“If I were in his place, I would have given false information to gain time and devise a possible plan of escape,” I conjectured.
“What makes you so certain he did not?” Joanna asked. “After all, a false lead may have been the reason for his prolonged torture.”
“All guesses,” I said, with a shrug.
“I believe otherwise,” Joanna countered. “For, although the puzzle is not yet complete, we have more of the pieces to work with.”
“I take it these pieces are important,” said I.
“Quite important if my assumptions are correct, and we shall determine that when more data is available,” Joanna replied. “But for now, let us proceed with the autopsy and see what else Mr. James Blackstone has to offer.”
My gaze went to the corpse’s lower extremities that were flexed at the knee, yet appeared to be aligned and without deformity. Under the bright light, however, I saw a definite vertical scar on the left thigh that stood out from the shriveled leathery skin which surrounded it. Unlike normal skin, the scar would be composed of thick, fibrous tissue which would resist the mummification process far longer.
“The wound from the war,” I noted and gestured to the midthigh area. “It is thin, straight, and even, all of which indicates it is surgical in nature, and not the result of bullets or shrapnel. Nonetheless, we should search for metal foreign bodies to make certain that is the case.”
“From my experience in war, I might add other causes for such a straight scar,” my father offered.
“Please do, Father.”
“Although rifles were far and away the weapons of choice, the soldiers in the Second Boer War also employed swordlike bayonets, while the cavalry used lances. Either of these would result in a straight, even wound.”
“Excellent,” I lauded. “But would such a wound be responsible for the limp Mr. Blackstone apparently suffered with?”
“Unlikely,” my father responded. “Unless the blade penetrated through the entire quadriceps muscle and shattered the femur.”
“Let us see.”
I incised through the length of the vertical scar and easily spread the leathery skin apart, for the quadriceps muscle had now disappeared. I could find no bullets or loose, foreign fragments in the scant soft tissue, but immediately encountered a metal plate that was screwed into the femur. These plates had been in use since the turn of the century and were used to fix the ends of the fractured bone together and allow for healing.
“There is an internal fixation plate in place,” I announced.
“Is it corroded?” my father inquired.
“To a minimal degree,” I observed after a closer inspection. “But for the most part it is clean metal.”
“Then I am afraid the corpse we are viewing here does not belong to James Blackstone,” my father said with conviction. “The time sequence is off by ten years or more.”
“Please explain, Watson,” Joanna requested at once.
“Last spring I attended a conference on internal fixation devices which was most informative,” my father told us. “The initial plates were designed by a surgeon named Lane just after the turn of the century, but they fell out of favor because of corrosive problems that caused the plates to fail. Had James Blackstone’s surgery been done during the Second Boer War, which ended in 1902, a Lane plate would have been inserted and by now be badly corroded. Our plate shows no such changes and thus was inserted much later on.”
“When did the newer plates come into use?” Joanna asked.
“Ten years or so after the war ended,” my father replied. “And I can assure you, Mr. Blackstone did not walk about with an untreated badly fractured femur for all those years.”
“Then we have a problem unless the plate we are viewing was in fact designed by Dr. Lane,” Joanna said frankly.
I immediately reached for a screwdriver and went about the business of loosening the metal plate. It was a most difficult task, for the screws which held it in place were deeply embedded in the femoral bone. Slowly but surely it began to give.
“Can you determine the cause of the fracture?” asked Joanna.
“Not with any degree of certainty,” I answered. “Nevertheless, the absence of metal fragments or excessive calcification suggest the injury was the result of a fall, perhaps from a horse.”
“Or a kick from one,” Joanna added.
As I tussled with the final screw, the metal plate cracked into two and exposed a fracture that had not completely healed and may well have accounted for a painful hip. I retrieved the broken pieces and retreated to a nearby basin where I scrubbed the grime and dried matter away. In the corner of the larger piece I saw a stamp mark, but could not make out the inscription even when held up to the light.
“I need a magnifying glass,” I said to Joanna.
She hurried over and handed her large glass to me, then stepped back and waited.
I brushed away more grime and carefully studied the plate under the brightest light in the autopsy room. The name on the internal fixation plate read CARNEGIE 10. “Was there a surgeon named Carnegie who designed such plates?”
My father shook his head. “The surgeon who invented the plate was William Sherman, who was the chief orthopaedic surgeon for the Carnegie Steel Company in America. The reason I recall this information is that Dr. Sherman was the guest speaker at the medical conference I attended.”
“And when did Dr. Sherman invent his plate?” Joanna asked.
“The same question was asked of Dr. Sherman and he replied that the first such plate was designed and used in 1912. This was a good ten years after the Second Boer War which ended in 1902. Thus it is safe to say the fracture and its plate cannot be from that war.”
Joanna pondered the problem at length before asking, “What does the number ten on the plate signify?”
“I cannot be certain, but most likely it denotes the particular lot
