An Instance of the Fingerpost (16 page)

‘Yes, yes. But I haven’t been overburdened by social calls. Not that I mind, as I have better things to do than talk. So if you want a favour of me, tell me what it is, then go away.’

Lower seemed quite used to this performance. I probably would have walked out by this stage, but he very placidly took the brandy bottle out of his satchel, and put it on the table. Stahl peered at it closely – I could see that he was short-sighted, and probably could have done with a pair of spectacles.

‘So? What’s this?’

‘It’s a bottle of brandy, with a strange slurry at the bottom, which you can see as well as I can, despite your pretence of being blind. We want to know what it is.’

‘Aha. Was Dr Grove killed by Spirits or by spirits? That’s the problem, is it? Is their wine the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps?’

Lower sighed. ‘Deuteronomy 32:33,’ he responded. ‘Just so.’ And
then stood patiently as Stahl went through an elaborate display of apparent thought. ‘So, how do we test this substance, even though it is corrupted by the liquid?’ The German thought some more. ‘Why don’t you offer that tease of a servant of yours a glass of this brandy one evening, eh? Solve two problems in one go?’

Lower said he didn’t think this was a very good idea. It would, after all, be hard to repeat the experiment even if it were successful. ‘Now, will you help us, or not?’

Stahl grinned, showing a range of blackened, yellowing stumps that passed for teeth and which might well have accounted for his ugly temper. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘This is a fascinating problem. We need a series of tests that can be repeated, and be sufficiently numerous so that it will identify this sediment. But first I have to extract this sediment in a usable form.’ He pointed at the bottle. ‘I suggest you go away and come back in a few days. I will not be rushed.’

‘Perhaps we might start, though?’

Stahl sighed, then shrugged and stood up. ‘Oh, very well. If it will rid me of your company.’ He went over to a shelf and selected a flexible tube with a piece of thin glass on the end, and inserted this into the open end of the bottle, which he placed on the table. Then, crouching down, he sucked on the other end of the tubing, and stood back as the liquid ran swiftly into a receptacle which he had placed underneath.

‘An interesting and useful exercise,’ he observed. ‘Common enough, of course, but fascinating none the less. As long as the second part of the tube is longer than the first the liquid will continue to flow out, because the liquid falling downwards weighs more than the liquid being required to flow upwards. If it didn’t, a vacuum would form in the tube, which is impossible to sustain. Now, the really interesting question is, what happens if . . .’

‘You don’t want to suck all the sediment out as well, do you?’ Lower interrupted anxiously as the level of brandy fell towards the bottom of the bottle.

‘I saw it, I saw it.’ And Stahl quickly whipped the glass tube out.

‘And now?’

‘And now I remove the sediment, which must be washed and dried. This will take time, and there is no reason at all for you to be here.’

‘Just tell us what you plan.’

‘Simple enough. This is a mixture of brandy and sediment. I shall heat it gently to evaporate the liquid, then wash it in fresh rainwater, allow it to settle once more, again decant the liquid off and wash and dry it a second time. It should be fairly pure by then. Three days, if you please. Not a moment earlier, and if you do turn up before then, I won’t talk to you.’

And so I followed Lower back to New College, and the warden’s lodgings, a large pile which occupied much of the western wall of the quadrangle. We were taken by the servant into the room in which Warden Woodward received guests, and found Locke already there, stretched out in conversation by the fire, as easy as if he owned the place. There was, I thought, something about the man, who could always inveigle his way into the good graces of the powerful. How it was I do not know, he was neither easy of manner nor particularly good company, and yet the assiduity of his attention to those he considered worthy of him was so great that it was irresistible. And, of course, he carefully crafted his reputation for being a man of the utmost brilliance, so that these people ended up patronising him and feeling grateful for it. In later years he went on to write books which pass for philosophy, although a cursory reading suggests that they do little but carry his bent for flattery on to the metaphysical plane, justifying why those who patronise him should have all power in their hands. I did not like Mr Locke.

His ease and self-assurance in the presence of Warden Woodward contrasted with the manner of my friend Lower, who fell into despondency when required to produce the mixture of deference and politeness required for dealing with those greater than he. Poor man; he desperately wanted favour, but had not the ability to pretend, and his awkwardness was all too frequently viewed as rudeness. Within five minutes the fact that Lower had been asked to examine Grove’s body with Locke there merely to observe had been all but forgotten; all the conversation passed between the lengthy philosopher and the warden,
while Lower sat uncomfortably by the side, his humour sinking as he listened in awkward silence.

For myself, I was gladly quiet, as I did not wish to incur Woodward’s displeasure again, and it was Locke – to give him credit – who rescued me.

‘Mr Cola here was dismayed at your censure of him earlier in the day, Warden,’ he said. ‘You must remember he is a stranger in our society and knows nothing of our affairs. Whatever he said was perfectly innocent, you know.’

Woodward nodded, and looked at me. ‘Please accept my apologies, sir,’ he said. ‘But I was distraught and did not mind my words as I should have done. But I had received a complaint the previous evening, and misconstrued your meaning.’

‘What sort of complaint?’

‘Dr Grove was being considered for a living and was likely to be given the place, but a complaint was lodged yesterday evening which alleged he was of a lewd way of life, and should not be appointed.’

‘This was the Blundy girl, was it not?’ Locke asked in a wordly, disinterested fashion.

‘How do you know that?’

Locke shrugged. ‘Common knowledge in the taverns, sir. Not that that fact makes it true, of course. Might I ask where this complaint came from?’

‘It came from within the Fellowship,’ Woodward said.

‘And more particularly?’

‘More particularly it is a college matter alone.’

‘Did your complainant give any evidence for the accusation?’

‘He said that the girl in question was in Dr Grove’s room yesterday evening, and he had seen her go in. He complained lest others see her and bring our reputation into question.’

‘And was that true?’

‘I had planned to ask Dr Grove this morning.’

‘So, she was there last night, and Grove was dead this morning,’ Locke said. ‘Well, well . . .’

‘Are you suggesting she extinguished his life?’

‘Heavens, no,’ he replied. ‘But extreme physical exertion, you know, may in certain circumstances bring on a seizure, as Mr Cola here so
innocently pointed out this morning. That is by far the most likely explanation. If so, then a careful examination will certainly help us. And anything more sinister seems unlikely, as Mr Lower says the girl seemed genuinely upset when she was informed of Grove’s death.’

The warden grunted. ‘Thank you for the information. Perhaps we had better proceed? I have had his body placed in the library. Where do you want to examine it?’

‘We need a large table,’ Lower said gruffly. ‘The kitchen would be best, if there are no servants around.’

Woodward went off to dismiss the kitchen staff, and we went into the next room to examine the body. When the house was deserted, we carried it across the hallway and into the domestic offices. Fortunately Grove had already been laid out and washed, so we were not delayed by that less than agreeable business.

‘I suppose we’d better begin, don’t you think?’ Lower asked, clearing the dinner plates off the kitchen table. We took off Grove’s clothes and, in the state in which God had created him, lifted him up. Then Lower got his saws, sharpened his knife and rolled up his sleeves. Woodward decided that he did not want to observe, and so left us to it. ‘I’ll get my pen if you would be so good as to shave his head,’ Lower said.

Which I willingly did, paying a visit to the closet where one of the servants kept his toiletries and fetching a razor.

‘A barber as well as a surgeon,’ Lower said as he drew the head – for his own interest only, I thought. Then he put down the paper, stood back and thought for a moment. When fully prepared, he picked up knife, hammer and saw and we all paused a moment in the prayers appropriate for those about to violate and enter God’s finest work.

‘Skin isn’t blackened, I note,’ Locke said conversationally when the moment of piety was over and Lower began carving his way through the layers of yellow fat to the rib cage. ‘Are you going to try the heart test?’

Lower nodded. ‘It will be a useful experiment. I’m not convinced by the argument that the heart of a poisoning victim cannot be consumed by fire, but we should see.’ A slight ripping sound as the layers were finally severed. ‘I do hate cutting up fat people.’

He paused a while as he opened up the midriff and held open
the thick heavy flaps of fat by nailing each corner to the kitchen table.

‘The trouble is’, he continued once this was done and he had a clear view inside, ‘the book I consulted did not specify whether you were meant to dry the heart out first of all. But you see Locke’s point about the lack of blackening on the skin, do you, Cola? A sign against poisoning. On the other hand, it is livid in patches. You see? On the back and thighs? Maybe that counts. I think we must call it inconclusive. Did he throw up before he died?’

‘Very much so. Why?’

‘A pity. But I’ll have his stomach, just in case. Pass that bottle, will you?’

And he decanted in a very expert fashion a slimy, bloody, stinking froth from the stomach into a bottle. ‘Open the window will you, Cola?’ he said. ‘We don’t want to make the warden’s lodging uninhabitable.’

‘People poisoned commonly do vomit,’ I said, recalling a case in which my teacher in Padua had been allowed to poison a criminal to see the effect. The poor unfortunate had died rather unhappily; but as he had been due to have his limbs cut off and his entrails burnt before him while he was still alive, he remained until the end pathetically grateful to my master for his consideration. ‘But I believe they rarely manage to expel all of the stomach’s contents.’

Conversation ceased at this point as Lower busied himself transferring stomach, spleen, kidney and liver to his glass bottles, passing comment on all of them as he held each individual organ up for me to see before popping it into its bottle.

‘The cawl is yellower than usual,’ he said brightly, as the work slowly restored him to good humour.

‘Stomach and intestines are an odd brownish colour on the exterior. The lungs have black spots on them. Liver and spleen much discoloured and the liver looks – what would you say?’

I peered inside at the odd-shaped organ. ‘I don’t know. It rather looks as though it had been boiled to me.’

Lower chuckled. ‘So it does. So it does. Now, the bile; very fluid. Runs all over the place and a sort of dirty yellow colour. Most
abnormal. Duodenum inflamed and excoriated but with no traces of natural decay. Same applies to stomach.’

Then I saw him eyeing the corpse reflectively, as he wiped his bloody hands on his apron.

‘No more,’ I said firmly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I do not know you well, sir, but already I recognise that look. If you are thinking of opening his skull and removing his brain, then I must beg you to desist. We are, after all, trying to establish the cause of his death; it would be quite illegitimate to go chopping bits off to perform dissections on them.’

‘And he will be on public view before the funeral, remember,’ Locke added. ‘It would be hard to disguise the fact that you had cut his skull in two. It will be bad enough making sure no one sees that his head has been shaved.’

Lower clearly considered disputing this, but eventually shrugged. ‘Keepers of my conscience,’ he said. ‘Very well, although medical knowledge may well suffer for your moral stand.’

‘Not permanently, I feel sure. Besides, we should be putting him back together again.’

And so we set to work, stuffing his cavities with strips of linen to present a good appearance, sewing him up, then bandaging the wounds in case any fluids should emerge to stain his funeral garb.

‘Never looked better, in my opinion,’ Lower said when Grove was finally dressed in his best and placed comfortably on a chair in the corner, with the bottles containing his organs lined up on the floor. Lower, I saw, was determined to have those at least. ‘Now, the final test.’

He took the man’s heart, put it in a small earthenware dish on top of the stove and poured a quarter-pint of brandy over it. Then he took a splinter of wood and lit it at the stove and thrust it into the bowl.

‘A bit like plum pudding, really,’ he said tastelessly as the brandy exploded into flames. We stood around and watched, as the liquid burnt, and then eventually spluttered out, leaving an exceptionally unpleasant odour in the air.