The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck (18 page)

“Yes—accordin’ to you, Mister—Saunders—with his nice black oily fingers Charlie leaves some fingerprints that look just like putty. Hmm. We ain’t allowed to hang ’em for bein’ as dumb as that, but they let us put ’em to makin’ baskets. Ever see the baskets they weave, down to the booby-hatch? Not bad, some of ’em, considerin’. Now just take a look here.”

He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and turned it upon the bulb. Looking closely, I could see a set of fainter, brownish prints, corresponding with, and partly overlapping, the others.

“Here, Sherlock Holmes,” the sheriff mocked, “have the hull works while you’re at it.” He proffered a magnifying glass ,and I used it in spite of his mockery. It was easy to see that the faint brown lines ran on top of the white ones. It was completely obvious too, that the prints were made by two different persons.

“Them brown ones are Michaud’s, and they went on after the vault door was opened, this fall. I was kinda hopin’ that the others would be—yours, Mister—left there in a hurry last spring. The last feller out of that place was in an all-fired hurry t’ git out, and he twisted the bulb instead o’ takin’ time to run back the other way to the switch. Or do you think I’m wrong, perhaps, Mister—ahem—Saunders, isn’t it?”

“I think you’re right, Sheriff. I snapped the switch once, and the light didn’t go on. Then Charlie turned the bulb, and it didn’t go on. I snapped the switch again, and it did light up. That left the switch back where it was. Therefore it had been in on the ‘on’ position all summer, and the bulb must have been turned off by twisting it, as you say.”

“Got it down pretty pat, haven’t you? Little bit too pat, mebbe. That is, from a jury’s point o view. Well, come on, Sherlock, let’s  mosey back and see if I have to turn you loose or put you in the hoosegow. Oh, wait a minute, while I get the stencil on the gas tank. Let’s see, 01014.”

When we returned, the coroner’s jury was still deliberating. I had the opportunity to reflect upon unexpected features of the post-mortem findings. I could not see why the wound in the back of the neck could be so definitely called the case of death if the body contained so much veronal. The likeliest explanation was that whoever had drugged Wyck had wanted to get on quickly with the embalming, and had severed the spinal cord in order to make certain that the incision for embalming would not shock a comatose body back into consciousness.

It was well past noon when at last the jury was readmitted. The deputy then went to the anteroom and returned with Biddy and Charlie. The foreman handed a folded piece of paper to the clerk, who read:

“We find that the cause of death of Gideon Wyck was premeditated murder, since he could not have stabbed himself in the back of his own neck. From verbal evidence given by Marjorie Wyck and Charles Michaud we find that death occurred between the hours of 9:45 P.M., April 3, 1932, and about 6:00 A.M., April 4, 1932, since it would have taken some time to embalm the body afterward and place it in a vault which was sealed in the presence of a witness at 8:00 A.M. on the 4th. We accept the coroner’s recommendation that a bill of indictment be drawn up and presented to a grand jury by the county prosecutor, accusing Charles Michaud of the murder of Gideon Wyck, and accusing Bridget Connell as an accessory before and after the fact.”

Charlie blinked, stood up, pulled off his dickey tie and limp collar, pushed both into his coat pocket, and sat down again. Since his compromise with the amenities, in the wearing of these ornaments, had not saved him from a dangerous plight, his mind apparently dictated the only immediate relief possible.

Biddy turned in bewilderment toward me and asked, “What’s that he’s sayin’ about me, Mr. David? What does it mean?”

The coroner said, “Mrs. Connell, you are accused of helping Charles Michaud to plan the murder of Dr. Wyck, and of helping him to evade justice afterwards.”

“I did no such thing,” she screamed, and began to sob.

“Sheriff Palmer,” Dr. Kent concluded, “you will hold the accused as material witnesses, pending the filing of the indictments.”

I tried to comfort Biddy, and promised to do everything I could to help in proving her innocence. Dr. Kent had come up, and must have heard this declaration; but I was glad that he had, for it provided me at last with a public excuse for being thoroughly interested in the case.

My head felt like a balloon as I left the town hall. For about five minutes I reveled in mere freedom and thoughtlessness. Then the reaction came from the pressing knowledge that Biddy was under arrest, with no husband or other relative to help her. If her witless way of testifying before the coroner was an indication of what could be expected in an actual trial, the county prosecutor would have no difficulty at all in making Biddy swear that she ate flatirons for breakfast.

Knowing that Daisy would be lunching, I hurried and caught her leaving early for the hospital, where she had hoped to get quicker news of the inquest. We walked the back way, and I had time to tell her of all the important factors during the twenty minutes before she had to go on duty.

After lunching at the dog cart, I typed out the post-mortem findings and made duplicate carbons for Daisy and for myself. A little later, she called me to whisper over the phone that Charlie and Biddy had been bound over to the Superior Court, which would commence its sessions on third Tuesday in September. It later turned out that she had learned this from a phone call by Dr. Kent to the attorney-general.

I went myself to look up Dr. Kent and asked him bluntly what my rights were in arranging for Biddy’s defense. He replied that I could apply for a writ of habeas corpus, but advised me not to do so because a review of her testimony would show multiple assumptions of perjury. He suggested that my best course would be to place all decisions unreservedly in a lawyer’s hands.

I had only twelve dollars in the world, and did not want to be responsible for drawing upon her nest egg of a thousand dollars from Mike’s accident insurance. Then I remembered that a fellow named Craig, a senior at State when I was a sophomore, had recently hung out his shingle in Phillipston. On the chance that he might take the case for glory, I rang him up, and he agreed to drive to Altonville next morning.

1. I have left this in its original, highly technical form, as it may thus have added interest for some readers. Its implications are clearly explained for the laymen in an early section of the narrative.—Ed.
   
2. Here again is evidence that the happenings referred to did not actually take place in Maine, where capital punishment has been abolished.—Ed.
   

With a whole house on my hands, if a small one, I called Daisy to suggest that we spend the evening studying the inquest. She arrived before eight o’clock. We pulled down the shades, locked the doors, and spread our documents on a table.

“Are you still clinging to the idea that it’s Alling?” I asked.

“I’m forgetting everything I’ve thought, Dave, or trying to. Something fresh ought to come out of this cryptogram, if you’ll be good enough to explain it to me.”

“Here goes,” I agreed, taking the post-mortem sheet. “Incision number one means nothing special. You’ve got to cut a body over some artery to embalm it, and that’s the handiest place. Incision number two is right here.” I showed the spot on the back of her neck with my finger, and she jumped at the touch. “Steady. Now, the head must have been bent well forward to separate those two vertebrae sufficiently for the knife to enter between them. Also, there would have to be a straight thrust and then a sidewise movement to sever the spinal cord. Like this, see?”

She nodded with a shiver, and I continued, “Paragraph number three—the six minute scars. The left antecubital fossa is here, just below the bend of the elbow, on the inside surface of the left arm. Transfusion needles would leave something of a scar. A hypodermic wouldn’t, unless he used dope with a dirty needle, but a doctor ought to know better than that. Anyway, the number of scars is significant. I’ll tell you why after we get on a bit. Now this abdominal scar—”

“For appendicitis, probably, or gallstones,” she interrupted. “Next.”

“Hold your horses,” I admonished. “What it says farther along makes it seem obvious that the incision didn’t go on through the inner membrane, the peritoneum, to get at the internal organs, so it was neither of those. Let it go for the present.”

“Now for internals. The first one means he was dying of cancer, in about as painful a spot as it could appear. No wonder he gave himself transfusions, and took dope, and looked so sick toward the end. He was an old so-and-so, but he had nerve, all right.”

“Granted. What about point two of the internals?”

“That substantiates another obvious suspicion. He had cancer of the skull, too, and it pressed on the brain, and slowly drove him crazy. Point number three, internal hemorrhage, gives the reason why they claim it was the cut that killed him, rather than the poison.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, when the heart’s still beating, there’s a high pressure of blood in the arteries. Blood from a vein just trickles out, but from an artery it spurts. Therefore, if the heart had stopped beating before the big artery in the spinal column was cut, the blood would have seeped into the surrounding tissues and clotted quickly. But the face showed a convulsive death, which means that the heart made a few last violent beats, after the artery was cut, forcing blood into the skull and spinal cord. You see, it was a clean incision, which wouldn’t have given the blood much chance to flow out through the wound, especially if the blade remained in it. Now, this fourth paragraph, about what was under the belly scar, I can’t understand at all, so let’s go on for the present to the analyses.”

“I can figure them out,” she interposed. “Somebody was wise to the fact that he’d been taking veronal regularly to relieve the pain of the cancer. That must have been the drug you smelled on his breath. The murderer gave him a big dose, with the idea that an autopsy would show traces all through the body, from chronic use, and make it seem he took an overdose by mistake, or else to commit suicide. Then the murderer got panicky, and used the knife to make sure of things, after Wyck had passed out. He realized too late that the suicide theory was ruined, and then bethought himself of embalming the body and putting it in the vault. I think the last point is our first clue, don’t you?”

“You mean we’ve got to start by considering who might have know that the vault was already locked up, ready for sealing in the morning, and wasn’t likely to be inspected again?”

“Of course. Now, who could have know all that?”

“Well, Charlie, and Coroner Kent, and D. Saunders, God help him, all knew for certain. Any of the students might have known. The vault is always sealed up on the day when final inspection of dissections is made, as a symbol of now or never.”

“All right. What about the other teachers?”

“They’re more like to have known than the students.”

“Well, that doesn’t help much. It just narrows it down to the whole school. Now, what about keys to the padlock?”

“Charlie testified that extra keys were in the possession of Kent, and the anatomy prof, and Wyck himself—” I paused uncomfortably.

“And?”

“And—Alling.”

“Alling. I thought so.”

“But remember that Wyck had his key on his person, and the murderer returned it with the bundle of clothes. In the meanwhile, he could have used it to put Wyck’s carcass in the vault—probably did.”

“If he knew what it was a key to,” she commented drily. “Well, let’s see that other sheet.”

I picked up a copy of the sheriff’s deposition concerning the bundle returned by mail. We studied it together.

* * *

The said bundle was received in a sack made up by mail sorters on a train en route from Boston to Portland at about noon on April 10th, and transferred unopened at Portland to the 4:14 P.M. train from Altonville. The sack was opened at 5:00 A.M., April 11th, at the Altonville post office, and delivered to the Wyck residence at about 10:30 A.M. by Hosea Creel, carrier.

The said bundle was supposedly mailed after closing hours on the evening of the 9th of April, 1932, at the main Boston post office. The postmarks are too smudged to make certain of this, but T. J. Flick, clerk at the said post office, noticed a bundle having twice the right postage, like this one, the next morning. The bundle bore no return address.