A Murder in Time (42 page)

Kendra asked, “Does anyone recognize her?”

“Nay, miss,” said one of the men. “She be a stranger.”

She wasn't really surprised by that answer. Clothing often determined a person's socioeconomic status, especially in this era. Even damaged, she could see that the woman's coat and gown weren't that of a servant or someone in the lower classes.

“She's unfamiliar to me as well,” Aldridge murmured.

“I can identify her,” Sam spoke up.

“What?” Startled, Kendra turned to look at the Bow Street Runner. “You know who she is?”

“Aye. She was a cagey one—all bawds are. But I didn't know—didn't suspect—she was telling me a Banbury tale. I interviewed her during the course of my inquiries about the lass in the lake. Her name is—was—April Duprey. She owns an academy on Bacon Street.”

Alec frowned. “You showed her the sketch?”

“Aye. She claimed not ter recognize the lass.”

The Duke said, “It would seem she lied to you, Mr. Kelly.”

“Aye.” He let out a sigh. “She lied.”

Kendra caught his eyes, and knew what he was thinking: April Duprey had lied, and it had cost her everything.

Kendra did what she could. She walked the area. She studied the path. She made copious notes and a rough sketch of the perimeter and the body within it. Twenty yards, she judged, to the edge of the forest and open glen. Even though she didn't think it would mean a tinker's damn, she dropped to her knees and went over the dead woman with the magnifying glass and tweezers, carefully plucking some of the tiny twigs and leaves from her hair and placing them on the sheet of foolscap, which she folded into an improvised envelope.

“There's a slash through the glove on the back of her right hand, and what looks like blood,” she observed, frowning. She slid the tweezers into the gap and pried off the leather, stiff now with dried blood, to view the cold, bluish-gray flesh beneath. “Hmm. It appears to be only one laceration. Odd.”

“Why is that odd?”

She twisted her head to look at Alec. She'd forgotten she had an audience. Her eyes traveled to the dozens of curious eyes circling her. Remembering how quickly gossip had flowed through the castle with the last victim, Kendra shook her head, sat back on her heels, and sighed, “There's nothing more I can do here. We might as well move the body.”

“To the icehouse?” Rebecca glanced between Kendra and the Duke.

Kendra shrugged. “There's a vacancy.”

39

The woman was laid on the same wooden table as the first victim. The Duke's normally soft blue eyes were shadowed in the lamp-lit room, his expression forbiddingly grim.

Kendra looked at him. “Dalton can't do this autopsy.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I see where that would pose a problem.”

Sam cleared his throat. “Ah, Your Grace, I may be of assistance. I know a London sawbones that the Watch uses on occasion. Dr. Munroe—he was actually trained as a doctor before he studied in Edinburgh ter be a sawbones. He opened an anatomy school in Covent Garden two years ago. I can vouch for his character.”

“Very good, Mr. Kelly. If you give me his address, I shall post a letter immediately.”

“Well, as ter that, sir, I feel I should go back ter Town, show the sketch again ter the other light-skirts at the brothel. 'Tis clear Miss Duprey misled me the first time.”

“I'd like to go with you,” said Kendra.

Four pairs of eyes swiveled around to stare at her in shock.

Alec was the first to recover, shaking his head. “Impossible, Miss Donovan. You cannot venture into a brothel and consort with prostitutes. Your reputation would be damaged beyond repair.”

Kendra raised her eyebrows and gestured to the body lying in front of her. “But it's all right for me to consort with dead prostitutes?”

Despite the grisly atmosphere, Aldridge's mouth twitched. “I rather think society would frown upon this, as well, but allowances have been made. Don't fret, my dear. I'm confident Mr. Kelly will be able to conduct this inquiry without your assistance. Now, I suggest we return to the castle. Nothing more can be done here until Mr. Kelly's man arrives to conduct the postmortem.”

As they gathered in the study around the breakfast that the Duke had ordered, it occurred to Kendra that for all this era's finely tuned sensibilities, no one's appetite had evaporated. Then again, it was still a time when public hangings were viewed as date nights.

“Miss Duprey clearly saw an opportunity to extort money from the killer,” Alec said, as he forked eggs and sausage onto his plate from a silver platter.

Kendra stared at them, suddenly feeling queasy. “It's my fault. I'm the one who thought to do a sketch of the victim and send it around to brothels for identification. If she hadn't seen that, she'd never have tried to blackmail the murderer.”

Another thought struck her. Who was April Duprey? Yes, she was a bawd, but who was she in
history
? What if she'd been the great-great grandmother of someone important, like Francis Crick, one of the Nobel Prize–winning scientists who had helped map DNA? Would she return to her own time and find out that everything had changed because of this one incident? That DNA, so vital to police work in the future, might not even exist?

“It is not your fault, Miss Donovan,” Aldridge said firmly, probably noticing how pale she knew she'd become. “The sketch was an inspired idea, but we would have sent out a verbal description to the London brothels. I daresay the woman would have recognized one of her own birds, particularly since she'd recently gone missing. Everything would have transpired exactly as it has. 'Tis the thread of fate.”

Kendra began to breathe again. She wasn't entirely sure she believed in the thread of fate, but maybe she hadn't begun unraveling the fabric of time after all. Or did she only want to believe what the Duke was saying because the alternative was too awful to contemplate?

The Duke eyed her as he cut his sausage. “Something else troubles you. What is it, my dear?”

Kendra hesitated. She drank her coffee, and then gave a sigh as she set the cup down. “Blackmail is why April Duprey was killed,” she finally said, “but it doesn't explain why she was killed
here
.”

Rebecca frowned. “I do not comprehend. You've gone to great lengths to convince us that the madman lives in the area. He most likely has been luring Unfortunate Women here for the last four years. Naturally, he would kill Miss Duprey here. 'Tis part of his pattern, as you have said yourself.”

“No. First of all, April Duprey is not part of his pattern. She looks nothing like his victims. She lived in London and he could have killed her there, probably without raising any alarm. Or why not kill her somewhere else in the country? Why
here
, specifically?” Kendra picked up her own knife and fork, concentrating on the meal as she let the words sink in.

“He killed her because she was attempting to blackmail him,” Rebecca said, bewildered. “We agreed that it explains the anomaly of her appearance and age.”

Kendra shook her head. “The unsub killed her because of the blackmail, but she wasn't someone he deliberately chose. In that sense, she wasn't a victim like the other girls.” She paused, searching for the right word. “She was a liability. He could have eliminated her quietly. But he didn't.”

“He didn't choose her, but he chose this area,” Aldridge realized. “The fiend
chose
to put her body on a public path where he knew she'd be found. Why?”

Alec slowly put down his knife and fork. “He's trying to elicit a reaction.”

“Yes.” Kendra nodded. “That's what I believe. And that tells us something. He's watching and listening. You remember when I told you that he's escalating?”

Aldridge said, “His—what did you call it? His cooling-off period was becoming shorter.”

“This is another form of escalation. He didn't expect our Jane Doe to be discovered. That was unexpected. Unplanned. But I think . . . it excited him.

“April Duprey doesn't fit his pattern,” she added softly, “but he took the opportunity to use her to engage us.”

Rebecca looked appalled. “
Us
? What are you saying, Miss Donovan? Are we in danger from this madman?”

“No,” Kendra answered quickly—too quickly. She had to pause and consider that. Could she be so certain with her conclusion? “At least not yet,” she amended carefully. “In my opinion, he'll become more unpredictable as the situation becomes unpredictable. As I said, control is important to him. He won't like it when things slip outside his control.”

“Like the bawd being identified,” Alec surmised.

“Yes. Exactly. He views this as
his
game, with
his
rules. He wanted April Duprey found. But identified? No. We've changed the rules on him; he just doesn't know it yet.”

“And when he does?” Rebecca asked.

Kendra sipped her coffee, and frowned. “I don't know.”

Alec looked across the table at her. “In the woods, you mentioned that the cut on the back of Miss Duprey's hand was odd. What did you mean by that?”

“It was, as far as I could tell, one laceration, through the glove, fairly shallow. Attacks using a knife follow a fairly predictable pattern. Either you're dealing with someone in a frenzy—multiple stab wounds—or you're dealing with someone who is controlled. They'll deliver one or two blows, but those tend to be mortal—in the thorax region, for example, aiming for the heart. I believe that's how April Duprey eventually died. Or the attacker goes for the throat, slicing open the jugular. Death is almost instantaneous.”

“So the monster broke pattern in this regard as well,” the Duke commented.

“And she didn't put up her hand to protect herself,” Kendra said. “That would've been on the palm of the hand.”

“He did it to get her attention,” Alec said.

She nodded. “That's what I think, too. He wanted her fear. And
that
fits his pattern.”

They fell silent, contemplating April Duprey's last moments on earth. She hadn't been tortured like Jane Doe, but she'd felt terror, hunted down like a wild animal.

Rebecca shivered, and pushed away her half empty plate. “Pray God that Mr. Kelly will get the name of the madman from the Unfortunate Women at the academy.”

The Duke picked up his teacup and gave Kendra a curious look. “Miss Donovan, you said something else earlier about beetles and spiders helping you determine how long the poor creature was left in the woods. I would like an explanation.”

Kendra had forgotten her comment, and now felt the weight of history pressing against her again. What to say? What not to say?

“Miss Donovan?” he prodded gently when she remained silent.

“There was actually a case in China—the thirteenth century,” she finally said. That, at least, seemed safe to share. “When a villager was found in his field stabbed to death, the authorities determined the murder weapon was a sickle. They confiscated all the sickles from the victim's neighbors and observed how blowflies were attracted to one particular sickle. Even though the killer had wiped the blade, microscopic bits of blood and soft tissue were still on it—enough to attract blowflies.”

“Why, how terribly clever!” Rebecca exclaimed.

“I am familiar with Francesco Redi's experiments, which proved that insects are attracted to decomposing flesh, as opposed to the Aristotelian abiogenesis theory, which purported spontaneous birth of maggots in decaying meat.” The Duke nodded, and gave her a look. “I am not familiar, however, that Redi's experiments ever determined
time
of death.”

Kendra stifled a sigh. Sometimes she wished the Duke wasn't so damn shrewd. Did she give them information that shouldn't be around for another forty years, when a French physician began using insect life cycles to determine time of death? Could
that
screw up the whole space-time continuum?