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did not know of any letter.”
    “Don’t apologize,” Turner-Smith said. “You and she never spoke of the matter?”
    “We rarely speak at all.”
    The town’s main police office stood next to the magistrates’ courts, with a secure passageway linking the two buildings so that prisoners could be walked straight from the jail cells and into the dock. There were public rooms at the front, with offices at the back and the cells below. Its rooms were spare, bare, and high-ceilinged. Despite the presence of gas flares and the most modern cast-iron radiators, those who worked there complained that the small-windowed cells were the only warm rooms in the entire building.
    There was a stable yard on the side, hidden from the street behind a high stone wall and archway. It was from the yard that Sebastian Becker and Superintendent Turner-Smith entered and made their way down the central corridor toward the Detective Department’s rooms.
    Word of Turner-Smith’s arrival had preceded them. A uniformed man stood ready to open the door, and the office beyond it was tidy and square. Detectives stood to attention by their desks. The police cat and its new kittens had been swept into a cupboard and would stay confined there for the length of the superintendent’s visit.
    “Be about your business,” Turner-Smith told them as he followed Sebastian. “This is not an inspection.”
    He lowered himself into a chair with a sound of relief as Sebastian opened a drawer and took out a package. The seal on the package was broken, and it bore no address other than the words
To the Police for their Kind Attention.
    “This was left by persons unknown,” Sebastian said, opening it up and laying its contents on the table before his superior.
    “When?”
    “Some time yesterday morning. The desk sergeant found the package in the public waiting room, but he did not see who’d left it. There is no letter or message. In my opinion, the writing resembles that of a child.”
    “Or an illiterate.”
    “It’s hard to say. The spelling is correct. But the hand is not a practiced one.”
    The contents were three sheets of a heavy, cheap paper with a distinct smell of the glue pot. Each bore pasted-on cuttings from a number of different newspapers.
    “Perhaps the writing has been disguised,” Turner-Smith said, leaning forward with both hands on the head of his walking stick. He peered closely at the sheets without attempting to touch them.
    “They are theatrical notices,” Sayers said.
    “So I see.”
    “All for the
Purple Diamond
company. All from different newspapers in different towns and cities on the tour.”
    “And not a good notice among them, by the looks of it,” Turner-Smith said. It was not necessary to read the reviews in full to get the flavor of their content; certain negative words caught the eye and told the story. He added, with growing interest, “Each notice appears to have been paired with a crime report from the same pages.”
    Sebastian said, “Look at the dates.”
    Turner-Smith looked at them. “They’re not the same.”
    “But there is a consistency. The notices are all from first nights. Which means that each mutilation murder probably coincides with the end of a run. Three days, four days, perhaps even a week later. It varies.”
    “And?”
    Sebastian said, “The
Purple Diamond
company closed at the Lyric last night. They’ve already packed up and left town for their next engagement.”
    “Leaving human remains for us to find today.”
    “So the pattern holds.”
    “If it
is
a pattern. I’m sure I could throw together a list of dead paupers and foundlings for any set of dates and places you could mention.”
    “Yes, sir. But all dismembered? Flayed? Eviscerated?”
    “I am not disagreeing with you. I think you are probably right. This has the look of insider work, Sebastian. Someone in the company is signaling their suspicions.”
    “I suspected that, sir, but I could not be sure.”
    “Where are