Alex Grecian - The Yard

“Come.”

Kingsley smiled and turned the knob and Day followed him into the office. He closed the door after them. Sir Edward stood and came around his desk. He held out his hand to Kingsley. His other sleeve was folded and pinned up at shoulder height, and Day imagined Sir Edward’s wife ironing that sleeve so that it would lie flat against his side.

“Doctor. It’s good to see you again so soon.” He turned and nodded at Day. “Detective,” he said. “Making progress?”

“Dr Kingsley has made an interesting discovery.”

“I’d like to show you something,” Kingsley said, “which I think might make the process of criminal identification much easier in the future.”

“By all means.”

Sir Edward gestured toward his desk, which was far neater and more organized than Day’s own. Kingsley set his bag on the desk and opened it. He laid the piece of foolscap in the center of Sir Edward’s blotter and held out his hand to Day, who gave over the razor. Kingsley set that down nearer to the three men than the paper and then took the shears from Day as well. He picked up the ink bottle and handed it to Day.

“I believe that’s yours. Thank you for the use of it. May I trouble you now for a pen?”

Sir Edward took a pen from his top desk drawer and handed it to Kingsley. Kingsley nodded at the ink bottle and Day opened it. Kingsley jabbed the pen into the ink and leaned over the desk.

“I should have labeled these immediately, but I believe I remember the order of them.”

He scratched a name under each of the four useful marks on the paper: Day, Blacker, Mayhew , and finally his own name.

“Who’s Mayhew?” Day said.

“Isn’t that the name of the unfortunate man from the storage closet?”

“He said his name was Henry.”

“Yes, Henry Mayhew.”

“He never gave a family name, only Henry.”

“Well, for some reason, the name Mayhew sticks in my mind. Regardless of whether it’s correct, we shall know that it stands here for that same man.”

Day nodded and indicated that Kingsley should continue.

“Now, Sir Edward,” Kingsley said, “as I showed your detectives yesterday, each and every citizen has a pattern on the skin that is different from that of anyone else in the city.”

“Do you mean skin coloring? Brown and white and freckled and so on?”

“No, sir, a pattern of ridges. Look carefully at your fingertips.”

Sir Edward held his hand up to the light and stared at his fingers. “You mean the wrinkles here at the knuckle?”

“Even smaller. If you’ll look at this piece of paper, you’ll see that the application of ink brings the patterns out and records them for future comparison. Here we have finger marks made by two of your detectives, a street person, and myself. None of them are exactly the same. There are minute differences in them all. And if you were to record this same sort of mark from the tip of the thumb or finger of everyone for miles around, none of them would match exactly.”

“That’s impossible. A fingertip is too small. Eventually you would come across an exact likeness.”

“It would seem so, but I believe this is one of nature’s many little miracles. Now, as fascinating as this is in theory, I’m about to put it into practice.”

He reached into his open bag and removed a brightly decorated tin that had once held snuff, but when Kingsley opened it Day could see a quantity of black powder inside.

“You’ve already shaved the charcoal,” Day said.

Kingsley smiled. “By keeping a certain amount of charcoal dust prepared and ready, I believe I might save time in the future. Now let’s see what evidence we can find on these two instruments of murder.”

He tapped a small amount of dust out onto his hand and blew it across the surface of the shears, then did the same with the straight razor. He picked them up, one at a time, and shook off the excess dust, then set them next to the paper and got his magnifying lens from the bag. He peered through it at the razor, moved over to the shears, back to the razor.

“Here,” he said. “And here. You see?”

He turned around and pushed the lens into Day’s hands. Day bent over the weapons and looked at the magnified marks. He played the lens over the paper and then back to the shears.

“Remarkable,” he said. “Unless I’m mistaken, I see Mr Blacker’s prints on these scissors. These, right here, may be yours. But there are more that don’t match any on the paper.”

“Those are undoubtedly the marks of Inspector Little’s killer,” Kingsley said.

“You don’t say,” Sir Edward said. “May I?”

Sir Edward bent over the items on his blotter and spent several minutes looking through the lens before straightening back up. He was frowning.

“I see it. I do see it. Mr Day, you’ve handled this razor, as has the good doctor and, it would seem, Mr Blacker. This other mark, this Mayhew fellow, his marks aren’t visible on the razor. At least not to my eyes, but perhaps Dr Kingsley has a more well-trained ability of perception. These shears, on the other hand, have all four sets of markings, and at least three other patterns.”

“Yes,” Kingsley said. “Very observant, sir. I’m going to assume that at least one of the sets of prints on the razor belong to the victim, since we’re going on the theory that his own razor was used to shave and kill him, but I won’t know until I have a chance to retrieve finger marks from the body in my laboratory and compare them.”

“Grisly work, that.”

“Simply a part of the job, sir. A new part of the job. I believe I’ll institute this step in all future examinations. It might even be possible to build some sort of repository of finger marks to compare against.”

“That sounds dreadfully tedious.”

“But if a suspect were to be winnowed out by other methods, then this sort of evidence might prove the clincher, mightn’t it?” Day said.

“And I can imagine other uses for this,” Kingsley said. “I’ve been considering it for quite a while now. Think of how useful it might be in helping to find missing persons. Or identifying bodies. You have no idea how many bodies come through my laboratory in a week that are not claimed, that end up being buried anonymously.”

“I understand how frustrating that must be,” Sir Edward said. “I’m not entirely convinced, but there does seem to be enough merit here to explore this.”

“Thank you. Let me dust the opposite side as well, the side lying against the table now. There may be surprises awaiting us there. But at the moment, these finger marks do provide us some clues.”

“Such as?”

“You already knew that Mayhew, the dancing man, has handled the shears. But he did not handle the razor. That points to his innocence in the murders committed by … What did Mr Blacker call him?”

“The Beard Killer.”

“Right. The Beard Killer is not your dancing man. At least, I don’t believe he is. This doesn’t excuse him from possible suspicion in Inspector Little’s murder.”

“I have some trouble believing Mr Little would have been surprised and overpowered by the dancing man.”

“Nevertheless, it is at least a possibility. But the extraneous set of marks on the shears do not match any of the marks on the razor.”

“We already suspected that the Beard Killer and Little’s killer were not the same man.”

“But this confirms it.”

“If we can somehow find more prints to compare with both weapons…”

“The trunk. I will dust the entire trunk and we may discover something helpful there.”

“Indeed.”

“I wish we’d known of this even yesterday,” Sir Edward said. “I can see how it may be quite useful in the future. But for now, please continue along traditional lines of investigation and use this as a last resort until we know more. I would like to have some confirmation that these finger patterns are always different. I won’t see a man convicted and imprisoned solely on the strength of his fingertip marks.”