'No, I'm not a mind reader,' said the pathologist. 'It's just that I've been down this road many times before. If suicides realized the trauma they inflict on those who find their damaged remains, some might think twice.' He turned back to the business at hand.
'Our friend here,' he said, 'is a classic example of a victim of asphyxial death resulting from suspension by a ligature. You will note the cyanosed complexion and the petechiae – those tiny red dots. The petechiae are more pronounced where the capillaries are least firmly supported. Externally they show here as a fine shower in the scalp, brow, and face above the level of compression. You will observe the tongue, lifted up at the base and made turgid and protruding. You will observe the prominent eyeballs. You will observe that the level of the tightening of the ligature – the blue nylon rope in this case – does not circle the neck horizontally as would tend to be the case in manual strangulation. Instead, it is set at the thyrohyoid level in front and rises to a suspension point just behind the ear. The impression on the body tissues, incidentally, conforms exactly to what you see here. Such would not be the case if he had been manually strangled beforehand or indeed hanged elsewhere. There are invariably discrepancies.
'Now, hanging normally causes death in one of three possible ways: vagal inhibition, cerebral anoxia, or asphyxia.'
Fitzduane made a gesture, and Buckley paused.
'Forgive me,' said Fitzduane. 'I'm familiar with some of these terms, but I think it would be wiser to consider me an ignorant layman.'
Buckley chuckled apologetically. He selected a pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it with tobacco. There was the flare of a match followed by the sounds of heavy puffing. 'Rudolf died from asphyxia,' continued Buckley. 'He strangled himself to death, thought I doubt that was his intention. The tree he chose and the branch he jumped from gave him a drop of about one meter eighty. We can't be quite sure because he may have jumped up and off the branch, thus increasing the drop.
'To use layman's terminology, I expect he intended to break his neck. He would have wanted the cervical segments to fracture, as happens, or is supposed to happen, in a judicial hanging. In reality, outside official executions, where the hangman has the advantage of training and practice, the neck rarely breaks. Rudolf was a strong, fit young man. His neck did not break.
'You will recall, of course, that I stated during the inquest that death was instantaneous. That was not the truth, merely a convention we tend to adhere to for the relatives' sake. The true facts are always in the written report given to the coroner.'
'What about the marks on his hands?' asked Fitzduane. 'There are scratches on the fingertips as well. They look like the signs of a struggle.'
'Perhaps they do,' said Buckley, 'but if there was a struggle that resulted in the victim being hanged by another, it's virtually certain there would be some sign on the victim's body. In this case I examined the body with particular care for the very good reason that I was working in another man's territory and didn't want to leave any possibilities unchecked – and I had rather more time than I tend to have with the work load here. Be that as it may, there were no signs of the bruising you might expect if another party were involved. The marks on the hands and fingers are entirely consistent with two things: first, the victim's ascent of the tree, which marked the palms of his hands and the insides of his fingers.' He paused to puff at his pipe.
'And second?' prompted Fitzduane.
'Second, the convulsing of the victim as he hung there and slowly asphyxiated. The distance between the trunk of the tree and the body, based now upon my observation of these slides, but originally on the sergeant's measurements, indicates that the body would indeed have brushed against the tree as it spasmed or, more specifically, that the fingertips would have rubbed against the bark of the trunk. Such convulsions can be quite violent.'
'I'm sorry I asked,' said Fitzduane.
Buckley smiled slightly. 'In addition, I took samples from under the deceased's fingernails and subjected them to various tests and microscopic examinations. The findings were consistent with what I have just said. Also, I should point out that in the event of a struggle it is not uncommon to find traces of the assailant's skin, tissue, and blood in the nail scrapings. No such traces were found in this case.' He looked toward Fitzduane. Half glasses glinted through the smoke.
Fitzduane marshaled his thoughts. 'Very well. If we accept that there is no evidence of strangulation, forcible hanging, or indeed any sort of physical pressure, how about the possibility that he killed himself while drugged or even while under hypnosis?'
Buckley grinned. 'Great stuff,' he said. 'I mentioned earlier that I had taken particular care with this fellow. The fact is that I did a number of things I wouldn't normally do on the basis of the evidence available, and it wasn't only because I was off my patch. It was also because the fellow was a foreigner and, as like as not, there would be another autopsy when the body arrived home. There would be hell to pay if our verdicts differed, as has happened before – to a colleague, in fact. Very embarrassing.'
'So in this case,' continued Buckley, 'although there was no evidence of foul play and on suspicious circumstances, I took extensive samples of blood, hair, urine, stomach contents, and so on, and sent them for examination in Dublin. I thought there was some possibility that he might have been under the influence of some self-administered drug, and I requested the toxicological tests as an extra precaution.'
'And?' said Fitzduane.
'Nothing found,' said Buckley. 'A very healthy young man, apart from being hanged, that is. Mind you, I'm not saying it was absolutely impossible. There are a staggering number of drugs and chemicals available today. What I am saying is that we found no evidence that he was drugged or poisoned in any way. The lab people are well practiced and expert, and it is unlikely they would have missed an alien substance in the body. A more likely possibility would be that a more remote substance might take longer to identify. But let me repeat, no alien substance was found.'
'What about hypnosis?' Fitzduane wasn't sure he believed in such a possibility himself, but Buckley was the expert, and he'd seen some decidedly odd things in the Congo.
'I don't know,' said Buckley in a deadpan voice. 'There could have been a witch doctor hidden in the tree. All I can say is that I didn't find a shiny gold watch dangling in front of his eyes when I carried out the examination.'
Fitzduane didn’t feel particularly amused. He knew pathologists had a reputation for ghoulish humor, but the blown-up images of Rudolf on the screen weren't doing much for his own sense of fun.
Buckley was not insensitive to his reaction. 'More seriously,' he went on, 'the evidence available suggests that it is most unlikely an individual will deliberately cause himself harm even when under hypnosis. The survival instinct is strong. Of course, there are recorded circumstances of quite extraordinary happenings in Africa, India, and so on, but in those cases the victim was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that a witch doctor was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that a witch doctor or whoever had the power to put a spell on him that could result in his death.'
'Preconditioned?'
'Preconditioned,' said Buckley. 'An unlikely happening for a you man brought up in the heartland of Western capitalism.'
Fitzduane smiled. 'Unlikely.'
Buckley switched the projector off and allowed it to cool for a few minutes. The room was now lit only by the reflecting glow of an angle desk lamp. Fitzduane stood up and stretched. One way or another he had been sitting for most of the day, and he was tired and stiff from the long drive.
Click! The lower two-thirds of Rudolf von Graffenlaub filled the screen. Buckley pressed the button on the illuminated pointer, and the little arrow of light indicated the stained area around the crotch of the dead youth's jeans.
'You will observe,' said Buckley in his lecturer's voice, 'that the deceased's bowels evacuated as he was dying. You may think that this indicates poisoning or something of the sort. Such is not the case. In fact, it is reasonably common, though not inevitable, for such an occurrence to take place during the convulsions of dying. It is also not uncommon in the case of a male for ejaculation to take place. As it happens, in this case there was no evidence of ejaculation.
'Police inquiries disclosed that the deceased attended breakfast in the college refectory a couple of hours
