Читать книгу Byways to Evil - Lloyd Biggle jr. - Страница 4

CHAPTER 1

The year was 1900, the place was London, and the night, an unusually warm one for September, began and ended with horrors. I was caught up in them almost without warning as I turned into a narrow, poorly lit, cobbled lane and instinctively slowed my pace. Ahead of me, where the passage took a sudden bend to the right, a small gas lamp glowed feebly, and its uncertain, wavering light produced oddly distorted shadows.

A man loomed up suddenly on my left—instantly recognizable despite the eerie dimness. It was John Thurtell, the notorious murderer. At one time his likeness—with clean-shaven, pock-marked face, closely cropped hair, and affectedly informal dress—had stared out of thousands of newspapers, posters and broadsheets. He had a fine, athletic figure, and had it not been for the diabolical sneer on his face, he might have been taken for a gentleman down on his luck. The sneer revealed his true character. Probably it was the last thing his victim saw when Thurtell, after firing two pistols into William Weare’s face, made the gun shots more emphatic by cutting his throat.

On the other side of the lane, standing with the dark silhouette of a barn behind him, was William Corder. In better light I might have been able to pick out, through the open door, the exact spot where he had just buried the mangled body of Maria Marten.

A few paces ahead of me were two sinister, shadowy forms, one short and stout, the other tall and thin—Burke and Hare, the “resurrectionists,” heavily burdened with a large tea chest in which they were conveying the corpse of their latest victim to Doctor Knox’s School of Anatomy.

A ghastly phantasm was at work in the shadows behind them: Jack the Ripper, bent over a victim to perform his perverted mutilations.

Under the dim lamp, the most fearsome figure of all stood quietly conversing with a neatly-dressed young woman. This was James Canham Read, the Royal Albert Dock cashier. Father of eight children, holder of a responsible business position, trusted and respected by all who knew him, he was horrifying because he was so eminently respectable both in reputation and appearance. He had made a sordid pastime of seducing young women until, only a few years earlier, he murdered one of them and was hanged for it. His career tainted every decent man’s reputation. It made respectability suspect.

Probably worse horrors lurked around the corner, but a quite ordinary door opened abruptly at the end of the lane, and light flooded the waxworks’s Dungeon of Horrors. The figures shrank to mere sculpted images, grotesque but harmless. Lady Sara Varnley called, “Is that you, Colin? We’ve been waiting for you.”

I entered a bright workroom where I found Lady Sara; Stephen Lynes, a young sculptor and protégé of Lady Sara’s whom I already knew well; and a second man—tall, middle-aged, wearing a frock coat—whom I had never met. He looked like a tired tradesman dressed for a night on the town. Lady Sara introduced us. He was Evan Vaughan, an artist from Leeds. She introduced me as Colin Quick, her secretary.

I was at most twenty years of age—my exact birth date had been lost in the mists of an East End childhood—but despite my youth, she never hesitated to confer on me whatever title or function a situation required. I was sometimes her assistant, sometimes her chief investigator, sometimes her secretary, sometimes a visiting official or technical consultant. Needless to say, I had to devote considerable effort and ingenuity to appearing and acting older than I was. Lady Sara’s own mentor, a retired actor, had coached me in applying quick touches of make-up and making minute changes in dress and manner in order to alter my appearance completely.

Lynes affected a beard, a cape, and a beret in the manner of young artists. Like beginning artists everywhere, he had to take any work he could get until he made a name for himself. “Any work he could get” had been extremely difficult to find, so he was attempting to earn money with a waxworks and at the same time set new standards in the realism and artistic representation of wax effigies.

Lady Sara was, as always, Lady Sara. The daughter of the deceased Burke Varnley, Earl of Ranisford, she was about forty years old at this time. Men her own age often told me how beautiful she had been as a girl. I thought she was still beautiful. She was unusually tall, for a woman, and she wore a simple gown of some rich, dark blue material. There were no flounces or frills of any kind. She wore no jewellery. Her straight black hair was arranged with the same simple directness—parted in the centre and gathered into a soft cluster behind her. She not only eschewed elaborate coiffures and curls, but she also disdained the Royal, or Alexandra, fringe across the forehead made so popular by the Princess of Wales.

Her oval face was capable of an astonishing range of expression. Many of her friends thought she might have been a great actress if she had come from a different social background, but it simply was not done for the daughter of an earl to choose a theatrical career. I thought her face the most expressive when she was simply being herself. No one walking into that room could have had the slightest doubt that she was the person with authority. That was true of any room and of any company. Lord Salisbury once took her to a cabinet meeting to discuss police problems in Britain. I had no doubt that she instantly took charge of that group, also.

An artist meeting her for the first time was certain to want to paint her. Any stranger knew at once that she was a woman of high distinction, but only her intimates had an inkling of her true métier. She was the foremost private investigator in England.

She took me aside for a moment, scrutinized my face briefly, and then remarked, “The steam-launch wasn’t the answer, I see. Never mind. Sooner or later we’ll find an opening.”

This was the most disconcerting thing about her. She didn’t have to ask what I had been doing or how my day had gone. One glance, and she knew.

Rampant thievery from London’s riverside warehouses had been going on for several years. Although the thefts actually took place along the shore, newspapers and even the police were calling the perpetrators “river thieves.” Goods under lock and key and close watch were disappearing by the boatload or waggon-load, and Lady Sara was asked to look into the situation. She arranged with the Thames police for me to observe their procedures, and I had spent the day on one of their steam-launches.

I hadn’t told her I intended to do that. I hadn’t known it myself until I arrived at Wapping Police Station, the river police headquarters. How could she possibly have known it? Not until I chanced to see myself in a mirror did I understand. There were smears of soot on my face. She knew I was going on the river, and, on a bright September day, where would I have exposed myself to soot if not on a steam-launch? Probably my frustrated air told her I hadn’t learned anything. In this fumbling fashion, I sometimes succeeded in making my own reconstruction of a deduction she arrived at instantaneously—but only one slow step at a time and with considerable effort.

“A launch is too conspicuous,” I told her. She was impatient of anything that wasted time, and years before she had ordered me to stop addressing her as “my lady” in private conversations. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll leave early and spend a few hours in one of the oared police galleys. They should have an advantage, especially at night. Unfortunately, they follow set schedules.”

She nodded. “The thieves will know those schedules at least as well as the constables do. Have a look, and then we will plan our next move.”

She turned to Lynes. “We are ready, Stephen.”

There were numerous waxworks in and about London, an indication of the steady growth in popularity of this form of entertainment. Most were temporary exhibits, hastily prepared to dramatize the most recent newspaper sensations. When their novelty faded and their custom fell off, they moved to new locations. The crudeness of such knocked-off displays was readily apparent, and their owners attempted to compensate by offering additional entertainments in the form of palmists, clairvoyants, or conjurors. Of the half-dozen or so permanent waxworks, the most prominent were Madame Tussaud’s, on Marylebone Road, and its principal rival on Edgware Road. These not only were artistically superior, but they offered far greater variety in their attractions, and their patronage reflected this.

Lady Sara considered the best waxwork figures to be pathetically inept, and she was encouraging Lynes in the hope he could achieve more life-like representations. The result was this new establishment on Tottenham Court Road—close enough to its rivals to compete with them but far enough away to attract a following of its own. With Lynes’s undoubted talent and Lady Sara’s critical assistance and financial support, it seemed bound to succeed.

Its opening was only a few days away, and we had been invited to preview what Lady Sara called the pièce de résistance, an effigy of Hob Hagan, the giant axe murderer, who had been hanged only two weeks previously. Hagan was a man of genuinely gigantic proportions, and I had expected a monstrous effigy, but the contours of the sheet-draped figure that stood in the centre of the workroom seemed preposterous. The top was at least ten feet above the floor. “Surely he wasn’t that tall!” I protested.

Lynes chuckled. “Just wait!” he said.

From the care with which he unwrapped the statue, one would have thought it fashioned of egg shells. Finally Hagan’s effigy stood revealed to us, and it was a fearsome thing, a pièce de résistance indeed. John Thurtell had displayed a sneer in his effigy; Hagan turned the furious snarl of a demented wild beast on the world. His huge, swarthy face had a nightmarish ugliness, and his massive arms looked equal to any kind of brutal iniquity. He held the axe poised above his head for another blow, and its blood-stained blade was dripping crimson gore onto his clothing and the turf at his feet. The wax effigies of the hacked victims—Hagan had murdered three people with his axe—were not yet completed.

“Excellent!” I exclaimed.

“Very well done,” Lady Sara agreed. “You’ve caught the climactic moment. The public should be delighted. Did he really pose for you?”

“He did, my lady,” Lynes assured her. “The authorities wouldn’t let him have an axe, but I rolled up a piece of newspaper to serve as an axe handle, and he posed and produced a number of appropriate facial expressions for my sketch pad. He seemed delighted that he was going to be in a waxworks.”

“Astonishing!” Lady Sara murmured. “Was he at all repentant?”

“Not in any way. In his view, the victims brought it on themselves. They shouldn’t have angered him.”

Lady Sara turned to Vaughan. “What do you think, Evan?”

“It is very capably done, my lady,” Vaughan said condescendingly, “but I can’t imagine Hob Hagan producing a facial expression like that, even by request. I knew him, you see.” Then he moved closer. “There’s one other thing. What have you done with his birthmark?”

“Birthmark?” Lynes echoed. “He had no birthmark.”

“But he did,” Vaughan said confidently. “A port wine mark on his left cheek. Just about here.” He pointed at his own face. “From a distance, it looked like a bug.” He walked around the statue. “And that mole on his right neck. Surely you’re wrong about that. Hagan had no mole.”

“But he did!” Lynes protested excitedly. “I’ll show you!”

He dashed to his desk and returned with the sketches he had made of Hagan in prison. He brandished them like a barrister producing telling evidence in a court of law.

Vaughan went to a chair in the corner for a large folder he had left there. He opened it and took out his own sketches, which he brandished in the same fashion.

Lady Sara watched the developing argument with a wisp of a smile on her face. Not only had she known this would happen, but she had invited Vaughan in order to make it happen—I hadn’t the slightest doubt about that. One of Lady Sara’s friends claimed her true talent was that of an impresario. She arranged confrontations in real life the way a theatrical manager arranged them on the stage. There was some truth in this, but the friend failed to grasp its significance. She thought Lady Sara improvised these scenes for her own amusement, whereas they were planned with great care and always with a purpose. In this instance, she already had formed her own conclusion about Hob Hagan, and she brought Vaughan with her in order to confirm it.

“Just a moment,” she said when things seemed about to get out of hand. “You should know, Stephen, that Evan sketched Hagan when he was in prison in York for assaulting some men there. Let’s sit down and compare the sketches.”

We gathered around a table, and Vaughan laid out his drawings. “These were done almost eight years ago, my lady,” he said. “Hagan interested me because of his size. I was living in York at the time, and I visited him several times while he was in prison and got to know him well. He always seemed like a very gentle person, slow to anger. I’ve been astonished at the reports of his subsequent career. He is supposed to have committed one hideous crime after another while all the police of England searched for him. Finally he was caught with the bloody axe in his hands. I still find that difficult to believe. All I know is that I sketched him exactly as I saw him in York, and the Hob Hagan I knew wasn’t a man who would savage anyone.”

“Tell us what did happen in York,” Lady Sara suggested.

“Hagan was a farm labourer. The farmer who employed him said he had a way with animals. Because of his enormous strength and willing attitude, he was an excellent worker. One day he happened upon three men who were mistreating a worn-out old horse. When he remonstrated with them, they turned their scorn on him. What happened next is a bit vague because there weren’t any witnesses. All three of the men ended in hospital, and one was injured critically. The magistrate was disposed to be lenient, because the original offence lay with the three men, but he had the severity of the injuries to consider. He gave Hagan two months and ordered him to pay the men’s medical expenses. It amounted to a severe fine.”

“Was Hagan repentant?” Lady Sara asked.

“Extremely so. He hadn’t meant to harm anyone. He just wanted to stop them from tormenting the horse. When they began to ridicule his size, he lost his temper. He swore it would never happen again.”

Lady Sara turned to Lynes. “How do you reconcile that gentle giant—with a birthmark on his face—with your axe murderer and his mole?”

Lynes shrugged. “Obviously he lost his temper again despite his good intentions. As for the mole, I drew him exactly as I saw him in his prison cell. Who can say a man wouldn’t grow a mole in almost eight years?”

“True enough,” Lady Sara said, “but what about the missing birthmark?”

Lynes shrugged again. “If it had been there, my lady, I would have drawn it. Maybe it faded away.”

“I doubt that!” Vaughan protested. “It was a deep red, and he said he’d had it all his life. It could have faded gradually as he got older, but it wouldn’t have vanished completely—not even in eight years.”

“I’ve been following Hagan’s career ever since he first came to police notice in York,” Lady Sara said. “Giants aren’t common in England. When I was a child, the Egyptian Hall exhibited a Chinese giant at the same time that a French giant was on display at St. James’s Hall. It was rare to have two such exhibits in London simultaneously. I made my father take me to see both. I found them fascinating, and I’ve been interested in giants ever since. Midgets never appealed to me. They were too close to my own size. A genuine giant seems breathtakingly gigantic to a child.”

“Are giants really that rare?” Lynes asked. “From time to time I see them advertised in squalid sideshows.”

“Along with fat women, tattooed men, fraudulent savages, and any other freaks the showmen have been able to find or fake,” Lady Sara agreed, “but giants in sideshows are rarely very gigantic. The French and Chinese giants I saw were genuinely huge. So is or was Hob Hagan—however he was sketched. There is more of a problem here than a disappearing birthmark or a newly grown mole. The reports indicate a remarkable personality change. I noticed it long before he killed three people and was caught with the bloody axe in his hands. What transformed the gentle, repentant giant of York, whose only offence was coming to the aid of a helpless animal, into the vicious murderer who emerged later?”

Neither of the artists said anything.

Lady Sarah smiled at me. “Chief Inspector Mewer will be along shortly. I wonder what he’ll have to say about this.”

“Something profane,” I suggested.

She laughed appreciatively. “No doubt, but he’ll keep that to himself. I wonder what he’ll have to say to me. I am amazed that such a capable police officer can function with so little imagination. When I invited him to meet us here, he said, ‘Waxworks? Waxworks? What’s that got to do with the police?’ Sometimes the questions I ask him, or the objections I raise, or the way I interpret evidence, almost makes him forget I am a lady. His own deductions make me want to forget it myself. We’ll find out shortly.”

But the Chief Inspector never arrived. After waiting for an hour, we went back through the Dungeon of Horrors and climbed the stairs to the office on the ground floor, where Lady Sara telephoned Chief Inspector Mewer’s home and had a brief conversation with his wife.

“He was called away by an emergency,” she told the artists. “He won’t be available tonight. Mrs. Mewer conveys his apologies. Because the waxworks isn’t open yet, it didn’t occur to him to let us know by telephone. If I have a chance to talk with him, I’ll try to arrange for him to see your sketches tomorrow.

We left the artists to continue their discussion of moles and birthmarks.

“I intend to look into this,” Lady Sara told me on the way out. “I consider it a certainty that there were two giants. Their careers have been confused not only by press and public but also by the police. Our legal system has called one of them Hob Hagan and hanged him for murder. The other may be just as vicious, and we must find out what happened to him before there are more victims.” She added, “This may be a case for the board.”

“A case for the board” was a crime or a mystery that merited an exceptionally thorough investigation. It was her standard of measurement. Cases for the board came along but rarely. If she considered the problem of the two giants worthy of a place there, it meant that the issues involved were either extremely serious, or they offered a fascinating perplexity—or both.

One of the workmen unlocked the door for us, and Old John Quick, Lady Sara’s congenial coachman and my foster-father, urged his horses forward when he saw us emerge from the building.

She paused on the step as I was handing her into the carriage. “Sorry, John. We have a long ride and perhaps work to do. Shadwell Market.”

He turned quickly and stared at her, and so did I. The crime had to be an extremely serious one to cause her to drive half-way across London at that time of night. I leaped aboard and closed the door, Old John flipped his whip, and the horses started off. We clattered our way down Tottenham Court Road to Oxford street and turned east, from which point the route to Shadwell was considerably more direct than those between most distant points in London.

Lady Sara kept her eyes on the countless dramas being enacted in the patches of illumination we passed. She loved to travel about at night, but she much preferred to do the driving herself. She would disguise herself in men’s clothing, take her place on the box beside Old John, and terrify him with the pace she set. Because such conduct while dressed as a woman would have scandalized London, on this night she had to confine herself to the carriage.

The streets had a restless, anticipatory air about them—a “between happenings” atmosphere. The early night crowd was tucked away in theatres or restaurants; the late night crowd, which would include much of the early crowd when it finally emerged, had not yet arrived. Because it was mid-week, traffic was light. Little knots of people stood gathered about food vendors, and sometimes they sent guarded, apprehensive looks at us as we passed. Such indications of guilt were seldom without justification, and I suspected these casual bystanders of all sorts of stratagems and treasons.

Here and there the dim presence of a solitary vendor could be glimpsed—a baked-potato man; a peanut seller; a shawl-muffled woman with a pipe in her mouth and a basket of unsold vegetables at her feet. They were desperate for custom and determinedly sticking to their posts long after all hope had vanished and their competitors gone home. They were the failures of their profession, a few of the many for whom costering provided not a living but only another way of starving. Lady Sara gave employment and survival to many such. She made them her agents, and if they sold little, they observed much, repaying her with information that was well worth the weekly shilling or two she gave them.

While we rattled our way toward Shadwell, Lady Sara told me what she had been able to learn from Mrs. Mewer about the emergency that forced the Chief Inspector to break his appointment. “She was reluctant to discuss it, but the little I was able to coax out of her suggested another Jack-the-Ripper is on the loose—this time with a male victim.”

“Do you mean the victim was deliberately mutilated?” I asked.

“That is the impression I got. Mrs. Mewer wouldn’t or couldn’t supply any details. London has never got over Jack-the-Ripper. It would stand this city on its head if he started operating again. The official view is that he drowned himself shortly after his last murder back in 1888, but the evidence wasn’t as clear as the police would have liked. The authorities may have been guilty of wishful thinking.”

Huddled into a corner of the carriage, I thought about the horror I was about to see and the horrors I had seen earlier—among them, the waxworks monster with an axe. Was his brutal twin at that moment stalking another victim?

By the year 1900, the East End, at least in its main thoroughfares, had become so regularized and sanitized that visitors to London sometimes made daring forays along Whitechapel or Commercial Road on Saturday night just to see the sights, which included enormous crowds of people, flaring naphtha lights on stalls and barrows, confused surges of passers-by, and the noisy bellowings of vendors. The crowds were much smaller on week nights, and the show was more restrained, but it was still worth seeing. Even St. George Street, which once was the notorious Ratcliff Highway, offered nothing that visitors to London would find offensive. The side streets were another matter entirely. A stranger venturing into them could quickly encounter more curiosities than he cared for.

Compared with the brightness of central London, St. George Street was dark and rather quiet. It was named for St. George’s in the East, one of the great churches of London. Establishments like the Seamen’s Mission Hall and the Seamen’s Chapel indicated how close we were to the docks. There also was Jamrack’s, where you could place an order for any living creature that interested you, from a humming-bird to an elephant, and eventually get it. At that hour of the night, long stretches of the street were deserted except for scattered groups of people talking or sitting in front of open doors. Perhaps they were already discussing the horror that had occurred at Shadwell Market.

In neighbourhoods near the docks, an apparently deserted street conveyed no impression of emptiness. Every second or third house was a pub, and all of their patrons were seamen with wives or sweethearts. From the open doors came strains of robust sailors’ songs, sung with an excess of enthusiasm and a marked absence of musical talent.

When we reached the turning to the market, we found the street blocked. Three constables were directing traffic away—not that there was much to direct. Shadwell Market had been established as a fish market to compete with Billingsgate. It did not seem to be thriving, but it tenuously survived. It did its business in the morning, however, opening at five o’clock. During the early hours of the night, the area should have been all but deserted, but police milled about with flares and bull’s-eye lanterns. Points of light flitted here and there as though someone had mobilized an army of fireflies.

Old John brought the carriage to a halt, and Lady Sara leaned out. “What’s going on here?” she demanded of the constable.

He turned his light on her for a second and then directed it away apologetically. All of the police in the metropolitan area knew Lady Sara well and admired her. They considered her their friend and supporter, which she was, but the constable seemed reluctant to discuss this particular crime even with her.

“There’s been a n’awful murder, my lady,” he said. “I have to ask you to move on.”

“Where is Chief Inspector Mewer?”

“The Chief Inspector is busy. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to move.”

“So am I busy,” Lady Sara said. “Tell the Chief Inspector I want to see him.”

The constable hesitated helplessly. At that moment a sergeant arrived, and the constable said in hushed tones, “Lady Sara wants to see Chief Inspector Mewer.”

The sergeant knew how to deal with a problem like that. He went looking for his inspector. Old John was allowed to make his turn and wait for instructions.

Eventually Chief Inspector Mewer appeared. He had his regular duties, but within the confines of Scotland Yard he was known as Commander of the Lady Sara Branch, the commissioner having decided years before that making one senior officer responsible for handling Lady Sara’s complaints, requests, suggestions, and revelations would be time saving. The Chief Inspector bore the burden of that responsibility with gloomy resignation.

He murmured, “Evening, my lady.” Then he demanded, “What are you doing here?”

He was not exceptionally tall, but he was unusually sturdy-looking, a Gibraltar of a man, and his mere presence at the scene of a crime brought comfort to victims and fright to anyone with a guilty conscience. When he chose to display it, he had a gentle refinement that seemed entirely out of character, but usually he hid this behind his bristling moustache. He might have been the prototype of the music hall joke that asked, “Who’s that gentleman?” And answered, “That’s no gentleman. That’s a police officer.”

“What am I usually doing?” Lady Sara asked.

“Something horrible has happened,” he said. His voice was sharply accusatory as though she were somehow responsible.

“I heard. Your wife made it sound like another Jack-the-Ripper murder.”

“That’s what the constables who found the body thought, but they were far off the mark. As near as we can make out, there’s some kind of wild animal loose along the waterfront. It’s killed a man—mutilated him horribly. As you know, animals like lions and tigers are imported from time to time for zoos and other exhibitions. We’re checking to see if one could have escaped from a ship. We’re also trying to get hold of someone from Jamracks to see whether they are missing an animal.”

“How did the animal kill him?” Lady Sara asked.

“He was clawed—as I said, horribly. Practically had his face torn away.”

“That killed him?” Lady Sara asked sceptically.

“He also suffered a blow to the head and claw marks on his arms from trying to defend himself.”

“I want to see this corpse myself,” Lady Sara said.

The Chief Inspector looked at her angrily. Lady Sara was always challenging his sensitivities by demanding to see and discuss things that he felt compelled to protect her from.

“Come along,” he said finally. He had learned that arguing with her was a waste of time.

The police were still awaiting the arrival of the divisional surgeon, and the body lay on its back where it had fallen—not in the market area, but in an adjoining street. It was a ghastly horror. The animal had swiped the unfortunate man’s face twice, or done it simultaneously with both front paws. Flesh had been ripped from the face. The left eye had been torn out. The Chief Inspector showed us how the victim had raised his hands to defend himself. Claws had ripped his coat sleeves away and cut vicious stripes along almost the whole length of the back of his forearms. The blow to his head had crushed the skull on the left rear side.

For more than a minute, Lady Sara stood scrutinizing the corpse. It was always a moment of high drama when she stepped onto the stage where a crime had occurred, but she behaved so quietly, not to mention decorously, that the police, and especially Chief Inspector Mewer, never seemed to comprehend what was taking place. I had seen it happen so often—her level, emotionless gaze, her complete indifference to what was happening around her, her intense examination of the entire scene, and then the sudden question or revelation—that I always held my breath while I waited. I performed my own scrutiny at the same time, but only rarely did my deductions keep pace with hers.

It was a moment of high drama, but it was not a performance. She never displayed her deductive abilities merely for effect or to impress bystanders. She said only what the occasion called for, and she was careful not to burden anyone, especially the police, with flights of deduction they would not be able to follow.

She took a step backward and asked a constable to direct his lantern at the cobbles surrounding the corpse. They looked bare, but she studied them with care anyway. Then she returned her attention to the dead man.

“There doesn’t seem to be much blood,” she observed suddenly.

“There isn’t much to be seen,” the Chief Inspector conceded. “There may be a pool of it under the body.”

“Or there may not be,” she said. Leaning over, she placed her fingers next to the dead man’s face, using them to measure the spacing of the claw marks. Then she raised his head. Again she called for light, and when she had examined the cobbles under the head, she lowered it gently.

“Do you know who he is?” she asked.

“Not yet. A decent labouring type from the looks of him.”

“Why are your men wandering about like that?”

“They’re looking for tracks. We’ve got to find out where the creature went before it attacks someone else. We also would like to know what sort of animal we have to deal with. An expert can tell us that with a glance if we can find an impression of its foot or pug-mark. My guess makes it a tiger, but I suppose it could have been a leopard, and Sergeant Grower, who has travelled in America, thinks a grizzly bear could have done it. If we can find just one pug-mark, we’ll soon know.”

Lady Sara returned her attention to the corpse. She regarded it for a few moments with calm reflection, and then she walked in a slow circle around it. “If I were you, I wouldn’t waste time looking for an animal,” she announced finally. “I would search the victim’s background. Either he was a considerable threat to someone or someone was threatening him. This man was murdered. He was hit on the head and killed. The clawing was done afterward for effect.” She paused, continuing to study the mutilated corpse. “And it is effective, isn’t it?”

The Chief Inspector shook his head. “It’d be a rare ‘someone’ who’d leave claw marks like that!”

“But ‘someone’ did,” Lady Sara said. “Not only did someone want him dead, but he wanted to leave his body in the most gruesome condition possible. I congratulate you, Chief Inspector. You have a remarkably interesting case on your hands. Come and see me tomorrow afternoon, and I may be able to tell you something about it. Shall we say—two o’clock? Come, Colin. You’ve had a long day.”

We turned away, leaving the Chief Inspector staring after us.

In the carriage, I asked, “Is this another case for the board?” After a doldrums that had lasted through much of the summer, a night that turned up two worthwhile cases would be one to remember.

A dearth of important cases did not mean Lady Sara hadn’t been busy. She was always furiously busy, but the trivial problems she handled daily were mere grist to keep her mind sharp until something significant came her way.

She reflected for a moment. “It’s too early to say. I’ll point the Chief Inspector in the right direction and see how he manages. Stripped of its bizarre embellishments, this may be a simple case. If he muddles it completely, which wouldn’t surprise either of us, then of course we’ll have to help him out.”

She paused, and then she added thoughtfully, “A deliberately disfigured corpse is rare in Britain. This wasn’t done in a frenzy of lust or blood lust like the Jack-the-Ripper murders. This murderer had a purpose, however deranged and perverted, and the mutilation was done for coldly calculated effect. The murderer has left his own distinctive signature on the corpse. I wonder whether his purpose was fully achieved with one murder, or whether he will require more.”

We made our turn onto St. George Street, and the unusually warm September night had suddenly began to feel chill and threatening.