He hadn’t sounded like a man who’d been planning to nip to the shops for a packet of fags. Will felt a prickle of unease, and at the same moment thought he caught a whiff of something.

Imagination? He got phantom smells occasionally, when he felt tense—mostly mud, sometimes the garlic-mustard that meant gas, occasionally the iron tang of blood. That last was what he thought he’d smelled now. He tried the doorhandle, and the door opened.

“Mr. Quiller?”

The room was a decent size, not too dark. There were several engravings on the wall, all depicting aspects of the Symposium Club. Peacock would spit. It was well kept and tidy, with a telephone neatly placed on a lace doily. A door stood open leading to a bedroom, and the smell definitely wasn’t Will’s imagination.

He moved forward quietly, purely out of habit because if someone was still in there, they’d heard him come in. In fact— He sidestepped to the dresser, and found a kitchen knife in a block. It wasn’t the Messer, which he now wished he’d brought, but it was respectably sharp. He moved softly to the bedroom door, and pushed it wide enough to be sure nobody was behind it.

The bedroom was small, with a narrow wardrobe and a high bedframe he could mostly see under. He checked both, and confirmed there were no villains lurking. There was nobody in the room at all, except for the dead man on the bed.

Mr. Quiller of the Symposium would not be celebrating his fiftieth anniversary of service. He lay staring upwards, faded eyes wide with dismay, and a knife protruded from what had been a clean white shirt front.

A knife.

Will couldn’t mistake it. He’d had it for eight years, and killed at least nine people with it. He could feel its carved handle now, phantom against his palm. It should have been in his desk at the shop, but it was right here, in this room, sticking out of a dead man’s chest.

What the hell. Killing people with the Messer was his job.

Incredulity had blotted out everything else for a couple of seconds. Now Will stepped forward, reaching automatically for his knife, and as he did, he heard the aggrieved and piercing tones of an angry woman rising from the hall along with deep male voices.

“What d’you mean, police? I didn’t call you. This is a respectable house! What do you want with Mr. Quiller?”

“Shit,” Will said aloud.

Stay and explain? He could imagine how that would go. Take the Messer, and risk being found clutching a bloodstained murder weapon? He couldn’t decide what was best, and then he heard heavy but rapid feet on the stairs, and that made the decision for him. He dropped the kitchen knife, leapt for the sash window, shoved the bottom half up, and swung himself out.