Brother, Can You Spare a Crime? by Sheri Cobb South

Author:Sheri Cobb South
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sonatina Press
Published: 2020-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

14

In Which Maxwell Interferes Once Again

Pickett pushed through the knot of children and knelt before the body, then took one of Jenny’s limp hands in his. Her skin was cool. No big surprise there, he reasoned. It was the middle of September, and the weather was growing cooler, especially at night. Still, he suspected she had been dead for some time, probably killed the night before and her body dumped here under cover of darkness.

The cause of the poor girl’s death was not far to seek, for a thin red line traced a circle around her throat where something—a thin cord or string, perhaps even a wire—had bitten into the flesh, cutting off the flow of air to her lungs. Her last, desperate struggle for life was suggested in the scratch marks above and below this line, where she had clawed at the garotte in a futile attempt to tear it loose.

He frowned thoughtfully at the sight of another mark, not so easily explained. This one was not red, but the bluish hue of a deep bruise. Although wider than whatever it was that had strangled her, it was perfectly aligned with the red line, as if something—a locket, perhaps, or a keepsake of some kind—had been threaded onto the cord. Suddenly he remembered quite clearly the first day he had spoken to her in Covent Garden, and had glimpsed a string that showed from the neckline of her dress. Something she’d worn about her neck, then, something that had been pulled so tight that it had strangled her to death. With a mental apology to the dead girl, he ran his hand beneath her bodice, but found nothing. Whatever she had worn, it was gone now. What had it been? Some lover’s token from Roger? Not on a plain string, surely; a chain or even a ribbon would have been far more likely. Something more mundane, then. A coin, with a hole punched through so it could be threaded onto a string as a deterrent to theft or loss? Or a key, perhaps.

Yes, thought Pickett with growing conviction. A key, so that she could lock the door of her residence behind her when she left for Covent Garden in the morning and let herself back in when she returned in the evening. And it had been removed after the murder, lest it should lead him (or perhaps Maxwell) to the bolt-hole of the man who was, Pickett strongly suspected, both lover and killer of the dead girl. He could almost picture Roger, or else his henchman, Jud, throwing her lifeless body over his shoulder with no more thought than Pickett himself had once given to the sacks of coal he’d carried in much the same manner.

Or had Jenny’s body been brought here in the very same wheelbarrow she’d used to convey her cabbages to Covent Garden? The hope that he might discover some telltale footprints or wheel tracks died half-formed. It was true that any cobblestones that might once have covered the ground here had long since gone, leaving nothing but packed earth in their place.

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