roaming around the mortuaries in which the incidents took place. Furthermore, one of the reported animals — the dog, to be specific — was found dead four days after one of the disappearances. Taking all this into account, I decided to offer a reward for anyone uncovering the corpse of the cat that was seen in connection with the last incident. This morning I received some news which cost me fifteen shillings. Some schoolchildren found the cat buried in the snow near a clump of bushes less than two hundred paces from the mortuary.”
With his back to the others, Sciss walked over to the window as if he wanted to go outside. It was already too dark to see anything except for the street lights wobbling in the wind and glimmering in the swaying shadow of an overhanging branch.
He stood silently, stroking the lapel of his baggy gray jacket with the tips of his fingers.
“Are you finished, Doctor?”
Sciss turned around at the sound of Chief Inspector Sheppard’s voice. A slight, almost boyish smile unexpectedly changed his small face, in which all the features were completely out of proportion, with its gray eyes, somewhat puffy cheeks, and a jaw so recessive that he was practically chinless.
Why he’s only a boy at heart… a perpetual adolescent, really quite pleasant in his way, Gregory thought in amazement.
“I’d like to say a few more words, but not until the end of the meeting,” Sciss replied, returning to his seat.
The Chief Inspector removed his eyeglasses. His eyes were tired.
“Good. Farquart, please, if you have anything else to say.”
Farquart answered without much enthusiasm.
“Truthfully, not very much. I’ve gone over this whole ‘series,’ as Dr. Sciss calls it, in the usual way, and I think at least some of the rumors must have been true. It seems to me that the case is fairly simple — the perpetrator wanted to steal a corpse but was frightened away in Shaltam and the other places. He finally succeeded in Treakhill, but since he was still an amateur he took a naked body. It looks like he didn’t realize how hard it would be to transport a body in that condition, as opposed to a fully clothed body, which is much less conspicuous. He must finally have realized this because he changed his tactics, making a definite effort to get clothing for the bodies. Also, the bodies he took the first few times weren’t exactly the best available — I’m thinking about what Dr. Sciss called the search for bodies ‘in good condition.’ For example, there was another body in the mortuary at Treakhill — a young man’s body — in much better condition than the one that disappeared. That’s about all…
“Of course there’s still the question of motive,” Farquart continued after a moment. “I see the following possibilities: necrophilia, some other kind of insanity, or some kind of… scientist. I think we should find out what Dr. Sorensen has to say about it.”
“I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,” the doctor sputtered in a gruff voice, “but you can absolutely rule out the possibility of necrophilia. Necrophiliacs are always feebleminded, retarded cretins who couldn’t possibly plan anything as complicated as this. In my opinion you can also rule out any other kind of insanity. Nothing was left to chance in any of these incidents. There’s too much precision, not a single slipup of any kind. Madmen don’t operate so methodically.”
“Paranoia?” Gregory suggested in a low voice. The doctor glanced at him indifferently. For a moment he seemed to be trying the feel of the word on his tongue, then he pursed his thin, froglike lips.
“No! At least,” he added, weakening the categorical character of his objection, “I don’t think it’s very likely. Insanity, gentlemen, is not a catchall for every human action that involves motives we don’t understand. Insanity has its own structure, its own internal logic. Of course in the final analysis it’s possible that the culprit could be a psychopath — yes, it’s possible, I suppose — but it’s only one of many possibilities.”
“A psychopath with a talent for mathematics,” Sciss commented almost involuntarily.
“How do you meant that?”
Sorensen turned to Sciss with a foolish but distinctly offensive sneer.
“I mean a psychopath who decided to have his fun by making sure that the product of the distance and the time between consecutive incidents, multiplied by the temperature differential, would be a constant.”
Sorensen stroked his knee nervously, then began drumming on it with his fingers.
“Yes, yes I know… you can multiply and divide almost anything by something else — the length of canes by the width of hats — and come up with all kinds of constants and variables.”
“Are you trying to make fun of mathematics?” Sciss began. It was clear that he was about to say something nasty.
“Excuse me, Doctor, but I would very much like to hear your opinion about the third possible motive.” Sheppard was glaring at Sorensen again.
“That the culprit is a scientist who steals bodies? No, absolutely not! Never in the world! The whole idea is ridiculous. The only scientists who steal cadavers for their experiments are in third-rate movies. Why steal a cadaver when it’s easy enough to get one from any morgue, or even to buy one from the next of kin. Besides, scientists don’t work alone anymore, and even if one had stolen a cadaver, although God alone knows why he would, he wouldn’t be able to hide it from his colleagues and co-workers. You can safely eliminate that as a motive.”
“In your opinion then,” Sheppard said, “do we have anything to go on?” The Chief Inspector’s ascetic face was expressionless. Gregory caught himself staring almost impertinently at his superior, as if studying a painting. Is he really like that, he wondered, is all this no more than a dull routine for him?
Gregory mused in this vein during the oppressive, unpleasant silence that followed the Chief Inspector’s question. Again a far-off engine resounded in the darkness beyond the window: the deep rumble moved upward, then grew silent. The panes shook.
“A psychopath or nothing,” said Dr. Sciss all of a sudden. He smiled and, indeed, seemed to be in a good mood. “As Dr. Sorensen so intelligently pointed out, psychopathic behavior is usually very distinctive — it is characterized by impulsiveness, stupidity, and errors due to an attention span limited by emotional disorder. Thus, we are left with nothing. Ergo, gentlemen, it is quite obvious that these incidents couldn’t possibly have taken place.”
“You’re joking, I suppose,” Sorensen growled.
“Gentlemen,” Sheppard interrupted. “The amazing thing is that the press has been very easy on us so far, probably because of the war in the Near East. For the time being we haven’t had to worry about public opinion, but we’re going to hear plenty of criticism of the Yard before long. And so, at least as far as its formal aspects are concerned, the investigation must be expedited. I want to know exactly what has been done already and, in particular, what steps have been taken to recover the bodies.”
“That’s all the lieutenant’s responsibility,” said Farquart. “We gave him full powers two weeks ago, and since then he’s been completely on his own.”
Gregory nodded his assent, pretending not to have heard the criticism implicit in Farquart’s words.
“Starting with the third incident,” he said, “we began to take extreme measures. Immediately after a missing body was reported, we closed off the whole area within a radius of fifty miles, using all the local forces, highway and airport patrols, plus two squads of radio cars from the London tactical headquarters at Chichester. We set up roadblocks at every intersection, railroad grade crossing, tollgate, highway exit, and dead-end street… but nothing came of it. By coincidence we happened to pick up five people who were wanted on various other charges, but as far as our own problem is concerned we didn’t accomplish anything. Of course it’s not easy to close off an area that big, and from the practical standpoint you can never set up a net that’s one hundred percent tight — it’s always possible for someone to slip through. After the second and third incidents the perpetrator probably left the area before our roadblocks were even set up, since he had six hours the first time and about five hours the next. I’m assuming, of course, that he also managed to dispose of his car. In the most recent incident, however, the disappearance took place between 3:00 and 4:50 in the morning, so he didn’t have more than an hour and three quarters for his escape. It was a typical March night… gale winds and snow after an evening of thick fog, and all the roads were impassable until noon of the next day. Of course the perpetrator might have used a tractor or a snowplow to make his getaway, but it would have been hard, and I know this from my own experience because we had an awful time getting our patrol cars out of the snow, both the ones from the local stations and the ones from the Greater London C.I.D. reserve that responded to our alert.”
“So you maintain that no car could have left the Lewes vicinity until noon of the next day?”
“Right.”
