The sergeant continued to hold the door open.
“Nothing more I can do for you, sir?” he asked genially.
“Is that the divisional surgeon?” I inquired.
“Yes. I am the divisional surgeon,” the newcomer answered. “Did you want anything of me?”
“This,” said the sergeant, “is a medical gentleman who has got permission from the coroner to inspect the remains. He is acting for the family of the deceased—I mean, for the family of Mr. Bellingham,” he added in answer to an inquiring glance from the surgeon.
“I see,” said the latter. “Well, they have found the rest of the trunk, including, I understand, the ribs that were missing from the other part. Isn’t that so, Davis?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the constable. “Inspector Badger says all the ribs is here, and all the bones of the neck as well.”
“The inspector seems to be an anatomist,” I remarked.
The sergeant grinned. “He is a very knowing gentleman, is Mr. Badger. He came down here this morning quite early and spent a long time looking over the bones and checking them by some notes in his pocketbook. I fancy he’s got something on, but he was precious close about it.”
Here the sergeant shut up rather suddenly—perhaps contrasting his own conduct with that of his superior.
“Let us have these new bones out on the table,” said the police surgeon. “Take the sheet off, and don’t shoot them out as if they were coals. Hand them out carefully.”
The laborer fished out the wet and muddy bones one by one from the sack, and as he laid them on the table the surgeon arranged them in their proper relative positions.
“This has been a neatly executed job,” he remarked; “none of your clumsy hacking with a chopper or a saw. The bones have been cleanly separated at the joints. The fellow who did this must have had some anatomical knowledge, unless he was a butcher, which by the way, is not impossible. He has used his knife uncommonly skilfully, and you notice that each arm was taken off with the scapula attached, just as a butcher takes off a shoulder of mutton. Are there any more bones in that bag?”
“No, sir,” replied the laborer, wiping his hands with an air of finality on the posterior aspect of his trousers; “that’s the lot.”
The surgeon looked thoughtfully at the bones as he gave a final touch to their arrangement, and remarked:
“The inspector is right. All the bones of the neck are there. Very odd. Don’t you think so?”
“You mean—”
“I mean that this very eccentric murderer seems to have given himself such an extraordinary amount of trouble for no reason that one can see. There are these neck vertebrae, for instance. He must have carefully separated the skull from the atlas instead of just cutting through the neck. Then there is the way he divided the trunk; the twelfth ribs have just come in with this lot, but the twelfth dorsal vertebra to which they belong was attached to the lower half. Imagine the trouble he must have taken to do that, and without cutting or hacking the bones about, either. It is extraordinary. This is rather interesting, by the way. Handle it carefully.”
He picked up the breastbone daintily—for it was covered with wet mud—and handed it to me with the remark:
“That is the most definite piece of evidence we have.”
“You mean,” I said, “that the union of the two parts into a single mass fixes this as the skeleton of an elderly man?”
“Yes, that is the obvious suggestion, which is confirmed by the deposit of bone in the rib-cartilages. You can tell the inspector, Davis, that I have checked this lot of bones and that they are all here.”
“Would you mind writing it down, sir?” said the constable. “Inspector Badger said I was to have everything in writing.”
The surgeon took out his pocketbook, and, while he was selecting a suitable piece of paper, he asked: “Did you form any opinion as to the height of the deceased?”
“Yes, I thought he would be about five feet eight” (here I caught the sergeant’s eyes, fixed on me with a knowing leer).
“I made it five eight and a half,” said the police surgeon; “but we shall know better when we have seen the lower leg-bones. Where was this lot found, Davis?”
“In the pond just off the road in Lord’s Bushes, sir, and the inspector has gone off now to—”
“Never mind where he’s gone,” interrupted the sergeant. “You just answer questions and attend to your business.”
The sergeant’s reproof conveyed a hint to me on which I was not slow to act. Friendly as my professional colleague was, it was clear that the police were disposed to treat me as an interloper who was to be kept out of the “know” as far as possible. Accordingly I thanked my colleague and the sergeant for their courtesy, and bidding them adieu until we should meet at the inquest, took my departure and walked away quickly until I found an inconspicuous position from which I could keep the door of the mortuary in view. A few moments later I saw Constable Davis emerge and stride away up the road.
I watched his rapidly diminishing figure until he had gone as far as I considered desirable, and then I set forth in his wake. The road led straight away from the village, and in less than half a mile entered the outskirts of the forest. Here I quickened my pace to close up
