The Investigation, Page 2

  The Chief Inspector, without saying a word, turned to the lieutenant.

  “Well… uh… he talks too much. Not reliable at all,” Gregory explained quickly. “At least that’s my impression. He’s one of those clowns who will do anything to get some attention, ready to give you his version of the history of the world at the drop of a hat. He insisted it was a trance or ‘something worse’ — those are his words. Frankly, he surprised me. People who work professionally with corpses usually don’t believe in trances — it goes against their experience.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  Gregory was silent, yielding the floor to Farquart. Apparently unhappy that such a minor matter was receiving so much attention, Farquart shrugged his shoulders.

  “The stevedore died the day before. Signs of rigor mortis were clearly evident… He was as dead as a doornail.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. Like all the other missing bodies, he was dressed for burial. The only body that wasn’t dressed was Trayle’s — the one that disappeared in Treakhill. The undertaker was supposed to dress him the following day because the family didn’t want to give him any clothing at first. That is, they took the clothing away after the body was brought in. When they came back with different clothing the body wasn’t there anymore…”

  “What about the other incidents?”

  “The body of the woman with the cancer operation was dressed also.”

  “How?”

  “Well… in a dress.”

  “What about shoes?” the Chief Inspector asked, his voice so soft that Gregory had to lean forward to hear him.

  “Yes, shoes also.”

  “And the last one?”

  “The last one… Well, it wasn’t dressed, but a black cloth disappeared from the mortuary at the same time, or so it seems. The cloth was used to close off a small alcove. It was attached to a curtain rod by some small metal rings. There were still a few shreds of material on the rings.”

  “Was it torn?”

  “No, the rod is so thin that it would have snapped if anyone had given it a good pull. The shreds—”

  “Did you try to break the rod?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know it would have snapped?”

  “Well, by sight…”

  The Chief Inspector asked these questions quietly, staring at the reflection of the window in the glass door of a cabinet; he acted as if distracted by something else, but he shot out his questions so rapidly that Farquart could hardly keep up with him.

  “Good,” the Chief Inspector concluded. “Were the shreds examined?”

  “Yes. Dr. Sorensen…”

  The medical examiner stopped massaging his pointed chin. “The cloth was torn off the rod. To be exact, it had been frayed to the breaking point but it was definitely not cut. That’s certain. It looked… as if someone had bitten it off. I conducted several tests. Under the microscope it looks the same way.”

  In the momentary silence that followed, a distant airplane engine was heard, its sound muffled by the fog.

  “Was anything else missing besides the curtain?” the Chief Inspector asked at last.

  The doctor glanced at Farquart, who nodded his head.

  “Yes, a roll of adhesive tape, a very big roll that had been lying on a table near the door.”

  “Adhesive tape?” The Chief Inspector raised an eyebrow.

  “They use it to hold up the chins… to keep the mouth from opening,” Sorensen explained. “Postmortem beauty treatment,” he added with a sardonic smile.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the corpse in the dissecting laboratory? Was it dressed?”

  “No. But in this case… oh, Gregory’s already told you the whole story, hasn’t he?”

  “I forgot to mention it before…” the lieutenant cut in quickly, experiencing an unpleasant sensation because his memory lapse had been discovered. “The body wasn’t dressed, but the janitor claims he was short one doctor’s coat and two pairs of white pants — the kind the students wear in the summertime. A few pairs of disposable slippers may have been missing also, but the janitor says he never manages to keep an accurate count on them — he says the cleaning woman steals a few every once in a while.”

  The Chief Inspector took a deep breath and tapped on the desk with his eyeglasses.

  “Thank you. Doctor Sciss, may I trouble you now?”

  Without stirring from his casual position, Sciss muttered incoherently and finished writing something in an open notebook which he was supporting on his sharp, protruding knee.

  Then, bending his balding, somewhat birdlike head, Sciss slammed the book closed and slipped it under his chair, pursed his thin lips as if he wanted to whistle, and stood up, rubbing his fingers against his twisted, arthritic joints.

  “I consider your invitation to be a useful novum,” he said in a high, almost falsetto voice. “It so happens that I generally tend to sound like a lecturer. I hope none of you mind; in any event it’s quite unavoidable. Now then, I have made a thorough study of this series of incidents. As we have seen, the classical methods of investigation — the collection of evidence and the search for motives — have failed completely. Consequently, I have utilized the statistical method of investigation. It offers obvious advantages. We can often define a crime at the scene of its occurrence by the kinds of facts that are connected with it and the kinds that are not. For example, the shape of the bloodstains found near a murdered body may have a connection with the crime, and if so they can say a good deal about the way it was committed. Certain other facts, however — for example, that a cumulus or cirrostratus cloud floated over the scene of the crime on the day of a particular homicide, or that the telephone wires in front of the house where the crime took place are made of aluminum or copper — can be classified as nonessential. As far as our series of incidents is concerned, it is altogether impossible to decide in advance which of the facts accompanying the incidents were connected with the crime and which were not.

  “If it were only a matter of one incident,” Sciss continued, “we would be at an impasse. Fortunately, however, there were several incidents. Now it stands to reason that a virtually unlimited number of objects and phenomena could have been found or observed in the vicinity of the incidents during the critical period. Therefore, to prepare a useful statistical series, we must rely only on those facts that are common to all the incidents, or at any rate, to a substantial majority of the incidents. Thus, we proceed by preparing a statistical breakdown of all the phenomena. Until now this method has almost never been used in a criminal investigation, and I am very pleased that I now have an opportunity to introduce it to you gentlemen, together with my preliminary findings…”

  Dr. Sciss, who until now had been standing behind his armchair as if it were a lecturn, took a few steps in the direction of the door, turned unexpectedly, inclined his head, and continued, looking into the room at the seated men.

  “Now, let us begin. First, you will recall that before any of these phenomena occurred there was a temporary phase which we can label conventionally as the ‘forerunner stage.’ During this stage bodies changed positions. Some turned upside down. Others were found on their sides. Still others were found on the floor next to their coffins.

  “Second, with only one exception, each corpse belonged to someone who had died in his prime.

  “Third, in each incident, again with one exception, some kind of covering was provided for the body. Twice this was ordinary clothing. Once it was most likely a doctor’s coat and white trousers, and once — a black cloth curtain.

  “Fourth, none of the corpses involved had been autopsied; all were undamaged; all were well preserved. Furthermore, every incident took place within thirty hours of the time of death, a fact particularly worthy of your attention.

  “Finally, all the incidents, again with one exception, took place in small town mortuaries to which entrance is usu
ally quite easy. The only disappearance that doesn’t fit this pattern is the one at the Medical School.”

  Sciss turned to the Chief Inspector.

  “I need a powerful spotlight. Can you get something for me?”

  The Chief Inspector said a few quiet words into the intercom. During the ensuing silence, Sciss opened his spacious, bellowslike leather briefcase and slowly drew out a sheet of tracing paper, folded several times and covered with colored markings. Gregory looked at it with a mixture of aversion and curiosity. The scientist’s patronizing attitude irritated him. Stubbing out his cigarette, he tried unsuccessfully to guess what was written on the paper rustling in Sciss’s awkward hands.

  Meanwhile, tearing one side of the paper slightly as he worked, Sciss unfolded it and spread it out on the desk in front of the Chief Inspector, whom he hardly seemed to notice, then walked over to the window and looked out at the street, holding one wrist with the fingers of the other hand as if checking his own pulse rate.

  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 corner 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 Levering. 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 t
o 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.