Oh, dear.
“I can see why the affair has been kept quiet,” I said with some alarm. Behind me, Magda took a rare full breath to gasp. “Seeing this in the penny dreadfuls would have inflamed the London mob.”
Doyle spoke up. “And then the American embassy.”
I could only nod. Murder scenes distress me, particularly ones where blood has been shed. I do not appreciate how I have to mention this, simply because I am a vampire. Of course they distress me! Someone was murdered there, and murder is awful. Nobody asks a mortal whether they are distressed by a grisly tableaux, and God knows living men have enthusiastically produced enough of those over the last ten thousand years.
And no, I do not merely find it ‘wasteful’ when somebody smears gore all over the walls, like what had happened here. Alarming and disgusting, yes. Wasteful, no. Blood is not milk or cheese.
“The poor girl,” murmured Magda. “How she must have suffered, before the end.”
“If I’d been allowed an autopsy,” said Bell, “I’d wager I’d find she died of blood loss, not the injuries themselves. See the stains, up here and here? She must have been running around the room like a lunatic for the spray to get that high-”
“Sir,” said Doyle.