Sidney Grice turned to me. *I did warn you, Miss Middleton. You had better go and wait in the cab.'

I reached into my cloak pocket and brought out a card.

*Do you know what this is?' I asked.

Parker screwed up his eyes and said, *No.'

*It is a permit from Her Majesty's Office of Structural Examiners to enter and inspect any building in the kingdom upon demand, and you would be committing an act of treason if you were to deny me access.'

*Blimey,' Parker said and stepped aside.

We entered a square hallway with five doors leading off it.

*Which case are you on?' Parker asked. *It can't be the poisoned vicar. Mr Cochran's already got that one. Not the Duke Road double drowning, I hope. Getting a bit slimy, they are.'

*Mrs Sarah Ashby,' Sidney Grice said.

*Oh, the chopping. She's in Room Four.' Parker took a ring of keys from his coat pocket and rattled them one by one in the lock.

*That was a railway ticket,' Sidney Grice murmured.

*Possibly,' I agreed, as Parker found the right key, swung open the door and said, *Are you sure you're up to this, miss? I've known experienced peelers turn funny in this room. One of them toppled over, hit his head and ended up on a table himself.'

I nodded. *Please proceed.'

*Take my arm,' Sidney Grice said, *and tell me the moment you feel unwell.'

I felt unwell already, but I would not have admitted it for all the opium in Bengal. The stench of death had filled my nostrils.

8.

The House of Death I hesitated a little for I knew that smell and the horrors that came with it.

*I shall be perfectly all right,' I said, rejecting the proffered arm as we went in.

It was a large low-ceilinged room, sloppily whitewashed and lit by flaring gas mantles on windowless walls. There were a dozen narrow pine tables in a row in the centre of the room, each covered with a stained white sheet, the shapes unmistakeable beneath them and the smells all too recognizable a freshly opened bodies, rotting flesh and the eye-stinging sharpness of carbolic acid burning in my lungs.

The body of a young man lay in the far corner and the sheet had slipped off his upper half. He had obviously been in a fire. His skin was blistered and his hair had been burnt off. But it was his face that shocked me. It was charred almost to the bone. I looked about for something to steady myself but there was nothing. I stood alone.

We stopped at a table in the middle.

*Here we are.' Parker whipped back a sheet and the tortured face of a toothless old woman sprang out. *Oh, sorry. This is Mrs Ashton. Run over by an hea.r.s.e in an hurry, she was.' We went to the next table. *Here we are.'

Parker clearly felt less flamboyant this time, for he lifted the cover back carefully to reveal a face. At first glance Sarah Ashby might have been slumbering. Her eyes were closed and her expression was one of peaceful repose. Her face was pale and haloed in long golden waves, her lips slightly parted as if in a contented smile. She might have been having a beautiful dream were it not for the place where she slept and the cut in her left cheek from the base of her little nose, almost to her ear, so deep and gaping that her back teeth grinned horribly through a second pair of lips in the parted muscles.

Sidney Grice stepped to her side and peeled back the rest of the sheet, leaving it below her feet at the bottom of the table. Sarah Ashby was naked, unearthly white and spattered in dark blood, and her neck and body were punctured by numerous black gashes. He whistled silently.

*Pretty thing, wasn't she?'

*Sliced up good and proper,' Parker said with relish.

*Oh, you poor thing,' I said.

*Where are her clothes?' Sidney Grice asked.

*Gone to the incinerator,' Parker said, and Sidney Grice looked at him sharply.

*What? All of them?'

*Of course. They weren't no good to anybody else, the state they were in, all ripped and soaked in gore.'

Sidney Grice closed his eyes briefly. *The man is an imbecile,' he said, making no attempt to lower his voice.

*Now see here, Mr Grice-'

*Did you remove her clothes yourself?'

*Of course.'

*What was she wearing?'

*A grey dress with bone b.u.t.tons at the back.'

*Still fastened?'

*Yes.'

*High- or low-necked?'

*High. Why?'

The floor was unevenly tiled and had been sluiced into sludgy puddles, and I saw that Parker had vulcanized galoshes on.

*Was there anything in the pockets?'

A long-legged spider ran over Sarah Ashby's arm and slid on its thread to the floor.

*Nothing valuable.'

*What then?'

*I don't know. A handkerchief. A piece of liquorice. I ate that. It was no use to her and I gave it a wipe first.'

*Have you ever heard of germs?' I asked and Parker grinned.

*Yes, and I've heard of fairies, but I never met anyone who's seen one.'

*Was she wearing any undergarments?' my guardian asked.

*Yes.'

*Upper and lower?'

Parker looked at the floor. *Please, Mr Grice. There's a lady present.'

*You may find this difficult to believe,' I told him, *but I am already aware that women wear undergarments.'

Sidney Grice grunted and said, *Both?'

*Yes, both.' Parker shuffled about. *No corsets, though.'

*And did the rips in her clothes match the wounds?'

*As far as I remember, yes, but I...' Parker's mouth stayed open but he did not finish his sentence.

*So you didn't take her clothes off and find far more wounds than you expected?'

*No. I don't think so.'

*No. You do not think,' Sidney Grice told him and, turning his attention back to Sarah Ashby, took her left hand in his. *Such doll-like fingers,' he said, bending and straightening them all at once, then twisting each a little and wiggling them side to side.

His nails were filed neatly short. He seemed lost in thought. Her nails, I noticed, were chipped but clean, but something was wrong.

*Where is her wedding band?' I asked.

*She wasn't wearing one,' Parker said.

*But her finger has a white ring around it.'

*I cannot help that,' Parker said. *If she was wearing any jewellery I would of handed it in as regulations require. Mr Grice knows me well enough to know that.'

*What is this?' Sidney Grice raised her right hand. *See that?'

The nail of her right index finger was cracked and something was caught in it.

*It looks like a hair,' I said.

Sidney Grice clipped a pince-nez on his nose.

*Not a hair.' He put her hand down and rooted through his satchel for a small pair of steel tweezers and a white envelope, lifted her hand again and tugged something out. *Look.' He held it up to the light.

*A yellow thread,' I said as he deposited it in the envelope, licked and sealed the flap, and scribbled a note on the back.

Sidney Grice crouched and lifted the hair to examine an ugly laceration in Sarah Ashby's throat. It ran all the way under her left jaw.

*This is very important, Parker,' he said. *Has the body been washed or wiped at all?'

*No. That's not in my job and the women only wash people what are being reclaimed by relatives and the like.'

*You are sure?'

Parker nodded.

*That is quite a wound,' Sidney Grice said.

*Yes,' I said. *But it did not kill her.'

Sidney Grice turned to me. *Go on.'

*I have seen something similar,' I said, *when two sentries at barracks in Bombay had an argument over a local girl. I helped my father to suture him. For a throat to be cut fatally, the thick blocks of muscles over the carotid artery or jugular vein have to be sliced through. This is not deep enough.'

*Quite so,' Sidney Grice said. *So what did kill her?'

*I am not sure,' I said. *She has so many wounds.'

*Forty,' Parker said. *I've counted.'

*I am amazed that he can,' Sidney Grice muttered, and pointed to a wound below Sarah Ashby's left breast, an oval crater about two inches across. *That is what did it. Hand me my bag, Miss Middleton.'

He took out a thin steel spatula, flattened at both ends, and he pa.s.sed it gently into the hole. *See how far it slides? That is a good six inches. The blade would have penetrated the abdominal wall and up through the diaphragm straight into the heart. She would have died instantly. It angles a little to the left as well, so we are looking for a left-handed killer. Help me turn her, Parker.' The two men twisted Sarah Ashby on to her right side. *You are in my light, Miss Middleton.'

*I beg your pardon.' I went to stand in a greasy stain at the lower end of the table and he ran his fingers through her hair again.

*Just as I thought,' he said. *A slight depressed fracture of the occipital skull but no injuries to her back.' They let her lie back again. *So what do we have? One wound to the face and one to the neck and thirty-eight to the chest and stomach, one fatal. Notice anything odd about the wounds, Miss Middleton?'

I shook my head.

*They are of two distinct types.' He pointed with the spatula. *Long slashes and smaller stabs. The stabs are unusual. Obviously, skin tends to distort and spring back again when cut, but the overall impression is that they have a wavy outline. You can see it quite clearly here where the tissues are firmer on the shoulder. Almost S-shaped.'

Sidney Grice walked down to her feet.

*That is odd.' He bent down. *Her great toe is bruised. Was she wearing any boots, Parker?'

*No boots or stockings,' Parker said.

*You are sure?'

*Sure as eggs is not potatoes. What are you doing?'

Sidney Grice had taken hold of Sarah Ashby's knees and forced them apart. He leaned forwards and peered upwards.