He realised he must have passed out for a second or two and was overwhelmed at her solicitude. But the doctor in him was shocked to find her kneeling on the ground in her present condition.
'Are you all right?' she asked, all anxiety. 'My God, what a fall it was. Spectacular!'
'Mrs Sieverance, please.' He struggled to sit upright, sucking in great mouthfuls of air. 'Kneeling. You mustn't… I'm fine. Fine.'
He felt woolly, stupid, his head both thick and light at the same moment. 'I'm so sorry,' he managed to go on. 'Your library steps.'
She was leaning forward now, taking her weight on her arms. He tried not to notice the way her breasts were forced to fall forward and push against her bodice as she turned on all fours to examine the library steps. He pushed himself over; he did not feel capable of standing just yet. Her fingers sifted crumbs of wood.
'Ant borings. It would have happened to the next person to stand on it.' She smiled at him. 'It might even have been me. You've saved me again, Doctor.'
That tone again. 'You must let me repair it,' he said quickly. 'Dr Quiroga knows the best carpenters.'
'Oh, it's not important.'
'But you said -'
'It's only a thing, after all. Someone owned it before me, someone will own it after. I'm only borrowing it really. We all are. We all get too attached to possessions, to things. They cannot be possessed, utterly, like food or wine. They are only on loan to us, these things we so cherish.'
This little heartfelt speech silenced him.
'That's very true,' he said, dully. 'But I'm still very sorry.'
'Perhaps you could help me up.'
Carriscant stood, slowly, and offered his hands. She took them. She took them…
'I think you'll have to come behind me,' she said. 'The muscles in my stomach-'
'Perhaps we should call the maid?'
'Dr Carriscant, please.'
He stepped round behind her as she raised her arms to accommodate his hands, which he fitted into the warm hollow of her armpits. He felt the big muscle, pectoralis major, clench on his forefingers as he lifted her up, taking her full weight (no slip of a girl this, he realised), and raised her from the floor. She stood and he quickly fetched her sticks.
'There,' she said, a curious smile on her face. 'What drama! The returning of a book, who would have thought it would lead to all this?'
He wanted then to declare his love, to seize her hand and tell her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, that every gesture, every animated facet of her being irradiated him with longing. He wanted to press his lips to hers and taste the violets on her tongue.
His face was immobile. He blinked. A headache was starting. A shoulder muscle was in spasm.
'I'm so sorry about the steps,' he repeated. 'I insist on sending for them. Quiroga will know the right man.'
'You've got dust on your coat,' she said and reached forward to slap his thigh with her fingers, lightly cuffing the dust away.
He felt indescribably puny, wholly unmanned. He had to leave.
She followed him to the top of the stairs as he made his farewells. Her smile was still ambiguous, a sense of power seemed to be emanating from her, he thought, of someone now perfectly in control. But how? Why? What had happened to bring this about? His clumsiness? His stunned, faltering behaviour? He walked out into the rain, enjoying the drenching he was receiving, his hair soon slick, drops of water running down his hot face, not looking back. As he walked along the road to Quapo, to the bodegon where Constancio was waiting with his carriage, the questions nagged at him again. As far as he could tell he had behaved, before and after the fall, with absolute propriety, had been the very model of polite discretion. So why did she act as if she knew something he did not? The balance of this relationship had altered markedly, he thought, with a small thrill of foreboding: the weight had swung to favour her.
SCALPEL
The woman's body lay face down in a small vigorous torrent, swollen by the rains that ran into the Tatuban estero. The stream was some way to the north of the city, between the Dagupan railroad and the Santa Cruz racecourse. Carriscant looked around him: they were barely a mile from Intramuros and yet all around them was bushy scrub and marshy fields under low pewtery clouds. It was a depressing scene, drear. Drear was the perfect word, he thought. Or drookit, a good Scottish word, except that had connotations of cold and here it was warm and steamy. The rain pattered steadily against his hat and yellow slicker. Bobby, beside him, held an umbrella above his head and not far off half a dozen native constables stood by stoically, soaked through.
'This track here leads to Tondo,' Bobby said, pointing, then swivelled round. 'Go the other way and you get to the Chinese hospital.'
'Is she Chinese?'
'Mestiza, I think. We can't identify her. Chances are she's from Tondo.'
The woman was unshod and her clothes were mean and worn. Carriscant shrugged. 'Tondo. It could take you months to find out who she was, if at all.'
'We got to try,' Bobby said tersely.
Carriscant frowned: Bobby was not in a good mood-understandable, perhaps, but he could not see why he had been summoned. 'Is there anything I can do?' he asked.
Bobby signalled to the constables to move the body from the streambed and turned away and offered Carriscant a cigar which, for once, he accepted. They dithered and fussed over the lighting process, Carriscant taking three damp matches and Bobby two. Carriscant exhaled smoke, looking out over the drab scene. The cigar was cheap, tasted dry, of straw, hot on the back of his throat, an odd contrast as everything he saw spelled 'cool': grey skies, muddy greens, rain, waterlogged ground. He felt he was breathing in tepid consomme. Under his shiny raincoat he felt completely damp, hot and damp.
Bobby blew on the end of his cigar and said, 'I think it's the same fellow.'
'What do you mean?'
'Same person killed her as killed Ward and Braun.'
Bobby led him over to the four-wheeled wagon where the woman was now laid out. She was young, not much more than twenty-five, Carriscant guessed, her face covered in smallpox scars. She looked thin and malnourished and the right side of her muslin blouse was torn. As Bobby lifted her arm Carriscant saw, through the rip, the rough puckered slit of a knife wound between her fourth and fifth ribs.
'Stabbed in the heart,' Bobby said. 'And like the others found in or near water at the site of Filipino or American lines as they were on 4 February 1899.'
'Who was up here?' Carriscant said, surprised.
'First Montana.'
Carriscant was sceptical. 'If she'd been a dead American soldier, I'd grant you your supposition. But she's a peasant, a sick peasant too, I'd wager, from a Tondo slum. And there's no L-shaped wound.'
Bobby's hand went into his pocket and drew something out. He showed it to Carriscant: it was a scalpel. Carriscant took it.
'We found it by the body, just on the bank there,' Bobby said.
It was a Merck and Frankl scalpel, heavy duty, with a strong two-inch-long bevelled blade, Carriscant saw.
'It's what we call a straight, sharp-pointed bistoury. Not for precision work. It's a common make,' Carriscant said, returning it.
'We figure the murderer was surprised. Otherwise I'm sure we'd have an L-shaped wound and a missing heart.'
'But why a woman? Why a slum dweller?'
