‘I suppose that’s what they mean by rigor mortice.’ said Dr Board, as Dr Mayfield desperately tried to steer the conversation back to the joint Honours degree.
‘Dear Lord,’ muttered Professor Baxendale. Judy had eluded the efforts of Barney and his men and had slumped back down the hole. ‘To think what she must have suffered. Did you see that damned hand?’
Dr Mayfield had. He shuddered. Behind him Dr Board sniggered. ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,’ he said gaily. ‘At least Wilt has saved himself the cost of a gravestone. All they’ll have to do is prop her up with Here Stands Eva Wilt, Born So and So, Murdered last Saturday carved across her chest. In life monumental, in death a monument.’
‘I must say, Board,’ said Dr Mayfield, ‘I find your sense of humour singularly ill-timed.’
‘Well they’ll never be able to cremate her, that’s for certain,’ continued Dr Board. ‘And the undertaker who can fit that little lot into a coffin will be nothing short of a genius. I suppose they could always take a sledgehammer to her.’
In the corner Dr Cox fainted.
‘I think I’ll have another whisky if you don’t mind,’ said Professor Baxendale weakly. Dr Mayfield poured him a double. When he turned back to the window Judy was protruding once more from the hole. ‘The thing about embalming,’ said Dr Board, ‘is that it costs so much. Now I’m not saying that thing out there is a perfect likeness of Eva Wilt as I remember her…’
‘For heaven’s sake, do you have to go on about it?’ snarled Dr Mayfield, but Dr Board was not to be stopped. ‘Quite apart from the legs there seems to be something odd about the breasts. I know Mrs Wilt’s were large but they do seem to have inflated. Probably due to the gases. They putrefy, you know, which would account for it.’
By the time the committee went onto lunch they had lost all appetite for food and most of then were drunk.
Inspector Flint was less fortunate. He didn’t like being present at exhumations at the best of times and particularly when the corpse on whose behalf he was acting showed such a marked inclination to go back where she came from. Besides he was in two minds whether it was a corpse or not. It looked like a corpse and it certainly behaved like a corpse, albeit a very heavy one, but there was something about the knees that suggested that all was not anatomically as it should have been with whatever it was they had dug up. There was a double jointedness and a certain lack of substance where the legs stuck forwards at right angles that seemed to indicate that Mrs Wilt had lost not only her life but both kneecaps as well. It was this mangled quality that made Barney’s job so difficult and exceedingly distasteful. After the body had dropped down the hole for the fourth time Barney went down himself to assist from below.
‘If you sods drop her,’ he shouted from the depths, ‘you’ll have two dead bodies down here so hang on to that rope whatever happens. I’m going to tie it round her neck.’
Inspector Flint peered down the shaft. ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he shouted, ‘we don’t want her decapitated. We need her all in one piece.’
‘She is all in one bloody piece,’ came Barney’s muffled reply, ‘that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.’
‘Can’t you tie the rope around something else?’
‘Well I could,’ Barney conceded, ‘but I’m not going to. A leg is more likely to come off than her head and I’m not going to be underneath her when it goes.’
‘All right.’ said the Inspector, ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing, that’s all.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing. The sod who put her down here knew what he was doing and no mistake.’
But this fifth attempt failed, like the previous four, and Judy was lowered into the depths where she rested heavily on Barney’s foot.
‘Go and get that bloody crane,’ he shouted, ‘I can’t stand much more of this.’
‘Nor can I,’ muttered the Inspector, who still couldn’t make up his mind what it was he was supposed to be disinterring; a doll dressed up to look like Mrs Wilt or Mrs Wilt dressed up to look like something some demented sculptor forgot to finish. What few doubts he had had about Wilt’s sanity had been entirely dispelled by what he was presently witnessing. Any man who could go to the awful lengths Wilt had gone to render, and the word was entirely apposite whichever way you took it, either his wife or a plastic doll with a vagina, both inaccessible and horribly mutilated, must be insane.
Sergeant Yates put his thoughts into words. ‘You’re not going to tell me now that the bastard isn’t off his rocker,’ he said, as the crane was moved into position and the rope lowered and attached to Judy’s neck.
‘All right, now take her away,’ shouted Barney.
In the dining-room only Dr Board was enjoying his lunch. The eight members of the CNAA committee weren’t. Their eyes were glued to the scene below.
‘I suppose it could be said she was in statue pupillari,’ said Dr Board, helping himself to some more Lemon Meringue, ‘in which case we stand in loco parentis. Not a pleasant thought, gentlemen. Not that she was ever a very bright student. I once had her for an Evening Class in French literature. I don’t know what she got out of Fleurs du Mal but I do remember thinking that Baudelaire…’
‘Dr Board,’ said Dr Mayfield drunkenly, ‘for a so-called cultured man you are entirely without feeling.’
‘Something I share with the late Mrs Wilt, by the look of things.’ said Dr Board, glancing out of the window, ‘and while we are still on the subject, things seem to be coming to a head. They do indeed.’ Even Dr Cox, recently revived and coaxed into having some mutton, looked out of the window. As the crane slowly winched Judy into view the Course Board and the Committee rose and went to watch. It was an unedifying sight. Near the top of the shaft Judy’s left leg caught in a crevice while her outstretched arm embedded itself in the clay.
‘Hold it,’ shouted Barney indistinctly, but it was too late. Unnerved by the nature of his load or in the mistaken belief that be had been told to lift harder, the crane driver hoisted away. There was a ghastly cracking sound as the noose tightened and the next moment Judy’s concrete head, capped by Eva Wilt’s wig, looked as if it was about to fulfil Inspector Flint’s prediction that she would be decapitated. In the event he need not have worried. Judy was made of sterner stuff than might have been expected. As the head continued to rise and the body to remain firmly embedded in the shaft Judy’s neck rose to the occasion. It stretched.
‘Dear God,’ said Professor Baxendale frantically, ‘Will it never end?’
Dr Board studied the phenomenon with increasing interest ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ he said. ‘Mind you we do make a point of stretching our students, eh Mayfield?’
But Dr Mayfield made no response. As Judy took on the configuration of an ostrich that had absentmindedly buried its head in a pail of cement he knew that the joint Honours degree was doomed.