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She’s been moved from where she died, but the death occurred sometime last night, I’d say. Gibson will have a more accurate idea of time.”
    He circled toward the other girl, stepping carefully. “This one, however, was killed here.” Blood splashed from the gaping chasm in her chest, the ribs splintered and the flesh around the wound mangled. “I think the heart has been removed from both of them, but this was done quickly and far less efficiently than the other girl. He was hurried here. Not as precise.”
    A glance showed arterial blood spattered across the nearest machines and drying on the timber floorboards. Garrett’s nostrils flared at the sight of blood, and his gaze shot toward the stairs that led down to the furnaces. He had to focus. “You heard nothing when you came in?” he asked Mallory.
    “Nothing, sir.”
    And he would have heard precisely that with the furnaces roaring. Garrett frowned. “I believe you startled the murderer and he killed the second girl here, while you were below. The first young lady was already dead and perhaps he was moving her.” Did the second girl struggle? Was that why he killed her? Had she tried to scream for help when she heard Mallory moving about?
    “How?” Perry murmured. “Carry one body over his shoulder and the other young woman in his other arm?”
    “That argues for either brute strength or help. No sign of the heart?” Garrett directed the question at Scoresby, who was taking photographs of the scene.
    “No, sir.”
    “How did he move the first body here and murder the other girl? She would have been struggling, I’d assume?” Barrons asked.
    “Don’t ever assume. What are your thoughts?” Garrett knelt down, directing the question to Perry. “Think there were two of them?”
    “Possibly.” Perry circled the girls, her lean form drawing his gaze. He waited patiently while she knelt and examined the blond, looking at her hands and fingers, then her face. She quickly performed the same examination on the brunette.
    When she looked up at him, her gray eyes were solemn. Troubled .
    “You recognize one of them?” he asked.
    “No. But I do recognize the sort. Look here,” she said, lifting the blond’s hand. A ruby ring decorated the girl’s middle finger, though red marks showed where someone had tried to remove it.
    “She came from money, then,” he mused.
    “Not just money, Garrett.” Perry turned the girl’s palm toward him. “No calluses, no signs of wear… Her skin is pale and flawless. Like she spends most of her time wearing gloves and has never performed a day’s work in her life. This”—she pointed to the ring—“is not just a common ruby. See the silverwork? The way the carved roses curl around the ruby and hold it in place?”
    He leaned closer, aware of leather straining as the other men did too.
    Perry’s thumbnail flicked one of the silver thorns and it popped out, a bead of clear liquid seeping from the end of it.
    Barrons sucked in a sharp breath and Perry looked up. “You’ve seen them,” she said, and it was no question.
    “It’s a fashion among the debutantes of the Echelon these days,” Barrons admitted, scratching at his jaw. “I don’t recognize either of the girls, though, which is not unusual. I rarely mingle for societal purposes these days.”
    “It’s not just a fashion,” Perry corrected. “It’s a weapon. A poison ring. The liquid inside is hemlock, designed to paralyze a blue blood long enough for the girl to get away if he attacks her.”
    Garrett reached for the girl’s hand and examined the ring. Hemlock and its effects on a blue blood had only been discovered recently, and the information was still circulating throughout London in humanist pamphlets.
    He’d heard rumors recently that some of the younger lords of the Echelon had begun to play dangerous games, taking what they wanted from the sheltered young ladies for the night and casting them aside without a thought. Once blooded,