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of
rage.”
    When Sturges failed to do so, Cobb asked,
“When did that – that business with the eye happen?”
    “I’d say after he died. There’s little
bleeding about the gouged socket. I found the eyeball over by the
wall there. Certainly he was rendered comatose by the initial blow
to the temple. He never knew what was happening to him.”
    “You mentioned Dougherty’s regular route,”
Sturges said to Withers.
    “That’s right,” Cobb interjected. “Some of
this area’s on my patrol. Fer the past month or more, Dougherty’s
been takin’ his mornin’ exercise along a precise route: down Bay to
Front, over to Simcoe, north to King, back over to Bay an’ then on
up to his cottage. I’ve never known him to vary it – rain, snow or
otherwise. An’ many of the storekeepers, those who get up early,
have mentioned it to me. They say they can set their clocks by his
passin’.”
    “So a lot of people could have known exactly
where he would be at a specific time?”
    “That’s right. Which pins down the time of
the murder right to the minute,” Cobb said, pleased at the ease
with which such conclusions now flowed out – after four murder
investigations carried out in tandem with the talented Marc
Edwards.
    “How do you figure that?” Withers said. “I
can only determine – from the state of the blood and the
temperature of the body – that it must have occurred no more than
an hour and a half ago. But that’s all.”
    Cobb’s reply was swift and sure. “Simeon
Galsworthy, the jeweller next door, told me that Dougherty joked
with him one mornin’ when they met out front that he timed his walk
every day by checkin’ the big pendulum clock in the shop window.
Seems he tried to rig his constitutional so he got here as close to
seven-thirty as he could manage.”
    “We’ll have to speak to Galsworthy an’
anybody else livin’ within a block or so of this alley,” Sturges
said.
    “Whaddya make of that message stuck to him?”
Cobb said to the coroner.
    “It’s intended to look as if the killer
scratched that obscenity in the victim’s blood,” Withers said.
    “Intended?” Sturges said.
    “It’s been written – before the event, I
suspect – in red ink with what looks like an artist’s brush. Damn
ghoulish, if you ask me. But it does suggest premeditation,
eh?”
    “As does this particular spot bein’ chosen,”
Sturges said. “We’ll be lookin’ fer a fella who planned this ahead
of time, wrote out a note, brought it along with his knife, picked
out a stone as his bludgeon, waited here fer seven-thirty to roll
around, then calmly carried out the deed – becomin’ enraged,
perhaps, after he got started.”
    “Or wanted us to think so,” Cobb said, with
the kind of devious logic Marc Edwards might have used.
    “Well, we’ve got the means an’ opportunity
part,” Sturges mused, showing that he too had been listening to Mr.
Edwards.
    “And the motive, too – have we not?” Withers
said, removing the dirk and the attached note, and drawing the
cloak up over the body.
    “Somebody who took offence at queers an’
buggery,” Sturges said.
    “That takes in most of the Christian folk in
this city,” Withers said.
    “Can we trace the owner of the dagger?” Cobb
said.
    “Looks like the weapon favoured by sailors,”
Withers said. “I’ve seen a hundred just like it in my time
here.”
    “And I’ve pulled a few outta the mitts of
tavern brawlers,” Cobb sighed.
    “Dougherty certainly had his share of
detractors,” Sturges said, “but he was still an important fella in
town. An’ the gruesome details of this crime are bound to get out.”
Sturges looked like a worried man.
    “Are you thinking, Wilf, what the rest of us
are?” Withers said.
    “I’m thinkin’ not just about that note, but
about that eyeball lyin’ outside the body.”
    Cobb said it for the other two: “We all heard
that sermon yesterday, didn’t we? An’ less than a day later, the
lawyer