An Unsuitable Death Read Online Free Page A

holds the wrists and the hands firmly together.”
    “And there was no elastic band used this time?”
    “No. The little fingers of each of this girl’s hands were tightly interwoven to keep them together, that’s all.”
    Lambert said, “It’s a small difference. The killer might simply have been in a hurry to get away. The Cathedral’s a much more public place than any of those he’s used previously.”
    For the first time since they had shaken hands, Billy Griffith allowed himself a smile. It was a fleeting and mirthless one. “Yes, John. But there was no evidence of haste on that Lady Altar. The girl’s body was laid out with elaborate care, with every fold of the dress diligently arranged; it even looks as if the hair was carefully combed back to make the effect intended. And there are other things as well. We haven’t publicised it, but the Sacristan has left notes with each of his other victims. Obscene notes, handwritten, with spelling errors — we hope they’ll eventually help to convict him. There was no note with this one.”
    “Anything else?” Lambert knew now what the implications of this were, but he might as well have the full catalogue of items.
    “Yes. Perhaps the most significant of all. The other women had all been sexually assaulted before they were killed. And their underclothing removed. This girl had not been assaulted. And her — her undergarments were not disturbed.”
    Lambert smiled grimly at his fellow officer’s hesitation. Strange what taboos death brought. The Billy Griffith he remembered had been notable for his lurid and uninhibited language and for a rampant sex drive. Now, in the context of murder and in a Chief Constable’s office, he even hesitated to speak of the girl’s knickers.
    It was Douglas Gibson who said heavily, “So it looks as if we have a copycat killer.”
    The room was silent for a moment as the three heavily experienced men let the implications of this sink in. A second damaged mind turning to violence. A man probably as unhinged as the Sacristan himself. Perhaps bolder, for the Cathedral was a more outrageous and certainly a more dangerous place than any of the country graveyards and churches chosen for the Sacristan’s killings.
    And a man just as likely as the Sacristan to go on to further murders if he was not caught quickly.
    ***
    In the small reception area at the mortuary in Hereford, Sarah Rennie gave her name coldly and clearly to the clerk at the desk. Bert Hook, standing behind her, realised that it was the first time he had heard her forename.
    She was as crisp and seemingly unemotional on the rest of the routine information required from her, even delivering her possible relationship to the corpse she was to view as “Mother” without a tremor. Bert Hook had seen a lot of identifications in a quarter of a century as a policeman. His first reaction to her control was a selfish one of relief. And he was well aware that shock took many forms, including an icy calm.
    Somehow this woman did not seem to him to be in shock. Her directness, her imperious desire to dispense with the fripperies of social exchange, struck him as more a trait of personality, perhaps a little accentuated by the stress of this situation, than the effect of shock. She dispensed with the bureaucratic formalities as impatiently as she had dismissed every other obstacle between her and the viewing of this girl she seemed so sure was her daughter. Hook had more sense than to offer her the moment to compose herself before entering the viewing area that he would normally have suggested at this point.
    The body’s hands were clasped still in the pastiche of medieval marble in which they had been found, but the pose was now mercifully obscured by the all-covering sheet. Sarah Rennie’s control held, even at the moment when that sheet was drawn gently back from the serene, nun-like face.
    There was not even the sudden gasp of horror and dismay that Hook had thought was