“So what is your plan, Sherlock?”
He stared at me blankly, as if he were surprised I needed to ask the question. He said, “Has your brain turned to dust like a crumbled building? I will examine the crime scene again. I will determine the cause of death. An autopsy will illuminate many things. I will evaluate the finest details. Then I can begin to build my case file.”
“And?”
“And then I will invade the killer’s mind to determine his vulnerabilities. A killer reveals himself through his victims. How they are killed, where and when. In the end, I will have a portrait of the killer’s mind - a good part of it, at least. A profile of his personality, if you will. I will keep an open and non-judgmental mind, unlike those idiots at the Yard. And I will find the truth.”
10
“So, here it is, Poppy. The coroner has thus far ruled them all natural deaths. He is a buffoon. In fact, in County Kent, he was investigated for neglect of his duties. Besides, the coroner only obtained his position through Mycroft, and so he answers to Mycroft, who wishes even more than Lestrade to keep this quiet. Lestrade is sometimes out of his depth, I’ll grant you, but his motives are pure. He does not wish to start a panic; Mycroft simply wants to be in charge of it all.”
There it was again, the rivalry between Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Sherlock was the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Sherrinford, had managed the family estate since their father passed away. Mycroft was seven years Sherlock’s senior and he held some mysterious position in the British government. Sherlock insisted he was the right hand of Her Majesty and ran the whole institution. He had told me that Mycroft had created his position, his own destiny, as it were, just as Sherlock insisted he had shaped his own position of Consulting Detective. He said that Mycroft frequently decided national policy and that his great brain could hold so much minutiae that he was now indispensable to Her Majesty.
“Lestrade has a great deal of faith in your uncle,” he said, “particularly since he undertook to be a part-time pathologist here at St. Bart’s. When Lestrade heard of your uncle’s implementation of the advanced protocol of the German doctor, he realized that Dr. Sacker was ahead of most of the physicians in Great Britain.”
I couldn’t disagree with the assessment of Uncle. He was an incredibly skilled and talented physician. And when Virchow developed the first step-by-step procedure for conducting autopsies a few years ago, Uncle Ormond had devoured the English translation that was published later that year.
“So, since Dr. Sacker is not here, I told Lestrade that you might assist us.”
“I am not my Uncle Ormond,” I confessed sadly. “I’ve only been a doctor for a year and-”
“Oh, do not be modest, Poppy. It does not become brilliant people. It is so transparent. Didn’t you tell me that you are thinking seriously about seeking a position as a railway surgeon? Must they not be open to new and creative medical practices?”
“What has that got to do with this?”
“Logic dictates that the more experience you have with body trauma and forensic medicine, the better internal guide you will have in the treatment of wounds and injuries. You have freely admitted that your practice has gone wanting. Surely it’s best to garner your knowledge of wounds and injuries and disease by examining and cutting into corpses rather than living patients, is it not? Particularly, when living specimens are so few and far between.”
“Sherlock, I don’t know. I-”
“Don’t you need to know about which injuries may cause death within hours?” he interrupted. “Lung bruising or heart bruising, a torn diaphragm or windpipe, a ripped gullet, hollow organ damage, solid organ damage... not all body parts are created equal. This body is fresh. It has been just hours since the man’s demise. It would seem to me the more you learn, the more you-”
Sighing, I said, “All right. What do you want me to look for, Sherlock?”
“I am hoping you can confirm my suspicions. All five bodies were found in the vicinity of the British Museum. I believe I shall soon know the ‘who,’ the identity of all of them, and the ‘where’ - if the bodies were not moved, and the ‘when’ is obvious. I believe that I have the ‘how’ as well, which is what I need you to confirm. I have yet to ascertain the ‘why.’”
I took off my hat, removed my cape and draped it over a chair in a corner of the necropsy suite. “You said you think you know how this man died. Do you wish to share your opinion?”
He took a small box from a table near the body. He donned gloves - he had been studying both sanitation and preservation of evidence for some time - and removed from the box a small statue of Buddha. It was perhaps fifteen centimeters tall and closely resembled a larger one I had seen on display at the British Museum. Then he removed from the box something covered with white linen. He unwrapped it to reveal a bird - dead and stiff.
“The Buddha is hollow and the bird was next to it. I believe the bird was poisoned. I will draw some blood to examine it microscopically, and I shall do the same
