It was a somber party that returned to my Uncle’s house. We had what we figured to be a corpse on our front stoop and no killer to be found. The rain matching our mood was continuing to fall with nearly no noise against the cobble stones. Maybe the dreary weather was the cause of the absence of the goodly people of town, but as this was the time of year for such weather it almost seemed something else was damping the spirit. The earlier sense of pointedly not being followed was still present, so to try to shake this funeral dirge I took a nip from my flask and quietly passed it to Sergei, keeping it from the sight of Gabriel with his being a teetotaler. The stain of violence had already washed away from all but the most secluded corners of the street, and with our minds on other diverse subject we all were almost surprised to find ourselves back at the gates. The footmen went to challenge us from their warm gatehouse, before recognizing us and sending us inside not only to get warm and dry, but to have us confer with the physician and constable they had brought in to deal with the corpse.
The physician, a restrained gentleman in his mid-fifties was counter balanced by the constable, a firebrand of Irish descent. The body was definitively a corpse; any appearance of life earlier had been gases being expelled from his innards. Of his face there was no sign, it beating the marks of claws or maybe a garden fork. His clothes were now unfit to be worn by even a pauper, there was the sign they had once been of a finer quality, maybe that to be worn by a watch maker I surmised.
The mysterious fabric of previous was not off this poor man’s clothes leaving that party of the mystery unsolved, nor was the reason why he had come here for his final resting place. The constable, who’s job was to determine the causality behind this unhappy morning, was continuously looking to me for approval like the terrier Jacks I had as a young girl. After dragging the body inside, spoiling any clues from the positioning of the body he tried his crude workers hand at forensics, prying open the deceased’s ruined mouth, wiping away blood and how from the wasted face and otherwise destroying any information of any remote value. I would think he was defective, but I doubt even this ill run government would be so incompetent. As he would only make it worse if he became upset, and I assume run to some nepotistic relative, I was forced to thank him for his efforts and try to guide him via suggestion rather than the drubbing he deserved.
I turned my knowledge of the victim’s potential identity into access into the convincing the constable to go get his superiors to further this investigation. Once he left, allowing me the time to not have to look more incompetent than him, I began thoroughly search the body and catalog everything from a loosened jacket button to a considerable amount of sandy dust that was rolled into his bottom trouser cuff. His right breast pocket contained an engraved pocket watch with some design engraved on the back, that denied my knowledge of modern and ancient languages to pierce the veil of meaningfulness. He carried no photographs or identification; beyond the watch the only other evidence to whom he might be were his cuff links which seemed almost like onyx, but darker, a darkness that seemed to pull my soul down some winding tunnel. They, like the watch, had a different but equally peculiar symbol carved into them, which also escaped the extent of my knowledge.
With the physician’s assistance, I began to strip the corpse, making notes and taking measurements as we went. The shoes, a servicable pair made of stout leather, had the same dust as the trousers worn into the seems. The soles had been worn considerably as if they had been used to walk great distances over loose terrain, though with none of the gouges one would expect from the sharpened shale rock of the nearby hillsides. His socks were non-descript beyond having the dampness and stench of a pair that had been worn all day in the blistering sun, versus the dreary morning of today. Underneath the socks was a different matter. Both of his feet had more of the queer markings, this time carved into the flesh of the balls of his feet and then more marking at the ankle. At this point the physician begged off as he had only appeared to be refined, and was much more of one of those garden lillies that only got his degree to appear more useful than a traditional dandy.
The belt came off with some effort as his waistband was also showing the sweat of a long day, causing the belt to adhere on like some kraken-esque myth. The trousers had nothing in their pockets beyond more of the dust in the far tips. The cut of the trousers was typical for the city beyond the faux pas of pleated trousers on an average build, one should only wear pleats if one is wider than their height would dictate. The a light wool they provided no hint to their providence. The seams now, those were a cause for my curiosity to be piqued. Most every seem in the more common wear areas had been replaced or reinforced by someone do ham-fisted it could have been only the owner. Once we removed those we were faced with more of the tattoos, looking over them it felt like I was hearing an inaudible whisper of words, of sentences. The marks traced up the side of his calves, which were overly developed of a shopkeeper. They continued I’m front of his bony and almost definitely arthritic knees, and then flowed to the backside of his thighs. The ant like tracing made continuous sinuous lines reminiscent of pictures of giant kraken. Underneath some of the lines there were deep scars that looked like other glyphs of the same damnable language, and over the top skin deflation which could only be faded brandings. Continuing to the upper half, the jacket, while a similar style as the trousers had been kept in better repair or not been subjected to the same rigors, perhaps having been removed before any strenous activity was performed. The pockets were empty, though there was sign of a slight bulging that one would expect from a small book being kept in that storehouse of illicit goods, the inner left breast pocket. The shirt below was drenched in blood from the ruined face above. The shirt as a whole lacked shape. There were no collar stays, no starch, no creases from being tucked in. The only other item of note, is the pits of the shirt were yellowed considerably which would show it being worn during much hotter or industrious labor than repairing watches. Unbuttoning this shirt gave light to a considerable more drawn, cut or burned markings, some of them being much more intricate than the previous lower pieces, maybe with some of these meant for some horrible aesthetic purpose while the ones below might only be for a bizarre practicality.