Love Lies Bleeding. Edmund Crispin

bound to be prints of everyone on the staff all over this room.’ He tapped on the table. ‘I take it, then, that Mr Somers was working here when someone interrupted him. He got up, knocked over the chair, faced away from the table and towards the door, and was shot…’ He paused, gloomily considering this hollow and unenlightening reconstruction, then observed that the doctor had finished his first brief examination of the body. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

      The doctor dusted his knees and wiped his eyes. ‘Exactly what you’d expect,’ he said. ‘He was shot at a distance of something like six feet with – I think – a .38.’

      ‘Six feet,’ Stagge muttered. He paced out the distance to where the murderer had presumably stood, and having arrived there, looked about him rather vaguely in search of inspiration: but apparently none was forthcoming, for he made no further remark.

      ‘He must have a thick skull,’ the doctor went on, nodding towards the body, ‘because the bullet’s lodged in his brain…Death was instantaneous, of course.’

      ‘Time of death?’ Stagge asked.

      ‘Anything between half an hour ago and an hour and a half.’

      Stagge consulted his watch. ‘And it’s twenty minutes to midnight now. Between ten and eleven, in fact. Anything else?’

      ‘Nothing,’ said the doctor uncompromisingly. ‘Can he be taken out to the ambulance?’

      Stagge shook his head. ‘Not for a moment. I must go through his pockets and the sergeant must take his fingerprints. After that you can have him.’

      He bent down and removed the contents of Somers’ pockets, laying them on the central table. At first glance there seemed nothing unusual about them: keys, money, a wallet – containing banknotes, an identity card and a driving licence – a pencil, a handkerchief, a half-filled tortoiseshell cigarette case and a utility petrol lighter…

      ‘But what on earth is he doing with that?’ Fen enquired.

      ‘That’ was a large sheet of spotless white blotting paper folded into eight, which had been in Somers’ breast pocket. Stagge turned it over carefully in his hands.

      ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t see anything specially odd about a man carrying blotting paper. I dare say…’

      But Fen had taken the sheet away from him and was comparing it with the pad on the table. ‘Same kind,’ he observed, ‘same colour, same size.’ He glanced round the room. ‘And there are several identical pads, all with clean blotting paper.’ Turning to Wells, he said: ‘Are you responsible for renewing the blotting paper in these pads?’

      ‘Yes, sir. I do it on the first day of every month, regular.’

      ‘Wells is a stickler for routine,’ the headmaster put in.

      ‘And this,’ said Fen thoughtfully, ‘is June first.’

      Wells nodded eagerly; with the switching off of the electric fire something of his animation had returned. ‘I changed the blotting paper earlier this evening, sir.’

      ‘I dare say,’ the headmaster remarked rather deprecatorily, ‘that Somers wanted some and just pinched it. People do that sort of thing, you know.’

      But Fen seemed dissatisfied with this explanation. To Wells he said: ‘Where do you keep the fresh blotting paper?’

      ‘In a cupboard in my office, sir.’

      ‘And where does it come from in the first place?’

      ‘Well, sir, from the school stationery shop.’

      ‘And is the same sort of blotting paper sold to the boys and the masters when they happen to want it?’

      ‘Yes, sir, I believe so.’

      ‘When you replace it, do you put a specific amount in each pad?’

      ‘Yes, sir. Three large sheets, folded double.’

      ‘Good,’ said Fen. ‘Have a look at all the pads in this room, then – including the one Somers was using – and see if there’s a sheet missing from any of them.’

      Glad of occupation, Wells began to bustle about.

      Stagge said, ‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at, Professor Fen.’

      ‘Was ist, ist vernünftig,’ said Fen cheerfully. ‘All facts are valuable, superintendent.’

      Stagge’s self-confidence visibly waned at this evasive response, and he was silent, watching the sergeant at his disagreeable task. He had cleaned Somers’ fingers with benzoline and pressed them on to an inked metal plate; now he was transferring the prints to a sheet of white paper. Finishing the job, he straightened up, red with effort, and said, ‘What about his wristwatch, sir? You’ll be wanting that?’

      Stagge grunted. ‘I’m glad you reminded me,’ he said, and bent down to unstrap it. The headmaster, watching this operation, broke in with, ‘He’s wearing it the wrong way round.’

      Fen looked at him with interest. ‘The wrong way round?’

      ‘He always wore it on the inside of his wrist, as I believe the Americans do. It isn’t like that now.’

      Stagge had the watch at his ear, holding it delicately by the edge of the strap. ‘Anyway, it isn’t going,’ he said, and examined it. ‘The hands are at five to nine.’

      ‘Is it broken?’ Fen asked.

      ‘Not that I can see.’

      ‘What about opening the back, then?’

      For answer Stagge went to the sergeant’s Gladstone bag, took from it a jar of grey powder, and with a camel-hair brush dusted this on to the glass and silver of the watch. He stared for a moment, blew off the powder, and picked up the sheet of paper with Somers’ fingerprints on it. For two or three minutes he was absorbed in the comparison, which he made with the help of a pocket lens.

      ‘Somers’ own prints are on it,’ he said at last, ‘and no one else’s. Which is what you’d expect.’ He prised off the back of the watch and studied its mechanism. ‘Broken, all right,’ he commented. ‘And deliberately broken, I’d say.’

      ‘To give a wrong impression of the time of death?’ the headmaster ventured.

      ‘Five to nine,’ Stagge pointed out. ‘Not a very sensible choice. And the glass isn’t smashed.’

      Wells had returned from his inspection of the blotting pads, and was hovering inquisitively at the edge of their little group. ‘I saw Mr Somers at ten o’clock, sir,’ he said. ‘Alive and well.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Stagge. ‘We’ll have a word about that in a minute.’

      The doctor, who had been dosing himself impatiently with snuff during this interchange, said, ‘Can he be taken away now?’

      ‘All right,’ Stagge agreed. ‘But don’t you go away, Stanford,’ he added hastily. ‘We’ve got another body to look at yet.’