The kiss of death.
It was a natural for the sob sisters and the tabloids. There were photographs of the woman, photographs of the body in its flimsy underwear sprawled on the floor.
And then the newspapers had gone on from there.
The murderous bandit had gone down to the next room, the bedroom of the sister. He had entered that room, apparently in search of another victim, or perhaps waiting for the younger sister to come to bed.
And while there, he had become engrossed in reading a book.
The literary bandit!
It was a gift for sensational exploitation.
The book was, as it chanced, a favourite of Rosalind Hart, and one which she kept constantly in her room. It was protected from wear by a cellophane cover, and, as it happened, police, knowing that the murderer had handled this book, were able to process it almost immediately upon their arrival at the scene of the crime and had obtained not only a perfect set of fingerprints, but a complete outline of the hand of the man they wanted.
The sister of the murdered woman had stated that, when she entered the door of the bedroom, the man who had been reading the book was wiping his lips with a handkerchief, apparently getting rid of the incriminating lipstick which had come from the lips of the dead girl. The murderer had been so startled by the intrusion of the sister that he had dropped the handkerchief as he jumped to his feet. Police, recovering that handkerchief, had made an analysis of the smears of lipstick which appeared on it, and had proved conclusively that this lipstick came from the murdered woman. There was a laundry mark on the handkerchief which was slightly smudged, so that temporarily the police were not able to trace it, but they hoped to be able to reconstruct that laundry mark and use it as an additional clue.
Reading the papers, I felt as though I were teetering on the brink of a precipice, standing on rotten rock and looking down into a deep canyon.