Part 28 (1/2)

*Why, I did' a the inspector stirred his tea a *while the constable kept Ashby firmly in his seat. We are not innocents, Mr Grice. I am fully aware that these situations can be faked to give one party the opportunity to pa.s.s notes or weapons or lockpicks to the other.'

*Did it take her long to recover?' I asked.

Pound took his cup. *A minute or so. Is all this important?'

*Yes,' Sidney Grice said. *I wished to be absolutely certain that there was no trickery and that Ashby wrote the letter himself. Having satisfied myself as to that point, we can rule him out as the writer who calls himself Caligula, for the two hands were completely different. Ashby's is large and ungainly whereas Caligula's is small and neat.'

*Another point in Ashby's favour,' Inspector Pound said, but Sidney Grice sipped his own tea and responded, *I beg to differ, but we will leave that to one side for the moment. How do we know the letter found on Hoggart was not written after the trial?'

Inspector Pound put his tea down untouched, slopping a little in his saucer. *Because the state of decay of the body showed it had been in the water for longer than that.'

I mopped his saucer and the underneath of the cup.

*What if somebody took the body out of the water, put the letter in its pocket and replaced the body?' Sidney Grice said and the inspector blinked.

*Now you are clutching at straws, Mr Grice. That body had not been disturbed for weeks, the weeds had grown around and over it, and they would not do that overnight. Also, the theft of a box of vestas from the match girl was never mentioned at the trial but the writer knew about it.'

*As did I, you, your constable and Miss Middleton,' Sidney Grice said.

*Now you are being absurd.'

Sidney Grice put his hand to his eye and held it there for a moment and said, *I am trying to make two simple points, Inspector. Firstly, that the finding of a letter in a man's pocket does not prove that he wrote it and, secondly, that people other than the murderer had an intimate knowledge of the circ.u.mstances of the crime. Ring for more tea, please, Miss Middleton. This pot is getting stewed.'

*What about the blade you found in that girl's body?' I went to the bell rope and pulled it twice. *It matches exactly the one which Ashby said he sold and the one which killed his wife, and yet you claim that this proved the murders were committed by two different people. I cannot see the logic in that.'

Sidney Grice drummed the arm of his chair with his fingers.

*All murderers have a modus operandi,' he said. *You know that as well as I. A woman who poisons for profit will, if she kills again, use the same poison. It is her tried and tested method. A garrotter does not become a bludgeoner, nor a strangler an axe-man.'

*But these two women were killed in exactly the same way,' Inspector Pound said. *They were both stabbed repeatedly with their throats cut, and through the heart, using the same or an identical knife.'

*Sarah Ashby was murdered by an experienced killer,' Sidney Grice said. *The fatal blow was the first. I asked at the mortuary if the body had been washed. It had not and yet there was surprisingly little blood from some of the deeper wounds, including the one to her throat. She was killed quickly and cleanly and then her body mutilated.'

*But William Ashby was a shopkeeper,' I pointed out.

*Ashby was a trained soldier,' Sidney Grice said.

*What makes you so sure it was a professional killing?' I asked as Molly came and took away the teapot. The bow of her ap.r.o.n was coming undone.

Sidney Grice stood up.

*Stand and face me,' he said. *Now take this ebony rule and stab me in the chest with it.'

*Oh, can I watch?' Molly asked.

*Go away,' my guardian said.

This was too good an opportunity to miss. I grasped the rule firmly and took a step towards him, bringing it down as hard and fast as I could.

*Ow.' My guardian winced and rubbed his arm as I drew the rule back for another a.s.sault. *Thank you, Miss Middleton. That is enough to prove my point.' He took the rule from me and rolled up his sleeve to examine the damage. *No one used to fighting with a knife would use it like that. First, you held the knife high so that your victim could see it and have time to prepare an escape, defence or even counter-attack. Second, you delivered a swinging blow. This is slow. The victim can see it coming and, most commonly, raises her arm to fend off the blow. Also, you know enough anatomy, I should imagine, to have learned that the ribs are arranged in a louvred fas.h.i.+on, the slats pointing down so that a knife coming from above in an arc is more likely to hit a rib than to slide between them, and this is exactly what happened to our second victim.' He rolled down his sleeve and re-b.u.t.toned the cuff. *The knife caught on the seventh rib, twisted and snapped off. An expert holds the knife low where it is more easily concealed a he can hold it at his side, for example a and he stabs upwards in an almost straight line, though there is always a slight bias from the killer's shoulder towards the midline. The thrust is much faster, more difficult to antic.i.p.ate and to ward off and, if he makes contact,' Sidney Grice demonstrated with the rule on me, *the blade slides easily between the ribs and is directed straight to the heart. Death is instantaneous. The second nameless girl-'

*She had a name,' I broke in, *even if we don't know it.' He tutted.

*The second girl had several lacerations to her arms where she had raised them to defend herself. Her killing was the botched job of a bungling amateur who was, judging a as one must a by the angle of the wounds, left-handed.'

*As was William Ashby,' I reminded him, and Sidney Grice sniffed.

*That is the only similarity.'

Inspector Pound drank his tea in one movement and I refilled his cup for him. He stirred the sugar in thoughtfully.

*I have the greatest of respect for you, Mr Grice,' he said, *and I would be the first to admit that you have been of great a.s.sistance to me over the years, but are you absolutely convinced that you are not saying these things to stop yourself from admitting that we made a mistake?'

Sidney Grice sipped his tea. The cup looked quite large in his elegant hand. He said, *Admittedly, it would not do our reputations any good if we were wrong. It would destroy your hopes of promotion and it has not done my business any good to send a client to the hangman. Think what damage would be done if it were to transpire that he was an innocent man. But I have two engines propelling my life. The first is a love of money and the second is a hatred of lies, and I would sooner send myself to the gallows than sacrifice the truth. Remember how we let Samuel Wesley walk free, though we knew he had broken his own mother's neck? If I had been prepared to swear that his handkerchief was found in the stables and not in the yard, we could have swung him and not lost a wink of sleep, and I would have pocketed the large reward that his sister was offering for his conviction.'

*I admit I did try to persuade you to alter your evidence.' Inspector Pound looked at the hearthrug.

*Two murders,' Sidney Grice said. *Two murderers.'

Molly returned with a fresh pot of tea and three clean cups.

*But why would Caligula confess to killing Mrs Ashby?' I asked.

Molly changed our cups.

*For the same reason that he confessed to the Slurry Street killings,' Sidney Grice said. *He wants the notoriety. It is what the French call a crime de copie. It all began with Springheel Jack. Every cutthroat in England claimed to be him as they stood on the trapdoor. It was their only hope of being remembered. How do we know that he did not murder the girl in the cellar before Sarah Ashby was killed and added her to his list when he heard about it? You wait until this latest murder reaches the Penny Dreadfuls and see how many lunatics and attention-seekers will confess to it. Go away, Molly.'

Molly had been loitering behind him. She bobbed lopsidedly and went out slowly, leaving the door slightly open.

*I hope you are right,' Inspector Pound said. *All h.e.l.l will break loose if you are not.'

*I am right and, if you will let me, I will help you find that unfortunate girl's killer.'

*I will drink to that,' Inspector Pound said as I poured us all another cup of tea.

*Go away, Molly,' my guardian shouted, and the door softly closed.

42.

Boots Inspector Pound's eyes were puffy and darkly rimmed. He was eating a pork pie over a gingham cloth when we arrived at his office.

*Breakfast,' he said.