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 can’t solve a crime, call in the gentleman detective, all will be resolved with the application of one cigar ash, a baby’s wail and eighteen generalizations. Brilliant!’
Denton worked his way down the bed,