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fitness for active service, then, Doctor?’
    â€˜Not if I’d had anything to do with it, Hardcastle,’ said Spilsbury.
    The cab delivered the two detectives to the main door of New Scotland Yard. Followed by a hastening Marriott, Hardcastle, his agility belying his bulk, bounded up the steps that led to the front entrance of the central building. A uniformed constable pulled open the heavy door for him and saluted.
    Once inside, Hardcastle immediately turned left and hurriedly descended the staircase. At the end of a long corridor he and Marriott entered the tiny workshop of Detective Inspector Percy Franklin, the Yard’s acknowledged ballistics expert. So enthusiastic was Franklin that the authorities at Scotland Yard had eventually yielded to his demand for somewhere to carry out his tests and experiments. On the wall of his tiny workshop there were cutaway diagrams of rifles, pistols and revolvers, and the bench at which the shirt-sleeved Franklin was working was littered with parts of firearms. To the unskilled eye, it seemed that there was no order to them, but Franklin knew every piece and where it belonged and how it fitted.
    In furtherance of his passion, Franklin had struck up a friendship with Robert Churchill, the gunsmith, whose premises were in the Strand. The two of them were frequently to be seen sitting by the fire in the nearby Cheshire Cheese public house, enthusiastically exchanging information about firearms. From time to time, Franklin would call in at Churchill’s small establishment to watch the gunmaker firing bullets into the heads of sheep, a ready supply of which came from the butcher next door. From these experiments, Franklin had learned, among other things, about how powder burns could determine the distance at which a firearm had been discharged. On one particular occasion, back in 1913, it had helped Franklin to prove that what at first was believed to be a suicide was actually a murder.
    â€˜Good morning, Ernie. Don’t tell me, your visit has something to do with a body found floating in the Thames yesterday.’ Franklin swung round on his stool, and put down the magnifying glass he had been using to examine a pistol. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
    â€˜You’re very well informed, Percy.’ Hardcastle placed a round on the bench. ‘Dr Spilsbury recovered this bullet from the skull of Ronald Parker, our victim. What can you tell me about it?’
    Franklin placed the bullet on a piece of green baize cloth, and with the aid of a jeweller’s eyeglass, examined it closely, occasionally turning it this way and that with a pair of forceps. ‘A seven-groove, point four-five-five ball round, Ernie,’ he said, at last looking up. ‘It’s almost certainly from a military weapon, probably a Webley and Scott, and anything between a Mark One and a Mark Six.’
    Hardcastle was impressed by Franklin’s apparent expertise, but at once slightly sceptical that the firearms specialist could deduce so much just by looking at a bullet. ‘Can you tell me which particular revolver it came from, Percy?’
    Franklin emitted a short, contemptuous laugh. ‘Not unless you can show me the weapon, Ernie.’
    â€˜I will, Percy, you may rest assured.
    â€˜Well, I hope you do, Ernie,’ said Franklin, ‘because I can’t tell you anything more until you do. I’m not a bloody magician, you know.’
    â€˜Really?’ said Hardcastle. ‘And there’s me thinking that you were.’
    â€˜Come into the office, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle when the two detectives were back at Cannon Row police station. He settled himself behind his desk and filled his pipe. Once he had lit it to his satisfaction, he leaned back in his chair, a reflective expression on his face. ‘We’ll have to give some serious consideration to this here murder of ours, m’boy.’
    â€˜D’you think Parker’s