Half a Mind TO Murder (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone Mysteries Book 3) by Paula Paul Read Free Book Online Page B

miffed. “You must be quite in shock.”
    Polly could respond with nothing more than a dull stare, as if s omething had drowned in the deep wells that were her eyes, but Snow answered sharply. “I shall have to ask Miss Cobbe to come with me for questioning.”
    “ Begging you pardon, sir. Can’t you see she’s—”
    “ That will be quite enough, Nancy.” Snow’s tone was even sharper. He was not as indulgent of Nancy’s impertinence as was Alexandra.
    Nancy lowered her head. “Of course, sir. Forgive me, sir.” To see Nancy acting like an ordinary servant gave Alexandra a momentary shock, but she couldn’t dwell upon it. She could sense the urgency in Snow’s demeanor and knew they must be on their way.
    It was a short ride in the constable ’s carriage to the alley behind the Blue Ram. Alexandra sat facing Polly all the way, watching her pale face and her empty eyes. She inquired of her once whether she was all right. Polly jerked her gaze toward her as if she was startled and replied with one whispered word, “Yes.”
    It was not surprising to Alexandra that Polly was in shock. Having seen the other body herself, she knew how brutal and disturbing the scene most likely was. Snow stopped his carriage a few feet away from the lifeless form lying in a pool of blood in the narrow alley. Polly made no move to step down from the carriage when Snow got down from his perch and opened the door. She simply stared straight ahead, still pale but no longer trembling.
    Alexandra took the constable ’s proffered hand as she stepped from the carriage. As soon as she saw the body, she understood more clearly Polly’s near catatonic state. The man’s chest had been brutally mutilated. The flesh on each side of the ribcage had been sliced, as it had been on the other victim. But this time, the cuts were not the clean surgical cuts she’d seen before. Instead they were ragged and messy. The severed ribs were also jagged and uneven, unlike the precision work done on the other man. It was as if the killer had been in a hurry. The heart had been removed as before, but there was evidence of tearing of the surrounding tissue, rather than the precise surgical removal she’d seen on the first victim. As further testimony of the killer’s haste, bits of the flesh lay a few feet away, coated in dust and dried blood, as if it had been carelessly flung aside. The heart, like Ben’s, was missing.
    As Alexandra examined the body, she noticed the same purplish color of the skin and the same pale lips and nails she’d seen on Ben Milligan’s body. However, unlike the other victim, there were no maggots present, and the limbs were blue. He had been dead no more than an hour.
    Before she fini shed the examination, a small crowd gathered, and in spite of Snow’s stern commands that everyone stay back, the group moved closer and closer as if it were one body.
    A faceless voice cried out from somewhere. “’Tis that idjet Lucas again. See what ’e done. None ’o us is safe.”
    “ Yer the idjet,” a deep, resounding voice shouted. “The boy’s in gaol. Even a sane man couldn’t do this from inside a lockup.”
    “ The bastard’s mum’s the one what done it, I say,” someone else said, a woman this time. “She’s not right in the ’ead either, you know. The boy inherited it from her, if you ask me.”
    “ Who says she ain’t right in the ’ead?” The deep voice said again.
    If there was an answer to that question, it was impossible to tell, because the crowd grew too noisy to distingu ish one voice from another. Alexandra knew, though, that the old argument of Gweneth Pendennis’s sexual indiscretion being linked to insanity was in full swing, along with a dangerous level of fear mixed with anger.
    Constable Snow had little patience for t he rabble’s noise or judgments, however. He raised his voice, which was remarkably strong for one so thin, and ordered the crowd dispersed. They obeyed, but reluctantly. Alexandra