However, if Knifing was correct, and this scene was a message to me, then the killer must have been inside my home to have seen my furniture and learned of the coincidence. Leif Sedgewyck had seen my table, but how could he have connected me to the Towers? Another theory was gnawing at the back of my mind; the theory that had attracted me to the scene of Felicity Whippleby’s murder in the first place: blood-draining was the mark of the vampire. And the suspect likeliest to have left me a message was Mad Jack.
My unease must have been plain upon my face, because Knifing said: “You’re getting exactly what you wanted right now. You decided to involve yourself and I can see that you’re only just realizing what it is in which you’ve become involved. I hope you’re enjoying the experience.”
He followed the trail of blood to the heavy door of the bedroom. He found it unlocked, and pushed it open.
“Oh dear,” said Angus as we entered.
My sweet Violet had been killed and drained in the same manner as Felicity Whippleby. We found her naked body in the bedroom, hung by the feet from a knotted linen sheet, which was affixed to one of the four high posts of the canopy bed. I tried not to think about how I had cavorted there with her the previous afternoon, and instead concentrated on keeping my expression blank to prevent my face from betraying our affair to Knifing. I wanted to take her down, to cover her, to offer her whatever protection I still could. But the revelation of our indiscretions together would only taint her memory, and it certainly wouldn’t be the best thing in the world for me and my standing in the community. I did nothing.
But my heart pounded in my chest, and my pulse fluttered in my throat. Feverish sweat began to pour from my forehead and my armpits, though the room was quite cool. I mopped my brow with my shirtsleeve and hoped my reaction to the sight of the corpse had escaped Knifing’s notice.
The idea that Violet could be ripped out of the world seemed a direct rebuttal to the sentiment I had shared with her the previous day. How could life be imbued with purpose if someone like Violet could be unceremoniously and arbitrarily unmade? My guts twisted within me, and I nearly swooned. This, I realized, was the intrusion of disorder Knifing had told me his clients hired him to rectify. He was right; looking at that still, dangling form, I wanted order and I wanted certainty and I wanted vengeance.
Knifing’s stony expression didn’t change when he saw the dead woman, and he did not seem to acknowledge her at all. He seemed more interested in a splatter of blood and bits of bone on the wall, near the doorway. He spotted a small hole bored into the plaster, and then, without commenting about Violet, returned to the dining room to look at her husband’s corpse again.
Using the point of his umbrella, Knifing pushed Tower forward, so the corpse slumped onto the table. The back of the skull was a tangled mess of hair and bone and flesh and brains.
“A pistol shot, at close range,” he said.
“He was shot in the back of the head?” I asked.
“Don’t be preposterous,” Knifing said with a dry chuckle.
He lifted Tower’s mangled head up by the ears and tilted it backward. Stinking red-and-gray pulp poured out of the gunshot wound, but Knifing paid no attention to it, except to make sure none got on his boots.
He pointed to a round, red wound beneath the jaw. “The bullet went in here, and out the back,” he said. “Entrance wounds are typically smaller than exits. You’ll find a pistol load embedded in the wall of the bedroom.”
He went back into the bedroom and knelt down, grunting softly as he bent his aged knees. He found a tear in the rug and rubbed it with his fingers.
“With more luck, these poor people might have survived, and solved our mystery for us,” he said. “Professor Tower struggled with the intruder, and had the better of him, for a while.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“The same way the Comanche can read the trail to learn where the buffalo herd he’s been tracking was attacked by wolves,” Knifing said. “The brains on the wall are at a level with a man’s chest, so Tower must not have been standing when he was shot. The track of the bullet is angled upward, and the entrance wound is beneath the chin. The killer must have fired the lethal shot while lying on his back, with Tower kneeling over him. The killer entered the bedchamber from the dining room with a knife or a dagger, and attempted to attack the victims. The husband resisted, and stripped away the weapon.” He toed the rip in the carpeting with his boot, and I realized the blade must have fallen there. Knifing continued: “Tower wrestled the attacker to the floor, but the killer got a hand free, and drew a gun.” He shook his head sadly at how close Tower had come to eluding his grisly fate.
Angus approached the wall and stuck his finger in the bullet hole to verify that it was, indeed, angled upward. “That all makes sense,” he said. “And the evidence corroborates each supposition. It’s really quite amazing, Mr. Knifing.”
“I know I am,” Knifing said, “but I wonder how the assailant gained access to the residence in the first place.” He retraced his steps out of the bedroom, past Professor Tower’s body in the dining room, and back to the front entryway. He scratched the loose, wrinkled flesh that connected his chin to his neck as he examined the bolt on the door, which looked ordinary. Then he opened an adjacent coat-closet, and the limp body of the Towers’ domestic maid fell into his arms. Knifing examined her and showed us the dark purple bruises around her throat.
“He strangled her,” Knifing said. “I doubt she even had a chance to scream.”
“We don’t have much violence here in Cambridge,” Angus said. “The students and Fellows are from the better classes, and most of the townsfolk have been here for generations. We all know each other. But maybe people here trust too easy. Likely as not, the killer simply knocked on the door, and this poor girl opened it for him.”
Knifing gently laid the body on the floor, and we went back to the bedroom to examine Violet’s corpse.
“How did he hang her up like that?” Angus asked. “Did she not resist?”
“She was already dead,” Knifing said.
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Imagine a wineskin filled with fluid, and suppose someone punctured it. The contents would drip or flow out, depending on the size of the hole, and if you held that pierced bag over a bucket, you could catch the fluid as it drained. But suppose you squeezed the wineskin.”
“The fluid would spray out of the hole instead of flowing into the bucket,” Angus said.
“Exactly. The beating of the human heart applies a force upon the veins and arteries not unlike that which you would apply upon the wineskin by squeezing the bag. For the killer to drain her into his pot or bucket, her heart must not have been beating when he cut her neck. If it had been, the mess would be evident.”
Knifing grabbed Violet’s head and peered into her glassy eyes.
“Cause of death is most likely asphyxia,” he said, and having verified that fact, he seemed to lose interest in her. He wandered around the room twice, and then opened the door to the adjoining bedroom, where the Towers’ children slept.
The older girl was also killed by smothering, Knifing told us. She was left in her bed, and looked as though she might only be asleep. I commented to this effect, and Knifing shrugged.
“Putrefaction will be quite noticeable in a matter of hours, if the body is left at room temperature,” he said. If he felt any twinge of emotion at the child’s death, his face did not betray it. I tried to mimic his stoicism. Angus didn’t. He sniffled loudly and wiped his eyes. Then he began to turn very red, and he left the room.