Page 17 of If Looks Could Kill

They arrest him the next day, on suspicion of being himself. The secret killer. They’re rounding up all sorts.

They let him go for lack of evidence. He laughs all the way home. Except… why?

The source of their suspicion, they never explicitly say.

Something about him being an American doctor.

He’s no doctor, but that’s no help. He’s done so well at marketing himself as a physician that all of London, Manchester, and Birmingham, not to mention the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and a growing swath of its interior, believe him to be one.

Still, his arrest is an accident of circumstance. A coincidence, if an uncomfortable one.

Had he been unwise, leaving his laundry with his laundress landlady this morning? There was some blood. But that’s an unrelated matter. In so wide a dragnet as the police are drawing, anyone might be caught. In the absence of evidence, he will always wriggle free.

But that shirt…

Best to lie low for a time. Take a trip out into the country for a spell. Let the city cool off after the furor over two killings in one night. Best not to return to that flat.

Soon he’ll be back and can resume the hunt once more.