Leaning over the bed, I began to draw the covers off. The second piece came away stained with blood. I yanked the rest off.
Mrs. Ashcraft was dead there.
Her body was drawn up in a little heap, from which her head hung crookedly, dangling from a neck that had been cut clean through to the bone. Her face was marked with four deep scratches from temple to chin. One sleeve had been torn from the jacket of her blue silk pajamas. Bedding and pajamas were soggy with the blood that the clothing piled over her had kept from drying.
I put the blanket over her again, edged past the dead woman in the hall, and went down the front stairs, switching on more lights, hunting for the telephone. Near the foot of the stairs I found it. I called the police detective bureau first, and then Vance Richmond’s office.
“Get word to Mr. Richmond that Mrs. Ashcraft has been murdered,” I told his stenographer. “I’m at her house, and he can get in touch with me here any time during the next two or three hours.”
Then I went out of the front door and sat on the top step, smoking a cigarette while I waited for the police.
I felt rotten. I’ve seen dead people in larger quantities than three in my time, and I’ve seen some that were hacked up pretty badly; but this thing had fallen on me while my nerves were ragged from three days of boozing.
The police automobile swung around the corner and began disgorging men before I had finished my first cigarette. O’Gar, the detective sergeant in charge of the Homicide Detail, was the first man up the steps.
“Hullo,” he greeted me. “What have you got hold of this time?”