It was now nearly nine in the morning. Any number of people could have touched the body or walked around it, disturbing the scene.
“Who closes the factory each night?” Lewis asked next.
The foreman, Mr. Bridges, claimed responsibility for that too. When asked, he said no, Miss Geary had not been there when he’d locked up and left the building at seven o’clock the prior evening. The place had been empty.
Leo crouched next to the secretary’s head. It was turned away, so that her face wasn’t visible, however she could easily spot a significant indentation in the top right side of the woman’s skull.
“Her parietal bone has been crushed.” In the silence that followed, she looked up to find several pairs of eyes staring at her quizzically. Jasper, however, only peered closely at poor Miss Geary. He crouched next to Leo.
“A killing blow?”
“Most likely.” With her fingers still encased in gloves, Leo moved aside some of Miss Geary’s blood-crusted hair. “Jas—” She caught herself. “Inspector Reid, look at the shape of the depression.”
“It’s difficult to make out. All I see is blood and…” He didn’t finish his comment. There was a good amount of gray matter exposed, which surely disturbed him. But Leo was looking past that to the wound itself.
“It’s almost perfectly round,” she said, tracing the shape with her fingertip.
Leo recalled another woman’s crushed skull from the month before, and the round indentation the murder weapon had made in her temporal bone. Claude had determined that a heavy mallet had been used to kill Regina Morris, then known as Jane Doe. With the crystal-clear memory of Miss Morris’s skull during her postmortem in mind, and with Miss Geary now in front of her on the cobbles, Leo was almost positive the wounds would prove to be a match.
Above them, Mr. Henderson groaned. “Can we please hurry this along? Her body cannot stay here much longer. As soon as reporters hear of this, it will be an utter spectacle.”
Jasper straightened and ignored the owner’s comment. “When did Miss Geary leave work last night?”
David Henderson had been standing outside the circle surrounding the body, holding his arms tightly around his middle, as if he had a stomachache. “Five o’clock, like always,” he said.
And yet she’d been found here again at five-thirty in the morning. She’d returned at some point during the night or early morning. Bracing herself for a round of objections, she removed her glove and reached for Miss Geary’s arm.
“What do you think are you doing?” Constable Harding asked incredulously.
“Determining how long she has been deceased,” Leo replied. She lifted the woman’s arm and felt hard resistance. The muscles were rigid, as were her fingers, which would not easily move when Leo tried to manipulate them. Ignoring the murmurs of shock around her, she stood and went to Miss Geary’s feet. Lifting her ankle, she felt the same rigidity. “She is in full rigor. You see, the larger muscles stiffen considerably about six hours after death and can remain that way for well over twelve hours, though no more than twenty-four. Considering it is now nine-thirty in the morning, I would place her death anywhere between seven o’clock last night, after the foreman left, and three o’clock in the morning.”
After a moment of silence, the elder Mr. Henderson barked out a mocking laugh. “I daresay that is for a coroner himself to determine, not you.”
Leo stood, her own muscles tight with irritation. “Correct, the coroner will determine it, and I believe he will agree with my estimation.”
Jasper cut her a warning look but nodded to Lewis, who wrote a note on his small pad of paper. The approximate time of death, Leo hoped.
“If she was killed between those hours, that means she returned for some reason. Was it usual for her to come here late at night?” Jasper asked.
“Of course not,” Jack Henderson said. “Clearly, she was up to some trouble.”
David withdrew from the circle again, his expression drawn. He rubbed the back of his neck, his brows pinched in misery. He appeared to be handling Miss Geary’s murder much more appropriately than his blustering and pitiless father.
Disappointed in the older man’s lack of sympathy, Leo returned to inspecting Miss Geary. The bludgeoned skull had captured her focus at first, but now she took in more ofthe woman’s position on the ground. Her hands were up and splayed at either side of her head. She wore a black glove on her left hand, with its match on the ground near her right. She must have dropped it when her attacker had come from behind and struck her.
“Miss Geary looks to have removed her glove,” Leo said. “Perhaps to handle a key more deftly.”
“She shouldn’t have had keys to the yard or to the building,” David said, though he lacked the same ire his father was boiling over with.
“If Mr. Bridges had locked up for the night, she must have had them,” Leo replied as she lifted her eyes to search the nearby cobbles and the ground surrounding the green double doors. “Or perhaps someone let her in.”
“Who else has keys to the gate and the building?” Jasper asked.
David spluttered for a moment before answering, “Mr. Bridges, of course. And my father and I.”
“As Mr. Henderson’s personal secretary, it might not have been too difficult for Miss Geary to get her hands on a set,” Leo offered as her eyes caught on a small metal object that lay between a pair of large steel barrels, pushed up against the exterior of the building. She stood and drew closer. It was exactly as she’d hoped: a pair of brass keys on a small ring.
Lewis came forward to collect it. “She must have dropped it when she was attacked.”
