more emotional field.’ And then, playing to the house: ‘Perhaps journalism.’ Uneasy, then relieved laughter.
Denton asked no questions but made his way into the arena as soon as Parmentier announced that they were done. Detective Sergeant Willey was making his way down from the other side but coming slowly, talking to his companion and the one who had served as clerk. Denton went right to Parmentier and, by talking louder than the nervous medical student already there, said, ‘Could the throat have been slashed while the attacker was engaged in coitus with the victim?’
The great man eyed him. He paid Denton the compliment of immediately turning his attention away from the student as he began pulling off the rubber gloves. ‘Do I know you, sir? Are you of the profession?’
‘I’m a guest of Hector Hench-Rose’s.’ Making it a joke: ‘Not a journalist.’
‘I shall take it as given that your interest is not prurient. I don’t know Hench-Rose, unless he’s related to George Hench-Rose.’
‘An older brother, I think.’
‘Ah. I see him at old-boy dinners.’ He tore at the left glove, which clung to him like skin, muttered, ‘These damnable things—’ and wrenched it off, dropping it on the floor with disgust. He took Denton’s left arm and steered him towards the covered body. ‘Yes, of course, if it was a man, it would be quite possible for him to support himself on his left elbow while grasping the hair with that hand and making that long, powerful cut across the throat with his right.’ He removed the cloth; the body was still face-down. ‘If you’ll just lend a hand—’ Denton took the cool, waxy ankles, and they rolled her over on her back; she seemed weightless. Lighter than Emma. ‘Now, you see how it can be done - the elbow here - the knife in the hand—’ Parmentier was bending over the girl as if he were the murderer still coupled with her, his eyes bright with enthusiasm.
‘Was there ejaculate in the vagina?’
‘Perhaps. It’s going to be difficult to tell because of the state of the tissue; a good deal of blood and secretion in there. I’ll have a look at it under a microscope. Are you in the police?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not. American? Canadian? American, yes.’ He wiped his hands on the cloth.
Denton was examining the stab wounds in the breasts. ‘You’re satisfied she’d given birth,’ he said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Thank you.’ Denton searched for a compliment. He hadn’t sat in on a post-mortem since he’d been a marshal and the local doctor had done an examination that lasted four minutes. ‘An elegant performance, sir.’ He had started to say ‘doctor’, but he couldn’t remember which sorts of medical men liked to be called doctor and which thought the word an insult. Parmentier half-smiled, bowing his head.
Going out, Denton came face-to-face with Detective Sergeant Willey, who scowled but turned away as if his most cynical ideas of Denton had been confirmed.
Chapter Four
Emma.
Had he really said that to her - ‘You’re mine?’ He didn’t think so, but he remembered thinking it. Some atavism: the man owns the woman. It was what asinine juveniles said on the Criterion Theatre stage to pretty ingénues - ‘You’re mine at last!’ And the ingénues agreed - ‘I’m yours!’ But that was metaphor. Wasn’t it? Yet his reaction when Emma had thrown him over had been one of - redness. Blood.
Had that been Stella Minter’s mistake, that she had left somebody who thought he owned her? He thought of the grey-green corpse on the table, Parmentier’s scalpel; the feel of the girl’s waxy, cool ankles; the watching, carefully controlled but greedy-eyed men. Yes, the savagery of the wounds might have come from that sort of passion. In the everyday world, the oldest of old stories, the lover jilted for somebody else. She was mine.
He had wanted to kill Emma; he saw that now, as if the post-mortem had opened a window for him. He hadn’t hit a woman, ever, even his wife when she was raging drunk and reviling him, although he had once shaken her when she was like that. Had he felt such shame then as he did now? What he remembered of the scenes with his wife was a deep loathing of both of them. Now, realizing his feeling towards Emma, he felt such shame as he had never known before, even in the worst of the war, when he had done some terrible things.
He tried to think about Mulcahy, but his mind kept straying to