He shakes his head.  “Weren’t nothing.”

“Why is it that you asked me before if my enemy was shaped like a man?”

He looks sheepish.  “Oh think nothing more of that.  Was a story I heard once when I was a child.  They say there’s a tall and spindly man made of sticks who stalks abroad at night and turns people inside out with his magic.  There weren’t nothing in the lane when the boy took us there.  That’s for certain.”

“I see. What clothing was I wearing?”

“Just that skirt of yours.  Same as now, only without the top and the boots.”

He spends a few moments examining his loincloth. The material is darkly colored and rather filthy, but it doesn’t immediately give the impression of having been soaked through with gore.

“I was naked save this garment? Are you sure?”

"Sure.  Yes."

He’s been watching the man closely. Any tell on that last statement?

No obvious change in his eye contact nor any fidgeting.

That’s unfortunate. It implies he was already stripped when the collectors reached him. This whole trip to recover his journal may have been for naught.  

He conceals his disappointment. 

“In what attitude was my body? Face up? Face down? How were the limbs positioned?”

The tobacconist looks thoughtful. “It was - hmm.  Mostly sideways like, in a hunched position.  With the head in the direction of the wall that had all the splattering done.  Looked at first like one eye had been torn out or at least caked with enough gore as to never work rightly again.”

"And yet I see no gore on my garment here. Why do you think that is?"

“Well, if there’s any left it weren’t for lack of effort on my part,” he says with evident peevishness. 

“That’s what I was telling you.  I fetched a rag and wetted it from the pump and I took it to you.  Dustmen won’t pay full if it looks like the bodies are filled with holes, will they?”

“I see. Thank you.”

“And my whole body was lying in blood? Was this loincloth wet to the touch?”

“The skirt?  Oh, to be sure.  Wet and foul-like.”

Implying his blood had not congealed. So he was either stripped immediately by his attacker and left in his undergarments in a puddle of his own blood, or else he was slain walking about Flint Court in the same scant clothing that he awoke with in the Mortuary. Only that doesn’t make any sense.

“What items did you find on the body?”  

He is calling to the utmost upon his powers of discernment now.

“Items?  No personal effects.  You were a pauper, that much seemed plain, even granting that you were full bodied.  Only it was the way you came about your end that was the unnatural part.”

No change in demeanor.

"And where was the crux ansata?"

“The whoosit now?”  There’s a bit of the old schmaltz in his voice.

He takes a step towards the man, lowering both the volume and the tempo of his speech.

“Come now, sir.”

Then, more quickly, “The size of a prayer book and shaped like this.” He impatiently draws in the air in front of him the shape of a lowercase 't' but with a large loop above the crossbar.

The man’s grip on the hound tightens and she lets forth a short, loud bark.  She begins panting heavily, but continues to stare into the middle distance rather than at The Nameless One.

“Weren’t a thing like that.”

“What did you find on my body?”

"Didn't find anything."