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the grate was free of ash or cinders. In fact, the room was so cold I guessed no heat had warmed it in many weeks. I felt it even through my jacket. I wondered at anyone wanting to sit and read in such a chilly room, and why the lodger had not asked for a fire. Had he been required to pay extra for it?
    Tapley’s eyes and mouth were open and the features still seemed to show his incredulity at the event. The back of his skull was a bloody pulped mess. Head wounds bleed copiously and this had caused a pool of blood and brain matter to seep out and into the carpet beneath. The victim was a small man and in death looked even more shrunken, a tiny helpless figure. To overcome him would not have been difficult. But there was no sign of a struggle. I guessed that he had been reading the book that lay, open, spine uppermost and clearly blood spotted, nearby. His assailant had opened the door quietly, approached the absorbed reader across the carpet and raised his weapon . . .
    Fire irons are always the first thing to check in such a situation, but the stand usually called a companion set, in the neatly swept pristine hearth, appeared to have a full complement of these – poker, shovel, tongs – and none was bloodstained. The murderer had evidently brought some weapon with him and taken it away again. This was not a disturbed sneak thief, I thought. The intruder was someone who had come with no other purpose than to kill. But why on earth should anyone harbour murderous intentions towards such a harmless little fellow as Tapley?
Biddle had given a little gasp when he saw the body and turned pale but assured me, when I gave him an enquiring look, that he was all right.
    ‘Go down to the kitchen and interview the housemaid, Jenny,’ I told him. ‘Ask particularly if there were any visitors to the house today and that includes visitors to the kitchen.’
    Would-be thieves sweet-talking housemaids in order to gain entry was a common enough occurrence; and it would be a necessary line of enquiry. Jenny might not want to admit to a ‘follower’. But she might speak more freely to Biddle who was nearer her age.
    Dr Harper had gone to the body and was kneeling over it. ‘A bad business,’ he observed.
    I took a more careful look round the room while he examined the dead man. This had been Tapley’s parlour, so his landlady had told us. It was a small sitting room but large enough for a single man to take his ease in. Again I wondered at the lack of a fire. Probably there was an understanding that he could join his landlady in the heated parlour after their supper taken together.
    The most significant piece of furniture was a bookcase stuffed with volumes. I took down a few at random. Most were well thumbed and their condition suggested they were second-hand. Some were novels or poetry, but others dealt with a wealth of practical subjects: health, the law, history, travel . . . There were quite few notes made in the margins, all in the same small, spidery hand. I would ask Mrs Jameson if she recognised the writing as being that of her lodger, as I suspected it was. Tapley’s interests had been scholarly and eclectic. Had he brought some of these books with him when he moved in? I wondered. Or had he bought them all in the past six months?
I left Harper to his examination and went into the next-door room. Mrs Jameson had said Tapley occupied the front two rooms, so this should be his bedroom. It was. A marble-topped washstand was furnished with bowl and ewer, together with a shaving mug painted with forget-me-nots. The bed was neatly made. Another book lay on a small table beside it, together with a candlestick and an empty china pin tray. I opened a wardrobe and saw his coat hanging inside it as sole occupant, apart from an empty, battered travelling grip standing on the floor. Opening the drawers of a dresser I found only some handkerchiefs, a spare shirt, a set of woollen ‘long johns’ and some knitted stockings. Mr Tapley