Death at Rottingdean (17 page)

“ ‘Tis Cap'n Smith,” she whispered. “E's the one 'oo deals in crooked goods. Remove Cap'n Smith, is wot George said 'ad to be done. Remove Cap'n Smith, and it'll all end.”

“What will end?” Kate asked, suddenly recollecting that the captain
had
been removed, although Mrs. Radford could not have known it.

Mrs. Radford cast down her eyes, and Kate thought she was not going to answer. But a moment later, she raised them again, now full of a flashing anger. “Are ye blind?” she demanded fiercely. “Are ye foolish? Why, th' smugglin‘, o'course. The 'ole village is in on't! 'Ow d'ye think a woman as poor and lowly as Dor'thy 'Oward could open a dress shop, I ask ye?” She seemed to take courage from her own words, for she pulled herself up straight in the chair and turned her gaze, withering now, and scornful, on Aunt Georgie.

“You think yer so ‘igh 'n' mighty, milady, wi' yer poor-relief cottages and yer overseers an' such. Yer village may have a good ‘eart, but its soul is rotten right through. And my brave, pure 'usband, God bless ‘im, knew all about it an' wuz ready to tell th' truth. So they killed 'im.”

“Who
killed him?” Kate asked sharply. “How do you know?”

But Mrs. Radford had said all she could. She fell into such a savage bout of weeping that Kate and Aunt Georgie could do nothing but wait until she had quieted a little, and then take their leave. As they left the cottage and were walking down the path to the dog cart, Kate saw a wagon passing, the team of horses driven by a uniformed constable. In the back of the wagon lay two sheet-covered corpses.

George Radford and Captain Smith might have been enemies in life, but they were making their final journey together.

“I wonder,” Charles said, “if you would like to see the X-ray photographs I made yesterday of the bones of my hand. They are really quite remarkable. Would you care to come down to the laboratory?”

The men all rose. “Ah, science,” Hodson said with a half-bitter mockery. “What subtle secrets it reveals! The latent pattern of the tip of the finger, the shadow of the bone beneath the flesh.”

Dr. Bassett, however, was more impressed. “The bones of the hand,” he marveled. “Think of the applications in medical science. And who knows? Soon we may he able to watch the very heart as it beats.

“And soon,” Kate said, rather more somberly, “we will have no secrets at all.”

—ROBIN PAIGE
Death at Devil's Bridge

 

 

 

A
rms folded across his chest, Charles watched the autopsy surgeon—who also happened to be the Queen's coroner for Brighton—at work. Dr. Barriston was experienced, precise, and methodical, although his humor took a macabre turn. Just now, he was elbow-deep in the body of George Radford, cheerfully singing a popular Gilbert and Sullivan ditty, “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.” Charles pulled out his watch. Twenty of twelve. They were making good progress.

“With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse,” Dr. Barriston remarked, and pulled the white sheet over George Radford's face. “Well done, old chap. You've told us as much as you're able. Pity you can't tell us who skewered you.” He glanced at the chief constable. “Satisfied, Sir Robert?”

Sir Robert Pinckney, Chief Constable of Brighton, turned to the fair-haired, ruddy-faced young constable standing at the foot of the table, a notebook in his hand. The young constable wore a strained look and his lips were pressed tightly together.

“Your notes are complete, Soames? Do you require any further clarification?” At the shake of the young man's head, he turned back to the doctor. “Satisfied enough,” he said grimly.

Barriston nodded. He was a stocky man with wild gray hair and gold-rimmed glasses, garbed in a blood-stained white laboratory smock. Singing
“I am very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,”
he went to a porcelain sink on one side of the room, turned on a tap, and began to scrub his hands vigorously. The water ran red.

“I take it, then. Paul,” Charles said, “that you believe Radford's stab wound to be neither accidental nor self-inflicted.”

Barriston left
“I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus”
hanging in mid-phrase. “Neither, Charlie,” he said, over his shoulder. “The gouge on the dorsal surface of the fourth rib can only have resulted from the weapon entering from behind, with considerable force, I might add. It was neither self-inflicted nor accidental—unless you wish to entertain the possibility that the deceased wedged a short sword into a tree and backed against it with sufficient strength to drive it completely through.” He reached for a towel and began to dry his hands.

The fair-haired constable snorted a laugh, then quickly covered his mouth and pretended to cough.

Charles allowed himself a small smile. “And the man was not drowned?”

“In a word, no.” The doctor took off his glasses, rinsed them under the tap, and dried them on the towel. “You saw the abrasions on the wrists and ankles. The victim spent some hours in the water, roped, most likely, to some sort of weight. But he was quite dead when he went in the water. Quite dead, poor chap.” He hooked his glasses over his ears. “Now, then, gentlemen. Shall we have luncheon?”

“Let's be done with it,” Sir Robert growled. He jerked his head toward the sheet-draped body on the other porcelain-topped table. “I don't exactly fancy eating with that job in front of me.”

The doctor sighed heavily. “Oh, very well. Although I should tell you that Mrs. McCormick, who is a very fine cook, is preparing an excellent partridge pie.” He lifted his nose and sniffed the air like a hopeful dog. “Ah, I can smell it now. The kitchen is just down this passageway, you know. Are you sure you won't reconsider?”

“I think,” Charles said tactfully, “that we should see what's involved in this one first. We are especially anxious to retrieve the fatal bullet.”

The body of Captain Smith was lying on the other table, and they went to stand beside it. The doctor stripped off the sheet, bent closely over the body, and began a careful visual inspection, muttering
“In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General.”
After several moments he looked up at Charles. “Seems like a fairly straightforward gunshot wound to me. In at the front, with no sign that it went out at the back. Why are you so keen on digging out the bullet? D'you intend to use it again?”

Charles raised one eyebrow. “The very model of a modern Major-General has not included forensic ballistics in his curriculum?”

“Ah,” Barriston said wisely. “You intend to try a few of Professor Lacassagne's parlor tricks, eh? Hope to nail our corpse's killer with a few trifling rifling grooves, do you?” He lifted his voice.
“When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery, When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery
—”

“As a matter of fact,” Charles said mildly, “I am following Lacassagne's example, although I don't think it is the rifling pattern we are after. The weapon is likely to be so unique that—” He shrugged. “But we will know more when we see the bullet, perhaps.”

“You may, but I shall still be in the dark,” Barriston replied.
“For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury, Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century.
However, since you are set on excavating for the bullet, I would suggest that we locate its exact position with an X-ray before we slice the captain open and begin burrowing like moles in his innards.”

“An X-ray?” Sir Robert asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Exactly,” Charles said. “A bullet often changes course radically after it enters the body, particularly if the projectile is traveling at a high velocity, or if it ricochets off a bone. An X-ray can locate it with great accuracy.”

“I say amen to that,” Barriston declared emphatically. “Fishing around among the organs is messy and time-consuming, and there is always the chance that one will miss the projectile amidst the mess of liver, intestines, and so forth. An X-ray can save all that bloody trouble. Besides, it is of great scientific interest—revealing the secrets of the human anatomy and all that.”

Sir Robert looked at Charles. “Why do you assume that the bullet is of a high velocity?”

“Because the cartridge indicates that it is a small caliber bullet with a large powder charge,” Charles replied. He nodded at the doctor. “I believe the X-ray is in order, Paul.”

The doctor grinned. “Well, well. You still have an interest in this sort of thing, then? Still have your own X-ray equipment, do you?”

“Absolutely,” Charles replied emphatically. “I happen to consider the X-ray one of the most promising scientific developments of the decade. I have sent for my manservant, Lawrence Quibbley. He is skilled at developing X-ray films and can manage it for us, if you like.”

The doctor nodded approvingly. “Well, then, we may have an early lunch after all. If you will be good enough to position our captain's table under the Crookes tube, I'll fetch the first film. Since the wound is in the center of the chest, we'll take two overlapping X-rays. Wherever the bullet has got to, we shall be sure to spot the little devil.”

While the doctor went for film, the three men shifted the heavy table under a glass bulb suspended by a chain at eye level and connected to several wires. The wires looped across the ceiling and down the closest wall to a square wooden box from the side of which protruded a lever. In a moment, the doctor returned with a heavy paper envelope, some twelve by eighteen inches.

“Now, if you'll be good enough to raise the fellow's shoulders a bit,” he directed, “I'll slide this film beneath him. I've brought only this, having learned that one must keep one's spare film out of the room.” He chuckled wryly. “I fogged an entire pack before I learned that small detail. The rays are quite pervasive.”

As Charles and the chief constable raised the dead man, the doctor slid the envelope onto the table and positioned it under the upper torso. “There,” he said, standing back. “Are we ready to begin?”

“How does it work?” the young constable asked curiously. “It would seem impossible for light rays to penetrate solid flesh.”

“ ‘O! that this too too solid flesh would melt. 'eh?” Barriston replied. “But you see, you have made a fundamental error, my boy. These are not light rays. They are invisible rays of a mysterious and arcane nature yet unknown, created by a powerful electric current passing through the partially evacuated Crookes tube. They are capable of penetrating both vegetable and animal matter.” He held up a finger. “Observe closely, while
I hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore, and whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.”
Whistling, he went to the box on the wall, threw the lever, and the bulb glowed briefly with an eerie green light.

“There,” he said. “Did you see it?”

“See wot?” the young constable demanded. “I saw a green light, that's all.”

“Ah, but therein lies the mystery, my naive young friend!” Barriston exclaimed. “Unseen by you, the invisible rays penetrated right through the captain's carcass, casting a shadow image on the photographic film placed beneath him. When it is developed, we shall see the shadow of his spine, his barrel of ribs, and the bullet that did him in. What do you think of that, eh? No more secrets—all, all is revealed. Quite, quite
parabolous,
wouldn't you say?”

The ruddy-faced constable stirred nervously. “Yes, but if these X-rays go through dead bodies, wot keeps 'em from goin' through live ones?”

“Why, nothing at all,” the doctor said. “In fact, they just went right through all of us in this room.” He smiled reassuringly. “I shouldn't worry, though. They are perfectly safe. I have been using the X-ray for some months now, and I have not yet had a patient show so much as a blister or rash. On a clear day, the bright sun can do a great deal more damage to us.” He rubbed his hands happily. “Now, we shall position another sheet of film under the middle to lower torso and take a second X-ray. And then, gentlemen, we can enjoy our lunch while Sheridan's assistant does his work.”

Charles himself had wondered about the safety of X-rays. The materials and techniques used in photography were on the cutting edge of both chemistry and physics, and the hazards involved were often not fully appreciated. Compressed acetylene had been used for photographic lighting until just recently, and several disastrous explosions had occurred before the danger of compressing the gas became evident. But since he had no evidence of any potential danger, he chose to keep his reservations to himself.

And so, to the accompaniment of
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform, And tell you ev'ry detail of Caractacus's uniform,
they completed the second X-ray and handed both films over to Lawrence Quibbley. In the doctor's dining room, Charles, Sir Robert, the young constable, and Barriston sat down to the epicurean pleasures of not just one but two fragrant partridge pies, a large apple pudding, and a bottle of excellent wine. They were still lingering over cigars when Lawrence entered the room and handed the exposed films to Charles.

“Thank you, Lawrence,” Charles said. “Stay near, will you? I shall want you to return to Rottingdean with me. We have one or two jobs to do there.” He gave the films to Barriston, who took them to the window.