Murder in the Queen's Armes

it looks like. As if he'd been draped over a saw horse when he was killed.'

'Ah, very perceptive. Excellent reasoning.” Merrill laughed his jolly laugh. “Erroneous conclusion, however. You must remember that although a newly dead body sinks for a few days before floating to the surface, it does not lie upon the ocean floor. No, it hangs suspended, in a shadowy limbo, as if were, between surface and bottom.” Merrill's gentle eyes glittered with enthusiasm. And why not, Gideon thought. Who was he to look askance if Merrill got enthusiastic about cadavers? There were plenty of people who wondered what he found so absorbing in skeletons.

'And,” Merrill went on, “what with the torso being the most buoyant part of the body, the corpse naturally turns on its face, its legs and arms trailing below, its head lolling forward, more or less like a great jellyfish.” He leaned over, dangled his head and arms, and made a presumably jellyfish-like face. From this unusual position he continued to speak.

'Obviously, the lividity—hypostasis is the better term, really—would therefore be most pronounced in the legs and arms. Face, too.” He stood up straight, smiling charmingly. “But of course, this fellow doesn't have a face, so it's moot.'

'Interesting,” said Gideon, and in spite of himself he was interested.

'Yes, isn't it?” Merrill responded with sincerity. He seemed about to elaborate on the subject but caught himself. “See here, you have a beautiful wife waiting for you, so let's get down to our business, which is: What can you tell us from the skeleton?” He went to a metal cabinet. “I have sliding and spreading calipers for you, and dissecting tools.'

'And if you have a pair of gloves, I'd appreciate them,” Gideon said.

'Gloves?” Merrill turned his head. “You mean rubber gloves?'

'Yes, if you have them.'

A faint shadow of surprise flitted over the pathologist's face. “I suppose we do, if you really want them. For myself, I find the sense of touch in my bare hands extremely sensitive.'

I do, too, Gideon thought but did not say. That's why I want the gloves. If he'd had the nerve, he would have asked for a surgeon's face mask and a rubber coat.

He slipped on the disposable plastic gloves that Merrill found for him, picked up a probe, and poked gingerly at the gristly tendons and ruined muscles of the face to see the bone underneath. It didn't take much poking. When the head wobbled on the plastic neck rest, he forced himself to steady it with his other hand. It was, he reminded himself, the first touch that was the worst.

'We don't expect any miracles, of course,” Merrill said, watching with interest, “but if you can give us anything positive that might be helpful in identification, we'd be most grateful. The race, perhaps...'

'You said you thought he was Caucasian?'

'Yes, from the hair. The color's no help after all this time in the water, obviously, but I had a look at some of the head hair under a microscope. It's oval in cross section, and relatively fine, both of which suggest a Caucasian. But even hair gets distorted after a month in the water, so I'm not overly confident.'

'Well, you're right. He's Caucasian.'

Merrill beamed. “Oh, but I say...just like that? But don't you have to measure the breadth of the skull, or index the pelvis, or some such arcane thing?'

'No, there are quite a few indicators visible right here.” Gideon said, and delivered a little lecture of his own. The skullcap, he pointed out, was dolichocephalic, quite a bit longer from front to back than from side to side. This was both a Negroid and Caucasoid trait; Mongoloids, on the other hand, tended to be round-headed. Moreover, the malars, or cheekbones, sloped sharply back. In a Mongoloid skull, the cheekbones would be broad planes that projected out to the sides, producing the wide, flat face of the Oriental or the American Indian. Thus, the body was almost certainly not Mongoloid, and it only remained to determine if it was that of a white man or a black man. That distinction, Gideon explained, was not difficult on this particular cranium.

Gideon ticked them off: The brow ridges were undulating, as opposed to the mesa-like ridges more characteristic of Negroid skulls; the nasal sill—the bottom of the nasal opening—was marked by a sharp border, and not the “scooped out” margin of the Negroid skull; the nasal bones themselves were “towered,” giving the appearance of having been pinched together; the shape of the eye sockets tended toward the triangular, not the rectangular....

Merrill listened, entranced. “Oh, I say, that's marvelous! I had no idea...! I must say, you're certainly living up to your reputation.'

'Actually, there's more,” Gideon said, not above flattery. “The arch of the palate, for example. You can look at it from underneath easily enough on this one, what with the throat muscles and the tongue gone.” He tipped the head back on its neck rest. “The Caucasoid palate is very narrow; that's why we suffer more from crowding of the teeth. The Negroid palatine arch, on the other hand—” He stopped suddenly, staring through the brown tatters of muscle to the bone and cartilage underneath.

'Ah, you've noticed, have you?” Merrill cried. “I was sure you would!'

With a probe, Gideon picked at a small U-shaped bone that lay above the larynx at the junction of jawline and throat. “It's murder, isn't it?” he said. “The hyoid's fractured. He's been strangled.'

'Indeed he has. Manually strangulated. And not only the hyoid bone, but the thyroid cartilage as well.” With his finger Merrill pushed at the stiff cartilage that formed the prominence of the Adam's apple. “The left horn's cracked. I've been a forensic pathologist for nineteen years and I've yet to see a thyroid broken this way—a single horn fractured—that wasn't caused by manual strangulation. It's the thumbs that do it, you know.” Ever ready to demonstrate, he raised his hands, thumbs up. “They press in and...pop! Good-bye, thyroid.'

The hands came down and he was abruptly grave. “So we have a male Caucasian, strangled from in front— otherwise the thumbs wouldn't have cracked the thyroid horn—killed four weeks ago, perhaps a little less. What else can we infer?'

'Well, we can see he was a big guy, pretty powerfully built.'

'I've estimated six feet two, living height; two hundred twenty pounds living weight. Why so thoughtful, Professor?'