that the Minories were in the City if he’d stopped to think about it - knew, too, that City police probably spent most of their time on business crime, not murder.
Denton said, ‘I’m afraid I’d like something in return.’ Willey’s face froze. ‘That’s why I originally went to Mr Hench-Rose. Is it possible for me to see the corpse?’ That idea had come to him as they had talked. Why did he want to see a mutilated female corpse? Emma had swum into his consciousness; he had refused to believe there was a connection.
‘Absolutely not.’ Shocked.
‘Isn’t there going to be a post-mortem?’
‘Of course.’ Stiff now, defending the procedures of the City Police.
‘Post-mortems are sometimes open.’
‘Mr Denton!’ Willey leaned towards him, hands clasped on the scarred desktop. He had hairy backs to his hands, dark curls like wires springing out. ‘This is a sensational case. Do you really think we want details of the poor woman’s body known to civilians?’
‘There’ve been a good many descriptions already, and she’s dead. Plus, she was a tart. Anyway, I’m not about to write about it. I simply want to—’ He wanted to say to know what frightened Mulcahy, but Willey would misinterpret that, he was sure. So he said, lamely, ‘To follow up.’
Willey was a cynic, like most policemen. ‘Oh, yes?’ he said in a tone that said everything about men who wanted to see post-mortems on female bodies.
‘To compare it with what the man told me.’
‘That’s police business, and you’re to stay out of it.’
‘Where’s the post-mortem?’
Willey stood. He was two inches shorter than Denton but secure of his mastery on his own turf. ‘We’re done here.’ He nodded to the clerk, who got up and went out. ‘Thank you for your information, Mr Denton. I’ll show you out.’
Denton went back to Hector Hench-Rose, missing his lunch - it was now after one - and so accepting Hector’s offer of scones because the hangover had turned to nausea, and got from him the information that the post-mortem on Stella Minter’s body would be at St Bartholomew’s Hospital at two, with Sir Frank Parmentier wielding the scalpel. Hector found this out only by sending five messengers in as many directions to other offices. ‘You owe me a lunch,’ he said when he’d got the news.
‘How do I get into the post-mortem?’
‘Oh, do you really want to? Well, as it’s at Bart’s, it’s probably in the theatre and so open to the students. You could just go in, probably, but—’ He took a piece of rather grand letterhead stationery and scribbled on it, signed with a huge and illegible flourish, then sent the young man off to get it stamped and initialled by the commissioner’s clerk.
‘Won’t it be under City Police control?’
‘The worst they can say is no, Denton.’ He twitched his ginger moustache. ‘Why ever do you want to go to a post-mortem? ’
Denton dragged a version of the truth from the clutches of the hangover. ‘I want to see if they were in coitus when he slit her throat. Mulcahy said that’s the way he saw it done long ago.’ Yes, well - there it was. He’d been shutting out an insistent image of slitting Emma’s throat while they made love.
Hench-Rose said hoarsely that you shouldn’t even think such things.
‘I find myself more and more interested in these mental cases.’ Not quite true, unless he was himself a mental case. Still—
Chapter Three
The operating theatre was circular and steep, the central well thirty feet across with only three steep ranks of seats rising around it. A lantern rose from the roof above, giving only gloomy light because of the rain, augmented by standard gas lamps in a rough circle around the wheeled table that was the centrepiece. The unheated space felt arctic; a coal stove on the far side was unlit. Fewer people than Denton had expected sat as audience, all men, most in overcoats as he was. Denton didn’t register as a separate fact that the only woman in the room was the dead one until he had looked around, got bored and begun really to see. He would, on the other hand, have been surprised to find a living woman there. He would not have been able to articulate why he would have been surprised. Now, he thought about it. Why was the murder of a woman a solely male concern?
On the table lay, presumably, what was left of Stella Minter, covered with a much-washed white cloth, some old stains barely perceptible