by Alex Grecian
“If you hadn’t stopped to check on me you might have caught up to him.”
“I couldn’t very well leave you to die.”
Day’s knees went out from under him and he fell back against the wall.
“You need to lie down, Day. I wish we had more men like you at the Yard. You saved that girl’s life, you know.”
March leaned in close to him and Day grabbed his shoulder as if he were steadying himself. He put his lips close to March’s ear and whispered, “He’s on the roof. I saw him run past the windows.”
March nodded, but he didn’t look up. He gazed across at the marshes and spoke too loudly.
“It’s too bad about Sanders,” he said. “What’s behind those marshes?”
“The river.”
“He could be anywhere, then. No doubt he’ll have taken a boat by now. Let’s get you back inside.”
March put his arm around Day’s shoulders and they entered the vestibule. Inside, out of earshot of the man on the roof, March set Day down on a bench. Across from the bench was a single door. Day pointed at it.
“Inside that closet there’s a ladder to the roof. Sanders has to come back through here to get down. He’s trapped himself.”
“I’ll bring him down.”
“Give me a moment to get my bearings and I’ll go with you.”
“You stay here. If he gets past me, stop him in this room.”
“He might still be a danger. You shouldn’t face him alone.”
“You forget, you’ve already disarmed him. You broke his weapon in two with your rocklike head.” March jiggled the closet doorknob. “Locked.”
“Where’s the parish priest?”
“He’s outside. We cleared this place out. If I go out to get him, Sanders will know we’re on to him.”
March knelt in front of the door and pulled a flat leather case from his jacket pocket. Inside was an assortment of odd-looking keys. He tried each of them in turn and the third key fit the lock. He turned it and a soft click echoed through the tiny room.
“Skeleton keys. I collect them. When you become an inspector, buy a good set and remember to have them on your person at all times. You never know when they’ll be handy.”
“I’ll never be an inspector, sir. I’m content here.”
“It is more important to use your gifts well than to settle for being content. You were the only one who saw the significance of the missing horseshoe. You’d make a fine detective.” March smiled. “And the bump in salary you’d receive would make that young lady happy.”
“Which young lady do you mean?”
“You may observe things that others miss, Constable, but I’m still better at it.”
He disappeared through the door. Day could hear his footsteps fading up the ladder to the roof.
“Constable?”
The voice came from outside. For a moment Day thought it was March, already calling down from the roof, but then it came again.
“Walter? Where are you?”
Day stood up too fast and had to steady himself with a hand on the wall. He stared at the forest-green pillow on the bench and waited for the swimming sensation to stop. When the world around him came back into focus, he noticed that the green was newly dotted with thick wet splashes of burgundy. He turned the pillow over to hide the blood and hurried outside.
“Claire?” he said.
He heard a noise from above and took a few steps back from the building. He looked up in time to see Adrian March heave into view through the trapdoor on the church’s roof. He scanned the length of the roof that was visible on this side and saw nothing, but a portion of the clerestory jutted out at the front of the building. It was the only place Sanders could be hiding. He nodded gently in that direction and saw March nod back.
“Walter?”
When he turned and saw Claire, everything else disappeared.
“Miss Carlyle, you must leave. Sanders is still at large.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Well, I do. Leave before you’re hurt.”
“I will not. You asked me a question and it would be rude to leave without answering.”
“I apologize for that. I’ve had a blow to the head.”
“Don’t apologize. You have every right to ask me a simple question.”
“Not the one I asked. It was unforgivable of me.”
“You didn’t wait for my answer.”
“I don’t require an answer.”
“I think you do.”
“Your father has already arranged things with Mr Erwood.”
“My mind is made up on that matter. I am not some chit to be traded back and forth over a business matter.”
“Of course you aren’t. I never meant to-”
“Stay back, March.”
Day looked up. Sanders had emerged from behind the stones at the front of the church roof and was pulling himself up the rusted downspout bolted to the side of the clerestory. There was nowhere to go from there. March had a gun in his hand, but wasn’t pointing it at Sanders.
“Stop where you are, Sanders. You’re under arrest, on Her Majesty’s authority, for the murder of Zachariah Bent.”
“I’m innocent. I never did it.”
“I will never marry Percy Erwood,” Claire said.
Day pulled his attention back to the girl in front of him and took a step toward the shadow of the church where she stood.
“Please, Claire,” he said. “It’s dangerous here. You must leave.”
“Come back to London with me, Sanders,” March said. “You’ll get a fair trial.”
“I’ll hang for it and you know it, March.”
“I’ve always fancied you,” Claire said.
“I didn’t know,” Day said.
“I’ve done everything short of throwing myself off a horse in front of you, but you never so much as glanced my way.”
“It would have gone better for you if you’d cooperated, Sanders,” March said. “You shouldn’t have run.”
“They’d have carted me off to prison. You don’t know what it’s like there.”
Day was growing dizzier trying to keep up with the conversation between March and Sanders while talking to Claire at the same time. Too much was going on and all of it was of vital importance. He held a hand to his head and shut his eyes. Above him, metal scraped against stone and a great wrenching noise filled the air.
“Sanders!”
Day rushed forward, his hands out, ready to push Claire out of the way. An instant later, Rex Sanders landed in Day’s arms and the weight of him pushed Day back against the church wall. A broken section of the downspout thunked to the ground where Day had been standing.
“I see you’ve caught our villain,” March said.
Day looked up and March peered at him over the edge of the roof. Day dropped Sanders in the dirt. Sanders tried to gain his feet, but Day tripped him and grabbed his arm.
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
“I’ll need help transporting him to London,” March said from above. “Care to come along?”
Day looked at Claire and she smiled. The sun flashed across his eyes and he smelled sunshine and honey and warm grass.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll be here waiting for you.”
Day smiled back at her and felt his knees buckle under him as the world turned dark again.
31
Hammersmith grabbed the countertop before he could fall. He held up a hand as Day moved toward him.
“Please, go on,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure, man?” Day said.
“A dizzy spell. Nothing to trouble yourself over.”
He had used a murder weapon to shave his face. He decided not to mention it. He would try not to think about the fact that he had just mingled his blood with that of a dead man.
“If Mr Hammersmith is quite all right,” Kingsley said, “I have a notion regarding how you might identify one of these many kil
lers we seem to have running loose about the city.”
“The Beard Killer, you mean?” Blacker said.
“The Beard Killer? A beard is made up of unfeeling hair, Detective, and can’t be harmed in the least.”
“Of course. I know what a beard is, Doctor. But this person seems to target men with beards. Therefore I call him the Beard Killer.”
“Blackly humorous, I suppose, but inaccurate all the same.”
“You were about to say, Doctor?” Day said.
“Yes…” Kingsley glanced around the room before going on. He held the straight razor up so that the other three men could see it. “This will sound fantastic, I’m sure, but there is a theory and I believe it has some credence. I have been following the advancements of the French regarding scientific identification of the criminal class. Although I find him odious in all other respects, Alphonse Bertillon has made great strides in the field. He has begun recording certain physical measurements of those arrested within his jurisdiction. The French are now measuring the length of a man’s arms, the color of his eyes, the size of his shoes, all manner of things which might be altered individually, but when taken together add up to a positive identification. A man may shave his beard or don a pair of spectacles to disguise his appearance, but he cannot make himself taller or shorter or alter the length of his middle finger without, I suppose, a great deal of difficulty.”
“Are you saying that you can somehow deduce these things from that razor?” Day said.
“No. Certainly not. But there is an additional characteristic that the French are not using yet. They are considering it quite seriously, but there has been some opposition.”
He hesitated, and Day urged him on.
“Bear with me,” Kingsley said. “This will be hard to credit, but perhaps a demonstration will help. Fiona? May I borrow your charcoal, dear?”
The girl jumped at the mention of her name. She had been standing unnoticed in the corner of the room, leaning against the long counter and quietly drawing. As she passed by him, Hammersmith glanced at her tablet and saw the sketch she had been working on. It was a remarkable likeness of Hammersmith himself.
Fiona handed the piece of charcoal to her father. Kingsley looked at her portrait of the policeman and scowled at Hammersmith. Hammersmith shrugged.
“What was I saying?” Kingsley said.
“We haven’t the slightest idea,” Blacker said. “But it had something to do with a razor and a piece of charcoal.”
Hammersmith had never worked closely with Blacker, and he found that he didn’t like the detective’s flippant attitude. Inspector Day seemed like a serious fellow, though. He was new, but he was clearly determined to do the job properly.
“Ah, yes,” Kingsley said. “The razor. And not so much the charcoal itself, but the dust from it.”
“The dust?”
“One moment, please.”
Kingsley opened a drawer under the counter and rummaged through it. Hammersmith glanced over at Day and Blacker, who were talking quietly to each other. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Blacker seemed angry about it. Finally Kingsley straightened up with a frustrated grunt and closed the drawer. He pursed his lips and looked around the room.
“I just need something that will … something coarse,” he said.
Blacker and Day stopped talking and looked up.
“Coarse? Some sort of fabric?”
“Of course not,” Kingsley said. “That wouldn’t-”
He smiled and pointed at the back wall of the room. Hammersmith turned to look as Kingsley hurried past him and slapped the bricks.
“Coarse, like bricks,” he said. “These ought to do the job. Now you’re going to see something amazing.”
He began to rub the charcoal across the bricks, back and forth, up and down, darkening the wall. He kept one hand cupped under the charcoal to keep the dust from drifting to the floor.
“I have been corresponding,” Kingsley said, “with a man named Henry Faulds. He’s Scottish, a missionary who has spent some time in the Orient. Faulds has been petitioning the Yard of late with a notion he’s brought back with him.”
As he spoke, Kingsley continued to rub the charcoal against the bricks. He had his back to the room and might almost have been talking to himself.
“There are faster ways to darken the wall,” Blacker said.
“Darkening the wall is beside the point,” Hammersmith said. “He’s gathering charcoal dust.”
“Exactly right,” Kingsley said. “Now watch.”
He returned to the counter, his fingers wrapped around a fistful of black dust, and carefully picked up the razor.
“Hammersmith, would you please bring that basin to me? No, not the metal one. We’ll want the white porcelain. The one with the fewest stains, if there is such a thing.”
Hammersmith selected a likely candidate from the table behind him and carried it to the counter.
“You others gather round here,” Kingsley said. “But breathe softly. Don’t scatter my dust. You, too, Fiona. I’ve only read about this, never performed it, but I think it will be very instructive.”
He took the basin from Hammersmith and set the razor in the bottom of it.
“Now look at the handle,” he said.
Hammersmith leaned in. The razor’s handle was bone, darker than the porcelain it sat on, almost yellow by comparison. There were two red smudges near the end of it where the blade opened out, a similar-looking streak of red across the middle of it, and a crack where it might have been dropped at some point in the past.
“Blood,” Day said.
“Yes,” Kingsley said. “Blood. You see here where the blood splashed against both the blade and the handle as it exited your victim’s throat. Arterial pressure forced it out quite violently, pushing it past the razor, which is why there’s so little to be seen here. But that’s not the most relevant point. These two smudges…”
“The killer got blood on his hand.”
“He did,” Kingsley said. “See how rough the outlines of these smudges are?”
“Sort of jagged.”
“Indeed. That tells us that the killer probably wasn’t wearing gloves.”
“Could have been wearing suede,” Day said.
Kingsley nodded, but he didn’t look pleased.
“I suppose so. That’s a good observation, Detective. But let’s suppose for a moment that the killer wasn’t wearing suede gloves and that the roughness of these marks was caused by variations on the surface of his skin. If that’s the case, then these marks won’t be the only ones on the handle. We simply can’t see the other marks.”
“Can’t see them?”
“Sweat. Our skin exudes all manner of liquids, and those liquids leave a residue.”
“But if we can’t see them-”
“Watch.”
Kingsley leaned in over the top of the basin and opened his hand. He exhaled quickly, blowing charcoal powder over the razor. The bone-white surface of the handle turned grey. He grabbed the razor, holding it with his fingertips near the end where the handle tapered, and tipped it up, shaking loose dust off it. He set it on the countertop and blew on it, scattering more of the excess charcoal dust. He turned around and smiled at his daughter.
“You see?” he said.
Fiona nodded, but Hammersmith didn’t see anything unusual about the dirty razor. He leaned in closer and almost bumped heads with Day, who was leaning in at the same time.
“There are black smudges now,” Day said.
“Yes,” Kingsley said. “But they’re more complete than the blood smears were. Look at them closely.”
Blacker, who stood back from the others, cleared his throat.
“I think I understand,” he said. “If we catch the man who did this, we can compare the size of his fingertips to these smudges and prove that he held the murder weapon in his hand.”
“I should think a great many people would have the same size fingertips,” Day said
. “I appreciate your diligence, Doctor, but I fail to see-”
“You didn’t look closely enough,” Kingsley said. “Here.”
He drew a magnifying lens from his vest pocket and handed it to Day. Day looked at the glass for a moment before using it to examine the razor’s handle. His expression made it clear to everyone that he was humoring the doctor, but his voice, when he bent over the basin, was an astonished whisper.
“Oh,” he said. “I see a pattern in the dust.”
“Yes,” Kingsley said. “Now look at your own fingertips. You don’t even need the glass to do it. Hold them up to the light.”
“Of course,” Hammersmith said. “Skin isn’t smooth.”
“That’s right, Constable. But what’s fascinating is that the minute patterns of the skin on your fingertips are different from those of our friend Inspector Day. Or from those of anyone else in this city. Quite possibly the entire world, although I don’t know how we would verify that.”
“Impossible,” Blacker said.
“I know,” Kingsley said. “It seems hard to reconcile, particularly when one takes into account how very small a fingertip is. But Faulds has done extensive research and experimentation on the subject and his findings are quite exciting. I have heard that authorities in India are considering the use of these fingertip patterns in identifying criminals. And there are other jurisdictions that may follow suit.”
“Excuse me,” Day said. “Please forgive me, but as interesting as this is, I fail to see how it helps us find the murderer.”
“Oh, it doesn’t, of course. But once found, his fingers might be compared to the smudges on this weapon. You could prove that he held the razor and that he used it.”
“He might only have shaved with it,” Hammersmith said.
Hammersmith tried to keep his manner casual, but he thought his voice sounded higher than normal.
“True,” Kingsley said. “I don’t think this would hold up in a court of law. But you might use it to coerce a confession, might you not?”
Day nodded and looked at Hammersmith.
“A demonstration much like this, perhaps dramatized a bit more colorfully so as to seem scientifically conclusive, might convince a suspect that there’s no hope for him.”
