“I see you have not yet removed his clothing. What was in his pockets?”
Cerridwen shifted his feet and cleared his throat. “Naught much—a soiled handkerchief, a set of keys, and—oh, yes, a single playing card. The three of clubs it were, sir.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Hang on a minute—think I’ve still got it,” he said, fishing around in his lab coat pockets. “Ah, here it is!”
Ian took the card and studied it. The design was unusual—it featured dancing skeletons, each wearing a jaunty red fez. Each of the three clubs was incorporated into the body of a skeleton, forming part of the torso.
“That’s an odd-lookin’ card, sir,” Sergeant Dickerson remarked, peering over his shoulder.
“Indeed it is,” Ian replied, sliding the card carefully into the breast pocket of his jacket. “You found no wallet or personal effects such as rings or watches?” he asked Cerridwen.
“I’m afraid not—p’haps it were already taken by those who found the body.”
“No doubt,” Ian remarked drily. Edinburgh morgue attendants were notorious for relieving the dead of unattended property, but they were difficult to prosecute, being adept at hiding evidence. The city’s numerous pawnshop owners and “resetters” were always eager to fence stolen goods before they could be traced.
Cerridwen shuffled his feet again and coughed, no doubt impatient to get to the bottle waiting for him in his tiny office. “Will you be needin’ me further, gentlemen?”
“Thank you, Mr. Cerridwen; I think we’ll be fine on our own,” Ian replied.
“Right, then, I’ll leave you to it. Just give me a whistle when you’re ready to leave.” He turned and strode briskly from the room, his footsteps fading rapidly down the stone corridor.
Sergeant Dickerson scratched his chin. “Shouldn’t he remain here while we examine th’ body, sir?”
Ian looked after the rapidly retreating Cerridwen. “It won’t be the first time a morgue attendant has skipped his duty for the lure of a bottle, Sergeant.”
Dickerson snickered, the sound oddly out of place in the solemn surroundings. He quickly choked back his inappropriate response and looked down at the dead man before them.
A human corpse is a curious and somber sight. First, the observer feels an instinctive physical aversion to death and dead things. That is followed by a kind of sickened curiosity, wonderment—and finally, sadness. If the body is in good condition, there is sometimes the odd expectation that the person is not dead after all, but will, at any moment, sit up and open his eyes.
Ian was no stranger to dead bodies, yet every time he was in the presence of death, he went through all of these stages. Young Wycherly’s body had already begun to bloat as the gases in his digestive system expanded. His skin had the mottled gray pallor of death, as the blood seeped from his tissues to collect on the underside of the body, in the process known as lividity. And yet in spite of that, his face in repose suggested some of the man’s gentle, unassuming personality. Perhaps Ian was prejudiced in this opinion by what Wycherly’s landlady had told him, but he thought it was a damn pity that such a boy should die so suddenly and violently. A stanza from one of his early poems popped into Ian’s head.
We meet again at death’s dark door
you have quit this world
with its untidy yearnings and disappointments
all joy and sorrow drained from your pale face
Dickerson shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. “Right, then, sir, what’s next?”
“What do you make of young Wycherly, Sergeant?”
Dickerson wiped sweat from his forehead—in spite of the cold, damp room, his face was flushed. “He’s—dead, sir.”
“Well done, aye—but apart from that.”
“I don’t quite take your meaning.”
“The dead can’t speak for themselves, so we must speak for them.”
“Right y’are, sir.”
“So . . . ?”
“Uh, what exactly d’you mean, sir?”
“Every crime is a narrative, a story told backward. We know the ending, and it is our job to discover the beginning and middle.”
“How d’we do that?”
“Look at him, Sergeant—describe what you see.”
Dickerson peered down at Wycherly’s body and swallowed hard. “Well, he’s quite young, I s’pose.”
“What else? What do you notice about his person—his grooming, his manner of dress?”
“His nails are well tended.”
“Good. What else about his hands?”
Dickerson suppressed a shudder and lifted one of the dead man’s arms, turning it over so he could study the hand. “Very smooth skin, I’d say, sir.”
“What does that tell you about him?”
“He’s definitely not a laborer. I’d say he’s spent most a’ his life indoors.”
“Excellent!” Ian said. “Well done.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dickerson replied with a little cough. Ian knew well enough that DCI Crawford’s men anticipated little in the way of commendation, and they were rarely disappointed in their expectations.
“If you view his life as a narrative, the moment where it intersects the life of the criminal, a new story begins.”
“And that’s the story we’re int’rested in?”
“Precisely! Now, what about his clothing?”
Dickerson straightened his spine and crossed his arms. “He’s dressed like merchant, or per’aps business clerk. Pro’bly works in office.”
“That’s the stuff,” Ian said. “Now you’re thinking like a detective.”
Dickerson frowned. “His landlady could ha’ told us that, sir.”
“Ah! But we must sharpen our minds to a fine point so we may glean clues wherever we find them.”
Dickerson pursed his lips dubiously. “If you say so, sir.”
“Now, please help me remove his clothes.”
“Sir?” Dickerson looked positively green.
“We must examine the body.”
Dickerson gulped and bit his lower lip, but soldiered on manfully in spite of his evident queasiness.
Rigor mortis was already beginning to fade, and as they tugged at the sleeve of Wycherly’s jacket, his arm suddenly went limp. Dickerson nearly tumbled backward at the touch of the pliable flesh. His ruddy face turned an even darker shade of red. He took a deep breath and loosened the stiff collar of his uniform.
“Are you quite all right, Sergeant?” Ian asked. He recalled his first dead body, as a young constable—a poor old wretch who froze to death in an unheated tenement in Skinner’s Close. His supervisor insisted he close the vacant, staring eyes, and Ian still remembered the marble coldness of the flesh under his fingers. The face haunted his sleep for weeks after; in his dreams, he was unable to close the eyes, no matter how many times he tried. They gazed up at him, pleading, accusing, horrible in their stillness. After that, he vowed never to be caught off guard by the presence of death again.
Dickerson cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his upper lip. “Steady on,” Ian said, laying a hand on the sergeant’s shoulder.