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say that it appears so, from papers about her person. Can you tell me when you saw her last yesterday?”
    “Didn’t see her at all yesterday,” said Rubicon, rubbing his beard. “I’d gone off to my club before she came to clean the Bishopsgate rooms.”
    “And you will certainly have people who can vouch for you at the club?”
    Rubicon glared at him. “Sir, are you suggesting I did for my own cleaning lady?”
    “Just to eliminate you from our inquiries,” said Lestrade soothingly. He changed tack. “I believe there had been a burglary…”
    Rubicon nodded. “Found it when I came to open up early this morning. One of the laboratories … wrecked. Your boys have already been round.” His eyes narrowed. “You think it might have something to do with…?” He nodded his head toward the body.
    “What was taken, Professor?”
    Rubicon rubbed his beard again with a big hand. “Looks like damage, more than anything. I had a few … scientific samples there. Not completely sure what’s gone missing, all told.”
    Lestrade nodded. The professor was suddenly shifty about something. He said as conversationally as he could, “What is the nature of your current work?”
    Rubicon tugged more forcefully at his full beard. “Much of it’s top secret, Lestrade. You know. Government work. Catching up, a lot of it, after … well, you read the papers, no doubt.”
    Lestrade did read the papers, and knew that only three months ago Rubicon had been saved from a shipwreck on some lost island in the Pacific, where he had been marooned for half a year with Charles Darwin. Saved by Gideon Smith and Aloysius Bent, he remembered, casting another glance over at the journalist at the fluttering cordon.
    “My constable mentioned a quantity of blood present at the laboratory,” said Lestrade.
    “Emily’s?” asked Rubicon, almost tugging the hair from his beard. Lestrade made a mental note. Pulls at facial hair when uncertain … or lying, perhaps?
    “We don’t think so. There don’t appear to be injuries other than … well. Perhaps if you go with my constable to formally identify the body, we can discuss it later?”
    Constable Ayres had appeared at Lestrade’s elbow again, with a small flask of coffee. And yet another newcomer, tramping through the crime scene. Lestrade looked at him with as much of his weariness as he could manage hidden behind his ferrety eyes.
    “Sir, this is…” Ayres glanced at the man, neatly bearded and with sad eyes in the shadow of his hat brim, an expensive-looking woolen overcoat keeping the snow off his immaculate black suit.
    “Friedrich Miescher,” said the man in a clipped accent, inclining his head.
    “German?” asked Lestrade.
    “Swiss.” Miescher dug into the inside pocket of his overcoat. “I have a letter of introduction from Sir Edward Bradford…?”
    That made Lestrade perk up a little. A letter from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police? Who was this Miescher? Lestrade took the folded vellum from the man—noting it had been opened and re-folded several times recently—and read from it. Miescher was some kind of scientist, and he had been given free rein to blunder into any murder investigation in London as he saw fit, the gorier the better from what Lestrade read. He handed back the letter.
    “I came as soon as I heard,” said Miescher, pocketing his folded paper. “Is it true…? Is this a Jack the Ripper killing…?”
    “Not so loud, sir,” admonished Lestrade. “The gutter press is out in force behind the cordon. What exactly are you looking for here?”
    “I apologize,” said Miescher, tapping his ear. “I am somewhat deaf from a boyhood attack of typhus. As to what I am looking for, Inspector Lestrade … blood.”
    Rubicon uttered an oath, and Lestrade murmured to Ayres, “Take the professor to formally identify the body, would you? Give me a minute with Miescher.”
    When Rubicon had been led to the sheet covering Emily Dawson, Miescher