“I have seen the coroner’s report,” he said. “It was released to the Yard this morning. It states that Gloria was hit in the face. Once, very hard, while she was still alive. Then a knife was inserted into her chest. She was stabbed, yes, but that word isn’t quite accurate. What was done to Gloria was done slowly, precisely, and without passion. She had no defensive wounds on her hands. There is no bruising around the wound, as of a man punching the blade with force. The knife was inserted between her ribs and into the cavity of the heart, causing the heart to cease almost immediately. Death, the coroner states, would have come in seconds.”
I looked down at my lap.
“So he hit her first,” George said. “Once, hard enough to stun her. Then he put a knife into her and stopped her heart. Then he carried her body to the pond and dumped her in. She had told the others she wanted some air, and she was not immediately missed. Because the body was hidden in the pond, it was some time before she was discovered and anyone knew a murder had occurred.”
I frowned. How could he know all of this?
He continued talking. “Scotland Yard has interviewed all of the people present that night, of course. You may have noticed that none of them are named in the papers. Most of the people in attendance were inconsequential; however, one of them was from a good family who wishes to keep things quiet. Suspicion falls on all of them, but the house was not exactly isolated. There are neighboring homes twenty minutes’ walk in two directions, and the property backs onto woods in which there are well-trodden paths. The pond itself is in easy reach of at least two of those paths. A stranger or neighbor could have done this just as easily as one of the inner group—more easily, in fact, as the people inside the house are now alibis for one another.”
“They could be covering for someone,” I said, my words almost automatic. I had a suspicion about who the person “from a good family” was.
“I thought so as well,” George replied, “but the Scotland Yard reports indicate that this was not a group of loyal friends. Far from it, in fact. They seem to have been a random group of pleasure seekers.”
“The Scotland Yard reports?” I asked. “Gloria was murdered just over a day ago, and the papers say nothing. How have you seen the reports?”
“That’s none of your concern,” he said, turning away and looking out over the traffic passing in the square.
I tried to follow his gaze, taking a closer look around me. The spires of the Houses of Parliament were visible not very far away; Scotland Yard itself, though it couldn’t be seen, was not far, either. Any number of government buildings, including Buckingham Palace, was within easy distance. My companion had approached me from behind, and I hadn’t seen which direction he’d come from.
“Mr. Sutter, what exactly do you do for a living?”
He shook his head. “That is also not your concern, Miss Winter. Be assured my sources of information are valid. What I’m telling you is the truth. May I continue?”
I trained my gaze on a man sitting on another bench in the square, reading a newspaper propped in front of his face. MURDER! the headline shouted. NOTORIOUS PSYCHIC STABBED TO DEATH AT SéANCE. And underneath it: WHO KILLED GLORIA SUTTER?
“Continue,” I said.
“I’ll put it bluntly. We may have been estranged, Miss Winter, but someone brutally killed my sister and dumped her body. I have no faith that Scotland Yard can solve this crime. There are too many possibilities.”
“They’ve barely begun investigating,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I have no faith, Miss Winter. None at all. This is not unusual for me. Even in the smallest things, I never have faith that anything competent can be done unless I’m in charge. And this is, to me, very far from a small thing. They have not even found a murder weapon. I will not go home and wait for the official investigators to bungle this up. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. I did. To my left, I vaguely heard the marionette man playing his music again. The man reading the newspaper turned a page.
“I considered hiring an investigator, but the note Gloria left me made it simple. I came to see you instead, and you impressed me. You are not a con artist as I suspected. You are honest. You are, in fact, the ideal candidate. You knew Gloria. You can talk to her friends, her associates without suspicion. You can move in her world in a way that no one else can—especially me. And you specialize in finding lost things.”
“I don’t talk to the dead,” I said, panic in my throat.
“Perhaps you don’t, though I’m well aware that your mother did.” He caught the look I gave him. “It’s hardly private record, and I told you I researched you. Perhaps you’re correct and Gloria’s note was wrong. But you have a talent, a sensitivity. I may not understand it, but I don’t have to in order to make use of it. You are my investigator, Miss Winter. You will find who killed her for me.”
I leaned my head back, looked up at the sky. The usual London gloom had vanished, and I looked into a vista of cerulean blue punctuated by far-off clouds. The usual protests bubbled up in me: I wasn’t trained as an investigator; it wasn’t my profession; I would have no idea what I was doing; I already had a job. “I don’t work for you,” I told him, still staring up at the sky. “I have no access to coroner’s reports or papers from Scotland Yard.”
“You’ll have what you need,” he said.
Of course. I rubbed my nose, unladylike. “Did your research tell you that we were enemies, Gloria and I? Did it tell you what she did to my family? That I hadn’t spoken to her in three years?”
“If that mattered, Miss Winter, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
I hated her. Or I had, at one point. But I thought about that knife, the cold dispassion of it. Someone had slipped it between her ribs and stopped her heart as easily as if they’d put a key in a lock. Someone who hadn’t even cared enough to hate her.
Still I kept my head tilted back and I stared at the sky. It was beautiful, and endless, and uncaringly cold. Mysterious in its way. All the mysteries of the universe were just above us, if only we would look up. And yet we never did.
“Miss Winter?” George said. If he thought it strange that I sat on a bench in Trafalgar Square staring at the sky, he made no comment.
“The papers,” I said at last. “Scotland Yard. No one is asking the right questions. No one.”