The girl was slim and young, with auburn hair splayed out on the pillow. Wycliffe almost believed her asleep rather than dead—until he saw her face. Although death was by strangulation, someone had smashed her face in after she was dead. She lay in a sordid room in a seedy hotel down by the docks, but her luggage, her clothes, and her makeup all indicated she was more expensive and classier than her surroundings. Superintendent…