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each of them a few terse questions and Pringle took a list of names and addresses. The professors were called one by one to a vacant storeroom beside the Chancellor’s office, and—fortified by his contempt for such lettered eccentrics, who knew nothing of the real world—Groves passed much of the afternoon conducting curt interviews and meaningfully jotting notes.
    There were a couple of these learned gentlemen, rivals no doubt , whose attitudes I did not like, they tried to look upset, but I knew Smeaton was not popular, and I could read on their brows the word “deceit.”
    â€œAny ideas, Inspector?” Pringle asked later.
    â€œNothing I am willing to admit at this stage.”
    The professor of forensic medicine—“Whitty by name and nature”—accompanied them in a carriage to the mortuary. “A body in three pieces…” he mused, shaking his head. “A case, it would appear, in which the body is as much a puzzle as the murder.”
    Groves frowned at the inappropriate mood. “A grand thing, sir, that you look upon this business in such a way. I assure you that this is no game.”
    â€œI can only pray,” said the good professor, “that the culprit shares that sentiment.”
    The preliminary death certificate had been signed by the police doctor, subject to amendment, the manner of death listed simply as “decapitation by means unknown.” An unusual “expression of feeling” had been appended to the bottom of the sheet: “Most Curious.”
    â€œThat barely begins to describe it,” said Professor Whitty, once he had peeled back the sheet and examined the pieced-together corpse under hissing gaslight. He pointed at the compressed head. “Observe the mandible…the way it’s been all but forced through the upper jaw…the collapse of the septum…and the ragged character of the tears to the throat. It’s difficult to conceive of this as having been perpetrated by a normal man.”
    â€œHow so?” Groves asked through a tightened throat. There was the penetrating odor of carbolic disinfectant in the air.
    â€œIt’s as if the body were some sort of doll, made of rags and ceramic, picked up by a spiteful child, squeezed around the arms, bitten around the head…and torn simultaneously in three directions.”
    â€œYou’re not suggesting this was done by a child, sir?”
    â€œ Cum grano salis, Inspector. But still…the enormous power it would take…” Whitty tapped a pencil against his chin. “And acts of unusual strength are invariably linked to passions of exceptional magnitude…”
    â€œA madman?”
    â€œI’m not certain,” Whitty admitted. “The intensity of this hatred…I find it difficult to attribute this to a human being.”
    â€œYou’re saying it could have been an animal, then?”
    â€œDid you find any evidence of an animal in the vicinity?”
    â€œOnly hoofprints.”
    Whitty pursed his lips. “I was thinking more of a saber-toothed tiger.”
    But Groves could not quite read his tone. “You can’t make any conclusions, is that it?”
    â€œNot on a superficial examination, no, and to go further I’d need a warrant from the Fiscal. Though it seems to remind me of another recent case.” He glanced at Pringle. “You remember that man brought in last month?”
    Pringle nodded. “The lighthouse keeper?”
    â€œAye. The way his face had been gouged from his skull?”
    Groves interjected. “What man was this?”
    â€œA case of Chief Inspector Smith’s,” Pringle told him. “You must remember, sir. The man walking his dog by Duddingston Loch?”
    â€œHe was a lighthouse keeper?”
    â€œRetired.”
    â€œA murder of profound savagery,” Whitty explained. “And like this requiring a formidable strength. As if a pitchfork had