attention. He said, “I suppose I’ll have to go down and look at her timbers…”
“You will,” she agreed, her mind in complete turmoil.
Elizabeth Busby hadn’t known whether to laugh or to cry. On impulse she had gone out into the garden, swept up a bunch of her aunt’s favourite roses—Fantin-Latour—and walked down to the churchyard by the river’s edge.
She cried a little then.
6
How can I support this sight!
« ^ »
The pathologist to the Berebury District Hospital Group was a fast worker. Nobody could complain about that. He was also a compulsive talker—out of the witness box, that is. His subjects were in no position to complain about this or, indeed, anything else. His assistant, Burns, was not able either—but for different, hierarchical, reasons—to voice any complaints about the pathologist’s loquacity. Should he have been able to get a word in edgeways, that is.
In fact, Bums, worn down by listening, had retreated into a Trappist-like silence years ago. Detective Constable Crosby, normally a talker, didn’t like attending post-mortems. He had somehow contrived to drift to a point in the room where, though technically present, he wasn’t part of the action. It fell, therefore, to Detective Inspector Sloan to maintain some sort of dialogue with Dr. Dabbe.
“You’ll be wanting to know a lot of awkward things, Sloan,” said the pathologist, adjusting an overhead shadowless lamp.
“We’ll settle for a few facts to begin with, Doctor,” said the detective inspector equably.
“Like how long he’d been in the water, I suppose?”
“That would be useful to know.”
“And damned difficult to say.”
“Ah…”
“For sure, that is.”
Sloan nodded. In this context, “for sure” meant remaining sure and certain “under determined and sustained cross-examination by a hostile Queen’s Counsel.
And under oath.
The pathologist ran his eyes over the body of the unknown man. “He’s been there—in the water, I mean— longer than you might think, though,” he said.
“I don’t know that I’d thought about that at all,” said Sloan truthfully.
“I have,” responded Dr. Dabbe, “and I must say again that I would have expected rather more damage to the body. Something doesn’t tie up.”
Detective Inspector Sloan brought his gaze to bear on the post-mortem subject because it was his duty to do so but without enthusiasm. The body looked damaged enough to him. Detective Constable Crosby was concentrating his gaze on the ceiling.
“The degree of damage,” pronounced the pathologist, “is not consistent with the degree of decomposition.”
“We’ll make a note of that,” promised Sloan, pigeonholing the information in his mind. By right, Crosby should have been regarding his notebook, not the ceiling.
“There’s plenty of current in the estuary, you see, Sloan,” said the doctor. “That’s what makes the sailing so challenging. But current damages.”
“Quite so,” said Sloan, noting that fact—perhaps it was a factor, too—in his mind as well.
“To say nothing of there being a good tide,” said Dr. Dabbe, “day in, day out.”
“I daresay, Doctor,” said Sloan diffidently, “that the tide’ll still be pretty strong opposite Edsway, won’t it?”
“If you’d tacked against it as often as I have,” replied the pathologist grandly, “you wouldn’t be asking that.”
“No, Doctor, of course not.” Sloan wasn’t a frustrated single-handed Atlantic-crossing yachtsman himself. Growing roses was his hobby. It was one of the few relaxing pursuits that were compatible with the uncertain hours and demands of detection. Owning a sailing boat, as the doctor did, wasn’t compatible with police pay either—but that was something different.
“The wind doesn’t help,” said Dabbe, stroking an imaginary beard in the manner of Joshua Slocum. “You get a real funnel effect out there in mid-channel.”
“I can see that you might,” agreed Sloan. “What with the cliffs to the north…”
“And the headland above Marby to the south,” completed the doctor. “That’s the real villain of the piece.”
Sloan was thinking about something else that wasn’t going to help either and that was the official report. It would have to note that the subject was relatively undamaged but not well preserved. It was the sort of incongruity that didn’t go down well with the superintendent; worse, it would undoubtedly have to be explained to him.
By Sloan.
“There’s the shingle bank, too,” said the doctor.
“Billy’s Finger.” Sloan had looked at the map. “I’m going out there presently to have a look at the lie of the land…”
“And the water,” interjected Detective Constable Crosby.
Everyone else ignored this.
“There’s always a fair bit of turbulence, too,” remarked the pathologist sagely, “where the river meets the tide.” It was Joshua Slocum who had sailed alone around the world but Dr. Dabbe contrived to sound every bit as experienced.
Immutable was the word that always came into Sloan’s mind when people started to talk about tides. He might have been talking about tides at that moment, but it was the face of the superintendent which swam into his mental vision. He would be waiting for news.
“Let’s get this straight, Doctor,” he said more brusquely than he meant. “This man—whoever he is—has been in the water for a fair time.”
“That is so,” he agreed. “There is some evidence of adipocere being present,” supplemented the pathologist, “but not to any great degree.”
“But,” said Sloan, “he hasn’t been out where the tides and currents and fish could get hold of him for all that long?”
“That puts it very well,” said Dr. Dabbe.
“And he didn’t meet his death in the water?”
“I shall be conducting the customary routine test for the widespread distribution of diatoms found in true drowning in sea or river water,” said the pathologist obliquely, “but I shall be very surprised if I find any.”
“Yes, Doctor,” said Sloan. He wasn’t absolutely sure what a diatom was—and now that the atom wasn’t the indivisible building block of nature any longer he was even less sure.
Something in what the doctor had said must have caught the wayward attention of Detective Constable Crosby. He stirred and said, “You mean that that test wouldn’t have done for the Brides-in-the-Bath?”
“I do,” said Dr. Dabbe. “There aren’t any planktons in bath water.”
“And,” said Sloan, gamely keeping to the business in hand, “we don’t know who he is either…” He had just the one conviction about all things atomic—that the only really safe fast breeder was a rabbit.
“No,” agreed Dabbe.
“Of course,” said Sloan, “we could always try his fingerprints…”
“You’ll be lucky,” said Detective Constable Crosby, taking a quick look at what was left of the swollen and distended skin of the unknown man. He caught sight of his superior officer’s face and added a belated “sir.”
“We don’t even know,” carried on Sloan bitterly, “if he went into the river or the sea.”
