“Good. What else about his hands?”
Dickerson suppressed a shudder and lifted one of the dead man’s arms, turning it over so he could study the hand. “Very smooth skin, I’d say, sir.”
“What does that tell you about him?”
“He’s definitely not laborer. I’d say he’s spent most a’ his life indoors.”
“Excellent!” Ian said. “Well done.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dickerson replied with a little cough. Ian knew well enough that DCI Crawford’s men anticipated little in the way of commendation, and they were rarely disappointed in their expectations.
“If you view his life as a narrative, the moment where it intersects the life of the criminal, a new story begins.”
“And that’s the story we’re int’rested in?”
“Precisely! Now, what about his clothing?”
Dickerson straightened his spine and crossed his arms. “He’s dressed like merchant, or per’aps business clerk. Pro’bly works in office.”
“That’s the stuff,” Ian said. “Now you’re thinking like a detective.”
Dickerson frowned. “His landlady could ha’ told us that, sir.”
“Ah! But we must sharpen our minds to a fine point so we may glean clues wherever we find them.”
Dickerson pursed his lips dubiously. “If you say so, sir.”
“Now, please help me remove his clothes.”
“Sir?” Dickerson looked positively green.
“We must examine the body.”
Dickerson gulped and bit his lower lip, but soldiered on manfully in spite of his evident queasiness.
Rigor mortis was already beginning to fade, and as they tugged at the sleeve of Wycherly’s jacket, his arm suddenly went limp. Dickerson nearly tumbled backward at the touch of the pliable flesh. His ruddy face turned an even darker shade of red. He took a deep breath and loosened the stiff collar of his uniform.
“Are you quite all right, Sergeant?” Ian asked. He recalled his first dead body, as a young constable—a poor old wretch who froze to death in an unheated tenement in Skinner’s Close. His supervisor insisted he close the vacant, staring eyes, and Ian still remembered the marble coldness of the flesh under his fingers. The face haunted his sleep for weeks after; in his dreams, he was unable to close the eyes, no matter how many times he tried. They gazed up at him, pleading, accusing, horrible in their stillness. After that, he vowed never to be caught off guard by the presence of death again.
Dickerson cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “Steady on,” Ian said, laying a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.
“I’ll manage, sir,” Dickerson muttered, reapplying himself to the task.
There wasn’t much blood. The worst injuries must have been internal, Ian surmised as he and Dickerson began removing the dead man’s clothes, carefully peeling away the green tweed jacket. It bore a London label from a high-end tailor shop Ian recognized. Turning it over, he noticed the cuff on the right sleeve was missing a button.
“What do you make of this, Sergeant?” he asked, holding it out.
Dickerson squinted at the jacket sleeve. “Left arm has two leather buttons for decoration, but th’ right sleeve is missing one, sir.”
“What does that tell you?”
“Could be Mr. Wycherly was in need o’ seamstress.”
“But look at the rest of his clothes—except for the damage sustained by his fall, they are in perfect repair.”
“So th’ button were lost—”
“In a struggle, Sergeant—the one that took place on the top of Arthur’s Seat.”
Dickerson scratched his head. “Beggin’ pardon, sir, but ’at’s hardly conclusive evidence.”
“True enough. I’m looking for something else to confirm my theory.”
“What exactly are ye lookin’ for, sir?” Dickerson asked, laying the jacket carefully on a nearby stool.
“I wish I could tell you, Sergeant,” he said, unbuttoning the collar of the linen shirt beneath the jacket. “I am hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”
And there, on the corpse of young Stephen Wycherly, was precisely what he had been looking for.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lillian Grey stepped from the butcher shop, treading with care on the uneven, rain-slickened cobblestones. She could call a hansom cab—several had already splashed by—but even at her advanced age, Lillian valued the effect of exercise on one’s complexion. Clutching a wicker basket containing a brown paper package, she threaded her way up the High Street in the direction of the High Kirk of St. Giles, to pay a wee visit before heading home. She tried to stop in for dear Alfie’s sake once a week. Lillian didn’t believe in any god of man’s creation, but Alfred had been a lifelong Christian, bless him, and she did it to honor his memory. After forty years of marriage, she owed him that much. He had left her a tidy fortune, for which she was grateful, but she would much rather have his warm body still next to her in bed on cold Edinburgh nights.
She pulled her woolen cloak closer as a spray of water from the wheels of a passing carriage slapped against her cheek. The coach driver ignored her glare, snapping his whip smartly against the flanks of two matching dapple grays. Lillian wiped the rainwater from her face with her gloved hand, lifting her skirts to avoid a puddle. She had lived in this town half her life and knew the weather well enough, but it was one thing to know it and another to become accustomed to it.
Even the sun misbehaved in Edinburgh. At the height of summer, it refused to retire at a reasonable hour, shining bravely on well after nine o’clock. In winter, the land descended into perpetual twilight, the sun barely scraping the horizon as it slunk across the sky in search of rest, as if exhausted by its summer excess.
She climbed up the High Street, past the Tron Kirk, its sharply pointed steeple slate gray in the chill rain. She pushed on to St. Giles’—Alfie always admired its grandeur and pomp; after all, as he liked to remind her, it was the center of Scottish worship. Behind her lay the house of John Knox, founder of the Scottish Reformation, who survived nearly two years as a French galley slave to lead the Scots away from French Catholicism. Though Lillian had no place in her life for Christianity, she admired Knox as a Scottish hero. She preferred Spiritualism, attending Madame Flambeau’s Friday night séances with regularity.
She shivered as she entered the great stone building, her footsteps echoing through its solemn walls. In the main nave, a group of schoolchildren spilled out of a pew, giggling and poking one another.