The Investigation (10 page)

Carefully examining the running man’s footprints, Gregory walked back to the Bentley. Eight paces from the wrecked car, the prints showed, he had whirled around, as if suddenly trying to turn; a bit farther on the snow was so churned up that there wasn’t much to see. Standing with his hands in his pockets, Gregory bit his lip.

“He missed him in front, then went into a skid and hit him … probably with his rear end.” Gregory lifted his head.

“How badly is Williams hurt?”

“He’s still unconscious, sir. The doctor—the one from the ambulance—was very surprised that he managed to keep walking afterwards—he didn’t fall down until he got over … oh, over here.”

“How do you know that’s where he collapsed?”

“Because there’s some blood…”

Gregory bent down and took a good look. Three, no four, coagulated brown spots had seeped so deeply into the snow that it was difficult to see them.

“Were you here when the ambulance took him away? Was he conscious?”

“Oh no, sir, definitely not!”

“Was he bleeding?”

“No sir, I mean, only a little, from the head … the ears, I think.”

“Gregory, will you please take pity on us,” said Sorensen, making no effort to hide a yawn. He flicked his lit cigarette into the snow.

“The regulations don’t say anything about pity,” Gregory snapped, looking around again. Wilson was angrily slamming his tripod into position; Thomas was cursing quietly to himself because the powdered plaster in his bag had spilled, and all his instruments were covered with it.

“Well, let’s get our jobs done, men,” Gregory went on, “prints, measurements, everything, and the more the better; when you finish here go down to the mortuary, but we’d better keep the rope up until later on. Doctor, there may still be something for you … wait a minute,” he said, turning to the constable. “Where’s your commanding officer?”

“In town, sir.”

“Well then. Let’s go see him.”

Gregory unbuttoned his coat; it was getting warm. The constable shifted uncertainly from one foot to the other.

“Do you want me to come along, sir?”

“All right.”

Sorensen followed them, fanning himself with his hat. The sun had come up in earnest now, and in its warmth the snow was quickly disappearing from the branches, which now appeared black and wet against the deep blue of the sky. As they walked, Gregory counted the number of paces from the wreck to the point where the cemetery lane joined the road: there were 160. The lane, and the cemetery at its end, lay in the shadows between two hills. It was cool here, and the snow was still wet and heavy; because of the hills nothing could be seen of the town except its smoke. The mortuary itself, a whitewashed little shed, was enclosed by thick underbrush in the rear; there were two small windows on the northern side, and a half-opened door in one wall. Carelessly slapped together with a few odd pieces of wood, the door had a simple latch but no lock. There were footprints all around the area, and just in front of the doorstep they saw a flat canvas-covered shape.

“Is that the body?”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Has anyone touched it, or is that the way it was found?” “Exactly the same, sir. No one touched it. The C.O. took a look at it when he got here with the doctor, but no one touched it.”

“What about the canvas?”

“The C.O. told us to cover it.”

“Tell me, could anyone have gotten to it while you were on the road?”

“No sir, impossible, the road is closed off.”

“On this side. But what about from Hackey?”

“We have a man on guard down there too, but you can’t see him from here because of the hill.”

“What about the fields?”

“It might be possible,” the policeman agreed, “but in that case he’d have to get across the water.”

“Water? What water?”

“There’s a stream on the other side of the road.”

Gregory still hadn’t gone near the canvas. Moving carefully to the side, he looked for Williams’s footprints. He found a few on the narrow, well-trodden pathway encircling the nearest gravestones; they continued around the long shed, then went back into the shrubbery. Some big footprints like the ones he had seen on the road were clearly impressed in the snow at the spot where the constable had abandoned his post, suggesting that he had lost his way in the dark.

Watch in hand, Gregory timed himself while making a complete circuit around the shed: four minutes. “At night, during the snow storm, it might have been twice as much,” he thought, “and maybe two minutes more, give or take, for the fog.” Venturing deeper into the thick shrubbery, Gregory found himself walking down a slope. Suddenly, the snow slid out from under him. Grabbing some hazelwood branches he managed to stop himself just before he fell into the stream. The area in which he regained his footing was the lowest point in the syncline in which the cemetery was situated. Even close up it was hard to see the stream because of the high snow drifts along its banks. Here and there he noted the water fretting steadily at the eroded roots of nearby shrubs; embedded in the soft loam at the bottom of the stream he could see stone fragments, some of them similar in size and shape to paving blocks. Turning around, Gregory had a better view than before of the mortuary’s rear wall, but only of the windowless upper portion which loomed over the bushes a few yards away. He took a good look; then, pushing the resilient hazel branches out of his way, began to climb back.

“Where can I find the local stonemason?” he asked the constable. The officer understood immediately.

“He lives near the road, a little way past the bridge. The first house over there, it’s a kind of yellowish color. He only does stone work in the summertime; winters he takes on carpentry to make a little extra.”

“How does he get his stones over here? By the road?”

“He brings them in on the road when the water is low, but when it’s high enough, which only happens once in a while, he floats them over from the station by raft. He enjoys doing that kind of thing.”

“Once he gets them here, where does he work on them—over there near the stream?”

“Sometimes, but not always. He works in a lot of different places.”

“If you follow the stream from here, does it lead up to the station?”

“Yes, but you can’t really go that way because the whole area is tangled with underbrush right up to the edge of the water.”

Gregory walked over to the side wall of the mortuary. One of the windows was open—in fact, it was broken, and a jagged piece of the glass pane was half-buried in the snow just beneath it. He peeked inside, but it was so dark that he couldn’t see anything.

“Did anyone go inside?”

“Only the C.O., sir.”

“Not the doctor?”

“No, the doctor didn’t go in.”

“What’s his name?”

“Adams, sir. We didn’t know when the ambulance from London would get here. The one from Hackey got here first, and Dr. Adams came along with it. He happened to be on night duty when the call came in.”

“Is that so?” said Gregory, but he was only half-listening to the constable, his attention attracted by a small, light-colored bit of wood shaving stuck to the frame of the broken window and by the deep though not very clear impression of a bare foot in the snow next to the wall. He bent down to get a better look. The snow was all churned up, as if something very heavy had been dragged through it. Here and there he could make out some flat-bottomed oblong depressions; they looked as if they had been made by pressing a large-sized loaf of bread into the snow. Noticing something yellowish in one of them, Gregory bent over still more and picked up a few more curled shavings. Twisting his head around, he looked at the second window for a moment. It was closed and painted over with whitewash. Then, stepping backward a little, he knelt on one knee to brush some of the snow aside, stood up again, and with his eyes followed the course of the strange signs. He took a deep breath. Standing erect, with his hands in his pockets, he glanced at the white space between the bushes, the mortuary, and the first gravestone. The deep, misshapen prints began under the broken window, looped around in an arc to the door, then zigzagged right and left as if a drunk had been pushing a heavy bag. Sorensen stood off to the side, watching all this without much interest.

“Why isn’t there a padlock on the door?” Gregory asked the constable. “Was there one before?”

“There was, Lieutenant, but it broke. The gravedigger was supposed to take it to the blacksmith but he forgot, and when he finally remembered it was Sunday, and so on. You know how it is,” the constable shrugged.

Gregory, not saying a word, moved closer to the unshapely canvas mound, carefully lifted the edge of the stiff sheet, then pulled the whole thing off and threw it to the side.

This revealed a naked body. It was resting on its side with its arms and legs bent, as if it were kneeling on something invisible or pushing against something. A wide furrow in the snow extended from the lower part of the body to directly under the window. About two paces beyond the body’s head was the doorstep. The snow in that space was smooth.

“Why don’t you examine him,” Gregory suggested, getting up again. The blood rushed to his face. “Who is he?” he asked the constable, who was in the process of pulling his cap down over his eyes to protect them from the sun.

“Hansel, sir. John Hansel. He owned a small dyeing plant near here.”

Gregory watched while Sorensen, wearing a pair of rubber gloves he had taken out of an ordinary briefcase, felt the corpse’s legs and hands, drew back the eyelids, and examined the spinal curvature.

“Was he a German?”

“I don’t know, sir. Maybe by ancestry, but I never heard anything about it. His parents always lived around here.”

“When did he die?”

“Yesterday morning, sir. The doctor said it was a heart attack. He had a heart condition for a long time and wasn’t supposed to work anymore but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything after his wife left him for another guy.”

“Were there any other bodies in the mortuary?”

Sorensen stood up, brushed his knee with a handkerchief, rubbed an invisible spot off his sleeve, and carefully slipped the rubber gloves back into his briefcase.

“There was one the day before yesterday, sir, but it’s already been buried. The funeral was yesterday, at noon.”

“So this is the only body that’s been here since noon yesterday?”

“That’s right sir, only this one.”

“Well, Doctor?”

Gregory walked over to Sorensen. They stood together under a willow bush for a moment, but the melting snow on its branches soon began to drip on them.

“What can I tell you?”

Sorensen sounded annoyed.

“Death took place about twenty-four hours ago. The stains on the jaw as you can see, indicate rigor mortis.”

“What about the extremities? Well, speak up—don’t you have anything to tell me?”

Both men lowered their voices but they spoke angrily.

“You saw it yourself.”

“I’m not a doctor.”

“All right—there’s no rigor mortis. Not a sign; someone must have interrupted it. Someone interrupted it—let’s leave it at that and call it quits.”

“It won’t come back?”

“Sometimes it does, at least to a certain degree, but not always. Is this very important?”

“Are you sure there was any to begin with?”

“There’s always rigor mortis. You should know that. And please don’t ask me any more questions because I’ve already told you all I know.”

“Thanks a lot,” Gregory said, not bothering to hide his irritation. He walked over to the door. It was still open, but in order to go in he had to step over the body—actually, to jump over it, since the whole area had already been trampled enough and he didn’t want to leave any unnecessary footprints. Gregory took hold of the latch from the side and pulled. The door, stuck in the snow, didn’t budge. He tugged harder; this time, the door, with a shrill creak, slammed into the wall. It was pitch dark inside, and there was a wide puddle of melted snow on the doorsill. Closing his eyes and waiting patiently until they were accustomed to the darkness, Gregory stood for a moment in the unpleasant cold draft from the walls.

The mortuary was lit slightly by some light from the small northern window—the broken one; the other window, covered with whitewash, was barely translucent. Looking around, Gregory saw a coffin strewn with shavings standing in the center of the beaten earth floor. Leaning against it was a fir and spruce mourning wreath wrapped in a black ribbon with the letters “R.I.P.” in gold. The coffin lid stood in a corner against the wall. There were more wood shavings scattered beneath the window; alongside the other wall Gregory saw a pickaxe, a shovel, and several coils of dirty, clay-encrusted rope. There were also a few wooden boards.

Gregory went outside again, closing his eyes for a second in the painful brightness. The constable was covering the corpse with the canvas, trying very hard not to touch it.

“You had the duty until three this morning, right?” asked Gregory, walking over to him.

“That’s right, sir.” The constable straightened up.

“Where was the body?”

“When I was on duty, sir? In the coffin.”

“How do you know? Did you check it?”

“Yes sir.”

“How, by opening the door?”

“No sir, but I shined my flashlight through the window.”

“Was the windowpane broken?”

“No.”

“What about the coffin?”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“Was the coffin open?”

“Yes sir,”

“What position was the corpse in?”

“The usual one, sir.”

“Why wasn’t it dressed?”

The constable livened up a little.

“The funeral was supposed to be today, sir. About the clothing—it’s a long story, it is. When Hansel’s wife walked out on him—that was two years ago—his sister moved in. She’s a pretty difficult woman, hard to get along with. Well, he died in the middle of breakfast and she didn’t want to give up the suit he was wearing because it was too new. She was supposed to give an old suit to the undertaker, but when he came to pick up the body she told him she’d decided to take an even older suit and dye it black. The undertaker didn’t want to make another trip, so he took the body the way it was. She was supposed to bring the suit this morning—”