"It’s obvious," retorted an officer of the Parisian Surete Urbain irritably, anxious to get on with the exercise. "We found a hundred and ninety-seven bones, all different. If there were more than one person here there would have been some duplications: two mandibles, two left clavicles-"
"True," Gideon heard Joly say quietly behind him, apparently talking to John.
"No, no, no," the Kenyan said. "To find duplications would indeed prove that there is more than one burial. But not to find them does not prove that there is not more than one burial." He folded his slender arms. "It is not warranted by the facts."
"That’s true too," Joly allowed.
But the class grumbled predictably at the Kenyan: Hadn’t Dr. Oliver said a hundred times that science doesn’t deal with proof, but with probability? And to find 197 bones without a single duplication-
"No, wait," Gideon said. "Captain Morefu’s making a sound point. We can do better than that. As a matter of fact, I have; while you were putting the skeleton together, I did a little matching."
He picked up the fifth cervical vertebrae, which was tagged with blue tape, and the fourth, tagged with green. "Vertebrae are the most complexly shaped and probably the most variable bones in the body, and they nestle into each other more closely than any others do; that’s what gives the spinal column its strength. Now, this C4 and C5 were in two different packages; if they were from two different people, they might fit roughly into each other-but not like this."
He held up the small, hollow-centered bones and slipped them against each other. They fit perfectly; as neat, tight, and inescapably matching as a pair of stackable chairs.
"No. No, Dr. Oliver, no." Captain Morefu was shaking his fine head. "How can I accept this as proof? How can we say with certainty that no two people have ever had greatly similar spinal columns? Many times have I seen-"
"Wait, Captain; give me a chance. There’s something else, and it’s about as close to proof as we’re going to get in this business. If you look at these two vertebrae-" He paused and held them out. "Here, have a look. Tell me if you see anything."
The Kenyan took them, turning them slowly around, frowning hard. After a few seconds he looked up, his face transformed and smiling. "These scratches. They match."
"That’s it," Gideon said and explained to the others. "The captain’s referring to the cut marks made during the dismemberment. If you hold the adjacent bones together in their natural positions, you can see how some of the marks start on one bone and end on the other. How could that happen unless they were together when the cuts were made? Case closed; We’re dealing with a single body."
He put the vertebrae down. "Now get going with your analysis. And remember, start with the sex."
"What difference does it make what we start with?" someone wanted to know. "Why the sex first?"
"Partly because you have to know the sex to draw other conclusions from it. Men and women have different proportions, as you may have noticed."
"No shit," one of the Americans said.
"But also," Gideon said with a smile, "sexing a skeleton is easier than anything else, and it’s nice to start with something easy. If you just flipped a coin you’d be right half the time. Compared to determining age, there’s nothing to it."
"For you, maybe," someone muttered.
"For you too," he said, not quite truthfully. "You’ve all watched me do it. Now let’s get to it."
The exercise went slowly while the groups measured, calculated, and debated. Gideon was itching to have a go at the new material himself, but resigned himself to wait, enjoying the teacherly satisfaction of watching his students put to competent use what they had learned from him.
At a little before ten, the three groups began their reports. They were unanimous in their determination of sex: the skeleton was that of a male. Gideon congratulated them and announced his agreement. A moment’s glance at the pelvis had confirmed what he already knew.
The groups also agreed on height; not surprising since all the long bones were there, and the application of the Trotter and Gleser equations was an easy task. But the estimate was surprisingly low: five-feet-four, plus or minus two inches. His own quick and dirty estimate from the vertebrae had been five-eight, and he couldn’t possibly have been four inches off. Two, maybe. Besides, Joly had already told him his findings matched Alain’s description. The attendees had fouled up somehow. He’d go over their work with them in a few minutes and straighten them out. Odd that all three groups should get it so wrong.
The reports on race were next. Given the complexity- some anthropologists said the impossibility-of determining ancestry from the skeleton, he hadn’t been going to ask it of them. But they had wanted to try, using the few simplified guidelines he’d given them (and, he was sure, the various stereotypes about skull thickness, brain-cavity-size, and "primitive" features that many of them had brought with them). Gideon let them go ahead, confident the experience would be instructive if nothing else.
It was. Two of the groups couldn’t agree among themselves and gave up trying, their preconceptions in tatters. This Gideon thought of as salutary and not unexpected. But the final group’s report was a dandy.
"We have determined," said the grave, slow-spoken female CID inspector who presented their report, "that the remains are those of a person of the Mongoloid race."
"Mongoloid?" echoed Gideon.
"Mongoloid," he was assured. "Quite probably northeastern Asiatic."
Anyone but the solid, relentlessly sober Inspector Hawkins and he might have thought his leg was being pulled. "Now where the hell did you get Mongoloid from?" he asked.
Inspector Hawkins was unfazed. "We applied intermembral ratio analysis and got a tibial-femoral index of 81.4," she replied without tripping over a syllable.
Well, she had her theory right, if nothing else. A tibial-femoral index of 81.4 meant that the tibia-the shin bone-was 81.4 percent as long as the thigh bone. And anything less than 83 percent was generally accepted as Mongoloid, reflecting the shortness of the Asiatic lower leg compared to the upper leg. In other races the typical ratio was much higher.
"Did you take the physiological lengths of the bones, not the maximum lengths?" he asked.
For the first time the sturdy Inspector Hawkins faltered. "The…ah…physiological lengths?"
That explained it, he thought with some relief. For a moment there he’d started to wonder what was going on. As racial criteria went, intermembral ratios weren’t bad, but they required trickier measurements than he’d been able to present in class. He’d spent a few minutes talking about the principles involved, but he hadn’t expected anyone to try and apply them. Fine, it would be one more good lesson for them to take back: using half-understood techniques was a mistake that could result in ludicrous errors. Better to call in an expert when you weren’t sure what you were doing.
"Here, let me show you how it’s done," he said, and taking the sliding calipers he moved to the table and picked up the right tibia. "Now, the physiological length of a long bone is its functional length, which you…"
His voice faded as he became aware of the odd heft of the bone. Puzzled, he looked more closely at it. Then quickly at the other tibia, and then both femurs. It was the first time he’d really examined them, and after twenty or thirty seconds’ study, he was still puzzled.
For one thing, Inspector Hawkins was right, even if she’d gone about it wrong. He didn’t need the calipers to tell him that the tibia was quite short compared to the femur. But it was the lightness of these normally dense leg bones that bothered him; that and their shape. There was something odd about them; not wildly odd, but
…something.
"Strange…" he said, more to himself than anyone else, and ran his fingers down the dusty, dry, brown length of a femur.