“Nothing. Nothing I could see. Not my job.”
“It was strangulation, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes. Definitely.”
Something in the doctor’s tone caused Grant to look sharply at him.
“I mean his neck wasn’t broken. He was asphyxiated. Must have been a rough death.”
“They’re all rough,” said Grant, and his eyes shifted towards the girl. She was standing just inside the door, very pale, very frightened. The attendant was still regarding her. “This is the rough part for us. The identification. The girl’s only nineteen, hardly knew the old boy, and we have to put her through this. Well . . .”
He gestured. The uniformed cop took the girl’s arm and led her forward. Ramsey walked over to the head of the slab and Grant stood beside the girl. His shoulders shifted. I had the impression he wanted to put his arm around her. But he didn’t. He was a policeman and he couldn’t. He nodded and Ramsey drew the sheet down. He drew it down only enough to expose the face and I heard the girl draw her breath in with a sort of whimper. I looked down. I was surprised to see how old the man had been. I’d heard Ramsey say he was in his seventies, but somehow it hadn’t registered – age seems irrelevant in discussing a corpse. But seeing him was different. Ramsey had obviously done his best to make the face seem relaxed and natural. But even so I could tell he’d died hard. The lips were forced upwards by the pressure of a swollen tongue and the eyes bulged beneath closed lids. The girl stared for a moment and then covered her face with both hands and turned away. Ramsey drew the sheet back over the old grey face.
“Miss?” Grant said gently.
She nodded behind her hands. It wasn’t exactly a positive identification, but it satisfied the formalities, and Grant turned to the cop and said, “Take Miss Smith outside.” He waited until they had left, then sighed.
“This will be a bad one,” he said. “There’s always so much public outrage when some old guy gets knocked off. So much interest and interference. And there seems to be no motive behind this one. Just a nice old guy. Killed in his own room. His landlady sort of took care of him, I guess. Anyway, she found the body this morning. Bringing him a pot of tea. He was on his bed and she thought he was sleeping. Then she looked down . . .well, you know how they look with their tongues sticking out black and their eyes popping. She dropped the teapot, I can tell you that. The killer must have entered by the front door. Just walked in. Had to go right past the landlady’s room, too, but she heard nothing. I think she’s a bit deaf, although she got annoyed when I asked her about her hearing. Must be deaf or she wouldn’t have been annoyed, eh? Just walked in cool as a cucumber and strangled the old boy and walked out again. Obviously not robbery. Nothing missing. Hell, he had nothing worth taking as far as that goes. Lived on a pension. Trimmed the hedge in return for his meals. Had a few friends his own age and drank an occasional glass of beer with them. No enemies as far as we know. No opportunity to make an enemy, the way he lived. Just a quiet old chap waiting to die . . .”
“Well, the waiting is over,” Ramsey said.
“For him, yeah.”
Ramsey and I both looked at Grant.
“For us, it’s just beginning,” he said. “A crime without motives. Well, you know what that means. We wait for the next one.”
“You think he’ll kill again?” I asked.
“The mad ones always do,” Grant told us. He pursed his lips; became aware of the displaced lock over his brow and brushed it back impatiently. “They kill and they kill again, and all we can do is wait until a pattern develops, a general motivation rather than a specific motive. Oh, we get them in the end. The pattern always emerges. But it isn’t a line on a graph or a pin stuck in a map. The pattern is made by the corpses of the victims. A man can have nightmares about that, you know. Any man. You dream of a tapestry, and it’s all vague shapes and forms and then you get closer and see the design is made up of dead men. It isn’t a tapestry then, it’s a filigree of intertwining limbs and arched torsos. And faces. The faces staring out from the pattern, mouths open in silent screams of accusation, eyes wide in sightless fear. A man . . . well, he dreams.”
Grant broke off abruptly; looked rather ashamed of the intensity with which he’d been speaking and jammed a cigarette in his mouth. It was the first time I’d ever thought of a policeman as human, I think. He puffed on the cigarette, his cheeks sinking in, his eyes thoughtful.
“Would you say it was the work of a madman, Doc?” he asked. “I mean, from the examination . . .”
Ramsey looked troubled.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Some aspects . . . and yet . . . Well, it’s all in my report, Inspector. Black and white. It will mean more if you read it than if I talk about it. A report is always more objective and logical.”
“Sure. I’ll read it.”
Grant turned as if to leave and then turned back, the cigarette in his teeth, his cheeks hollow.
“I’m delaying,” he said. “I don’twant to face that kid again. Have to, of course. But what if she asks me why the old man was killed? People ask cops things like that, you know? And will she feel better if I tell her it was a maniac? That there was no purpose, no reason; that nothing was gained by his death? Oh, I’m supposed to tell her I can’t discuss it at the present time. Against regulations. Not allowed. But will that make her feel better? You drag some kid in and make her look at a dead body . . . ah, hell. It’s not pleasant, Doc.”
Ramsey nodded; looked at his hands thoughtfully. His hands had been scrubbed spotlessly clean, and there was nothing there to see. But he looked. I stepped back, feeling I was intruding. Grant’s eyes had gone blank and his brow furrowed. The ash dropped unnoticed from his cigarette, a long ash that disintegrated when it hit the tiles and looked very improper in that sanitary and disinfected chamber. Somehow the ash looked too clean on that sterile floor.
“I hope to God it wasn’t a maniac,” he said very softly.
Ramsey lowered his eyes. I took another step back. Then Grant turned sharply and walked out with his shoulders square. The attendant did not look up from his book, and it was some time before Ramsey looked up from the floor . . .
We left the building and walked across to the parking lot. Most of the motorcars had gone by this time and the big concrete space looked strangely abandoned and neglected and forlorn. Ramsey hadn’t spoken; he seemed to be pondering something – something both disagreeable and interesting – his expression that of a little boy using a stick to poke at the decaying carcass of a dead animal. He was thinking about the murder, of course, and I sensed he was considering that part which was in his report and which he hadn’t wanted to talk about. It had captured my interest and, by this time, we were close enough to speak openly.
“Well? Was it a madman?” I asked, when we were in the car.
Ramsey shrugged.
I made an elaborate task of fitting the keys into the ignition but did not start the engine.
“There was something – some aspect – in your report, which troubles you, wasn’t there?”
“There was, yes.”
“None of my business, of course . . .”
He waved a hand.
“Oh, it isn’t that. It troubled me because . . . well, because it was unusual. And gruesome. I’ve been a doctor too long to get upset by violence and bloodshed, John. But this was different. It was . . . well, calculated. Ghastly but calculated. The fact itself implied frenzy and rage, and yet there was none of that in evidence. It was as if the killer had coldly and deliberately set about his ghoulish act .
The term startled me.