The Investigation (3 page)

The door opened; a policeman came in with an aluminum spotlight on a high tripod and connected it to an outlet. Sciss switched it on. Waiting until the door had closed behind the policeman, he focused a bright circle of light on the huge wall map of England, then placed the sheet of tracing paper over it. Unfortunately, it was impossible to see the map through the translucent paper, so he moved the spotlight away, took the map down from the wall (swaying precariously on a chair to do so), and clumsily hung it on a stand which he pulled from a comer to the middle of the room. The spotlight was set up again where it could shine through the map from behind, while Sciss, with his arms spread wide to hold the sheet of tracing paper open, moved in front of it. This position—with outstretched, raised arms—was obviously uncomfortable beyond description.

Sciss finally managed to steady the stand with his leg. Holding the tracing paper from the top, he turned his head sideways.

“Please direct your attention to the area in which our incidents have occurred,” he said.

Sciss’s voice was more high-pitched than before, possibly because he was trying not to show how much he was exerting himself.

“The first disappearance took place in Treakhill on January sixteenth. Please remember the places and dates. The second—January twenty-third, in Spittoon. The third—February second, in Lovering. The fourth, February twelfth, in Bromley. The most recent incident took place on March eighth in Lewes. If we treat the location of the first incident as the starting point, and enclose it in a circle with an expanding radius, the results are as shown by the notations on my tracing paper.”

A section of southern England along the Channel coast was clearly demarcated by the powerful beam of light. Five concentric circles encompassed five towns, each marked by a red cross. The first cross appeared in the center, the others were much closer to the perimeter of the largest circle.

Watching for signs of fatigue in Sciss, whose arms, still outstretched to hold the tracing paper, were not even trembling, Gregory began to feel tired.

“If you want me to,” Sciss said in a shrill voice, “I will explain my calculations later on. Right now I shall only give you the results. The incidents occurred in a particular sequence: the more recently each incident took place, the farther it is located from the center—that is, from the site of the first disappearance. In addition, there is another significant item: the time between the respective incidents, counting from the first one, gets longer and longer, although not as if they were in proportion to each other in some specific ratio. But if temperature is also taken into account, it becomes evident that there is a certain regularity. More specifically, the product obtained by multiplying the time elapsed between any two incidents, and the distance separating any two consecutive disappearing-body sites from the center, when multiplied by the differential between the prevailing temperatures at both sites…

“This gives us,” Sciss continued after a moment, “a constant of five to nine centimeters per second and degree. I say five to nine because the exact time of disappearance was not ascertained in any of the incidents. Therefore, in each case we have to deal with a broad, multi-houred time block during the night, or, more precisely, during the latter half of the night. If we take a mean of seven centimeters as the true quantity of the constant, and then do certain calculations, which I have already completed, we get a rather curious result. The causal factor of these phenomena, which have been moving steadily from the center toward the perimeter, does not lie in Treakhill at all, but has shifted westward to the towns of Tunbridge Wells, Engender, and Dipper … that is, the very places where there were rumors circulating about moving corpses. If, on the other hand, we attempt an experiment based on a completely accurate location point to determine the geometric center of the phenomena, we find that it is not located in any of the mortuaries, but about eighteen miles southwest of Shaltam—in the moors and wastelands of Chinchess…”

Inspector Farquart, whose neck had been turning progressively more red as he listened to all this, was finally unable to contain himself.

“Are you trying to tell us,” he exploded, “that an invisible spirit of some kind came up out of those damned moors, flew through the air, and snatched the bodies?”

Sciss began to roll up his paper. Standing in the glow of the hidden spotlight, thin and dark against the bright greenish map behind him, he resembled a bird more than ever (a swamp bird, Gregory thought to himself). Sciss carefully hid the tracing paper in his battered old briefcase and straightened up. He looked coldly at Farquart, his face covered with red blotches.

“I have nothing to add beyond the results of my statistical analysis,” he declared. “A close relationship can easily be demonstrated between eggs, bacon, and the stomach, to name only one example, or a distant relationship, with somewhat more difficulty, between, for example, a country’s political system and its average marital age. But regardless of the degree of difficulty, there is always a definite correlation, a valid basis for a discussion of causes and effects.”

With a big, carefully folded handkerchief, Sciss wiped several droplets of sweat from his upper lip. Replacing it in his pocket, he continued.

“This series of incidents is hard enough to explain, and preconceived notions of any kind must be avoided. If you insist on displaying your prejudices to make things difficult for me, I will be forced to give up the case, as well as my cooperation with the Yard.”

Sciss waited a minute, as if hoping someone would pick up the challenge, then walked over to the wall and turned off the portable spotlight. The room became almost completely dark. Searching for the light switch, Sciss momentarily moved his hand along the wall.

In the brightness of the ceiling light the room’s appearance changed. It seemed to become smaller, and for a second the Chief Inspector, with his dazed, blinking eyes, reminded Gregory of his old uncle.

Sciss returned to the map.

“When I began my study,” he continued, “so much time had already elapsed since the first two incidents, or rather, to be completely accurate, so little attention had been given to the incidents in the local police blotters and so few facts recorded, that it was impossible to reconstruct a detailed, hour-by-hour record of what happened. Because of this I limited myself to the remaining three incidents. In all three cases, I discovered, it was foggy—thick fog in two instances, extremely thick fog in the other. Moreover, several vehicles are known to have passed within a radius of several hundred yards of the site of each incident. Granted, none of the reports mentioned any ‘suspicious’ vehicles, but it’s hard to say what the criteria for suspiciousness could possibly have been. Certainly no one would have driven to the scene of the crime in a truck marked ‘Body Snatchers Ltd.,’ but a vehicle could have been parked not too far from the scene, if necessary. Finally, I learned that around twilight of the evening preceding the night of each of the disappearances…” Sciss paused, then went on in a quiet but distinct voice, “some kind of domestic animal was observed close to the scene—and was reported either as a type of animal not usually found in a mortuary, or as one which my informants didn’t recognize or had never seen before. In two cases it was a cat and once it was a dog.”

A short laugh, transformed immediately into a poor imitation of a cough, resounded through the room. It came from Sorensen. Farquart sat absolutely still, not responding even to Sciss’s rather questionable joke about “suspicious” vehicles.

Gregory noticed the Chief Inspector glaring in Sorensen’s direction and immediately understood its significance: not a reprimand, not even anger, but a clear-cut and inescapable expression of authority.

The doctor coughed again to save face. Complete silence followed. Sciss stared through the window over their heads at the increasing darkness outside.

“To all appearances, the statistical significance of the last fact is not very great,” he finally continued, lapsing more and more frequently into a falsetto. “I ascertained, however, that stray dogs and cats are almost never found roaming around the mortuaries in which the incidents took place. Furthermore, one of the reported animals—the dog, to be specific—was found dead four days after one of the disappearances. Taking all this into account, I decided to offer a reward for anyone uncovering the corpse of the cat that was seen in connection with the last incident. This morning I received some news which cost me fifteen shillings. Some schoolchildren found the cat buried in the snow near a clump of bushes less than two hundred paces from the mortuary.”

With his back to the others, Sciss walked over to the window as if he wanted to go outside. It was already too dark to see anything except for the street lights wobbling in the wind and glimmering in the swaying shadow of an overhanging branch.

He stood silently, stroking the lapel of his baggy gray jacket with the tips of his fingers.

“Are you finished, Doctor?”

Sciss turned around at the sound of Chief Inspector Sheppard’s voice. A slight, almost boyish smile unexpectedly changed his small face, in which all the features were completely out of proportion, with its gray eyes, somewhat puffy cheeks, and a jaw so recessive that he was practically chinless.

Why he’s only a boy at heart … a perpetual adolescent, really quite pleasant in his way, Gregory thought in amazement.

“I’d like to say a few more words, but not until the end of the meeting,” Sciss replied, returning to his seat.

The Chief Inspector removed his eyeglasses. His eyes were tired.

“Good. Farquart, please, if you have anything else to say.”

Farquart answered without much enthusiasm.

“Truthfully, not very much. I’ve gone over this whole ‘series,’ as Dr. Sciss calls it, in the usual way, and I think at least some of the rumors must have been true. It seems to me that the case is fairly simple—the perpetrator wanted to steal a corpse but was frightened away in Shaltam and the other places. He finally succeeded in Treakhill, but since he was still an amateur he took a naked body. It looks like he didn’t realize how hard it would be to transport a body in that condition, as opposed to a fully clothed body, which is much less conspicuous. He must finally have realized this because he changed his tactics, making a definite effort to get clothing for the bodies. Also, the bodies he took the first few times weren’t exactly the best available—I’m thinking about what Dr. Sciss called the search for bodies ‘in good condition.’ For example, there was another body in the mortuary at Treakhill—a young man’s body—in much better condition than the one that disappeared. That’s about all…

“Of course there’s still the question of motive,” Farquart continued after a moment. “I see the following possibilities: necrophilia, some other kind of insanity, or some kind of … scientist. I think we should find out what Dr. Sorensen has to say about it.”

“I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,” the doctor sputtered in a gruff voice, “but you can absolutely rule out the possibility of necrophilia. Necrophiliacs are always feebleminded, retarded cretins who couldn’t possibly plan anything as complicated as this. In my opinion you can also rule out any other kind of insanity. Nothing was left to chance in any of these incidents. There’s too much precision, not a single slipup of any kind. Madmen don’t operate so methodically.”

“Paranoia?” Gregory suggested in a low voice. The doctor glanced at him indifferently. For a moment he seemed to be trying the feel of the word on his tongue, then he pursed his thin, froglike lips.

“No! At least,” he added, weakening the categorical character of his objection, “I don’t think it’s very likely. Insanity, gentlemen, is not a catchall for every human action that involves motives we don’t understand. Insanity has its own structure, its own internal logic. Of course in the final analysis it’s possible that the culprit could be a psychopath—yes, it’s possible, I suppose—but it’s only one of many possibilities.”

“A psychopath with a talent for mathematics,” Sciss commented almost involuntarily.

“How do you meant that?”

Sorensen turned to Sciss with a foolish but distinctly offensive sneer.

“I mean a psychopath who decided to have his fun by making sure that the product of the distance and the time between consecutive incidents, multiplied by the temperature differential, would be a constant.”

Sorensen stroked his knee nervously, then began drumming on it with his fingers.

“Yes, yes I know … you can multiply and divide almost anything by something else—the length of canes by the width of hats—and come up with all kinds of constants and variables.”

“Are you trying to make fun of mathematics?” Sciss began. It was clear that he was about to say something nasty.

“Excuse me, Doctor, but I would very much like to hear your opinion about the third possible motive.” Sheppard was glaring at Sorensen again.

“That the culprit is a scientist who steals bodies? No, absolutely not! Never in the world! The whole idea is ridiculous. The only scientists who steal cadavers for their experiments are in third-rate movies. Why steal a cadaver when it’s easy enough to get one from any morgue, or even to buy one from the next of kin. Besides, scientists don’t work alone anymore, and even if one had stolen a cadaver, although God alone knows why he would, he wouldn’t be able to hide it from his colleagues and co-workers. You can safely eliminate that as a motive.”

“In your opinion then,” Sheppard said, “do we have anything to go on?” The Chief Inspector’s ascetic face was expressionless. Gregory caught himself staring almost impertinently at his superior, as if studying a painting. Is he really like that, he wondered, is all this no more than a dull routine for him?

Gregory mused in this vein during the oppressive, unpleasant silence that followed the Chief Inspector’s question. Again a far-off engine resounded in the darkness beyond the window: the deep rumble moved upward, then grew silent. The panes shook.

“A psychopath or nothing,” said Dr. Sciss all of a sudden. He smiled and, indeed, seemed to be in a good mood. “As Dr. Sorensen so intelligently pointed out, psychopathic behavior is usually very distinctive—it is characterized by impulsiveness, stupidity, and errors due to an attention span limited by emotional disorder. Thus, we are left with nothing. Ergo, gentlemen, it is quite obvious that these incidents couldn’t possibly have taken place.”