The bell above the door had jangled as he had pushed his way inside. The store had been oddly silent. He had paused, then crossed the boarded floor and called, ‘Mr West? Anyone there?’

The stiff shop dummies with their bright-pink faces had smiled back at him sightlessly. The dust of thread and cotton cloth had fallen through the sunlight. There had been that sharp smell of dressing, and of linseed. In a back yard somewhere, a woman was calling, ‘William! William! Here, kitty!’

‘Mr West?’ Collis had called again. Again, there had been no answer. He had waited a few seconds more, and then walked up to the counter and pinged at the brass bell with the flat of his hand.

The ping had died away. Collis had turned around, his back to the counter, and taken a deep breath. It had been bad enough trying to screw up the courage to talk to Walter West about divorcing Hannah in the first place. To be obliged to wait in this dim and silent store was fifty times worse.

He had heard a shuffling noise, and turned around again. He had listened, alert, his pulse rushing in his eardrums. Nothing for a few moments, but then another shuffling noise, and something which could have been a whisper. It had appeared to come from behind the counter.

Collis had cautiously made his way around a stack of gingham to the end of the counter, and peered over. What he had seen had made his scalp freeze and prickle. On the buff-coloured bolts of calico behind the serving area had been dark splashes and squiggles which were unmistakably blood.

‘Oh, my God,’ he had breathed. He had pushed the gingham out of the way and stepped right around the counter. And there, lying amid bloodstained receipt books and unravelled tape measures, his hair and his beard clotted with gore as black and sticky as molasses, had been Walter West.

Collis had been stiff with fright and horror. He had seen men killed before, men crushed by carriages, children left floating and bloated in the East River, but the sheer quantity of blood that had plastered the body of Walter West had been hideous to the point of unbelievability. How could anyone have so much blood?

Dragging over a bolt of linen to kneel on, Collis had crouched, shaking, beside the haberdasher’s body. He had coaxed, hoarsely, ‘Mr West? Walter?’ But Walter West’s eyes had remained puffy and closed, and when Collis had placed his fingertips close to his open mouth, he had felt no breath. Maybe the whispers and scratchings that Collis had heard earlier had been Walter West’s final twitches of death.

Collis had felt very sick. This near to the body, he had been able to see what had happened. Walter West had been attacked with knives or hatchets, so sharp that many of his facial wounds appeared to be nothing more than thin red hairlines. His forearms and his hands had been savagely cut, which must have meant that he had tried to protect himself against his attackers.