Aaron Elkins - Murder In The Queen's armes

Merrill finally found the right key. "At last! Thought I was going to have to disappoint you." He laughed happily, and Gideon smiled unconvincingly back as they entered the morgue proper, a small, white-tiled room with two tables, on the nearer of which was what they’d come to see.

"Whew," Gideon said, steeling himself not to shrink back.

"Pretty bad, eh? Of course, once you get something like this out of the water, decomposition speeds up enormously. Naturally, we’ve had it in the freezer overnight. By the by"-Merrill gestured at a stainless-steel door in one wall-"We’ve got a really fascinating case in there. Poor old fellow was done in by a high-pressure jet of cellulose spray. Astonishing sight. Never seen anything like it. Perhaps if you have time after you finish here-"

"Thanks very much," Gideon said quickly, "but I think I’d better get back as soon as I’m done. I’m on my honeymoon, you know."

"Honeymoon! No, I didn’t know. Congratulations!" Laughing, he led Gideon by the arm toward the corpse. "What’s a newlywed like you doing in a place like this, eh?"

"Eh" is right, Gideon thought.

"Well," Merrill said crisply, "we shan’t keep you long. Now, let’s have a look at this chap."

Gideon made himself look down. He had learned that it was only the first few minutes that were really bad, and that the sooner he got used to it, the better off he’d be. The body, terribly swollen and discolored to a blackish green, lay on its back on a basin-shaped porcelain autopsy table that was tilted slightly so that the pink, transparent fluid that ran sparsely from it dribbled down to a hole at the table’s foot and drained through a rubber tube to collect in a thready puddle in a stoppered sink below-for what purpose Gideon didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

The autopsy had already been performed; the body was sliced from throat to crotch, its ribs spread open like a pair of cupboard doors. The scalp, with its algae-like cap of mud-colored hair, had been peeled back, the top of the skull sawed off, and the brain removed. The skullcap, neatly cleaned, had been placed near the head, flat side down, like a halved coconut, presumably awaiting Gideon’s inspection.

"Well, then," Merrill said, "Where shall we begin?" He clapped his hands softly and squeezed his fingers. He might have been a child looking forward to solving a jig saw puzzle; in a sense he was. "How long would you say he’s been in the water?"

"I’ll accept your judgment on that, Doctor. Outside of the skeleton, I’m afraid I don’t know much about tissue pathology. Besides, the water here is probably colder than what I’m familiar with. That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?"

"Oh, yes, all the difference in the world. It would retard the postmortem changes drastically. Now," he said, slipping comfortably into a teacher’s role, "this is a typical four-weeker."

"Four-weeker? That rules out Alexander. I was talking to him only two weeks ago."

"I said a typical four-weeker. But a body might be caught up in a warm current, for example, or float where there are industrial effluvia that heat the water. Either way, decomposition would be hastened. Or it might run into a particularly voracious school of fish or other flesh-eaters. I grant you, this one seems awfully advanced for two weeks, but let us reserve our conclusions."

At Gideon’s nod of agreement, Merrill resumed his lecture where he’d left off. "Now this, as I say, is a typical four-weeker: The face is gone, as well as the flesh of the hands-no fingerprints from this one-and the meat is pretty well eaten away between ankle and calf. And just look at the maceration! Classic washerwoman’s skin syndrome." With a finger he pushed gently at one wrinkled foot. The skin slid loosely back and forth. "I could slip the dermis off as easily as if it were a sock."

Merrill looked as if he might demonstrate, and Gideon interrupted hurriedly. "So he was fully clothed, then?" Aquatic life, he knew, attacked the uncovered parts of the body first. On a clothed male it would be the head and hands, then the area just above the socks, where the trousers floated free, then the rest.

"Correct, Professor. Leather jacket, jeans, and all the rest. We’ve checked, of course, and the clothing might be Alexander’s, but there’s no positive identification. They’ll be shipped to the Yard today with the body. Now then, does anything else strike you?"

"Well, there’s an odd pattern of lividity. The body fluids seem to have settled in the arms and legs. Chest, too, it looks like. As if he’d been draped over a saw horse when he was killed."

"Ah, very perceptive. Excellent reasoning." Merrill laughed his jolly laugh. "Erroneous conclusion, however. You must remember that although a newly dead body sinks for a few days before floating to the surface, it does not lie upon the ocean floor. No, it hangs suspended, in a shadowy limbo, as if were, between surface and bottom." Merrill’s gentle eyes glittered with enthusiasm. And why not, Gideon thought. Who was he to look askance if Merrill got enthusiastic about cadavers? There were plenty of people who wondered what he found so absorbing in skeletons.

"And," Merrill went on, "what with the torso being the most buoyant part of the body, the corpse naturally turns on its face, its legs and arms trailing below, its head lolling forward, more or less like a great jellyfish." He leaned over, dangled his head and arms, and made a presumably jellyfish-like face. From this unusual position he continued to speak.

"Obviously, the lividity-hypostasis is the better term, really-would therefore be most pronounced in the legs and arms. Face, too." He stood up straight, smiling charmingly. "But of course, this fellow doesn’t have a face, so it’s moot."

"Interesting," said Gideon, and in spite of himself he was interested.

"Yes, isn’t it?" Merrill responded with sincerity. He seemed about to elaborate on the subject but caught himself. "See here, you have a beautiful wife waiting for you, so let’s get down to our business, which is: What can you tell us from the skeleton?" He went to a metal cabinet. "I have sliding and spreading calipers for you, and dissecting tools."

"And if you have a pair of gloves, I’d appreciate them," Gideon said.

"Gloves?" Merrill turned his head. "You mean rubber gloves?"

"Yes, if you have them."

A faint shadow of surprise flitted over the pathologist’s face. "I suppose we do, if you really want them. For myself, I find the sense of touch in my bare hands extremely sensitive."

I do, too, Gideon thought but did not say. That’s why I want the gloves. If he’d had the nerve, he would have asked for a surgeon’s face mask and a rubber coat.

He slipped on the disposable plastic gloves that Merrill found for him, picked up a probe, and poked gingerly at the gristly tendons and ruined muscles of the face to see the bone underneath. It didn’t take much poking. When the head wobbled on the plastic neck rest, he forced himself to steady it with his other hand. It was, he reminded himself, the first touch that was the worst.

"We don’t expect any miracles, of course," Merrill said, watching with interest, "but if you can give us anything positive that might be helpful in identification, we’d be most grateful. The race, perhaps…"

"You said you thought he was Caucasian?"

"Yes, from the hair. The color’s no help after all this time in the water, obviously, but I had a look at some of the head hair under a microscope. It’s oval in cross section, and relatively fine, both of which suggest a Caucasian. But even hair gets distorted after a month in the water, so I’m not overly confident."

"Well, you’re right. He’s Caucasian."

Merrill beamed. "Oh, but I say…just like that? But don’t you have to measure the breadth of the skull, or index the pelvis, or some such arcane thing?"