The Sergeant was as big as his voice, florid of face with thinning sandy hair and a double chin that overlapped the collar of his uniform, giving the impression he was on the brink of choking to death. A man who had come up through the ranks but bore no malice toward Rutledge, who had come from a very different background.

He began his report diffidently. “About this woman, sir. It was the usual thing. One of the boats on the river found her; can’t say whether she went in by accident or design. Bloated but hadn’t been there long enough for the fish to get at her. There were some bruises, but nothing to signify anything more than the tossing she’d taken in the water. The problem was identification.”

Rutledge, swallowing his tea with a grimace, nodded. Identification of the corpse was the first order of police work.

“She had none on her—no letters or papers or the like—and she didn’t match any of our missing persons records. We advertised more than a week for information. Then a woman who keeps a boardinghouse walked into a local station and reported that a lodger had skipped without paying her rent, and wanted her found. Right balmy old bitch, I’m told, arrogant and demanding. But the Sergeant on duty remembered the description of our lass, and soon enough they had the landlady down at the morgue. She couldn’t have identified the body—she only gave it a glance—but she did say the hair was right. We showed her the clothes the deceased was found in, but she wasn’t what you’d call certain what the lodger was wearing the last time she’d gone out. Or whether she could have been provided a new wardrobe by any gentleman she had taken up with. But the landlady did fling another fit about not getting her money, which made Inspector Joyce suspect she must be fairly sure it was the missing woman.”

Rutledge asked, before Wilkerson could put a name to the corpse, “Any trouble with her before? The landlady?”

“None, except for the occasional lodger who disappears with back rent owing. Then she’s demanding the police earn their keep. She gets a class of women who aren’t steadily employed, if you take my meaning.”

“Why did Chief Superintendent Bowles think the dead woman might be connected with the murder in Norfolk?”

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? The lass worked as a shill for an Italian bloke who—the landlady claims—died in the War. Then she spent the better part of the summer with a Strong Man’s show, called himself Samson. Your man Walsh, it appears. Landlady remembers when he came to collect her, because of his size. They had a few words, did the landlady and this Iris Kenneth, on parting. But Mrs. Rollings took her back again when the Strong Man was tired of her!”