Page 19

She steepled her fingers.

‘Secondly, because this is the case I’ve been waiting for. It has all the hallmarks of a murder as fiendish and knotted as the one we solved last year at Tithe Hall. In fact, it is even more complicated. Conrad’s murder was an isolated family incident, in a remote location with a limited number of suspects. This murder took place in broad daylight, in a crowd of fifty thousand, and a city of seven million. What’s more, it has national, international and even generational significance. Better yet, there’s not a fucking butler in sight.’

She leant back in her chair.

‘Finally, I have agreed to take the case because I cannot stand to watch falsities paraded as truth. I know beyond doubt that those women are innocent, but, unlike Mrs Pankhurst, my conclusion is based on unavoidable fact, irrefutable logic and incontrovertible reasoning. There is simply no way, Stephen, that those three women could have murdered that police officer. It is impossible.’

There was a long pause while I blinked at her. ‘Umm …’

‘Let us begin with the conclusion reached by Chief Constable Cartwright last night. He deduced that Constable Watts chased the three women into the road, and they fought back. One of them slashed his neck, then they stuffed a ribbon into his gullet, dropped the murder weapon and escaped down a side road, leaving him to bleed to death on the pavement. You had a good look at the wound to his neck, Stephen. Describe it for me, please.’

I gulped queasily. I really didn’t want to. ‘It was deep enough to see his neckbone, Miss Decima. And right from one side to the other.’

‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘With the amount of blood spilt on the pavement, the knife would have needed to sever both carotid arteries. Is there anything about that which strikes you as unusual?’

I closed my eyes. She was right. I’d been pushing away the thought all night. But now there was no point hiding from it.

‘I saw a pig being slaughtered once,’ I said quietly. ‘When I was a boy. A farmer had it pinned down over a bucket, holding it steady with one arm so he could cut its throat with the other. One movement, deep and wide. That’s what the officer’s throat looked like. Purposeful, is what it was. Clinical, even.’

Miss Decima nodded. ‘Excellent deduction, Stephen. This was not the kind of injury caused by a wild swipe in a knife-fight. Furthermore, you informed me that Watts had no other injuries to his body: no other cuts or bloodied knuckles, all of which suggests that he was overpowered without a struggle. He was held in place, immobile, while someone methodically sliced his throat from ear to ear. In no uncertain terms, it was an execution.’

I frowned. ‘Well, that’s perfectly possible, Miss Decima. It was three against one, after all.’

‘Quite,’ she replied haughtily. ‘But let us consider the three women in question. You told me that one was older – in her sixties, perhaps. One had such a hacking cough that she could barely climb the statue. Watts was a strapping young man – a pillar of strength, even – and he had a truncheon, which you say was found beside his body. Do you really believe, Stephen, that those three women could have overpowered that man in such a way that he did not sustain any further injuries?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, it’s unlikely. But not impossible.’ I took a moment to think it through. ‘If they knocked the truncheon out of his hands, then held him down when he tried to grab it, then one woman could be on each arm holding him down while the third slashed his throat.’

‘Exactly,’ Miss Decima replied immediately. ‘Which is why it’s impossible. The blood, Stephen. Where was it?’

I hardly knew where to begin. ‘Everywhere. All over him, all over the pavement, and that wall.’

‘The wall,’ she repeated. ‘That’s the answer, Stephen. It was clearly marked with arterial splatter from a projectile expulsion of blood from a height of five feet. Which means that Watts was standing upright and facing the wall when his throat was slashed. There is no way that he could have been pinned to the ground.’

I was impressed. ‘What if they had him standing up, then, with his arms held behind his back?’

‘Impossible,’ she said once more, shaking her head. ‘That would require someone, likely two people, holding his arms behind him, while the first would have to stand in front and slash his throat. Were that the case, Stephen, the one holding the knife would have been drenched in his blood. They would have left bloody footprints –’

‘There was a blood trail,’ I interrupted, ‘leading from the body and out of the Gore –’

‘Mere droplets. You saw how much blood there was on the pavement: if the killer had stood before Watts when they slashed his throat, we would no doubt have several dozen eyewitness reports of a woman racing down Exhibition Road soaked from head to toe in blood, but we don’t. Instead we have a small trail, which would correspond with a small amount of blood dripping from a hand which had just, say, stuffed a ribbon down an open throat.’

She cracked her knuckles – I hated it when she did that.

‘So! The only possible option is for the killer to slash his throat from behind: and, if two women were already standing behind Watts, holding his arms, a third would have had to reach blindly around them in order to cut his throat. It would have been impossible to achieve such a perfect incision on a man who would have no doubt been fighting for his life. I repeat: impossible.

‘There is only one way for Watts to have been killed, and that is by someone who took him by surprise, before he could fight back. Someone who was already hiding in wait in the Gore, who sneaked up on him from behind. Someone strong enough to hold him standing upright, even briefly, who slashed his neck in one clean go, stuffed a ribbon down his throat, flung the knife to the ground and fled.’ She wheeled around to me. ‘Now! Tell me about that knife, Stephen.’

It was a scramble, keeping up with her sometimes. ‘Er … it had a word on it, Miss Decima. L. A. W. Like a message or statement or –’

‘Initials,’ Miss Decima muttered. ‘It was a personalized item. I have no doubt whatsoever that the knife belonged to one of the three suffragettes.’

I frowned. ‘I don’t know many women who own straight razors.’

‘You don’t know many women, Stephen.’ She nodded slowly to herself. ‘Once we consider this fact … a picture begins to emerge. Constable Watts was killed at the end of an empty road with no eyewitnesses, outside the apartment of a chief of police. The murder weapon – linked directly to one of the women – was then left beneath his body. If one were to orchestrate a killing and pin it on someone else, you could not do much better.’

A long silence followed before I finally plucked up the courage to give my thoughts.

‘That’s … well, if I’m honest, Miss Decima, that’s all rather … far-fetched. It sounds too complicated ever to be likely.’