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“Certainly if, as we believe, the strike to the head rendered the victim unconscious at best, then it would have been a relatively simple matter to go about the removal of the heart without the need of further violence. This therefore suggests a further motive for the use of the shotgun, the second red herring.”

“Second?” said Makinson.

“Indeed, Inspector. The first one is the removal of the hearts, though quite what such an intrusion could possibly disguise I have, as yet, no opinion. Equally, the reason for the missing flesh or the partial incision is still unclear.”

We moved across to the third cot, pulling back the sheet to expose a grisly collection. The young woman’s head was propped between the legs while the arm lay before it like some kind of gift and all were set out on the torso as if to resemble a construction puzzle. I lifted first the arm, turning it over in my hands, and then the legs, performing a similar study. There seemed nothing to give any clue for such a crime. I laid the limbs at the foot of the cot and turned my attention to the head.

The woman appeared to have been in her middle twenties. I lifted the head carefully, some hidden and forgotten part of me half expecting the eyes to open and regard me with a cruel disdain, and turned it around. There was a similar depressed fracture to that suffered by the farmer and I was sure, simply by the pulpy feel of the bone around the occipital region, that death would have been instantaneous. I set the head down with the limbs and moved to the torso.

The limbs had clearly been removed by chopping as opposed to sawing and one of the shoulders showed signs of mis-hits, with some cosmetic damage to the edge of the right clavicle. One could only give thanks that the poor girl had been dead when the madman went about his business.

I turned to face Holmes and shook my head. “Nothing here,” I said.

“Nothing save for the fact that the arm is missing,” Holmes pointed out. “There is clearly some significance in that fact and the fact that the heart has not been removed.”

“Why’s that, then?” said the Inspector.

“Elementary, my dear Makinson,” said Holmes, clearly pleased to be asked to explain his deduction. “I suspect that the killer simply forgot about the heart, being so concerned with his plan to remove all the limbs and then discard those he did not need. If your men have been as thorough in their investigations around the scene of the slaying as you say – and I have no reason to doubt that such is the case – then the killer must surely have taken the arm with him.”

“You mean that he was prepared to chop off everything just to get one of her arms?”

Holmes nodded. “Otherwise, why did he not leave all of the limbs together? For that matter, why remove them and then leave them?”

“Why indeed?” I agreed.

“Let us consider the final body,” said Holmes.

The face of William Fitzhue Crosby no longer existed. Where once had been skin and, undoubtedly, normal characteristics such as a nose, two eyes and two lips, now lay only devastation, a brown mass resembling a flattened mud pie into which a playful child had inserted a series of holes.

The sheer ruination of that face spoke of a hell on Earth, a creature conceived in the mind of Bosch – though whether such a description might not be more aptly levelled at the perpetrator of such carnage is debatable.

“Look at the rear of the head, Watson,” said Holmes.

I turned the head to one side and felt the skull: the same fracture was there and I said as much.

“Inspector,” said Holmes, “did you know Mr Crosby personally? By that I mean, were he still alive, would you recognize him on the street?”

“I’m not sure as I would, Mr Holmes,” said Makinson, frowning. “I don’t as doubt that him and me has passed each other by on occasion but –”

Holmes strode purposefully from the cot to the door. “We’ve finished here, I believe. Come Watson, we have enquiries to make.”

“Enquiries?” I pulled the sheet up over Crosby’s face.

“We must speak with the relatives of the victims.” He walked from