.”
“Was Little … Was he disliked?”
“Disliked? I wouldn’t say so. But few of us associated closely with him. It was unpleasant to be too near him.”
“In what way?”
“He was somewhat … odiferous.”
“He smelled bad?”
“Quite. When I first found you here this evening, I thought that Little had returned from the grave. That box you had in here smelled very much like him.”
“Could he have been killed for that? For a lack of hygiene?”
“What, by someone with hyperactive nostrils?”
“Perhaps by a neighbor who tired of his scent?”
“A neighbor who was so tired of his scent that he killed the man, sewed shut his eyes and his mouth-but not his nose, mind you-and pounded his limp body into the bottom of a steamer trunk, then dragged that trunk to the train station?”
“It does sound ridiculous.”
“No, I agree that it might be worth following up with the neighbors. After all, I’m the one who brought up his body odor in the first place. I’m simply laying it all out to look at. There’s no part of this case that isn’t ridiculous in the most morbid way. A foul body odor is as likely a motivation as any, I suppose.”
“Not for a sane man.”
“What sane man does any of these things?” Blacker indicated the mounting stacks of case files on the desk. “If all men were sane, we would be blacksmiths.”
“I believe I would be a lord to the manor born.”
“Ah, well, if we have that much choice in the matter…”
Blacker chuckled and they hurried through the rest of their files. There was nothing else in Little’s files as promising as the beard-hater who had killed John Robinson twice in the same bathtub.
“Listen,” Day said. “Whoever killed Robinson, if he killed Little, too, what if he killed others? There are dozens of unsolved murders here.”
“You mean he’s like the Ripper, he kills again and again?”
“I know it’s a horrible thought, but…”
The idea of someone who killed from habit and need was a relatively new one and something the detectives weren’t prepared to deal with. Murder was usually between spouses or involved money. Crimes of passion were frequent. Prostitutes were killed, bankers bludgeoned, landladies buried alive. Madness was sometimes a factor, but madmen were most often public and demonstrative about their crimes. The Ripper had been something new. He had killed in secret and for no apparent reason. He had done it again and again with impunity.