Free Mistress Murder by Bernard Knight Page A

gloves already being fouled up.
    â€˜I don’t like the look of it, Mr Benbow … I’d like to have a look at the car afterwards.’ He paused and pointed to the shaved area of the girl’s head. ‘There’s a skin wound and a depressed fracture there. I can’t tell much until I look under the skin, but it’s most unlike a motor injury unless there’s some unusual projection inside the car that would cause a deep narrow wound like that.’
    Benbow’s eyes glistened in his lumpy face. He forgot his stomach.
    â€˜It could be a blow from a weapon, you mean?’
    Soames pursed his lips. ‘Or a door handle or a window winder … no, it’s the wrong shape for those, too long.’ As he spoke, he bent down so close to the week-old corpse that his big nose almost touched its left ear. Then he took fine-pointed forceps and carefully picked something from the edge of the head wound.
    â€˜Better have this, Inspector Hooper … bit of fibre, may be a contact trace, unless it’s something the undertakers left behind.’
    The Yard laboratory officer stepped forward with a plastic envelope and delicately took the little yellow thread.
    Soames turned his attention to the rest of the body and looked at the fractures of the right arm and both legs. Then he began studying the inside of the forearms with greater care.
    â€˜See those marks there,’ he said to Benbow, pointing to the insides of the elbows and arms. ‘Needle marks. That one in the crook of the left elbow is direct into the vein. Looks much more recent than the others too.’
    Archie Benbow had been too long in London’s West End not to realise at once, the significance of the marks. ‘So she was on the hook?’ he said.
    Soames nodded. ‘Could explain why she was unconscious, I suppose, especially as that last one is intravenous instead of just under the skin like the others. Still, we’re trying to run before we crawl, eh?’
    The photographers moved away again and the bloody part of the business began.
    For forty minutes the pathologist went through the organs, one by one. They were beginning to decay, but still good enough to show any abnormalities. He put several of them into big glass jars supplied by the laboratory officer and also took specimens of blood, urine, and stomach contents into bottles.
    â€˜Want some hair and fingernail clippings?’ he asked the liaison officer.
    â€˜Aye, better have them, just for the record,’ said Hooper. ‘If she was put out forcibly by somebody, she may just have had the chance to run her nails down the skin of his face. God knows they’re long enough!’
    He collected the tips of Rita’s scarlet nails into another bottle in the faint hope that enough flesh might be trapped under them to provide blood group identification.
    Benbow noticed the doctor sniffed like a beagle when he came to slit open the stomach.
    â€˜Anything definite?’
    â€˜Pooh! Booze, plus-plus!’ answered Eustace Soames, wrinkling his long nose. ‘I don’t know about drugs, but she’s got enough alcohol in her belly to lay out an elephant!’
    The examination finished about ten thirty, much to Bray’s relief. Soames took the top of the skull away in a plastic bag, in case it was needed as an exhibit in the event of a court case. As he sat in the anteroom of the mortuary, he gave Benbow and Bray a summary of his findings.
    â€˜I think you’ve got a case, Mr Benbow. She’s got gross injuries consistent with a motor crash: open fractures of both thighs, busted arm, her chest crushed from the steering wheel and a dislocated neck … but I think she was dead before they occurred.’
    The detective chief inspector bobbed his head gravely. Soames went on as he washed his hands and arms.
    â€˜She has a deep localised fracture on the left side of the skull … most unlike a normal traffic injury,