I swallowed, trying to keep my voice level. ‘Since you’re obviously still following me closely, you’ll know that I’ve only been here twenty minutes at most. This man has been dead for hours – look at the limbs.’
‘Hm.’ Paget tucked his gloves into his belt and gave the body a cursory prod. ‘The widow downstairs is extremely observant, you know. People up and down these stairs all afternoon, according to her. She’s naturally alarmed by so much activity in the rooms of her murdered neighbour. I’ve had to leave one of my servants to reassure her.’
My heart dropped. So he had brought reinforcements; of course he had. He had planned this with care.
‘What an undignified way to go,’ he remarked, still looking at Joseph’s naked back. ‘How was he killed?’
I turned to him. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’
‘I?’ He held my gaze. ‘I am not a physician.’ I continued to look at him in silence; after a few moments he nodded, as if making a concession. ‘Very well. I will hazard a guess.’ He leaned over to examine the dead man’s face, pulled up one of the eyelids, shone his candle on the throat. ‘Garrotted, I would say.’
‘With what?’
He raised a shoulder. ‘How should I know? Something broad and soft, there’s not much of a mark. A scarf, perhaps, or a stocking.’
I stared at him. ‘Wait.’ I lifted the shirt from the chair and drew out the silk stockings that had been left folded in the pile. I held them up to the light. They were long, the kind held up around the thigh with a garter. More usual under the velvet or satin breeches of a court dandy than beneath a friar’s robe, but I recalled that at San Domenico the aristocratic young brothers had liked to indulge in finery under their habits as a reminder of their status – the inverse of a hair shirt. Most striking about this pair, though, was that a knot had been tied approximately halfway along.
‘He tried to pull at the ligature as he was strangled – he made his neck bleed. There – look.’ I pointed; the stockings were spotted with blood and snagged, where the fabric had been torn by frantic nails. ‘I’ll be damned. Killed with his own stockings.’ I stretched them between my hands at either end; there was not much give in the material. ‘You’d think they’d be too flimsy,’ I murmured, half to myself.
‘Not necessarily,’ Paget said, taking them from my hands and studying them. He appeared to be giving the matter serious consideration. ‘Not if you had a stick.’
‘A stick?’
‘To make a tourniquet.’ He held his fingers about six inches apart to indicate. ‘A stick or baton, this sort of length. Get the loop around the victim’s neck, twist the ends together, insert the stick and turn it. Tightens instantly without the killer needing to use much force. Then the knot crushes the windpipe.’ He wound a stocking once around his wrist and mimed a rotating action with a finger.
I looked at him, almost impressed. ‘You seem very familiar with the technique.’ The distance between his fingers was about the length of the penknife I had found.
He gave a dry laugh and tossed the stockings back to me. ‘I dare say you and I are both conversant with skills that might surprise polite society. One has to learn certain tricks to survive, in our business.’
‘How to garrotte a man with a tourniquet?’
‘Not something I’ve put into practice, but I understand the theory.’
‘So it seems.’
A silence elapsed. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, eventually. His moustache twitched with a smile. ‘You think I did it?’
‘You knew Joseph was not coming to Brinkley’s shop this afternoon.’ I spoke slowly to give myself time to formulate my thoughts. ‘I wondered how you could have been so sure. You’ve coordinated all this. Did you arrange to meet him here, with the promise of helping him escape?’ I laid the stockings on the chair and continued to back away from him, towards the door. ‘Was that why you got me out of the Conciergerie last night – because you were planning for me to take the blame all along?’ I could hear the pitch of my voice rising and broke off; I must remain in control. I was acutely aware of the danger I was now in. Paget laughed.
‘I’m flattered that you think I’m so capable, Bruno, but I must say you’re beginning to sound a little overwrought.’ He took a step back, so that he blocked my way to the door. ‘I knew Joseph would not come to Brinkley’s because I understand how those networks operate. Lefèvre was the go-between. Joseph would never have turned up himself – that’s not how things are done. But you’re right to think that you are in serious trouble. I could send for the watch right away. You’d be arrested like that.’ He snapped his fingers and grinned. ‘Especially with him naked. Everyone knows what you friars are like.’
I didn’t smile. ‘So what is stopping you?’
He leaned his weight on his right foot, allowing his hand to rest gently on the hilt of his sword as he eyed me with apparent indifference. ‘Because I know that you know more than you are telling, and this death means I cannot afford to indulge you any longer. It’s time you and I paid a visit.’
I could guess where he had in mind.
‘And if I refuse?’
He shook his head, as if my answer had disappointed him. He placed two fingers between his lips and produced a short but piercing whistle. The door opened instantly to reveal the
