by Kim Wright
CHAPTER TWO
London
April 16, 1889
7:14 PM
Trevor Welles crouched low over the slate kitchen floor of socialite Geraldine Bainbridge and peered at the still form of her butler, Gage. Blood was splattered across the front of the man’s starched white shirt and had puddled beneath his shoulders.
“Now,” he said. “What can we conclude?”
“From the splatter formation, it’s clear that an artery was severed,” said Tom Bainbridge, Geraldine’s great-nephew and Trevor’s fledgling medical examiner. “Most likely with a notched knife, given the ragged nature of the wound.”
“A bread knife,” Davy Mabrey ventured. “Taken from the block on the counter.”
Trevor nodded at the young bobby, then rocked back on his heels. “And was the deceased attacked from the front or the back?”
“The front,” Davy said. “That’s why the wound is deeper at the top, because it was the initial entry point and then the knife point was dragged, just so…” He crouched too and traced the imaginary arc of the assailant’s knife down the still form of the butler.
“I’d say from behind,” Tom said.
Davy frowned. “Why?”
“No defensive wounds. He didn’t see it coming, and thus there was no struggle.”
“You both make solid points,” Trevor said, rising awkwardly to his feet and using the sink, just for an instant, to steady his sizable frame. “Fortunately, there was a witness to the crime and perhaps she can tell us more.”
The eyes of all three men turned to the seated figure of Emma Kelly, Geraldine’s maid and companion, who had withdrawn to the rocker by the fire and was already shaking her head.
“I’ve told you,” she said irritably. “It happened so fast that I was too unnerved to notice anything.”
Even though he didn’t want to further distress the girl, Trevor knew he couldn’t let it go at that. It was the fourth session of their Tuesday Night Murder Games and at the first three staged crimes scenes, Emma had been his star pupil, surprising everyone by outstripping the observations of both Tom, who was within a term of completing medical school, and Davy, who had two years as a bobby under his belt. She seemed to have a gift for inference, so Trevor was sorry to see her so dispirited tonight.
It was his own clumsy fault. He hadn’t wanted the excitement of their evenings to flag, so he’d upped the stakes. Paid a boy from a theater troupe a few pounds to drop by Geraldine’s home in the fashionable neighborhood of Mayfair, where the forewarned Gage had left the kitchen door unbolted. The lad had taken his task entirely more to heart than Trevor had intended, and had arrived in full stage make-up and an ill-fitting pirate costume. No doubt indeed Emma had been startled and nothing short of terrified when he’d sprung through the kitchen door, shouting seafaring threats at Gage, who had responded with quite the performance of his own, letting fly with a fearful shriek before sinking to the floor.
They had timed the attack for the hour when Gage and Emma would be in the kitchen preparing the evening meal and Trevor had anticipated it as the latest and most demanding test of the girl’s powers of observation. But when Trevor slipped into the kitchen he had found Emma pale and clammy, trembling so violently that he had escorted her promptly to the chair where she now sat.
Trevor silently cursed himself. He’d become so obsessed with testing his three apprentices that he had failed to factor in that Emma’s own sister had been killed with a knife no more than six months earlier, the last known victim of Jack the Ripper. Emma had assured Trevor that she wanted to join the Murder Games, and the initial thought was that her knowledge of foreign languages would prove useful to their studies of forensics, especially in light of the fact so many of the procedural documents Rayley Abrams was providing were still in their original French. It had been an unexpected bonus when she’d furthermore proven a quick study at the simulated crime scenes. She had been, in fact, the only one of the three to notice the fraying of the noose in the tableau Trevor had dubbed “Suicide or Something More Sinister?”
But this clearly had been too much – the actor rushing through the door, the fact the victim was her friend Gage, the choice of a knife as a weapon. Emma had disconnected from the activity around her and now sat staring into the fire.
“You remember nothing?” Trevor questioned gently, lowering himself to the chair opposite hers. “Perhaps the clothing?”
“He wore a red vest,” she said with a sigh. “His boots were…high.”
“High like those of a coachman?”
She paused. “No, more like a boatman.”
“His height?”
“Shorter than Gage, of course. Everyone is shorter than Gage. And taller than me.” She glanced at Trevor, gave a bitter little laugh. “Not very good, is it?”
He smiled. “It does give us a considerable range.”
Emma turned in her chair and perused the crime scene. “Close to the height of Tom, I’d say. Yes, closer to Tom than anyone else in the room. And he was young. Not yet twenty.”
“Good,” said Trevor. “Very good. Hair?”
“Slicked back with oil. Dark, but perhaps it only seemed that way because of the oil.” She frowned. “Could he have been wearing….he was very pale. Unnaturally so. Could he possibly have had white powder on his face?”
“He could and he did. Excellent, Emma.” Trevor felt a surge of optimism. If she wanted to continue with the forensics team, Emma would have to face a death by stabbing at one point or another, so as difficult as the experience had been, at least it was now behind them. He snuck a quick glance down at his pocketwatch. He would have Emma questioned again in five minutes, this time by Davy. It was part of a more personal experiment Trevor was doing on changes in recall over time. He suspected that the truest impressions were the first, and that almost immediately thereafter the witness would have already begun to tell themselves a story about what they had seen. A story which may be the mind’s attempt to comfort itself or explain away troubling details, and thus may fail to accurately reflect the true facts.
“Something here, Sir,” Davy called. “We have possibly found the murder weapon.” He was standing by a wooden block in which the hilts of twelve knives, a full set, was visible. “Tom, I mean the medical examiner, Sir, estimates a blade length of six inches and only one of the serrated knives is that long.”
“It’s clean?”
“Yes, Sir, suspiciously so. The cleanest in the block.”
“Ah,” said Trevor, coming to stand beside him. “Used, wiped down, and concealed among the other knives. Odd for several reasons, I would venture. Why would the killer not bring his own weapon?”
Davy’s brow puckered. “Didn’t intend to kill, Sir? Didn’t expect anyone to be at home?”
“A robbery gone wrong,” Tom offered, looking up from the floor where he was bending over the supine form of Gage with a ruler, measuring the distance between blood spots. “He encounters Gage unexpectedly and is forced to seize whatever’s close at hand.”
“Indeed. See the bread on the counter?” Davy was gaining confidence. One of the servants is slicing bread for dinner, thus a serrated knife is on the counter. The killer grabs it up, does the deed, then wipes it down and replaces it in the knife block with the others.”
“It explains it all,” Tom said.
“Does it?” Trevor asked sharply. “Even if I accept your unlikely premise that our would-be thief was unable to predict the presence of servants in a kitchen an hour before meal time, there are still many questions that remain unanswered. Precisely where was the butler standing when the first blow was struck? Why did he not fight back? Did he die on the spot or move about after the first cut? Could he possibly have struck a retaliatory blow? What do the blood stains tell us? And the maid…where was she in all this? Why was she not beset upon too or why did she not attempt to come to the aid of her fellow?”
“She screamed,” Tom said. “We heard her in the parlor.”
“Indeed. But at what point did she scream? And if she was in the kitchen, why did the killer take the time to calmly wipe his knife and replace it in the wooden block?”
“I was in the pantry,” Emma called out from the hearth. “I heard a scuffle and I –“
“Thank you, dear,” Trevor said tersely. “But my goal is for our young scholars to deduce that without your help.”
“Here’s how I see it,” Davy said. “Emma was the one slicing bread and she stops, halfway through her task, to fetch something from the pantry. The killer enters through the back door, intent on robbery, and sees Gage at the sink, his back turned toward him. He seizes the knife Emma was using, swipes at Gage’s throat from behind. Wipes the knife before he goes to replace it, although I’m not sure why.”
“A ragged cut from a serrated knife,” Tom added. “Normally not enough to kill a strong man. But as luck would have it, he nicks the carotid artery, as evidenced by the arched spray of blood which presumably erupted as our victim turned and fell. Let’s see, what then? Emma reenters the kitchen to find Gage rapidly bleeding to death and the killer has just finished replacing his knife. He recognizes that there was a second witness but, fortunately for her, he has already abandoned his murder weapon so this time he simply flees.”
“Better,” said Trevor. “At least as far as it goes.” He checked his pocketwatch again. “Now, Davy, begin your eyewitness interviews. The shock has passed and the young lady is admirably beginning to regain her memory. Your task is to retrieve every shred she can produce about the appearance of this man.”
Davy promptly pulled out a small leather notebook, an item he had purchased only because he had seen Trevor use the same type many times, and went to sit opposite Emma at the fire.
“Should I take up the trail of footprints?” Tom asked.
“Footprints?” Trevor said. “This case is designed to test wound analysis and blood splatter, not footprints.”
But Tom was still on his hands and knees. “They’re small,” he said. “Most likely a woman, judging by…”
“Geraldine,” Trevor bellowed, and a head popped through the door of the pantry.
“I’m sorry, darlings,” Geraldine said, although she didn’t look particularly so. “But someone has to see to dinner.”
“I shall do it, madam,” Gage said, raising his head.
“Nonsense, dear, you’re dead. I hope everyone will be content with soup considering the recent demise of our cook. How soon do you anticipate finishing up your little game?”
“We are finished,” Trevor said, struggling to mask his irritation. “The crime scene has been contaminated.”
“Our witness has recalled something else, Sir,” Davy said from the hearth. “She believes the assailant was wearing boots in the manner of a soldier.”
“She was closer the first time,” Trevor said wearily, waving them all out of the kitchen.
Fifty minutes later the corpse had changed his shirt and served them a light meal of soup and bread in the breakfast room. Two glasses of a very fine claret from Geraldine’s cellar had left Trevor in far better spirits.
“The Tuesday Night Murder Games Club is called to order,” Trevor intoned. He meant the solemnity as a bit of a joke, but the pronouncement sent silence around the table and everyone shifted in their seats toward him. Evidence that the others cared for these evenings as much as he did was always gratifying to Trevor and was one of the reasons he found himself constantly looking for ways to intensify the challenges.
While planning this latest game with Gage, Gerry, and the overenthusiastic theater boy, Trevor had taken great pains in re-creating the crime scene precisely as Rayley had described it in his letter. Returning the knife to its block, drawing a jagged wound on Gage’s throat, positioning him in the proper position, and meticulously placing drops of pig’s blood on the floor to correspond with the diagram Rayley had drawn. The amount undoubtedly seemed excessive to someone who had never witnessed the explosive force of a ripped artery, and Gage had even raised his head at one point to look about the scene with dismay, evidently thinking of the mess he’d be left to contend with once he’d been returned to the world of the living. After he had reproduced Rayley’s diagram, Trevor had opened the parlor door to let the shaken Emma and impatient Tom and Davy into the crime scene. But of course the problem with such spectacular violence is that they would all undoubtedly expect more excitement next week, and Trevor could only hope the unopened letter in his coat pocket contained an even gorier and more perplexing crime du jour.
“At the risk of belaboring the obvious,” Trevor said. “Rayley’s last letter was about the analysis of wound and blood spray patterns. The test of changes in witness memory over time was my own invention. Admirable job, each of you.”
He did not have to add “At least as much of it as there was,” for Gerry immediately fell to guilt, as she was apt to do.
“Next time I promise I won’t step in all your lovely splatters,” she said. “I know I made a muddle –“
“Never fear, Geraldine. You open your home to us each week, providing superior food and wine, as well as your own very pleasing brand of hospitality. You could waltz your way through a hundred bloodstains and your honorary standing in the Murder Club would not be in jeopardy.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Emma said. “I was a proper fool of a girl, wasn’t I? Screaming and fleeing and unable to remember a thing.”
“You were startled, dear,” Gerry said, patting her hand.
“But crime strikes unexpectedly, Gerry, that’s Trevor’s whole point,” Emma said. It was clear she was still somewhat agitated by the manner in which she gripped her teacup and the way her eyes darted around the table, settling on no one. “A suspect does not walk towards you slowly in broad daylight wearing a placard that reads ‘Criminal.’ They come in the dark, moving fast, often having taken pains to conceal their identity. Is that why he was wearing makeup?”
“I’m sorry to say that particular fantastical touch wasn’t my idea,” Trevor told her. He smiled with what he hoped was assurance, but her eyes had already moved on to Tom.
“But you’ve left us guessing,” Tom was saying. “Why did the criminal wipe the knife and place it so carefully back into the block?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Trevor said, dabbing up the last bit of soup with a crust. “I was hoping one of you could tell me. The scene is precisely as Rayley described it. A respectable French family in a better part of town, a cook and a maid in the kitchen just after six in the evening. The maid moves into the pantry to retrieve some item or another, and while she is gone a man rushes into the kitchen, uses the knife on the cutting board to kill the cook, wipes it clean, and replaces it with the other cutlery. She reenters just as he is leaving but she doesn’t recognize the man. Question one: why would a thief enter a kitchen at an hour when he would almost certainly encounter people in the process of preparing the evening meal?”
“Perhaps he was not a thief,” Davy said promptly. “We went straight to that assumption, without much evidence to support it.”
“Then what was the motive?” Trevor asked.
“Could have been someone from the cook’s past,” Davy said, his voice a little more speculative. “A man who bore him a personal grudge.”
“If confrontation was his aim then why would he show up without a weapon?” Emma asked. “He seemed to grab the bread knife on impulse, and, as you say, it’s hardly a weapon of first choice for someone bent on murder.”
“And why wipe it down after he used it?” Tom said, putting his elbows on the table and leaning in. “I’m sorry to sound redundant but I find that the most puzzling part of our little experiment. The knife was already out, being used to slice bread. Why not simply return it to the cutting board?”
“He feared the police could find fingerprints on the weapon?” Emma guessed.
“Your average criminal doesn’t know anything about fingerprint
ing,” Tom said skeptically. “The concept is in its infancy and seems to mislead as often as it solves.”
“But the French are very proud of it, are they not?” Emma said. “No doubt any crime stories reported in the Parisian papers are those in which fingerprinting proved successful. The criminal element may be more frightened of the notion than they should be. Or consider this. By bragging about their new forensics techniques, the police may not be scaring off potential criminals at all, merely teaching them to wipe down any objects they touch. Especially murder weapons.”
“Which exonerates the maid,” Tom said.
Emma frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“Her fingerprints should be all over the knife. It would be suspicious if they weren’t. So she had no reason to wipe it clean.”
“You’re making the rather daring assumption that she was rational,” Emma said. “Or that anyone is can be rational in the middle of a murder scene. She’s a maid. Perhaps she just cleans things compulsively, as a matter of course, and has never heard the word ‘fingerprint’ in her whole life.”