‘We opened it,’ Tillottson said, ‘and checked the contents as they lay. We left them for a doing-over and re-closed the lot. You can see what happened. The other end of the cord was secured round her waist. The slack had been passed two or three times under the handle and round the case. When the handle came away at one end the slack paid out and instead of being anchored on the river bed, the body rose to the surface but remained fastened to the weighted case. As it was when we recovered it.’

‘Yes,’ Alleyn agreed. ‘You can see where the turns of rope bit into the leather.’

Fox, who was bent over the cord, said: ‘Clothes-line. Did they pinch it or had they got it?’ and sighed heavily. ‘We’ll inquire,’ he said.

‘They might have had it,’ Tillottson said. ‘In their kit, you know. Easily they might. Or what-say,’ he added, brightening, ‘they picked it up in Jo’s yard? How’s that?’

‘That might or might not argue premeditation,’ Alleyn said. ‘For the moment it can wait. We’d better take another look inside.’

The case was unlocked but fastened with strong old-fashioned hasps and a strap. The saturated leather was slimy to the touch. He opened and laid back the lid.

A jumble of clothes that had been stuffed into the case. Three pairs of shoes which spoke with dreadful eloquence of the feet that had distorted them. A seedy comb and hairbrush with straggles of grey hairs still engaged in them.

‘And the whole lot stowed away in a hurry and not by her. No hope of prints, he’s a damn’ sight too fly for that, but we’ll have to try. Hallo, what’s here?’

Five stones of varying sizes. A half-brick. Two handfuls of gravel. Underneath all these, a sponge-bag containing a half-empty bottle of aspirins (Troy’s, thought Alleyn) a tooth brush and a tube of paste and, in a state of disintegration, Hazel Rickerby-Carrick’s ‘self-propelling confessional’.

‘The diary,’ Alleyn said. ‘And to misuse a nastily appropriate line: “lift it up tenderly, treat it with care”. You never know: it may turn out to be a guide-book.’

CHAPTER 8
Routine Continued

‘At this point,’ Alleyn said, ‘I’m going to jump the gun and show you a photograph of post-mortem marks across the back at waist level and diagonally across the shoulder-blades of the body. Here are her wrists, similarly scarred. These marks were classed as having been inflicted after death. As you see they have all the characteristics of post-mortem scarring. What do they suggest? Yes?’

‘The cord, sir,’ ventured Carmichael in the second row. ‘The cord that attached the bawdy to the suitcase.’