The Investigation (13 page)

“Did you find anything on the expressway?”

“A few tire tracks, but nothing definite. Don’t forget that everything I’ve told you is still only conjectural—we can’t be sure of anything until we talk to Williams. If he remembers the door being closed, but without the lath in the latch, we’ll accept the second variant.”

“How is Williams doing?”

“Still unconscious. The doctors say his case will be settled in two or three more days, one way or the other.”

“Yes…” said Sheppard. “You’ll have to come up with a better reconstruction, otherwise we have only one alternative: ‘…and for fear of Him the keepers did shake…’”

Gregory’s eyes wandered from the Chief Inspector’s face to his hands, which were resting motionlessly on the desk.

“Do you really think so?” he asked slowly.

“Gregory, I really wish you would think of me as your ally rather than your adversary. Try to put yourself in my place for a moment. Is my request really so funny?” Sheppard asked quietly, noticing that the lieutenant had begun to smile.

“No. I just remembered something. I also … anyway, it doesn’t really matter. If I were you, I’d still think the same way I do now. You can’t go through the wall if there’s no door.”

“Good. Let’s go over the first variant. The perpetrator, you said, sneaked into the mortuary sometime before the first constable went on duty at eleven o’clock. Here’s a floor plan of the mortuary. Show me where he could have hidden.”

“Here in the comer behind the big coffin, or in the opposite corner behind the boards.”

“Did you try any of these places yourself?”

“Well, more or less… You can get behind the big coffin, but it wouldn’t be much good as a hiding place if anyone shined a light in from the side. That’s why I say it must have been the boards. None of the guards made a systematic search of the mortuary; at best they only looked in through the door.”

“Good. Now, the corpse was stiff, so to get it through the window the perpetrator had to change its position, right?”

“Yes. And in the dark too. Then he had to break the window and drop the body out.”

“How did he manage to get the corpse’s footprint into the snow next to the wall?”

“I don’t think that would have been too hard for him.”

“You’re wrong, Gregory, it would have been extremely difficult. He had to do it without attracting Williams’s attention, but Williams had already been drawn to the scene by the sound of the breaking glass. From the perpetrator’s point of view, this must have been a damned critical moment. We can be certain that Williams wouldn’t have run away if he’d seen the perpetrator. Someone moving a corpse around wouldn’t have frightened him—after all, he knew very well that he’d been assigned to the mortuary to watch out for just that kind of thing. Maybe he would have used his pistol, maybe he would have tried to apprehend him without weapons, but he certainly wouldn’t have just run away. Do you see what I mean?”

Gregory was looking the Chief Inspector straight in the eye. Finally, with a brief gesture, he nodded his assent.

Sheppard continued.

“Now, if the corpse had fallen into the snow and the perpetrator was nowhere near the body—let’s say he was squatting behind the window and couldn’t be seen from outside—even then Williams wouldn’t have run away. He would have drawn his pistol and waited to sec what happened next. He might have decided not to go inside, but he would have kept his eye on the door and the window. Whatever he did, though, he wouldn’t have run away. Do you go along with this also?”

Gregory nodded his head again, staring at the floor plan on the desk.

“We have the same problem with the second variant. None of it is very probable except the part about how the perpetrator got inside, since it doesn’t depend on him hiding behind the boards as suggested in variant one. The snow could certainly have covered his footprints as you said. Let’s continue. From this point on, according to both variants, the incident took the same course. After Williams ran away, the perpetrator left the mortuary, pulled the corpse over to the door, and then escaped by way of the bushes and the stream. But what was the purpose of dragging the body through the snow—and in point of fact he didn’t drag it at all, as we both know very well, but did something quite peculiar: he made it look as if a naked man had been crawling around on his hands and knees. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

“The situation is much worse than after our first conversation…” Gregory said, his tone quite different from what it had been until now, as if he had an unexpected secret to tell. “It was easy enough to get inside the mortuary if all the factors were taken into account. He could easily have followed the constable—it was a dark, windy night and it was snowing—once inside the mortuary he could have waited, let’s say, forty-five minutes or an hour, in order to let the snow cover his footprints. But as for the rest… I couldn’t help thinking for a while that he wanted to produce the very effect you mentioned; in fact, once I accepted the idea of someone trying to set up a situation that would force the police to believe there had been some kind of resurrection, I thought our investigation had come to the end of the line. But now we can’t even consider that theory anymore. The perpetrator moved the corpse but then left it at the scene. Maybe something frightened him away, but why did he leave the corpse in the snow? One look at the corpse is enough to prove that it didn’t come back to life. He must have known that, but even so he moved it, and in a way that made it appear as if it had moved itself. None of it makes any sense—not in criminal terms and not in terms of insanity.”

“Maybe he did get frightened away, as you said just a minute ago. Maybe he heard the approaching car.”

“Yes, he could even have seen it, but—”

“Seen it? How?”

“When you turn off the expressway for Pickering, your headlights—the expressway is on somewhat higher ground, you see—shine into the cemetery and light up the roof of the mortuary. I checked it last night.”

“Gregory, that’s important! If the perpetrator was frightened by the lights of a car, and if that’s what caused him to abandon the corpse, we may have our explanation. Furthermore, it would be his first blunder, his first failure to carry out a well-planned act. He panicked and dropped the corpse. Maybe he thought the police were coming. That should be the basis of your reconstruction… At any rate, it’s an out!”

“Yes, it’s an out,” Gregory admitted, “but… I can’t take a chance on it. We’re dealing with a man who studies weather reports and plans his actions in accordance with a complicated mathematical formula. He would certainly have known that the lights of a car coming around the turn from the expressway would light up the whole area for a moment, including the cemetery.”

“You seem to have a great deal of respect for him.”

“I do. And I absolutely refuse to believe that anything frightened him away. An armed constable standing right there didn’t scare him. Would he have been afraid of a couple of headlights off in the distance?”

“Things like that happen. The straw that breaks the camel’s back… Maybe it took him by surprise. Maybe it confused him. You don’t think it’s possible? You’re smiling again? Gregory, you seem to be absolutely fascinated by this person. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up being … a disciple!”

“I suppose that’s a possibility,” said the lieutenant in a caustic tone of voice. He reached for the report but, discovering that his fingers were trembling, hid his hand under the table. “Maybe you’re right…” he said after a moment’s reflection. “I can’t help feeling that everything I found out there was exactly the way he wanted it to be; I don’t know—maybe I’m beginning to go crazy. Only… Williams wasn’t frightened by the corpse but by what was happening to it. Something happened to that body that made him panic. We may find out what it was, but will we ever know why…”

“There’s still the matter of the cat,” Sheppard mumbled as if talking to himself. Gregory lifted his head.

“Yes. And, to tell the truth, that’s a lucky break for me.”

“How do you mean that?”

“Right from the beginning this case has been characterized by a fantastic consistency—every incident has certain features in common with all the others—incomprehensible, perhaps, but definitely all following the same pattern. In other words, no matter how it looks, this business isn’t chaotic. It has to do with something real, although we haven’t the slightest idea of its purpose. Chief Inspector… I … even though, as you said, I myself…”

Uncertain whether he was making himself clear, Gregory began to feel nervous.

“I realize we can’t do anything except increase the surveillance. That is, we can’t do anything right now, but this case will come to a head once he uses up all his alternatives… He’s been relentlessly consistent so far, and one day we’ll turn that consistency against him. Sciss will help by telling us where to expect the next incident.”

“Sciss?” repeated Sheppard. “I just received a letter from him.”

He opened his drawer.

“He says there won’t be any more incidents.”

“What?” Completely flabbergasted, Gregory stared at Sheppard, who nodded his head quietly.

“According to him, the series is over, either indefinitely or … forever.”

“Sciss said that? On what basis?”

“His letter says he’s working on the documentation now, and would rather not explain anything until he’s finished. That’s all.”

“I see.”

Trying hard to regain his composure, Gregory took a deep breath, straightened his lanky torso, and studied his hands for a moment.

“I suppose he knows more than we do. Did he see the results of my investigation?”

“Yes. I turned them over to him at his own request. We certainly were obligated at least to that extent, since he enabled us to pinpoint the places where the incidents would take place…”

“Yes, yes. Of course,” Gregory repeated. “This … this changes everything. There’s nothing else we can do, if…”

He stood up.

“Would you like to talk to Sciss?” asked Sheppard.

Gregory made a vague gesture: more than anything, now, he wanted to leave the Yard, to be by himself, to end this conversation as quickly as possible. Sheppard rose from his chair.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so impatient,” he said in a low voice. “In any case, please don’t take offense. So far as that goes, please…”

Gregory retreated toward the door. Somewhat disconcerted by the look of expectation on Sheppard’s face, he swallowed and said with some effort:

“I’ll try, Chief Inspector, but I don’t think I’m ready to talk to him yet. I don’t know. I still have to…”

He left without finishing. In the corridor the lights had already been turned on for the evening. The day seemed to be so indescribably long, Gregory thought; he felt as if the incident yesterday had taken place weeks before. He rode down in the elevator; then, surprising himself by his impulsiveness, he got off on the second floor, and headed for the laboratories, his steps muffled by a deep carpet. Here and there old-fashioned brass doorknobs glowed dimly, polished by the touch of thousands of hands. Gregory walked slowly, his mind a blank. Through an open door he saw some spectrographs mounted on stands; near them, a man in a white lab coat doing something with a bunsen burner. A few more steps and he reached another open door. Inside, covered from head to toe with white powder and looking more like a baker than a technician, he found Thomas. The room, jammed with long, even rows of strange-looking twisted blocks of hardened plaster, looked like the studio of an abstract sculptor. Thomas was bending over a long table with a wooden mallet in his hand, apparently about to release his latest creation from its mold. A basin of soft plaster stood on the floor beside him. Gregory leaned against the door and watched him for a few moments.

“Oh, hello,” Thomas said, looking up. “I’m just about finished. Do you want to take it with you?” He began shifting the casts around, eying them with professional satisfaction.

“A nice clean job,” he muttered to himself. Gregory nodded, picked up a white, surprisingly light block of plaster which was standing near the edge of the table, and, glancing at its bottom, saw the impression of a naked foot with big, thin, widely spaced toes. Along the edges the plaster had risen slightly to form a mushroom-like rim.

“No thank you, not now,” said Gregory, putting the cast down and hurriedly walking out of the room. Thomas watched in surprise, then began to remove his splattered rubber apron. Gregory, already in the corridor, stopped and asked over his shoulder:

“Is the doctor in?”

“He was a few minutes ago, but he may have left already. I don’t know.”

Gregory walked to the end of the corridor. Without knocking, he opened the door and went into the medical examiner’s lab. The window was shaded, but a small lamp next to a nearby microscope stand provided some light. Here and there, he could see racks of test tubes, beakers and other instruments, and some glistening bottles of colored liquid. There wasn’t a sign of Sorensen, but Dr. King, his young assistant, was sitting at his desk, writing.

“Good evening. Is Sorensen around?” Gregory asked; without waiting for an answer he began to bombard King with questions.

“Do you know anything about the cat? Did Sorensen examine—”

“Cat? Oh, the cat!”

King stood up.

“I ought to know—I did the autopsy. Sorensen isn’t here. He said he was too busy.” King’s emphasis suggested that he was not especially loyal to his boss. “I still have the cat,” he continued. “Do you want to take a look?”

He opened a small door in the corner of the room and turned on the ceiling light. The only article of furniture in the narrow cubicle was a dirty wooden table; it was splattered with reagents and rust-colored stains. Gregory glanced in at the reddish sliced-up thing pinned to the table and backed away.

“Why should I look?” he said. “You’re the doctor. Tell me what you found.”

“Well, in essence … mind you, I’m not a veterinarian,” King began, straightening up slightly. With a mechanical gesture he touched the row of pens and pencils in the breast pocket of his jacket.