“What do you see, Sergeant?” Val asked.
Felix gazed at each of the photographs and then shrugged. “All three of the victims were women. All three were strangled. They were all posed in a way to make them look pleasant, or at least a detraction from the violent death they suffered,” Felix surmised.
Val nodded. “What else?”
Felix looked them over and then saw them. “The primrose.”
Val said nothing but nodded. In each picture, which had immortalized the three dead women, there had been one thing left with them. A small white primrose with a yellow center was placed in each of the dead woman’s hands, and it could only have been left by the killer. There was no other explanation but that the killer had left it at the scene of his crime.
“What do you make of it, Sir?” Felix asked.
Val pulled a worn copy of The Sentiment of Flowers by Robert Tyas from a small shelf behind his desk and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
“Primrose blossoms can mean many different things,” he read. “It’s a symbol for bashfulness. It’s a symbol for inconstancy. It can also refer to young love as well as neglected merit. However, the most popular meaning for primrose is ‘I can’t live without you’.”
Val closed the book and looked over at his sergeant. “Perhaps what ties these women together is a lover that they angered or spurned. Someone that didn’t take the rejection well. And in return for their snub, they paid for it with their life.”
“Three women all with the same man? Sounds implausible.” Felix shook his head. “They weren’t streetwalkers. These were women from good families and good homes.”
“Perhaps one of the women was murdered by one man and the others by someone else,” Val threw out. “We could have a copycat on our hands.”
“The newspapers have been covering the murders quite heavily since the second woman was found and a pattern was established,” Felix nodded. “It’s possible.”
“Anything is possible,” Val nodded as he skimmed through the pages of the Tyas book, passing through the many illustrations of the flowers.
He looked up and saw Felix staring at him. He closed the cover of the book.
“But if you don’t mind me saying, Sir, we aren’t much better off since the first murder.”
Val sighed softly. “I don’t mind you saying so because unfortunately it’s true. We aren’t.”