Victor O'Reilly - Games of The Hangman

"What about hypnosis?" Fitzduane wasn't sure he believed in such a possibility himself, but Buckley was the expert, and he'd seen some decidedly odd things in the Congo.

"I don't know," said Buckley in a deadpan voice. "There could have been a witch doctor hidden in the tree. All I can say is that I didn't find a shiny gold watch dangling in front of his eyes when I carried out the examination."

Fitzduane didn’t feel particularly amused. He knew pathologists had a reputation for ghoulish humor, but the blown-up images of Rudolf on the screen weren't doing much for his own sense of fun.

Buckley was not insensitive to his reaction. "More seriously," he went on, "the evidence available suggests that it is most unlikely an individual will deliberately cause himself harm even when under hypnosis. The survival instinct is strong. Of course, there are recorded circumstances of quite extraordinary happenings in Africa, India, and so on, but in those cases the victim was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that a witch doctor was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that a witch doctor or whoever had the power to put a spell on him that could result in his death."

"Preconditioned?"

"Preconditioned," said Buckley. "An unlikely happening for a you man brought up in the heartland of Western capitalism."

Fitzduane smiled. "Unlikely."

Buckley switched the projector off and allowed it to cool for a few minutes. The room was now lit only by the reflecting glow of an angle desk lamp. Fitzduane stood up and stretched. One way or another he had been sitting for most of the day, and he was tired and stiff from the long drive.

Click! The lower two-thirds of Rudolf von Graffenlaub filled the screen. Buckley pressed the button on the illuminated pointer, and the little arrow of light indicated the stained area around the crotch of the dead youth's jeans.

"You will observe," said Buckley in his lecturer's voice, "that the deceased's bowels evacuated as he was dying. You may think that this indicates poisoning or something of the sort. Such is not the case. In fact, it is reasonably common, though not inevitable, for such an occurrence to take place during the convulsions of dying. It is also not uncommon in the case of a male for ejaculation to take place. As it happens, in this case there was no evidence of ejaculation.

"Police inquiries disclosed that the deceased attended breakfast in the college refectory a couple of hours before his death. This gave me a little concern when I read the report before making my examination, since it's my experience that suicides rarely eat much in the period immediately prior to the taking of life. However, on examination of the stomach contents, I was relieved to find that he had not actually eaten at breakfast, though he had drunk some tea."

"Yet another indication of suicide," said Fitzduane.

"Well, if that was what he was contemplating, it was scarcely surprising that Mr. von Graffenlaub's mouth felt somewhat dry at the time." Buckley reverted to his lecturer's monotone. "You will observe that the zip of the jeans if fully done up and the penis is not exposed. That tends to eliminate the possibility of a sexual perversion that went wrong."

"Of what?" said Fitzduane, taken aback.

"Its' part of the world of bondage, masochism, and similar perversions," said Buckley mildly, "and it's not confined to high fliers in London or Los Angeles. It happens wherever there are people, such as in this good Catholic city of Cork. You see, partial asphyxia can be a sexual stimulant. This is often discovered accidentally, such as when schoolboys are wrestling. The next thing you know some youngster is locking himself in the bathroom or lavatory and playing games with ropes or chains around his neck as an aid to masturbation. Then something goes wrong, and he slips or puts the rope in the wrong place. He just nicks the vagus, and that's it. He's work for the likes of me. His parents have forced the bathroom lock or whatever, and there is little Johnny, cyanosed, looking just like Rudolf here except for his penis hanging out and dribbling semen. And often porno magazines all over the place."

"This is all news to me," said Fitzduane, "and I never thought I lived a sheltered existence."

"Well," said Buckley, "to each his own. Your average person knows more about football than hanging."

Fitzduane followed the pathologist's Volvo across the city, along

Macurtain Street , and turned left up the hill to the Arbutus Lodge.

The box of slides and a photocopy of the pathologist's file on the dead Bernese lay on the seat beside him. There seemed to be little doubt that the hanging had, in fact, been suicide. The matter of the motive was as obscure as before.

It never seemed to be easy to park in Cork. The cramped hotel forecourt jammed full of cars made maneuvering difficult, and it took some minutes and rather more frustration before they were able to squeeze through to the hotel's lower parking lot, where a corner was still free.

The sleet had stopped, thought the wind was viciously cold. For a brief moment, after they had locked their cars, Fitzduane and Buckley stood side by side and looked across to where the River Lee rolled by below them. Its route was outlined by streetlights on its banks. There was the occasional glint of reflected light on the black, oily surface of the river, and below and to their right they could see the lights of merchant ships tied up at the quays.

"Many of my customers are fished out of that river," said Buckley. "Cork people do so love to drown themselves. We had so many drownings last year that one of the mortuary attendants suggested building a special quay for suicides and supplying them with marker buoys and anchors."

"I guess it's the parking problem," said Fitzduane.

Buckley looked at the last morsel of carefully aged Irish beef with a slight hint of sadness. With due ceremony he matched it with the remaining sliver of buttered baked potato. The carefully loaded fork made its final journey.

"There is an end to everything," he said as he pushed his plate away. He looked across the table at Fitzduane and grinned benevolently.

"What I'm saying," said Buckley, "is that it doesn't do to make too much of a suicide. In the small patch of Cork I cover, I dealt with about a hanging a fortnight last year. There is some poor sod making his greatest gesture to the rest of mankind, and all it adds up to is a few hours' work for us employees of the state."

Fitzduane smiled. "An interesting perspective."

"But you're not persuaded?"

Fitzduane sipped at his port and took his time answering. "I have a tight focus," he said, "and it isn't how Rudolf killed himself that primarily concerns me. It's where and why. He did it on my doorstep."

Buckley shrugged. For the next few minutes the cheese board became his primary concern; then he returned to the subject of suicide. "It's a funny business," he said, "and we know nothing like enough about the reasons." He grinned. "Dead people don't talk a lot. One survey in London in the fifties analyzed nearly four hundred suicides and estimated that either physical or mental illness was the principal cause in about half the cases. Well, I can tell you that Rudolf was in excellent health, there was no evidence of early cancer or venereal disease or anything like that, and the reports I received would tend to rule out mental illness. So, according to the researchers, that leaves what they term social and personal factors."

"And what exactly does that mean?"

"Hanged if I know."

"Jesus!" groaned Fitzduane.

"Suicide statistics," continued Buckley, "leave a lot to be desired. For instance, if I am to believe what I read, Ireland has a suicide rate so low as to be almost irrelevant. So where, I ask myself, do all those bodies I work on come from? Or is Cork unusually suicide-prone?" He shook his head. "The reality is that people are embarrassed by suicide, so they fudge the figures. A suicide in the family is considered a disgrace. As recently as 1823, for example, a London suicide was buried at a crossroads in Chelsea with a stake through his body. Now, there is a nice example of social disapproval."