"And now?" said Günther.
Kilmara waited a beat and grinned. "I'm going to go home early and bathe the twins," he said. He put on his coat, checked his personal weapons, and slid down the specially installed fireman's pole to the underground garage. He'd tell Fitzduane about this second hanging tomorrow. Hugo would have to get by on one hanging this night.
He was unmercifully splashed by the twins.
* * * * *
The city of Cork, Ireland's second largest, had been sacked, burned, pillaged, looted, and destroyed so often since its foundation in the sixth century by St. Finbar that it now seemed laid out with the primary objective of stopping any invader in his tracks.
Its traffic problem was impressive in its turgid complexity, and on a dark, wet March evening it had reached a pinnacle of congestion that was a tribute to the ingenuity of its corporation's planning committee.
Fitzduane had a manic private theory that the reason the city's population had expanded was that none of the inhabitants could get out, and so they stayed and became traders or lawyers or pregnant or both and conversed in a strange singsong that sounded to the uninitiated like a form of Chinese but was, in fact, the Cork accent.
Fitzduane actually quite liked Cork, but he could never understand how a city that stood astride only one river could have so many bridges — all, apparently, going the wrong way. In addition, there seemed to be more bridges than during his last visit, and some seemed to be in different locations. Maybe they were designed to move secretly in the dead of night. Maybe the reason the British had burned the city — yet again — in 1921 was just to find a parking space.
He was agreeably surprised when the SouthInfirmaryHospital loomed through the sleet.
* * * * *
Fitzduane transferred the slides of the hanging to the circular magazine of a Kodak Carousel projector and switched it on.
The screen was suddenly brilliant white in the small office. He pressed the advance button. There was a click and a whir and a click. The white of the screen was replaced by a blur of color. He adjusted the zoom lens and the focus, and the face of the hanged boy, much enlarged, came sharply into view.
Buckley held an illuminated pointer in his hand, and from time to time, as the slides clicked and whirred and clicked, he would point out a feature with the small arrow of light.
"Of course," said the pathologist, "I didn't see the locus —the place it actually happened — so these slides of yours help. They should really have been handed in to me before the inquest, but no matter.
"Now, under our system, the decision as to whether the pathologist sees the deceased at the locus depends on the police. If they have any reason to be suspicious, the body is not disturbed in any way until the fullest investigations are carried out. In this particular case the sergeant used his judgment. A youth was involved, and his death occurred on the grounds of his own college. A very fraught situation, and the sight of a victim of hanging can be quite traumatic, as you know. There were no signs of foul play, and the sergeant knew that hanging almost invariably means suicide. There was also the matter of determining that the lad was actually dead. All these factors encouraged the sergeant to take the view that he should cut down the deceased immediately, and I have to say that it is my belief that he acted correctly."
Fitzduane looked at the grimacing figure on the screen. He had an impulse to wipe away the blood and mucus that so disfigured the face. He tried to make his voice sound detached as he spoke. "He must have been dead, surely. I checked his pulse when I found him, and there was nothing — and just look at him."
The pathologist cleared his throat. "I must point out, Mr. Fitzduane," he said, "that given the position of the hanging body, I doubt that you could have carried out an adequate examination. The absence of a pulse alone, especially considering a normal layman's limited experience, is by no means a sufficient determination of death."
"Are you saying that he could have been alive when I found him — even without a pulse and looking like that?"
"Yes," said Buckley in a matter-of-fact voice, "it's possible. Our investigations, based upon when he was last seen in the college, when the rain stopped and so on, plus, of course, your own testimony, indicate that the hanging must have taken place between half an hour and an hour of your finding him. He could have been alive — just — in the same way that a victim of drowning can survive a period of total immersion and can be brought around by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."
As Buckley spoke, Fitzduane tried to imagine giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to that bluish face. He could almost feel those distorted lips stained with spittle, mucus, and blood. Had his revulsion killed the boy? Had it really been so impossible to cut the body down?"
"For what it's worth," said Buckley, "and this is not a scientific opinion, merely common sense, he was almost certainly dead when you found him. And anyway, I fail to see how you could have cut him down single-handed, since the evidence stated, as I recall, that you had no knife of similar item. In addition, there would have been the probability of further damage to the boy when the body dropped. Finally, if any trace of life did remain, the brain would have been damaged beyond repair. You would have saved a vegetable. So do not harbor any feelings of guilt. They are neither justified nor constructive."
Fitzduane smiled faintly at Buckley.
"No, I'm not a mind reader," said the pathologist. "It's just that I've been down this road many times before. If suicides realized the trauma they inflict on those who find their damaged remains, some might think twice." He turned back to the business at hand.
"Our friend here," he said, "is a classic example of a victim of asphyxial death resulting from suspension by a ligature. You will note the cyanosed complexion and the petechiae — those tiny red dots. The petechiae are more pronounced where the capillaries are least firmly supported. Externally they show here as a fine shower in the scalp, brow, and face above the level of compression. You will observe the tongue, lifted up at the base and made turgid and protruding. You will observe the prominent eyeballs. You will observe that the level of the tightening of the ligature — the blue nylon rope in this case — does not circle the neck horizontally as would tend to be the case in manual strangulation. Instead, it is set at the thyrohyoid level in front and rises to a suspension point just behind the ear. The impression on the body tissues, incidentally, conforms exactly to what you see here. Such would not be the case if he had been manually strangled beforehand or indeed hanged elsewhere. There are invariably discrepancies.
"Now, hanging normally causes death in one of three possible ways: vagal inhibition, cerebral anoxia, or asphyxia."
Fitzduane made a gesture, and Buckley paused.
"Forgive me," said Fitzduane. "I'm familiar with some of these terms, but I think it would be wiser to consider me an ignorant layman."
Buckley chuckled apologetically. He selected a pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it with tobacco. There was the flare of a match followed by the sounds of heavy puffing. "Rudolf died from asphyxia," continued Buckley. "He strangled himself to death, thought I doubt that was his intention. The tree he chose and the branch he jumped from gave him a drop of about one meter eighty. We can't be quite sure because he may have jumped up and off the branch, thus increasing the drop.