Chapter Six
‘Judas Priest,’ Munro muttered.
The smell burst out to meet them as if under pressure. Denton recognized blood and decay; memories of battle-fields flitted down his mind, then an image of a short man he had shotgunned who had bled seemingly everywhere.
‘You were at the post-mortem,’ Guillam said. ‘You know what to expect.’
Stella Minter had died in a room only big enough to hold her bed, a rickety chair, a stand that held a chamber pot, and a curtained area no wider than her shoulders, where her few clothes hung. High in the wall opposite the bed, in that part of the house that jutted forward beyond its neighbour, was an oval window, the long axis vertical, a piece of cloth pinned over it for a curtain. Guillam now tried to pull it aside and managed to pull it down.
‘Touch nothing,’ Guillam said.
‘Anything been removed?’ Munro muttered.
‘Not supposed to’ve been.’ Guillam pulled several folded sheets of paper from some inner pocket and handed it over without looking. Munro opened them and Denton, coming behind him, moved closer and waited for somebody to object. Nobody did. He saw at the top of the paper in a neat hand, ‘
Guillam was lighting the only gas lamp, in the wall above the bed, which had been fitted with a polished reflector that made the light briefly painful. When Guillam was finished, he closed the door, making a shooing gesture at somebody outside.
She had been killed on the bed, and most of her blood had soaked into the sheets and the mattress. Some blood, now dry, also lay on the wood floor like ink.
‘She was laying this way, feet towards the door,’ Guillam said. He sliced his right hand through the air, index finger up, palm to the left, parallel to the long axis of the bed. ‘Legs were partly drawn up, arms-’ He scrabbled for another paper. ‘Got the City Police drawing somewhere-’ He unfolded it — a stick figure on a rectangle. The arms were above the head. ‘Could have arranged the body somewhat, our killer could. One foot off the end of the bed a little; maybe moved her, or maybe that’s just the way she placed herself.’ He glanced up at Denton. ‘Notion is that he was a customer and all she was wearing was the wrapper; she opens the door, lets him in, lays herself down, and there you are.’
‘He hit her in the face,’ Denton said. ‘Twice.’ He met Guillam’s stolid look. ‘Post-mortem — two contusions on the right side.’
‘Report didn’t say that
‘Somebody she knew?’ Denton said.
‘Wouldn’t have to be somebody she knew; she was a cheap toss, move them along and get them out, next chap in. Except this one killed her. What you driving at?’
‘Nothing. Only if she knew him, it would have been easier for him. Where’s the wrapper?’
All three looked at the inventory, then at the floor. Guillam muttered, ‘Damn them,’ and got on his knees and looked under the bed. He got up breathing hard, brushing his knees, muttering, ‘Mistakes, mistakes-’ He looked at the list again. ‘Must’ve been taken as evidence.’
‘Why that?’
‘Blowed if I know.’
‘Anything else taken as evidence?’
Guillam looked at him. ‘You ask a lot of questions, you do.’ Surprisingly, he grinned. ‘Yeah, they took the washbowl, the soap dish and the pitcher because the killer might have handled them. Washing himself. Find maybe blood on them or his fingers’ marks. Don’t think much of the finger-mark business — not much to it.’ He was going through the sheets. The last one was headed ‘Seized for evidence at 7-A Priory Close Alley’ and listed the toilet articles and the wrapper. ‘Bit sloppy, putting the wrapper down twice. Damn them.’
Denton was trying to picture the jet of blood from the severed carotid artery. It would have sprayed the murderer, apparently had also sprayed the wall at the head of the bed. There was a line of blood down the wall beside the bed, as well, as if one spurt had struck it. Had he rolled her that way? Or had Stella Minter moved? He thought of the corpse he had seen at Bart’s, the stab wounds in the breasts and the tearing incisions in the pelvis. Parmentier with one leg up on the table, miming intercourse and cutting her throat. ‘He must have been drenched with blood,’ he said. The two detectives looked at him. ‘Even if he wore an overcoat — it would have been all over him.’
‘He may have killed her from behind, then arranged her after.’
‘What, while she was standing?’
‘Yeah, a big man, easy to do — reach around, he’s holding her with his other arm.’
‘He’s left-handed, then. Post-mortem made it pretty clear how the cut was made — right side of her throat to the left.’ He hesitated. ‘Mulcahy said he — the man he knew — murdered a woman while he was inside her.’ Again, the two detectives looked at him, their faces unreadable. ‘Killing from the front, his clothes’d have been covered with blood. Wouldn’t have taken his clothes off, I suppose. Wash himself afterwards, or at least wipe himself down. Maybe with the wrapper?’
‘“Mulcahy said.”’ Guillam folded up the inventory. ‘Your Mulcahy was talking about something donkey’s years ago, and anyway he made it up, if you ask me.’
‘That’s what he said, that it was long ago.’
‘You got Mulcahy on the brain, excuse my rudeness, sir.’ Guillam winked at Munro, who turned away. Guillam looked back at Denton, saw that he’d seen the wink, moved his whole torso inside the big tweed coat in what might have been a shrug. ‘I’m about done here,’ he said.
Munro was moving slowly around the outside of the room, apparently studying the bed and avoiding the stain on the floor. Denton, feeling that he didn’t want the visit to be wasted, began to look at the walls. What had he missed? He looked at the ceiling — cracks, discoloration, a moulding that ended halfway along the wall nearest the bed and reappeared on the front wall as if there had once been an opening there, now closed in.
‘No opening into the house?’ he said. Guillam, staring at the dress, shook his head.
‘Used to be.’That got no response. ‘What’s over there?’
‘Number Seven — lodging house,’ Munro said. ‘Nobody heard anything. Nobody saw anything. Right, Georgie?’
‘Nobody, nobody, nobody,’ Guillam muttered.
Denton looked at the walls. Nothing — more cracks, more discoloration. Over the head of the bed, an engraving from a magazine of two young women, one praying and one ascending up what appeared to be a beam of light. Halfway down the bed, on the near wall parallel to it, a reverse painting on glass, much the worse for wear, of a castle in an exaggerated mountain setting. Denton stepped across the stain as Munro had done and worked his way down the narrow space between the bed and the wall to study the blood-splashed picture. ‘Balmoral’ was painted on a grey-green lawn that swept away from the castle, most of whose middle had flaked away, leaving a dark hole where the royal apartments might have been. Denton leaned closer.
‘Mr Sherlock Holmes has found a clue,’ he heard Guillam say.
If he hadn’t said it, Denton might have spoken up. Instead, anger rising, he pushed his hands into his overcoat pockets and stared some seconds longer into the bowels of Balmoral and then turned back to the room, silent about what he’d seen. ‘Not waiting for me, I hope,’ he said.
Guillam was grinning. ‘An admirer of Mr Sherlock Holmes, are you?’
Denton was still standing behind the bloodstained bed. ‘I think it’s claptrap.’
‘You astonish me.’
‘I liked the stupid doctor, what’s-his-name. Reminds me of people I’ve known.’
‘Coppers, probably.’ Guillam’s grin became tight. ‘Coppers are stupid, that’s the tale, isn’t it? Stupid coppers
