Embarrassment of Corpses, An (9 page)

“What if there's a connection, but not between the victims?” asked Oliver suddenly.

“Come again.”

“What if the connection in each case is actually with the killer's signature? Effie—Sergeant, I mean—you just referred to the victims as the Pisces, the Aquarius, and the Capricorn. Could those actually be their birth signs?”

Mallard absorbed the idea. Then, without a word, he turned to Effie and nodded to her to consult her files again.

“Nettie Clapper was born on the twentieth of January, 1932,” she reported. “And Mark Sandys-Penza's birthday was Christmas Eve. We don't have a file on Sir Harry Random, because it was never a murder investigation. Do you know Sir Harry's birthday, Mr. Swithin?”

Oliver liked the way his name sounded on Effie's soft lips. “He was born on the twenty-ninth of February,” he told them. “A leap-year baby.”

“So what are their birth signs?” asked Mallard.

Oliver shrugged. “Search me, I never look at those things.”

“Effie?”

“I refuse to follow the foolishness of horoscopes, Chief.”

Mallard sighed with irritation. “Well, do you two skeptics know your own signs? Maybe one of the victims was born about the same time.”

“My birthday's the first of March and I'm a Pisces,” Effie said. “So that would make Sir Harry one, too.”

“One match, at least. Oliver?”

“I was born in August, on the cusp between Leo and Virgo.”

“Typically pretentious answer and no bloody help at all,” Mallard complained.

“It's not my fault. Half the horoscopes put me at the tail end of Leo and half at the very beginning of Virgo.”

“I thought you never looked at those things,” Mallard sneered. “You must be one sign or the other. It depends on the year you were born. And when's my birthday, Oliver? Not that you've remembered any time during the last twenty-five years.”

“I don't know, Uncle.”

“Fifth of June and I'm a Gemini. So that's no good.” Mallard thought for a second. “There's an old song called ‘Jesus was a Capricorn.' So if Sandys-Penza was born on Christmas Eve, he's probably a Capricorn, too. Another potential match. And Nettie Clapper's birthday falls between the others, so I'll lay odds she's an Aquarius. It looks like you may be right again, Ollie. Excuse me for not leaping up and down and shouting ‘Hallelujah!' but it still doesn't help us much.”

“Thanks to Mr. Swithin, we know the next victim's birth sign,” Effie conceded. “That limits him or her to only a twelfth of the population.”

“Maybe, but can hardly put out a stop press horoscope: If you're a Sagittarius, avoid meetings with tall, dark strangers brandishing lead pipes.”

They paused again while the large perambulator made its return journey past their bench. Mallard smiled politely at the nanny and turned to help Effie collect the files. So only Oliver saw the nanny grope in her handbag for the baby's bottle and thrust it under the pram's hood. Was it a trick of the sunlight, or did the liquid in the bottle seem amber in color? And was that an anchor tattooed on the nursemaid's somewhat hairy forearm?

“There
must
be another reason why the killer is choosing these particular victims,” Mallard continued thoughtfully, as the oversized vehicle trundled away toward Buckingham Palace. “Could they have all worked together at some time, for example? Or could they have all been witnesses to the same event?”

“If the pattern persists, we're going to have one victim for each of the twelve signs of the zodiac,” said Oliver. “I'm no mathematician, but I would think there's a pretty low probability that twelve co-workers or twelve witnesses—that is, twelve people taken at random, at least in terms of their birthdays—should each be born under a different sign of the zodiac.”

“One in eighteen thousand, six hundred and fourteen,” said Effie idly, fixing her gaze on a Canada goose that had settled on the bank of the lake opposite them. The two men stared at the policewoman and then at each other. Finally, Mallard cleared his throat.

“So you're saying the probability of any group of twelve people representing all twelve zodiac signs is so small that we can probably write off any other connection between the victims?”

“Not exactly,” Effie replied. “It depends how big a group you have to choose from. You can probably find a representative of each of the twelve signs quite easily in, say, a large company, or a church, or the same street. It gets harder as the original group gets smaller, hardest of all when you only have twelve to choose from in the first place, such as the twelve apostles or the Dirty Dozen. And maybe there aren't going to be twelve murders. Maybe the killer's already finished. The odds of any three specific people, such as the three of us sitting here, having adjacent zodiac signs are much smaller.”

“What are they?”

“Only one hundred and forty-three to one. And they get even better if you choose your three from a bigger group.” She smiled at them, and Oliver caught his breath. Wonderful nostrils, he decided. How do Aquarians match up to Leo-Virgo cusps?

“Well, I can't afford to assume the killer's finished,” said Mallard blandly. “And I still can't help thinking that there's something else to these deaths. The murderer is going to a lot of trouble for what seems quite an easy pattern. Using the zodiac as the secret code—it's almost trite.”

He stopped, and they sat in silence, watching the goose. She ambled reproachfully into the water and turned her back on them.

“Everyone's a critic,” stated Mallard. “I have to go back to the Yard. Effie, why don't you and Oliver continue to ponder this through an early lunch?”

“No, I'll come with you,” she replied swiftly. “I can start getting this personal information into the computer.” She stood up and hoisted the shoulder bag into place. Mallard gave a long and elaborate shrug behind her back. This annoyed Oliver, who felt quite capable of arranging his own social calendar.

“I have an errand to run for my employer, anyway,” he claimed, although Mallard knew he was lying; in the two years, Oliver had worked for Woodcock and Oakhampton, they had never asked him to perform any task except to greet visitors—who never came—and answer the telephone—which never rang for business purposes.

“Then give us an hour and a half and join us at the Yard.”

***

But an hour and a half later, Detective Superintendent Tim Mallard and Detective Sergeant Effie Strongitharm were not to be found in New Scotland Yard's offices.

“Sagittarius?” Mallard asked, as he squeezed into the hastily erected tent.

“We haven't found any label or card yet,” Effie replied, stepping back from the body. She had arrived ten minutes earlier, leaping up from her desk the moment the message flashed on her computer screen. “But the situation is unusual enough. Sagittarius is the sign of the Archer. It's not every day you find someone killed with a bow and arrow in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.”

She hummed the opening fanfare from the old “Robin Hood” television series. The young pathologist looked up from the body and smiled in a way that irritated her. “Robin Hood used a longbow,” he said suavely. “This is a crossbow bolt. Think William Tell, instead. A little Rossini, perhaps, Sergeant?”

“I heard that the definition of an intellectual is someone who can hear the
William Tell
Overture and
not
think of the Lone Ranger,” Mallard remarked, to cover Effie's bewilderment. He knew her tastes ran more to techno-funk than opera seria.
“Come, Sergeant Strongitharm, let's give the good doctor some room to practice his craft.”

They took one more look at the victim—a stout man in his thirties, sprawled face down on the enclosed patch of pavement, the bolt protruding from the back of his neck—and stepped outside the hot and crowded tent.

“Mr. Swithin's notes said the symbol for Sagittarius is an arrow with a short line drawn across the shaft,” Effie said.

“It'll turn up,” muttered Mallard. “I can feel it.”

The police had cleared the tear-shaped peninsula of pavement in front of Lillywhites store, driving curious onlookers from the steps around the statue of Eros. So the scores of aimless tourists and unemployed locals in Piccadilly Circus, many of the men bare-chested in the unremitting heat of early September, had crossed the street, where their view of the tent was partly blocked by stranded vehicles. Yellow-and-red carrier bags from Tower Records caught the sun, making the scene look like the daubs of a color-blind pointillist. Every window around the Circus—at least, those that weren't covered by the massive hoardings—had a figure leaning out, waiting for the tent to come down and for the corpse to make its reappearance.

Mallard, one of the few figures on the empty pavement, stared out at the thousands of expectant faces. “Since we have so great a cloud of witnesses….” he whispered.

“Actually, we have one very good witness,” said Effie, who rather enjoyed the theatrical aspects of her job. “A man who was talking to the victim when he was shot. Hit. Stabbed. Bolted.”

“Shot will do.”

Effie led Mallard to the curbside, where several eyewitnesses to the murder were leaning against an unmarked police car. She gently pulled one man aside, out of earshot of the others, and introduced him as Edmund Tradescant.

“They say that if you stand in Piccadilly Circus long enough, you're bound to meet somebody you know,” remarked Tradescant sadly. He was a well-dressed, clean-shaven man in his late forties. “But you don't expect him to be killed in front of you,” he added.

“You're saying you knew the victim?” Mallard echoed.

“Oh yes. He was a colleague of mine. We both work for the same pharmaceutical company. I was very surprised to see him here. Gordon's from our research division in Yorkshire, a bit of a recluse.”

“Gordon…?

“Sorry, Gordon Paper.”

“And he lived in Yorkshire, you say?”

“Yes, just outside Richmond.”

“He'd never lived in London?”

“Never, as far as I know.”

“Not west London.”

Tradescant shook his head. “He hated anything that wasn't Yorkshire. He had a complete laboratory in his home, which he'd converted from an old windmill. You couldn't get him out of it, so the firm let him work from home. You see, Superintendent, Gordon Paper suffered from acute travel sickness. Couldn't take a bus ride without losing his lunch. That's what he was working on—a cure for travel sickness, with himself as his guinea pig. A fruitless task, of course, but some of the by-products of his research are our best sellers. In pure economic terms, he'll be a terrible loss to the company.” He winced. “Sorry, that's an appalling way to look at it, of course.”

“Tell us exactly what happened.”

Tradescant collected his thoughts. “I had an appointment to meet someone here, and as I was waiting, I caught sight of Gordon, strolling along in front of the statue. I called to him and started to walk over. He turned, but as he did so there was a whizzing sound, a thud, and he plunged forward into my arms. I lost my balance and fell over backward. I'm afraid I just lay there until someone else lifted him off me.”

“Very distressing for you, sir,” said Mallard with sincerity. “So Mr. Paper didn't have the chance to tell you why he was here?”

“He didn't say a word. It was over so quickly.”

The pathologist emerged from the unsteady wigwam behind them and signaled to Mallard that he was ready to talk. Mallard nodded.

“Thank you, Mr. Tradescant,” he said to the other man. “You've been a great help.”

Tradescant frowned. “Is that it? I'd like to help more, of course. Gordon was a good man. A little odd, in his way, but harmless. Certainly unworthy of this sort of end.”

“That's all for now,” Mallard continued. “Leave us a phone number.”

“Don't you want to know if he had any enemies, or that sort of thing?”

“No, sir.”

“Old scores to settle, long-standing feuds? Although I can't think of any, I may add.”

“No, thank you, sir.”

He stared from Mallard to Effie and back again.

“Don't you want to know
anything
more about him?” he whispered incredulously.

“Well, there is one thing…” Effie said.

“Yes?”

“What sign was he?”

“Sign?”

“Sign of the zodiac.”

Tradescant's mouth dropped open. “I don't know,” he stammered.

“Ah, modern police methods,” said Mallard brightly to Effie as they moved away from the baffled witness. “Poor Mr. Tradescant probably thinks we read our tea leaves and rub a rabbit's foot before setting out on an investigation.” Effie chuckled. The pathologist thought this was a smile of greeting and gave her a casual salute, pivoting one finger beside his forehead. Effie contemplated turning on the Look, but a moment of self-doubt caused her to hesitate.

“Killed by the crossbow bolt, obviously, which ended up in the brain stem,” the doctor reported, unaware of how readily he could have been made to remember an incident with a staff nurse and a bedpan. “Crossbows pack quite a punch, as I'm sure you know, but the bolt didn't penetrate very far. This leads me to conclude that it was fired from a distance, and so lost a lot of its momentum in flight.”

“Estimates?”

“I need to consult a few files. We don't come across medieval weaponry too often in this game, Superintendent. But it could have been as far as four or five hundred feet. Judging from where the victim was standing, with his back to the street, the bolt may have been fired from any of the buildings on the far side of the Circus, probably with a slightly downward trajectory.”

Mallard scanned the facades of the buildings around him, about three hundred feet away. To the left, the old Swan and Edgar building, its arched windows flaming with the red neon of Tower Records. Then, beyond the start of Regent Street's curving Quadrant, the similar County Fire Office building—several windows there. Another break for the angular arrival of Glasshouse Street, then more buildings designed in the typical London fricassee of Palladian and Beaux-Arts, which quickly and mercifully disappeared behind a mosaic of neon billboards, drab and dirty in the bright sunlight. A gap for Shaftesbury Avenue and, finally, one side of the triangular London Pavilion, with waxwork rock stars waving incongruously from the balconies of its classical frontage.