Alex Grecian - The Yard

“The Beard Killer, you mean?” Blacker said.

“The Beard Killer? A beard is made up of unfeeling hair, Detective, and can’t be harmed in the least.”

“Of course. I know what a beard is, Doctor. But this person seems to target men with beards. Therefore I call him the Beard Killer.”

“Blackly humorous, I suppose, but inaccurate all the same.”

“You were about to say, Doctor?” Day said.

“Yes…” Kingsley glanced around the room before going on. He held the straight razor up so that the other three men could see it. “This will sound fantastic, I’m sure, but there is a theory and I believe it has some credence. I have been following the advancements of the French regarding scientific identification of the criminal class. Although I find him odious in all other respects, Alphonse Bertillon has made great strides in the field. He has begun recording certain physical measurements of those arrested within his jurisdiction. The French are now measuring the length of a man’s arms, the color of his eyes, the size of his shoes, all manner of things which might be altered individually, but when taken together add up to a positive identification. A man may shave his beard or don a pair of spectacles to disguise his appearance, but he cannot make himself taller or shorter or alter the length of his middle finger without, I suppose, a great deal of difficulty.”

“Are you saying that you can somehow deduce these things from that razor?” Day said.

“No. Certainly not. But there is an additional characteristic that the French are not using yet. They are considering it quite seriously, but there has been some opposition.”

He hesitated, and Day urged him on.

“Bear with me,” Kingsley said. “This will be hard to credit, but perhaps a demonstration will help. Fiona? May I borrow your charcoal, dear?”

The girl jumped at the mention of her name. She had been standing unnoticed in the corner of the room, leaning against the long counter and quietly drawing. As she passed by him, Hammersmith glanced at her tablet and saw the sketch she had been working on. It was a remarkable likeness of Hammersmith himself.

Fiona handed the piece of charcoal to her father. Kingsley looked at her portrait of the policeman and scowled at Hammersmith. Hammersmith shrugged.

“What was I saying?” Kingsley said.

“We haven’t the slightest idea,” Blacker said. “But it had something to do with a razor and a piece of charcoal.”

Hammersmith had never worked closely with Blacker, and he found that he didn’t like the detective’s flippant attitude. Inspector Day seemed like a serious fellow, though. He was new, but he was clearly determined to do the job properly.

“Ah, yes,” Kingsley said. “The razor. And not so much the charcoal itself, but the dust from it.”

“The dust?”

“One moment, please.”

Kingsley opened a drawer under the counter and rummaged through it. Hammersmith glanced over at Day and Blacker, who were talking quietly to each other. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Blacker seemed angry about it. Finally Kingsley straightened up with a frustrated grunt and closed the drawer. He pursed his lips and looked around the room.

“I just need something that will … something coarse,” he said.

Blacker and Day stopped talking and looked up.

“Coarse? Some sort of fabric?”

“Of course not,” Kingsley said. “That wouldn’t-”

He smiled and pointed at the back wall of the room. Hammersmith turned to look as Kingsley hurried past him and slapped the bricks.

“Coarse, like bricks,” he said. “These ought to do the job. Now you’re going to see something amazing.”

He began to rub the charcoal across the bricks, back and forth, up and down, darkening the wall. He kept one hand cupped under the charcoal to keep the dust from drifting to the floor.

“I have been corresponding,” Kingsley said, “with a man named Henry Faulds. He’s Scottish, a missionary who has spent some time in the Orient. Faulds has been petitioning the Yard of late with a notion he’s brought back with him.”

As he spoke, Kingsley continued to rub the charcoal against the bricks. He had his back to the room and might almost have been talking to himself.

“There are faster ways to darken the wall,” Blacker said.

“Darkening the wall is beside the point,” Hammersmith said. “He’s gathering charcoal dust.”

“Exactly right,” Kingsley said. “Now watch.”

He returned to the counter, his fingers wrapped around a fistful of black dust, and carefully picked up the razor.

“Hammersmith, would you please bring that basin to me? No, not the metal one. We’ll want the white porcelain. The one with the fewest stains, if there is such a thing.”

Hammersmith selected a likely candidate from the table behind him and carried it to the counter.

“You others gather round here,” Kingsley said. “But breathe softly. Don’t scatter my dust. You, too, Fiona. I’ve only read about this, never performed it, but I think it will be very instructive.”

He took the basin from Hammersmith and set the razor in the bottom of it.

“Now look at the handle,” he said.

Hammersmith leaned in. The razor’s handle was bone, darker than the porcelain it sat on, almost yellow by comparison. There were two red smudges near the end of it where the blade opened out, a similar-looking streak of red across the middle of it, and a crack where it might have been dropped at some point in the past.

“Blood,” Day said.

“Yes,” Kingsley said. “Blood. You see here where the blood splashed against both the blade and the handle as it exited your victim’s throat. Arterial pressure forced it out quite violently, pushing it past the razor, which is why there’s so little to be seen here. But that’s not the most relevant point. These two smudges…”

“The killer got blood on his hand.”

“He did,” Kingsley said. “See how rough the outlines of these smudges are?”

“Sort of jagged.”

“Indeed. That tells us that the killer probably wasn’t wearing gloves.”

“Could have been wearing suede,” Day said.

Kingsley nodded, but he didn’t look pleased.

“I suppose so. That’s a good observation, Detective. But let’s suppose for a moment that the killer wasn’t wearing suede gloves and that the roughness of these marks was caused by variations on the surface of his skin. If that’s the case, then these marks won’t be the only ones on the handle. We simply can’t see the other marks.”

“Can’t see them?”

“Sweat. Our skin exudes all manner of liquids, and those liquids leave a residue.”

“But if we can’t see them-”

“Watch.”

Kingsley leaned in over the top of the basin and opened his hand. He exhaled quickly, blowing charcoal powder over the razor. The bone-white surface of the handle turned grey. He grabbed the razor, holding it with his fingertips near the end where the handle tapered, and tipped it up, shaking loose dust off it. He set it on the countertop and blew on it, scattering more of the excess charcoal dust. He turned around and smiled at his daughter.

“You see?” he said.

Fiona nodded, but Hammersmith didn’t see anything unusual about the dirty razor. He leaned in closer and almost bumped heads with Day, who was leaning in at the same time.

“There are black smudges now,” Day said.

“Yes,” Kingsley said. “But they’re more complete than the blood smears were. Look at them closely.”

Blacker, who stood back from the others, cleared his throat.

“I think I understand,” he said. “If we catch the man who did this, we can compare the size of his fingertips to these smudges and prove that he held the murder weapon in his hand.”