Chapter 2

With some difficulty, the two men eventually managed to carry the corpse across the street, down the side alley that ran to the rear of the hotel, and in through a rear door that presented into a store room. As they passed through the doorway, Frobisher nudged a wall switch with his elbow and turned on the overhead electric light. The room was revealed as a dusty repository for an assortment of ironmongery. Frobisher briefly left August clutching the dead man and proceeded to clear the large table at the far end of the room. He and August then hoisted the body on top.

“Clearly this isn’t the same man that you buried last week,” said August. “This blood’s quite fresh and the body’s still relatively warm.”

“So, who the devil did we bury then?” asked Frobisher, “It certainly looked like Newton when I saw the body in the mortuary.”

“You were asked to identify the body?”

“No, not exactly; I just went along with his guardian, Miss Alice Wenthrop. She was the one they asked to do the identifying. She was the nearest thing Newton had to family. But she’s quite old and frail nowadays, so I was there just to keep her company and provide a bit of support like.”

“And Miss Wenthrop was sure the body was Newton’s?”

“She was absolutely positive.”

“And you got a close look yourself? Close enough to be sure?”

“I’d say so, yes,” said Frobisher. “Newton has – well, had – very particular features. He was albino for a start, and he had a bright red birthmark on his neck.”

August leaned over to inspect the neck of the corpse. Sure enough, there was a birthmark plainly visible on the left side of the neck, just below the hairline.

“Right,” said August, “Could you get hold of your local doctor, and tell him Inspector Brighton from Scotland Yard would like to see him here as soon as he can manage? And then get a blanket or something, so that we can cover him up. I’m off outside again to see if I can see anything that might explain how the body came to be in the street.”

“Right you are, sir,” said Frobisher, and promptly disappeared through the door at the far end of the storeroom.