Clapper folded his arms. “If you say it’s a stab wound, I’ll accept it, but how can it be the cause of death? Obviously, the rib blocked the knife from entering the body cavity, and you don’t die from a nicked rib, or are you going to tell me that you do?”
“No, of course you don’t, but there’s more. Look.”
He had cleared a space on the table, in which three other ribs lay, and on two of them he pointed out similar nicks. “He didn’t die from these either. But this one…” He slid over the longest of the ribs and held it up for their inspection. “This is the fourth rib on the left side, and here about midway back, you see not a little puncture like the others, but—”
“A spur!” Robb exclaimed. “Like the one on the tibia.”
“Well, not quite. That spur, if you remember, was a stubby little spike on the sawed edge of the bone. This one extends from about the middle of the rib’s bottom, and it’s longer. It’s more like a thin, curved sliver, a—”
“It looks as if it’s been peeled away from the rest of the bone,” Robb said, “bent back but not enough to break it off.”
“Yes, that’s a good description, that’s what happened.” Gently, Gideon fingered the inch-long sliver. “This cut wasn’t made by the point—well, it may have been started by the point—but, basically, it was made by the blade, which sliced through the thin lower edge of the rib on its way by. Try that on a piece of dry bone, and it would just break off, but when bone is green—that is, living—it’s flexible; it gives, it doesn’t break, and you get a shaving, like this.”
Robb frowned. “But he wouldn’t have died from that either. Or would he?”
“Not from that itself, no. You don’t die from broken bones, let alone nicked bones, no matter how severe. It’s the soft tissue damage associated with it that does you in. And this had plenty of soft tissue damage associated with it. See, to create a slice this wide, the knife would have had to be shoved in pretty far—six or seven inches anyway, assuming it’s shaped anything like a typical kitchen knife— which means that it would have slipped right on through the fourth intercostal space, kept on going through the left superior lobe of lungs, and wound up deep in the left ventricle of the heart.” He put the bone down. “And when that happened, he would most assuredly have lain down and died.”
Clapper nodded. “So we have our cause of death.”
“Well, not for sure. For all we know, he was already dead from some other wound or blow that doesn’t show up on the bones. But there’s not that much difference. If I wanted to use our usual weasel-words, I’d say that trauma of this nature is not compatible with continued life. That would cover it.”
Robb was fascinated with the bone sliver. “Such a little thing,” he murmured. “It’s hardly noticeable.”
“You’d notice it if it was you,” Clapper said, and to Gideon: “Four stab wounds. That’s a lot.”
“Yes, it is,” Gideon said, “especially considering that we have only eight ribs here. There are stab wounds on half of them.”
“Out of how many ribs altogether?”
“Tw—”
But Robb was quicker on the draw. “Twenty-four,” he announced promptly. “Twelve on a side. And men and women do have the same number.”
Clapper rolled his eyes. “What a joy it is to work with such a fount of knowledge.” He groped for the box of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, flipped open the lid with his thumb, and lit up. “Truly, I am blessed.”
“Sorry, Sarge,” Robb said, laughing, “It just popped out. I can’t help myself sometimes.”
“You should try harder,” Clapper said. “Twenty-four altogether,” he mused, letting out a lungful of smoke. “So if the ratio holds, we probably have something on the order of a dozen stab wounds, would that be a reasonable guess?”
“No, I wouldn’t want to guess at the number,” Gideon said, “but I think it’s pretty safe to assume, given what we have, that he was stabbed a whole lot of times. A very violent death.”
Clapper nodded soberly. “A crime of passion. Someone was very upset with our Mr. Williams. Assuming that this turns out to be Pete Williams.”
“Oh, as to that, I don’t think it will. Williams was supposed to be around thirty—although that may turn out not to be correct. But in any case, this guy was a good twenty years older than that.”
Predictably, Robb’s interest quickened. “Can you tell us how… ?”
“Sure, some bones age predictably enough to give you a pretty reliable range.” He was going to demonstrate with the sternal rib ends, but that got a little abstruse, so he picked up the scapulas instead and held them up to the ceiling lights. “See, bone demineralizes and thins out as you get older, and whereas in a twenty- or thirty-year- old, you wouldn’t see any light through… any light through…”
His voice faded out. This was the first time he’d held the two scapulas up side by side, and as he did his mind shot off on a tangent of its own. There were some significant differences between the two shoulder blades. “Looks like he was left-handed…” he murmured, and then, after a few moments: “No, it’s almost as if these are from two different people. No, it isn’t that. It’s more like…”
Again, continuing to peer at the scapulas, he fell silent. Thirty seconds passed.
“Hello?” Clapper said. “Is anybody home?”
“Mm,” said Gideon. Another thirty seconds went by.
Clapper sighed and ground out his cigarette. “Shall we go?” he said to Robb. “It appears that Elvis has left the building.”
FIFTEEN
THE only room in Star Castle that was large enough to comfortably hold seven people, other than the dining room and the dungeon bar, was the cozy second-floor lounge, and it was there that the consortium held its meetings, seated not at a conference table but informally, in a rough circle, on what were probably the very same
