Editing Lord Peter Views the Body (section)

===The Vindictive Story of the Footsteps That Ran===
While assisting a doctor friend with his experiments in curing diseases in rats, Wimsey and Bunter hear the sound of footsteps and shouting from the flat above. A moment later, the tenant comes running downstairs to get the doctor, hysterically proclaiming his wife Maddalena has been killed by a [[Mafia|Mafioso]] who broke in through their kitchen window.

While the police are sent for, Wimsey searches the flat for clues, his subconscious telling him that something is strange about the whole story. The woman has been stabbed to the heart but with a strange, jagged weapon that has now been removed. There are no footprints on the sill or glass roof of the doctor's laboratory below, as the window-cleaner had recently been. Furthermore, though the chicken is burning in the oven, the bowl of dripping, which is full, has been already removed and set on the counter, suggesting the chicken was taken out and then hurriedly put back in again. Quickly, Wimsey realizes what was subconsciously bothering him – the sound of footsteps running came from the wrong direction, running to and fro in the kitchen instead of to the body and then to the stair as the tenant suggests. Pulling the skewer out from the chicken, Wimsey and the doctor discover traces of human blood on it, which the man was trying to burn off in the oven. His motive for the crime was unreasonable jealousy, as his pretty Italian wife attracted several admirers each time they went out.