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Walker.
    â€˜What the hell’s up, Edgar?’ demanded Morris.
    â€˜Look here, on the chest. I haven’t done anything more than lift up that coat to have a dekko, so don’t look at me like that.’
    As he held aside the thin jacket, Wally, peering closer, could see a darker red stain, the size of half a crown, on the dress beneath. In the centre was a vague ragged area, a fraction of an inch across, with clotted blood on the edges.
    â€˜Now ’ave a butcher’s down ’ere,’ invited the mortuary keeper with mournful glee. He gingerly held open the neck of the dress and pointed down with a finger. Deep in the depths of the clothing, below the brassiere and to the left side, was a small puncture wound, directly under the circle of blood on the dress.
    Wally had seen enough.
    â€˜Well, chum, here we go,’ he said resignedly to Edgar, ‘let’s get the cloak-and-dagger boys in on it!’
    The next few minutes were spent in telephoning.
    First, he rang the police station and spoke to the local detective inspector. Then he informed the coroner and got permission to ask Dr Alistair Chance, the head of the Forensic Medicine Department at St Jeremy’s Hospital Medical School, to perform the autopsy. He rang next Dr Chance’s secretary and fixed the time for the post-mortem for noon.
    By this time, the detective inspector, Sydney Grey, had arrived and duly ‘gone up the wall’, as Edgar put it. After learning the meagre facts and looking at the body, he grabbed the telephone and spread alarm and despondency in the heart of the divisional detective superintendent, who promised to come post-haste from the divisional office two miles away.
    Once this panic was under way, the DI faced Wally Morris across the mortuary:
    â€˜Well, this is going to be the mother and father of all muck-ups, Wally boy!’
    Syd Grey was a red-faced, bulbous-nosed man, with sparse hair plastered over a high dome of a head. He always wore a camel-hair coat, except in the hottest weather, and the general effect was that of a small time ‘bookie’ with a liking for the bottle. Nothing could be farther from the truth and he was, in fact, a very astute detective, due to be promoted before long.
    Not that this sort of a case helps that cause , he thought, ruefully.
    â€˜A right pig of a case, this is!’ agreed Wally, rubbing his chin. ‘All because the damn doctor didn’t take a proper look at her. And then sending her in here off his own bat was just plain ruddy ignorant.’
    Edgar looked up from cleaning his fingernails with a post-mortem needle. ‘Wotcher goin’ to do first, mate?’ he inquired of Morris. ‘Wait for old Grizzle-Guts to do the PM or get ’old of the relatives?’
    â€˜Grizzle-Guts’ was the accepted local nickname for Alistair Chance, whose humour and temper were by no means the equal of his professional skill.
    Wally looked at the detective inspector. ‘What’s it going to be, Syd? We’ll look a right pair of idiots if there was nothing in it after we’ve raised the alarm!’
    Grey strongly disapproved of this remark.
    â€˜Leave the “we” out of it, Wally; this is your baby, not mine. Still, you’re right, we don’t know the score yet, but every minute lost now is going to mean a bigger kick in the pants for us eventually if it does turn out to be a dirty job.’
    Edgar, with forty years’ experience of violent death, was scornful. ‘What you mean, “if”?’ he demanded, ‘You reckon she’s always ’ad a ’ole in ’er chest wiv blood comin’ out?’
    â€˜You’re a great comfort, you are!’ growled the detective inspector. He turned to his sergeant, a keen, fresh-faced young man with a shock of red hair.
    â€˜Masters, get over to this place in Great Beachy Street right away, find out who’s in the house and stay put until you