"This is all news to me," said Fitzduane, "and I never thought I lived a sheltered existence."
"Well," said Buckley, "to each his own. Your average person knows more about football than hanging."
* * * * *
Fitzduane followed the pathologist's Volvo across the city, along Macurtain Street, and turned left up the hill to the Arbutus Lodge.
The box of slides and a photocopy of the pathologist's file on the dead Bernese lay on the seat beside him. There seemed to be little doubt that the hanging had, in fact, been suicide. The matter of the motive was as obscure as before.
It never seemed to be easy to park in Cork. The cramped hotel forecourt jammed full of cars made maneuvering difficult, and it took some minutes and rather more frustration before they were able to squeeze through to the hotel's lower parking lot, where a corner was still free.
The sleet had stopped, thought the wind was viciously cold. For a brief moment, after they had locked their cars, Fitzduane and Buckley stood side by side and looked across to where the River Lee rolled by below them. Its route was outlined by streetlights on its banks. There was the occasional glint of reflected light on the black, oily surface of the river, and below and to their right they could see the lights of merchant ships tied up at the quays.
"Many of my customers are fished out of that river," said Buckley. "Cork people do so love to drown themselves. We had so many drownings last year that one of the mortuary attendants suggested building a special quay for suicides and supplying them with marker buoys and anchors."
"I guess it's the parking problem," said Fitzduane.
* * * * *
Buckley looked at the last morsel of carefully aged Irish beef with a slight hint of sadness. With due ceremony he matched it with the remaining sliver of buttered baked potato. The carefully loaded fork made its final journey.
"There is an end to everything," he said as he pushed his plate away. He looked across the table at Fitzduane and grinned benevolently.
"What I'm saying," said Buckley, "is that it doesn't do to make too much of a suicide. In the small patch of Cork I cover, I dealt with about a hanging a fortnight last year. There is some poor sod making his greatest gesture to the rest of mankind, and all it adds up to is a few hours' work for us employees of the state."
Fitzduane smiled. "An interesting perspective."
"But you're not persuaded?"
Fitzduane sipped at his port and took his time answering. "I have a tight focus," he said, "and it isn't how Rudolf killed himself that primarily concerns me. It's where and why. He did it on my doorstep."
Buckley shrugged. For the next few minutes the cheese board became his primary concern; then he returned to the subject of suicide. "It's a funny business," he said, "and we know nothing like enough about the reasons." He grinned. "Dead people don't talk a lot. One survey in London in the fifties analyzed nearly four hundred suicides and estimated that either physical or mental illness was the principal cause in about half the cases. Well, I can tell you that Rudolf was in excellent health, there was no evidence of early cancer or venereal disease or anything like that, and the reports I received would tend to rule out mental illness. So, according to the researchers, that leaves what they term social and personal factors."
"And what exactly does that mean?"
"Hanged if I know."
"Jesus!" groaned Fitzduane.
"Suicide statistics," continued Buckley, "leave a lot to be desired. For instance, if I am to believe what I read, Ireland has a suicide rate so low as to be almost irrelevant. So where, I ask myself, do all those bodies I work on come from? Or is Cork unusually suicide-prone?" He shook his head. "The reality is that people are embarrassed by suicide, so they fudge the figures. A suicide in the family is considered a disgrace. As recently as 1823, for example, a London suicide was buried at a crossroads in Chelsea with a stake through his body. Now, there is a nice example of social disapproval."
Fitzduane put down his glass. "Let's get back to Rudi. Is there anything — anything at all — that you noticed about him or the circumstances of his death?"
"Anything?" said Buckley.
Fitzduane nodded.
The port decanter was finished. They left the now-empty dining room and retired to have a final brandy by the log fire in the annex to the bar. Fitzduane was glad that he was staying the night. How Buckley remained upright with so much alcohol inside him was a minor mystery. The pathologist's face was more flushed, and he was in high good humor; otherwise there was little overt sign that he had been drinking. His diction was still perfect. "Anything at all?" he repeated.
"Think of it as the classic piece in the jigsaw," said Fitzduane.
Buckley picked up a fire iron and began poking the fire. Fitzduane removed his jacket, rolled up his left sleeve, and thrust out his arm. For a moment, Fitzduane thought that the pathologist was going to hit him and that he was unlucky enough to be spending an evening with someone whom drink turns violent.
"Look at this," said Buckley.
Fitzduane looked at the proffered arm. A snarling bulldog's head wearing a crushed military cap was tattooed on the forearm; under it were the words “USMC 1945.”
"The Marine mascot," said Fitzduane. "I saw it often enough in Vietnam."
"You don't have any tattoos?"
"Not that I've noticed," said Fitzduane.
"Do you know the significance of the bulldog to the Marines?"
"Never gave it much thought," said Fitzduane.
Buckley smiled. "The choice of a bulldog as their mascot goes back to the name the Germans gave the Marines in France in 1918. They were called Teufelhunden, devil dogs. It was a tribute to their fighting qualities. Well, jobs were scarce in Ireland when I was a young lad, so I ended up serving a hitch in the U.S. Navy as a medic and being attached to the Marines. The tattoo was a present from my unit. It means more to me than a Navy Cross."
"Rudolf had a tattoo?" asked Fitzduane.
Buckley rebuttoned his shirtsleeve. "If you've ever been tattooed yourself, you tend to be more interested in such things. They often have great significance. For a time I used to collect photos of unusual tattoos off the cadavers as they paraded through. I built up quite a collection. Gave it up years ago, though. Well, Rudolf had a tattoo, a very small one but unlike any I've seen before. It was more like a love token or a unit badge or some such thing, and it was positioned where it couldn't be seen unless the wearer wished."
"The mind boggles," said Fitzduane.
Buckley smiled. "Not that dramatic but clever all the same. It was on his outer wrist, just under where you would wear a watch. It was very small, about a centimeter and a half across, and it showed a capital ‘A’ with a circle of what looked like flowers around it."
"So maybe Rudi had a girlfriend whose name or nickname began with 'A,' said Fitzduane.