by Eric Flint
An empty wine bottle lay next to the corpse. Residue on it strongly suggested it had contained red wine, so, depending upon the color of the stains it left when oxidized, that could problematize distinguishing it from the blood, and so, determining the freshness of the latter.
The corpse’s pockets were turned out. While broader crime-scene competence was not something to which she could lay any reasonable claim, she knew that was frequently observed in the victims of theft—particularly if the theft was carried out post mortem, or at least once the victim was unconscious or otherwise unable to resist.
The front of the man’s tunic was stained with blood. Maybe wine, too, but Sharon doubted that. These stains were browner than any dried wine she’d ever seen. She scanned down, seeing less blood than she expected on his baggy trousers. A lot less, actually. If he had fallen against this wall immediately after being attacked, most of his blood should have drained downward from the wounds, to the bottom half of his tunic and the upper half of his pants. But in addition to the comparative paucity of blood, it hadn’t saturated the clothes as uniformly as it should have.
Or, she realized, the blood isn’t uniform in its dryness. Some of the blood on both the tunic and pants still gleamed faintly. Overcoming an initial instinct against touching anything at a crime scene, she laid the tip of her index finger in the blood, drew it back: moist, and still red. She glanced back at the loose tunic. The chest wounds were lustreless, encrusted with the distinctive sienna-brown of dried blood.
“Dear heart…” Ruy started.
“Shhh!” she commanded, before she was fully aware of doing so. She flashed an apologetic smile at him, then waved the men back so she could see the pattern of blood on the ground.
Unfortunately, their feet—and possibly those of the assailant—had made a mess of it. But even so, it was distinctive. It was a wide pattern, which was to be expected: the victim had not exsanguinated in a rapid gush, as from an arterial wound, but from the lacerations that crossed his torso. So, not a single, well-defined point source for the blood. But the farther edge of the bloodstains on the ground were not appreciatively wider than those closest to the victim. And most instructive of all was the shape of the individual droplets that speckled the edges of the stains. She pointed them out to Ruy and Owen. “See those?”
They nodded and exchanged looks, as if checking to see if the other had any idea what these small droplets were supposed to reveal.
“It’s a setup,” Sharon explained. “I’m pretty sure this man was not attacked here at all.”
“Because of the blood drops?” Owen sounded skeptical.
“That alone is not conclusive. But it sure is looking that way.” She nodded at the spatters on the ground. “Consider the shape of the farthest blood drops. They’re round. That’s the mark left by a drop falling more or less straight down. But the farthest blood from the victim would have been traveling in an arc, so when it landed—”
Ruy’s eyes widened. “A teardrop shape.”
Owen was looking at the spray pattern, nodding. “Aye. And look there.”
Sharon saw where he was pointing, knew what he had seen. “Yes, that’s the other clue that something is wrong with this scene. Whoever planted this blood here—dumped it to make it look like the victim’s—didn’t stop and think that when you drop a liquid, drops arc out in all directions.” She laid her finger on one of the few teardrop-shaped blood spots close to the corpse. “The head of the teardrop shape always points from its source, so why is this one pointing toward the corpse?”
Ruy nodded. “Because that blood did not come from him; it was poured out here, where we’re standing, and splashed in all directions. Including in the direction of the corpse. Which is to say, in exactly the wrong direction.” He beamed at his wife, then turned toward Owen. “Logically, then, our next step must be—”
“Must be to get me a table with lots of light in a windowless room,” Sharon interrupted. “Now.”
Ruy started at his wife’s hard tone. “My love?”
“Ruy, this body has more to tell us, some of it very important to any subsequent investigation.” She tried moving the corpse’s arms: they were almost as stiff as a mannequin’s. “Primary rigor mortis. And look”—she poked an exposed forearm—“fixed lividity.”
Owen blinked. “What?”
Sharon shook her head impatiently. “The blood has settled; there’s no blanching of the skin when you push it. This man was killed at least eight hours ago. Probably more.” She studied the forward drooping head closely, then pressed upward against the forehead. Although the neck tissues were every bit as stiff as she expected, the dip of the head was slightly skewed off the centerline, and there was less overall resistance than she had expected. She allowed the head to rest forward again and motioned for Grogan to bring the light closer as she worked to tilt the whole body forward and explore the rear of the neck. Sure enough, just beneath the hairline, centered on the spine, was an incision from which a small trickle of blood had emerged and dried. She pointed it out to the others. “This is what killed him, not the slashing from the front.”
“So it was two attackers,” Owen breathed.
“At least. But not here. If one of his attackers was behind him, he couldn’t have fallen backward against the wall.”
Ruy frowned. “So, whoever slew him wished to make it look like common thievery. And had the presence of mind to wait until night to move the body.”
“Which means that this poor sod died somewhere they didn’t want found, or searched,” Owen conjectured. “Which means we need every clue we can get about who or where they might be.”
Sharon nodded. “That’s why I need that well-lit, windowless room and a table.”
“And where might we find that?”
Sharon turned and looked at St. Peter’s steeple just behind them, now outlined against the lightening sky. “I hear that the Hibernians keep an outpost in there.” She glanced toward where she believed Finan to be lurking. “Do they have some kind of ready room?”
Finan’s voice emerged from the shadows. “Would a basement do?”
Chapter 17
Somehow, Sharon thought, it hadn’t sounded so bad when Finan had suggested “a basement.” It certainly hadn’t sounded gruesome when they had filed into St. Peter’s, explaining the situation to the parish priest, and then asking for the use of a room below ground level. The priest had shook his head and explained that the church did not have a basement per se.
But it did have a crypt.
According to both Ruy and Owen during their descent of the musty stairs, every self-respecting church in France or Italy had one, and, unlike the up-time context, the word here had more congenial associations. Instead of invoking horror movie images of ghouls and other undead monsters, here it was typically the repository of relics and the remains of particularly holy persons, and was often furnished with a chapel. St. Peter’s crypt did in fact have a small altar and provision for worshipers. But for Sharon, a crypt was still a crypt, and a damned creepy place to conduct an autopsy.
On the other hand, there had been plenty of room to set up a makeshift autopsy table and surround it with all the lanterns and oil lamps they could find. By which time, Sharon was starting to strip the body, and in so doing, confirmed what she had suspected. Bending the corpse forward easily, she grumbled, “The only reason I can do this is because they already broke the rigor mortis at the waist. Which meant this corpse was laid out flat long enough for the rigor to become complete.”
“And how long is that?” Owen asked.
Sharon pushed hair back from her scalp. “In hot weather, maybe eight hours. At these latitudes and temperatures, probably at least ten or eleven. But I can probably refine that guess in a few moments.”
Having carefully cut the clothes off, with Grogan lifting and moving limbs when necessary, she stood back, and took a look at the corpse. The upper half was uncommonly pale, but the flesh on the lower flank and particularl
y the back was dark and blotchy. “Yep. Fixed lividity.” The faces around her were both attentive and expectant. “You must have seen it before, on battlefields. The blood pools in response to gravity. Whatever part of the body was uppermost drains down to the lowest. And at this point, it won’t shift or respond when you press it.” She demonstrated. Finan suddenly became more pale. “See? Fixed. That means at least eight hours, which confirms the time of death suggested by the rigor mortis. It also means that when he died, they laid him on his back, probably to clean the blood and try to keep some of it in him for later, when they propped him up. Not a very effective technique.”
“And the wound to the rear of the neck?” Ruy asked softly.
“I’m working on it,” Sharon mumbled as she gestured Grogan to roll the corpse on its side. She peered at the wound, frowned, reached into the padded compartment containing her largest magnifying glass, and peered again. She spoke as she observed: “Blade went almost straight in, partially severing the spinal cord. That’s why the hang of the head didn’t look quite right. Slight, ragged deformation at the top of the wound; probably the attacker was pulling the weapon out as the body was slumping. An internal exam might show corroborating kerf marks—”
“Whut marks?” Grogan echoed.
“Kerf marks. Where bones are nicked or cut by weapons.” She stopped, thought. “Please lay the corpse out again, Sergeant Grogan,” she asked. Waiting for him to finish, Sharon answered the questions she assumed Ruy and Owen were most interested in. “Progress of the wound channel is downward from the point of entry at the back of the neck. If I had to guess, I’d say the attacker was considerably taller than the victim. That would put his shoulder in line with the base of the victim’s skull.”
Owen frowned. “That’s only a guess?”
Sharon nodded, opened the corpse’s mouth, asked for Grogan to bring one of the lanterns closer. “Under the best of conditions, Owen, forensics is never entirely an exact science.” She looked up as she pried open the victim’s mouth. “And these are far from the best of conditions. However, I can tell you that the blade’s cross section was an elongated trapezoid—a skinny diamond shape—that it was less than half an inch wide at its broadest point, and that its edges were quite sharp.”
Ruy nodded at Owen. “A thin rondel dagger or a northern stiletto.”
Owen nodded back. “An assassin’s weapon. And used in that fashion: from the rear and to inflict a single, mortal blow.”
Ruy stared down at the corpse. “So, as you feared: not a simple act of thievery.”
Sharon nodded. “Nothing simple about this at all,” she agreed. “The point of the weapon did not emerge from the roof of the mouth, so far as I can see. That angle further implies that the attacker is indeed as tall as we suspect.”
“Why?”
Sharon shrugged. “Again, all conjecture, but visualize the attack. A shorter man would have to be striking overhand to hit that point at the back of the skull, or would have been aiming upward—and the entry wound is not consistent with anything other than a perpendicular angle of attack. But if the attack had been overhand, that means the attacker’s move is not a thrust—not straight in and out—but an arc. And even if the entry wound looks precisely perpendicular, some of that angular momentum would have been imparted to the blade—meaning there’s a good chance it would have curved down a bit inside the tissue and emerged from the roof of the mouth. But there’s no sign of that.
“There’s also no sign that the victim was drinking, and red wine in particular should have left signs. However, the tongue is not darkened, and there are no characteristic fresh stains on the teeth or at the gum line.” She paused, hands on hips, frowning. “But I’d like to be sure.”
Ruy nodded. “Of course. How is that done?”
She looked up at him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Here?”
She nodded. Where else could they do it?
Resigned, and probably thinking the same thing, he turned to Finan. “You must requisition some old bedclothes from the good father upstairs.”
Finan frowned. “What for?”
“To keep the mess from spreading when we examine the contents of this fellow’s stomach.”
Finan followed his orders with uncommon alacrity.
* * *
By the time Finan arrived with the bedsheets and they had been spread, Sharon was finishing her external survey of the body. Since beginning, she had remained silent, not wanting to distract herself with updating Ruy and Owen with the details as they came up: better to give a single report at the end. She was feeling the effects of her abruptly foreshortened sleep, and, since a cup of coffee was not readily at hand, she was concerned that she might start getting drowsy, sloppy. So while she still had the concentration to do it—
Examining the contents of a stomach is never a pleasant business, and, done without proper gloves, can present some risks to the examiner as well. Which reflection made Sharon chuckle: since when had she become an examiner? The other voice in her head provided the answer with a healthy dose of snark: ever since you arrived here in the seventeenth century, fool. Hell, you were able to surgeon your way through unpacking Ruy’s intestines in the process of repairing what would otherwise have been a mortal gut wound, so you can sure as hell accept the title of medical examiner as well. Because the simple fact was, in this time and place, she was pretty much the closest equivalent.
“You found something…amusing?” Ruy’s voice asked from the end of a very long tunnel.
Poor Ruy! She must have been smiling as one part of her had scolded the other. Must be unnerving for her hidalgo husband—strider of continents and peerless armsman—to watch his time-traveler wife grinning and giggling as she poked around in a corpse’s guts. Might make him rethink his conviction that she, and the rest of Grantville, were not demons in disguise. Because her present activity, and casual smiles while doing it, was not exactly powerful contrary evidence…
Sometime later, Sharon emerged from the trance of sorting through and peering into the dead man’s stomach. Particularly given the poor light, it required complete focus while searching for clues. It was like a hunter trying to find rabbits in an overgrown meadow: the slightest bit of inattention is all it would take to miss the prey, to pass it by and never realize she’d done so. Sharon blinked, straightened, saw her hands and arms were stained most of the way up to her elbows. “I’d be grateful for some water.”
Finan was there with a pitcher and a basin; although it was purely a literary device to say that someone’s complexion turned green, he was doing as good an imitation of it as she’d ever seen.
When she had finished washing her hands and arms and had patted them dry methodically, she turned to face Ruy and Owen. “There was no trace of wine in the stomach. There are some small food remains, but they were heavily denatured by the stomach’s acid. If I had to guess, it was bread and cheese. A typical light lunch for the locals.
“The whole body exam confirmed my initial time of death estimates. The eyes, specifically the corneas, are cloudy and slightly sunken or ‘flattened.’ That’s consistent with a minimum of eight hours since expiration.
“The one finding which may simplify the task of establishing the victim’s identity is that there was a small amount of ink under the second and fourth fingernails of his right hand.” Sharon saw eager optimism grow in Ruy’s eyes; she hated having to squash it. “Unfortunately, I doubt he’s a scribe. He’s not dressed correctly, and he has none of the finger callouses that would be consistent with holding a pen for long hours. However, it still narrows the search: he is not only educated, but at least occasionally worked with writing, possibly keeping accounts or making notations of some kind. As such, he’s likely to be known among other workers or guilds that require similar skills. He’s approximately forty-five, has no major scars or signs of other physical trauma. Dermal aging is moderate; if he ever works outdoors, I suspect that is relatively rare.”
Owe
n leaned forward into her pause. “And the attackers?”
Sharon sighed. “Obviously, any conclusions concerning them is the sheerest guesswork. But I think the following conjectures are reasonable.
“I suspect that the crime was committed wherever they live. They not only took all these precautions to make it look like he was killed here, but were able to wait for at least eight hours before moving the body. And frankly, given the quality of the rigor mortis and the progression of all the other signs, I think it’s more like twelve hours. I saw the first signs of larval activity in the oral mucosa: the first place that the common fly goes to lay its eggs.
“Next guess: his attackers live uphill from where we found him, or they live fairly close. Carrying this body was not a simple job. The victim was heavy enough that it would have been hard work for two relatively fit men to tote him here, particularly if they had to travel a long distance or uphill to do so.”
“So the attackers are not from the riverfront or the Battant,” Ruy mumbled.
Sharon shook her head. “And here’s another complicating factor: in order to sit him up and make him look like a drunk who got rolled by a knife-happy thief, they had to break all the rigor that would prevent his body from bending at the waist. That is not an easy job. Doing it after they brought him to the alley would not only be dangerous in terms of attracting attention, it would entail a considerable risk: what if the men carrying him couldn’t do it on their own? But to avoid that, they would have had to break the rigor where they lived, which means that carrying the body was going to be that much more awkward: he was no longer conveniently stiff as a board.”
Owen nodded, his blue eyes narrowed. “And carry him they did. Which means that, to them, the risk was worth it. So that has me wondering what it is they had to conceal.”
Ruy rubbed his chin. “And what this poor fellow stumbled across.”
Owen frowned. “Looks like there might be a few more assassins here in the Buckle, after all.” He glanced at Sharon. “Anything more you might be guessing about the killers?”