He took them up once more and turned them over slowly to bring each part into view. Adhering to one heel was a small flat mass of some material which had apparently been trodden on, and which Thorndyke detached with his pocket-knife and deposited in an envelope from the research case.
“Looks like a small piece of soap,” he remarked as he wrote “heel of right shoe” on it and put it back in the case, “but we may as well see what it is. You notice several rubbed places on these shoes, but especially on the backs, as if deceased had been dragged along a fairly smooth surface. Perhaps the back of his coat may tell us something more.”
He laid the shoes down and, taking up the neatly folded coat, carefully unfolded it and held it up.
“I think you are right, Thorndyke,” said I. “The coat is pretty dirty all over, but the back is noticeably more dusty than the other parts. It looks as if it had been dragged along a dirty floor; and those two bits of cotton sticking to it suggest indoor rather than outdoor dirt. And the same is true of the trousers,” I added, holding them up for inspection. “There is a definitely dusty area at the back, and here is another piece of cotton sticking to the cloth.”
“Yes, I think that point is clear,” he said, “and it is an important point. The cotton is, as you say, definitely suggestive of a floor rather than an out-of-door surface.” He picked off the three fragments, and, as he bestowed them with the other ‘specimens,’ remarked: “There is nothing very distinctive about cotton, but we may as well take them for reference. I wish we had time to go over the clothing thoroughly, but we had better not show too conspicuous an interest.”
Nevertheless, he looked over each garment, quickly, but with intense scrutiny, passing each to me before taking up the next. Over one object only—the collar—did he seem disposed to linger; and certainly its appearance invited notice; for not only was it extremely dirty and crumpled, but it seemed to be uniformly stained as if with weak tea. Moreover, as I held it in my hands, it gave me the impression of a sort of harsh stiffness unaccounted for by the material, for it was a collar of the kind known as ‘semi-stiff’ which usually becomes quite limp after a day’s wear. But now Thorndyke had passed on to an examination of the rope noose and I laid down the collar to join him.
“Evidently,” said he, “as they were able to remove it without cutting it, the knot must have slipped open pretty easily. And you can see why. The noose was made with a running bowline, a rather unsuitable and unusual knot for the purpose. We will venture to untie it and measure its length, to add to our other measurement. You notice that both ends are cut, so that the whole length is only a part of the complete rope, whatever it was.”
He rapidly unfastened the knot and measured the length of the piece, and when he had made a note of the measurement, he produced his pocket-knife and cut off a portion about eight inches long which he dropped into the research case. Meanwhile, I carefully re-tied the bowline and had just replaced it where we had found it when the door opened somewhat abruptly and a stout, well-dressed, middle-aged man bustled in and deposited a handbag on a side bench.
“I must really apologise to you, gentlemen,” he said, civilly, “for keeping you waiting, but you know how difficult it is for a G.P. to keep appointments punctually. Inquests are the bane of my life.”
He hung his hat on a peg by the door, and then, as he turned, his glance lighted on Thorndyke’s rubber gloves and instrument case.
“Those your tools?” he asked; and when Thorndyke admitted the ownership, he enquired with evident interest: “Were you thinking of taking a hand in this job?”
“I came prepared to offer any assistance that might be acceptable,” Thorndyke replied.
“That is very good of you—my name is Ross, by the way. Of course I know yours—very good of you, indeed. I don’t mind confiding to you that I hate post-mortems; and really, they are not very suitable jobs for a man who is going in and out of sick-rooms and examining living people.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Thorndyke. “Medicine and pathology do not mix kindly; and as I am a pathologist and not in medical practice, perhaps you would like me to carry out the actual dissection?”
“I should, very much,” Dr. Ross replied. “You are an experienced pathologist and I am not. But do you think it would be in order?
“Why not?” Thorndyke asked. “You are instructed to make a post-mortem inspection. You can do that without performing the dissection. The observations and inferences on which you will give evidence will be your own observations and inferences.”
“Yes, that is true,” agreed Ross. “But perhaps I had better make, say, the first incision. If I do that, I can say truthfully that I made the post-mortem with your assistance. That is, if I am asked. The whole affair is a mere formality.”
“Very well,” said Thorndyke; “we will make the autopsy jointly,” and with this he took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, drew on the rubber gloves, opened his instrument case and removed the sheet with which the body had been covered.
I was somewhat amused at our colleague’s casuistry and also at the subtlety of Thorndyke’s tactics. The sort of examination that our friend would have made, on the assumption that the cause of death was obvious and the autopsy “a mere formality,” would not have served Thorndyke’s purpose. Now he would conduct the investigation in accordance with what was in his own mind.
Dr. Ross ran his eye quickly over the corpse. “It is not an attractive body,” he remarked, “but it might easily have been worse after three weeks. Still, all those post-mortem stains are a trifle confusing. You don’t see anything abnormal about the general appearance, do you?
“Nothing very definite,” replied Thorndyke. ‘Those transverse stains on the outer sides of the arms might be pressure marks, or they might not.”
“Precisely,” said Ross. “I should say they are just post-mortem stains. They are certainly not bruises. What do you think of the groove?”
“Well,” replied Thorndyke, “as we know that the body was hanging for three weeks, we can hardly expect to learn much from it. You notice that the knot was at the back and that it was a rather bulky knot.”
“Yes,” said Ross. “Wrong place, of course, and wrong sort of knot. But perhaps he hadn’t had much practice in hanging himself. Shall I make the incision now?”
Thorndyke handed him a scalpel and he made an incision—a very tentative one. Then he retired to the open window and lit his pipe.
“You don’t want to supervise?” Thorndyke enquired with a faint smile.
“What is the use? You are an expert and I am not. If you will tell me what you find, that will satisfy me. I accept your facts without question, though I shall form my own conclusions.”
“You don’t consider an expert’s conclusions as convincing as his facts?” I suggested.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “But, you see, a medico-legal expert tends to approach an inquiry with a certain bias in favour of the abnormal. Take this present case. Here is an unfortunate gentleman who is found hanging in an empty house. A melancholy affair, but that is all that there is to it. Yet here are you two experts, with an enthusiasm that I admire and respect, voluntarily and cheerfully undertaking a most unpleasant investigation in search of something that pretty certainly is not there. And why? Because you utterly refuse to accept the obvious.”
“It isn’t exactly the function of a medico-legal expert to accept the obvious,” I ventured to remind him.
“Precisely,” he agreed. “That is my point. Your function is to look out for the abnormal and find it if you possibly can. To you, a normal case is just a failure, a case in which you have drawn a blank.”
I was on the point of suggesting that his own function in this case was, in effect, the same as ours. But then, as I realised that his easy-going acceptance of surface appearances was making things easy for Thorndyke, I refrained and proceeded to “make conversation” along other lines.
“Your work as police surg
eon must give you a good deal of medico-legal experience,” I remarked.
“I’m not the police surgeon,” he replied; “at least only by acting rank. The genuine artist is away on leave and I don’t care how soon he comes back. This job is a hideous interruption of one’s ordinary routine. But I see that the pathologist has made a discovery. What is the specimen that you are collecting?” he added as Thorndyke replaced the stopper in a bottle and stood the latter on a side bench.
“It is some fluid from the stomach,” Thorndyke replied. “There was only an ounce or so, but I am surprised to find any in a half-mummified body like this.”
“And you are preserving it for analysis, I suppose?” said Ross.
“Yes, just a rough analysis as a matter of routine. Would you write the label, Jervis?”
“Any particular reason for preserving that fluid?” asked Ross. “Any signs or suggestions of poison, for instance?
“No,” replied Thorndyke. “But it will be just as well to exclude it definitely. The stomach is better preserved than I should have expected and less red.”
“You don’t suspect arsenic?”
“No, certainly not as a cause of death; nor, in fact, any other poison. The routine analysis is just an extra precaution.”
“Well, I expect you are right, from your point of view,” said Ross. “And, of course, poison is a possibility. The ways of suicides are so unaccountable, I heard of a man who took a dose of oxalic acid, then cut his throat, ineffectually, and finally hanged himself. So this man may have taken a dose and failed to produce the desired effect; but he undoubtedly finished himself off with the rope, and that is all that matters to the coroner’s jury.”
“There are a number of small bodies which look like fish-scales sticking to the walls of the stomach,” Thorndyke reported. “No other contents excepting the fluid.”
“Well,” Ross protested, “there is nothing very abnormal about fish-scales in the stomach. The reasonable inference is that he had been eating fish. What do you mean to suggest?”
“I am not suggesting anything,” replied Thorndyke. “I am merely reporting the facts as I observe them. The lungs seem slightly cedematous and there is just a trace of fluid in them—only a trace.”
“Oh, come,” Ross expostulated, “you are not going to hint that he was drowned! Because he wasn’t. I’ve seen some drowned bodies and I can say quite positively that this is not one. Besides, let us keep the facts in mind. This man was found hanging from a beam in a house.”
“Once more,” Thorndyke replied, a little wearily, “let me repeat that I am offering no suggestions or inferences. As we agreed, I report the facts and you form your own conclusions. There are one or two of these little bodies—fish-scales or whatever they are—in the air-passages. Perhaps you would like to look at them.”
Dr. Ross walked over to the table and looked down as Thorndyke demonstrated the little whitish specks sticking to the sides of the bronchial tubes, and for the moment he seemed somewhat impressed. But only for a moment. Unlike the medico-legal expert, as his fancy painted him, Dr. Ross evidently approached an inquiry with a strong bias in favour of the normal.
“Yes,” he said, as he returned to the window, “it is queer how they can have got into the lung. Still, we know he had been eating fish, and there must have been particles in the mouth. Perhaps he had an attack of coughing and got some of them drawn down his trachea. Anyhow there they are. But if you will excuse me for saying so, these curious and no doubt interesting little details are just a trifle beside the mark. The object of this examination is to ascertain the cause of death—if it isn’t obvious enough from the circumstances. Now, what do you say? You have made a pretty complete examination—and uncommonly quick you have been over it. I couldn’t have done it in twice the time. But what is the result? The alleged fact is that this man hanged himself. If he did, he presumably died of asphyxia. Is the appearance of the body consistent with death from asphyxia? That is the question that I shall be asked at the inquest; and I have got to answer it. What do you say?
“One doesn’t like to dogmatise,” Thorndyke answered, cautiously. “You see the state of the body. Most of the characteristic signs are absent owing to the drying and the other changes. But making all the necessary allowances, I think the appearances are suggestive of death from asphyxia. At any rate there are no signs inconsistent with that cause of death and there is nothing to suggest any other.”
“That is what I wanted to know,” said Ross, “and if you can give me one or two details, I will run off and put my notes in order so that I can give my evidence clearly and answer any questions.”
Thorndyke dictated a brief description of the state of the various organs which Ross took down verbatim in his notebook. Then he put it away, got his hat from the peg and picked up his handbag.
“I am infinitely obliged to you two gentlemen,” he said. “You have saved me from a task that I hate and you have done the job immeasurably better than I could have done it and in half the time. I only hope that I haven’t victimised you too much.”
“You haven’t victimised us at all,” said Thorndyke. “It has been a matter of mutual accommodation.”
“Very good of you to say so,” said Ross; and having thanked us once more, he bustled away.
“I hope that you have not misled that good gentleman,” I remarked as Thorndyke proceeded to restore, as far as possible, the status quo ante and render the corpse presentable to the coroner’s jury.
“I have not misled him intentionally,” he replied. “I gave him all the observed facts. His interpretation of them is his own affair. Perhaps, while I am finishing, you would complete the labels. That corked tube filled with water contains the fish-scales, as I assume them to be.”
“Shall I write ‘fish-scales’ on the label?”
“No; just write ‘from lungs, mouth and stomach’; and perhaps you might look through the beard and the hair and see if you can find any more.”
“The hair!” I exclaimed. “How on earth could they get into the hair?”
“Perhaps they did not,” he replied. “But you may as well look. We are not adopting Ross’s interpretation, you know.”
I took a pair of dissecting forceps and searched among the rather short hair of the scalp, speculating curiously as to what Thorndyke could have in his mind. But whatever it was, it evidently agreed with the facts for my search brought to light no less than six of the little, white, lustrous objects.
“You had better put them in a separate tube,” said Thorndyke, when I reported the find, “in case they are not the same as the others. And now it would be as well to have another look at the coat.”
He had drawn the sheet over the whole of the body excepting the head and neck and now proceeded to clean and dry his rubber gloves and instruments. While he was thus occupied, I took up the coat and made a fresh and more detailed inspection.
“It is extraordinarily dirty at the back,” I reported, “and there seems to be a slight stain on the collar and shoulders as if it had been wetted with dirty water.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” he said. “You don’t see any foreign particles sticking to it or to any of the other garments?”
I looked the coat over inside and out but could find nothing excepting a tiny fragment of what looked like black silk thread, which had stuck to the flap of a pocket. I picked it off and put it in the envelope with the ends of cotton. Then I turned my attention to the other garments. From the trousers nothing fresh was to be learned, nor from the waistcoat—the pockets of which I searched to make sure that the little leather ring-case had not been overlooked—excepting that, like the coat, it showed signs on its collar of having been wetted; as also did the blue and white striped cotton shirt. I was examining the latter when Thorndyke, having finished ‘tidying up,’ came and looked over my shoulder.
“That stain,” he remarked, “hardly looks like water, even dirty water, though it is surprising how distinct and conspicuous a stain perf
ectly clean water will sometimes make on linen which has been worn and exposed to dust.”
He took the garment from me and examined the stained part intently, felt it critically with finger and thumb and finally held it to his nose and sniffed at it. Then he laid it down and picked up the collar, which he examined in the same manner, by sight, touch and smell, turning it over and opening the fold to inspect the inside.
“I think,” he said, “we ought to find out, if possible, whether this was water or some other fluid. We don’t know what light the knowledge might throw on this extraordinarily obscure case.”
He was still standing, as if undecided, with the collar in his hand when the sound of footsteps approaching down the alley became audible; whereupon he turned quickly, and, dropping the collar into the research case, closed the latter and took his hat down from the peg. The next moment the door opened and the sergeant looked in.
“Jury coming to view the body, gentlemen,” he announced; and with a critical look towards the table, he added: “I thought I had better come on ahead and see that they shouldn’t get too bad a shock. Juries are sometimes a bit squeamish, but I see that the doctor has left everything tidy and decent. You know where the inquest is to be held, I suppose?”
“We don’t,” replied Thorndyke, “but if we lurk outside and follow the jury we shan’t go far wrong.”
We walked up to the top of the alley, where we met a party of rather apprehensive-looking men who were being personally conducted by a constable. We waited for them to return, which they did with remarkable promptitude and looking not at all refreshed by their visit, and we turned and followed in their wake, the sergeant, as coroner’s officer, hurrying past us to anticipate their arrival at the place where the inquiry was to be held.
“It seems almost a waste of time for us to sit out the proceedings,” I remarked as we walked along in the rear of the procession. “We have got all the material facts.”
“We think we have,” replied Thorndyke, “and it is not likely that we shall hear anything that will alter our views of the case. But, still, we don’t know that something vital may not turn up in the evidence.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 93