The Players And The Game by Julian Symons

knobs on it gleaming, was sombre. ‘I’ll tell you something else I can smell, Harry. Blood.’
    There were two bedrooms on the upper floor. In the back one the lower part of the wall was splattered with marks of a bright, recent red. Rust-coloured stains were on the floorboards. On the boards, and on a kitchen chair, there was candle grease. He’s certainly got a nose for it, Plender thought. In one corner of the room were some clothes, a pink dress that looked small enough for a child, briefs, brassière, shoes. It occurred to Plender afterwards as pathetic that they should have made such a tiny pile, but at the time he felt only a thrill of recognition. Hazleton prowled round the marks and then said in a harsh voice, ‘Come on, then. Let’s find her.’
    They unbolted the back door. The sky was still blue, the sun shone, but to Plender there was now something sickly in the country smell, it seemed to him that the scent of blood was mingled with that of the long grass and the flowers. It was he who opened the door of the outhouse. He saw rusty buckets, an old coal-bin on its side, some bits of corrugated iron. He moved farther in, among empty tins, some old sacks, and lifted these to uncover what looked for a moment like a paler sack beneath. But only for a moment. He went out again and called Hazleton.
    The big man went into the outhouse and came out again. He looked at Plender. ‘Pull yourself together. You’ve seen a dead girl before, haven’t you? They look worse after traffic accidents.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘I want you to drive us back. Edwards can stay here.’
    Hazel Palmer sat in a corner of the car, temporarily forgotten. She looked at them and said. ‘You’ve found Louise.’
    ‘You were right to come to us. She’s dead.’ Hazleton got in beside her, patted her hand and sighed. ‘I wish you read the papers while you were on holiday.’

Chapter Fourteen
Ends, Mostly Dead
     
    If one is horrified by medical detail, then the report on Louise Allbright was fairly horrifying as such things go. The cause of death was strangulation by some kind of ligature, but when this occurred she must have been in an enfeebled state, for some four dozen incisions had been made in her body, so that by the time she died she must have been a mass of blood. Most of the cuts were trivial, but some were on her nipples and in the vagina, as well as under armpits and on her face and neck. The incisions had been made with some sharp thin instrument like a razor blade. There were severe bite marks on her neck. When she was found her hands were tied behind her back with electric light flex. There had been no sexual connection, but a sexual assault had taken place in the form of an attempt to force some object up her vagina. Louise Allbright had not been a virgin.
    So far the medical details, which did not horrify any of the policemen who read them. They were not of much direct help in giving a line to her murderer, nor was Doctor Otterley, the pathologist, able to say whether more persons than one had been involved. Some of the cuts were deeper than others, so that the light ones might have been made by one hand and the deep ones by another, but this was frankly conjecture. Nor were the fingerprint details of much help. There were a number in the room with bloodstains on the walls where she had presumably been tortured and killed, but most of them were blurred and some were her own. The front door, about which Hazleton had been so careful, yielded only a number of blurred impressions. There were some prints on the outhouse door, but it was quite likely that they were not connected with the case.
    The discovery of the body, and the nature of the injuries, however, brought full-scale attention in the press. There were pictures of what was called the murder cottage, and a heightened account of what Hazel Palmer had seen, under the heading ‘Who Was The Mystery Woman?’ All known local sexual deviants were interrogated. Few of