Stanislaw Lem: The Investigation

Rattling rhythmically at each floor, the old-fashioned elevator moved upward past glass doors decorated with etchings of flowers. It stopped. Four men emerged and walked down the corridor toward a pair of leather-covered doors.

The doors swung open.

“This way, gentlemen,” gestured someone standing just inside.

Gregory was the last one in, right behind the doctor. Compared to the brightly lit corridor, the room was almost dark. Through the window the bare branches of a tree were visible in the fog outside.

The Chief Inspector sat down behind his high, dark desk, which was enclosed by a low ornamental railing. Except for two telephones, an intercom, his pipe, his eyeglasses, and a small piece of chamois cloth, there was nothing on the polished wood surface.

Seating himself in an upholstered armchair on one side of the room, Gregory noticed Queen Victoria eying them from a small portrait on the wall behind the desk. The Chief Inspector looked at each of the men in turn as if counting them or trying to memorize their faces. One of the side walls was covered by a huge map of southern England; on the wall opposite there was a dark shelf lined with books.

“Gentlemen,” the Chief Inspector said at last, “I want you to go over every aspect of this case. Since the official record has been my only source of information, I think we should start with a brief summary. Farquart, perhaps you can begin.”

“Certainly, sir, but I don’t know anything about the beginning of the case except what’s in the reports.”

“There were no reports at the very beginning,” commented Gregory somewhat too loudly. Everyone turned to look at him. With exaggerated casualness he began to rummage energetically in his pocket as if looking for a cigarette.

Farquart straightened up in his chair.

“The affair began around the middle of last November, but there may have been some earlier incidents that were ignored at the time. The first report to the police was made three days before Christmas, but an investigation in January showed that these corpse incidents began much earlier. The report was made in the town of Engender, and it was, strictly speaking, semiofficial in character. Plays, the local undertaker, complained to the commander of the district police station, who happens to be his brother-in-law, that someone was moving the bodies around during the night.”

“What exactly did this moving consist of?” The Chief Inspector was methodically cleaning his glasses.

“The bodies were left in one position in the evening and found in different positions the following morning. Strictly speaking, only one body was involved — apparently a certain drowned man who—”

“Apparently?” the Chief Inspector repeated in the same indifferent tone.

Farquart straightened himself even more in his chair.

“No one thought the incident was important at the time,” he explained, “and when we finally began collecting evidence it was hard to get the exact details. The undertaker isn’t completely sure anymore whether the body involved was actually the drowned man’s. In fact the whole report is somewhat irregular. Gibson, the Engender police commander, decided not to log any of this because he thought—”

“Do we have to go over all this again?” shouted a man who was sprawled in a chair next to the bookshelf. His legs were crossed so high that a line of bare skin was visible above his gold-colored socks.

“I’m sorry, but it’s absolutely necessary,” Farquart answered in a dull voice without looking at him. The Chief Inspector put on his glasses, and his face, until now a total blank, took on a kindly expression.

“We can do without the formal aspects of the investigation for the time being,” he said. “Please go on, Farquart.”

“Whatever you say, Chief Inspector. The second report was made in Planting, eight days after the first. Someone moving corpses at night in the cemetery mortuary again. The dead man was a stevedore named Thicker — he died after a long illness that almost bankrupted his family.”

Farquart glanced out of the corner of his eye at Gregory, who was shifting around impatiently.

“The funeral was scheduled for the morning. When the family showed up at the mortuary they noticed that the body was lying face downward — that is, the back was facing upward — and that its hands were open, which gave them the impression that Thicker… had come back to life. At least that’s what the family believed. Before long, rumors about some kind of trance were circulating in the neighborhood; people said that Thicker had only seemed to be dead, then woke up, found himself in a coffin, and died of fright, this time for good.

“The whole story was nonsense,” Farquart continued. “A local doctor had certified Thicker’s death beyond any shadow of a doubt. But as the rumors spread through the surrounding area, attention was drawn to the fact that people had been talking for some time about so-called moving corpses that changed position during the night.”

“What does ‘for some time’ mean?” asked the Chief Inspector.

“There’s no way of knowing. The rumors referred to incidents in Shaltam and Dipper. At the beginning of January the local forces made a cursory investigation, but they didn’t take the matter too seriously, so they weren’t very systematic. The evidence given by the local people was partly prejudiced, partly inconsistent, and as a result the investigation was worthless. In Shaltam it involved the body of one Samuel Filthey, dead of a heart attack. According to the gravedigger, who happens to be the town drunk, Filthey is supposed to have ‘turned over in the coffin’ on Christmas night. No one can substantiate the story. The incident in Dipper involved the body of an insane woman that was found in the morning on the floor next to the coffin. According to the neighbors, the woman’s stepdaughter, who hated her, slipped into the funeral home during the night and threw her out of her coffin. The truth is, there are so many stories and rumors that it’s impossible to get your bearings. It all boils down to one person giving you the name of an alleged eyewitness, and the ‘witness’ sending you to someone else, and so on…

“The case would have been dropped as a sure ad acta ,” Farquart began speaking faster, “but on January sixteenth the corpse of one James Trayle disappeared from the mortuary in Treakhill. Sergeant Peel, on detail from our C.I.D., investigated the incident. The corpse was removed from the mortuary sometime between midnight and five in the morning, when the undertaker discovered that it was missing. The deceased was a male… maybe forty-five years old—”

“You’re not sure?” the Chief Inspector interrupted. He was sitting with his head bent as if peering at himself in a highly polished mirror. Farquart cleared his throat.

“I am sure, but that’s the way it was told to me… Anyway, the cause of death was poisoning by illuminating gas. It was an unfortunate accident.”

“Autopsy?” said the Chief Inspector, raising his eyebrows. He leaned over to the side and pulled a handle which opened the casement windows. A whiff of damp air flowed into the warm, heavy atmosphere of the room.

“There was no autopsy, but we’re convinced it was an accident. Six days later, on January twenty-third, there was another incident, this time in Spittoon. The missing body belonged to one John Stevens, a twenty-eight-year-old laborer in a distillery. He died the day before, after inhaling poisonous fumes while cleaning one of the vats. The body was taken to the mortuary around three in the afternoon. The caretaker saw it for the last time around nine in the evening. In the morning it wasn’t there. Sergeant Peel looked into this incident also, but nothing came of this investigation either, mainly because at the time we still hadn’t thought of linking these two incidents with the earlier ones…”