Page 32 of Disturbing the Dead
I take one last look around, but there’s nothing else to see here. It was mostly about confirming that Selim’s story was, at least, plausible. Now it’s back to the other caved-in partial tunnel, where he’d been left.
The marks in the dirt here also support his story. Again, the middle is too trodden to pick out footsteps, but at the entrance to the side tunnel, drag marks show where his unconscious body had been moved from where he fell in the main tunnel.
“The question then,” I say, “is how strong does one need to be to drag a person Mr. Awad’s size.” I eye Gray. “You’re slightly bigger than he is, so back at the house, I need to see whether I can drag you the right distance.”
“The conditions will be different.” Gray lowered himself to one knee. “To replicate them as closely as possible, you must drag me here. In the other direction, of course, to avoid disturbing the initial marks.”
“I am not dragging you along the floor in your party best, Gray. Mrs. Wallace would kill you.”
“Not if I blame you.”
I sputter. “Blame me? What did I do, knock you down and drag you?”
“Exactly so. As she has long feared, you intended to do something nefarious with me, knocked me down and dragged me through the muck. I escaped, luckily.”
“You joke, but she might actually believe that.”
Gray is already lying on his back.
“For science,” he says, and lifts his hand for me to grab.
I could argue that Selim’s attacker probably dragged him by his jacket, but if it was a woman, she’d have struggled to bend that far in a corset. She really would need to drag him by the arms. I grab and heave. It’s not easy, but the dirt seems to help, and I can indeed drag him the correct distance.
“Someone my strength could do it,” I say. “With rest breaks, someone slightly smaller could also do it. It would also be easier if I were wearing my maid corset, being less restrictive. Again, then, if the culprit is a woman, it’s unlikely to be someone like Lady Christie… unless she switched out her usual corset.”
Gray gets up and dusts himself off as I begin taking a closer look for footprints. He joins me, but soon says, “There are far too many.”
“Yep,” I say. “From Michael running in there, and then me, and then Hugh, and then you…”
I don’t grumble about that. We’d found someone in distress—no one was thinking about preserving the scene, and even if I had thought of it, I’d have put Selim first. Otherwise I might have been investigating another murder instead of an assault.
“I’ll sketch the imprints I can make out,” I say.
He plucks the paper from my hand.
“Hey, my sketches are fine,” I say. “It’s my handwriting that’s the problem.”
“It is your handwriting that is the greater problem.”
“Are you insulting my manual dexterity? I’ll have you know that I have a seventy-words-a-minute typing speed, even on a cell phone.”
“I am sure that is impressive,” he says. “However, having nothing that requires those skills in this world, I would suggest you practice more with a pen and pencil. I will sketch the prints. You will measure them.”
“Yes, sir.”
As we do that, we look for other signs of trace evidence in the tunnel. I find a few hairs, and I do take them, but I suspect they belong to Selim, having come from approximately where his head was lying.
Once that’s done, we continue on down the tunnel. There isn’t much farther to go before we reach a rusted ladder. Gray examines it.
“Old,” he says. “We shall need someone to take a better look, but I would say this ladder predates the current residents.”
I’d agree. Even in these damp conditions, it wouldn’t rust so badly in a decade or two.
“I will ascend first,” Gray says. “As you will have difficulty in those—”
I grab the ladder. He sighs behind me.
“I was merely being chivalrous,” he says.
