The Sans Pareil Mystery (The Detective Lavender Mysteries Book 2) Read Free Page A

it was rotten and mouldy, but the flimsy article would serve to collect in the evidence retrieved by Barnaby.
    One of the constables arrived with the pick Lavender had requested. ‘Ned Woods has calmed down the mob,’ the constable said. ‘And ’e’s sent off to Bow Street for a cart to take the body to the morgue.’
    Lavender nodded, grateful for Woods’ initiative. Now more confident in the stability of the building, he allowed this second constable to stay. ‘We’ll have to drag her backwards by the feet and pull her out this way,’ he told them. ‘If we do that we don’t have to go near the edge; it could collapse at any moment.’
    Moving cautiously just inside the door of the chamber, the three men prised up the floorboards. It didn’t take them long to expose the feet of the corpse. There was something particularly helpless about those tiny, lifeless soles. The torn stockings were filthy and revealed little patches of skin beneath. Lavender felt a wave of sympathy wash through him for the victim.
    ‘Where are her shoes?’ he asked. ‘Nobody in their right mind would walk into this place without shoes.’
    Sharp-eyed Barnaby reached down into the void and pulled out a dusty pair of high-heeled, embroidered brocade evening shoes with silver buckles. There was a label inside them which he suspected denoted the name of the cobbler: ‘Kinghorn and Naylor’.
    ‘Dancing shoes,’ said Lavender. He was thinking aloud. ‘I suspect that this woman came – or was carried here – in the evening. The villains used darkness to cover their crime. It also looks like whoever stuffed her body beneath the floorboards threw in her shoes as an afterthought, determined to conceal evidence.’
    The two constables glanced at Lavender quietly, waiting for further deduction. But this wasn’t the time or place.
    Lavender instructed the constables to grab the woman’s ankles and pull her towards them. She didn’t weigh much but their job was made more difficult because her muslin gown and short wool jacket kept snagging on the jagged timbers and rusty nails. Her clothes didn’t look particularly warm and Lavender wondered how long she had been here in this freezing building. The stench increased as the rest of the corpse was gradually revealed. Lavender fought back his urge to gag.
    Despite the filth and the dust which covered the corpse, Lavender saw that the woman had been very pretty and was probably aged about twenty-five. Her bloated face had once been oval-shaped. Beneath the pallor of death, her complexion was flawless. Large, brown eyes fringed with luscious black eyelashes stared up at him blankly. He saw the marks around her wrists where she had been bound – presumably by the rope they had retrieved – but there was no obvious sign of injury. Her throat wasn’t cut, there were no bloodstains anywhere on her crumpled clothing and there were no stab wounds or tell-tale bruises from strangulation around her throat.
    He knew that there was no time to further examine the body; Raleigh Close could disintegrate into a pile of rubble at any moment. He needed to get the corpse to the morgue at Bow Street.
    ‘Barnaby, have another look in the space beneath the floorboards. See if the killers have thrown in her reticule, gloves or anything else which might to identify her.’
    Barnaby crawled on his stomach once more across the creaking floor. ‘There’s nothing else down ’ere,’ he called. ‘Oh, wait a minute – there’s some money.’
    The young man stretched down into the hole and then held up a gold coin, which glinted in the weak sunlight. Lavender was surprised to see that it was a newly minted Spanish escudo . He narrowed his eyes and stared at the small piece of metal.
    What on earth are you doing here? he wondered as he pocketed the coin.

Chapter Three
    Back at Bow Street, the corpse was placed into the morgue at the back of the building. Lavender went to wash off some of the grime and stench of