The Floating Body (7 page)

As she did so the schoolboy turned in my direction. By shading my eyes against the rising sun and squinting I made out who it was. And it was none other than Freeman Fox, the School Bully—the same boy I had seen grappling with young Stanhope a week and a half ago. Now, what on earth was Muriel McKell doing in clandestine conversation with the School Bully?

That puzzle, however, was small beer compared to the astonishing and inexplicable disappearance of Dave Fowler.

‘Have you any theories, Jack, about what happened to Fowler’s body?’

‘It is a capital mistake to theorise ahead of the facts. And in saying those words I am quoting, as you will have recognised, young Morris, from no less an authority than Sherlock himself,’ said Jack, smiling as he paused to light his pipe. ‘There is,’ he added, turning his back against the morning breeze and shielding his pipe as he struggled to get it to light, ‘a second puzzle just as substantial as the vanishing corpse.’

‘Which is . . . ?’ I prompted.

‘His invisible attacker.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Morris, we both saw the same thing,’ Jack explained. ‘We saw Fowler alone on that roof. We saw him apparently arguing with someone we couldn’t see. Gesticulating in the direction of an empty, flat roof. Then he doubled over as if struck. But there was no one in front of him to strike a blow. Then we saw that he had been stabbed—but there was no one on the roof to thrust a knife into him.’

I stopped in my tracks as if hit over the back of the head by a sock full of wet sand. ‘You’re right!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve been so obsessed with Fowler’s corpse having gone missing that I hadn’t stopped to think about how the man became a corpse.’

‘Well, think on it now, old chap.’ Jack gave me a sly grin, then continued, ‘It’s a pretty puzzle, isn’t it?’

Having much to think about, we walked on in silence for a bit.

Then I asked, ‘Did you really mean what you said last night? About human nature being fundamentally defective?’

‘Most certainly. And there is nothing unusual or eccentric about such a view—it’s simply the common or garden view of bog-standard, classical Christianity.’

‘I had no idea Christianity was so bleak.’

‘Not bleak at all, old chap,’ said Jack. ‘Just uncommonly honest. And it is, in the end, good news—because as well as offering an accurate diagnosis it also offers a cure.’

‘But really, Jack! Human nature is “fundamentally defective”? That’s a grim assessment.’

‘Human nature, young Morris, is as broken as an electrical appliance with a blown fuse.’

I was about to say more but at that point we had reached the old timber door that led out from the cathedral close to the road behind the school building. It was a heavy door and required a mighty tug on my part to get it moving.

But move it did. And once it had swung open, Jack and I stepped out onto the gravel road—and in doing so stepped into the biggest mystery we had ever encountered.

For lying there, in the middle of the road, right where it should have been the day before, was the body of Dave Fowler.

I think my mouth must have opened and closed a number of times, like a goldfish in a bowl—perhaps a goldfish of uncommonly low IQ. My gaping and heavy breathing continued for some moments before any words came out. And even then the words didn’t make any sense: ‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’

Jack didn’t waste his energy on words but hurried over to where the body lay face down on the road and felt for a pulse.

‘Not only dead but cold,’ Jack said. ‘In fact, I think we’ll find that he died yesterday—at just the time we saw him die.’

‘Then where has he been in the meantime?’ I managed to ask. ‘Where?’ I gestured at the space above our heads—the empty air between us the roof of the school building.

‘Has he been floating up there somewhere?’ I demanded. ‘Floating invisibly? Waiting until this morning to finally come crashing down?’

My questions were good ones, and they were the same questions that very shortly everyone else was asking. In the course of that morning I heard those questions over and over again.

However, at the moment of our first discovery of that impossible corpse, what I went on to say to Jack was, ‘One of us had better stay here with the body . . .’

‘I’ll do that,’ Jack offered.

‘. . . and in that case I’ll go and tell the Head Master and then call the police.’

My knock at Dr Rogers’ door was greeted by a maid who showed me inside. The Head was still in his dressing gown, seated at the breakfast table spreading Olde English Breakfast Marmalade thickly over a slice of toast.

‘Do you realise what time it is?’ he demanded when I appeared at the breakfast room door.

I said I did and apologised for disturbing him at this hour, but a serious matter had arisen.

‘Very well,’ he said with a deep sigh, leaning back in his chair and taking a bite from the toast. ‘Go on, dear boy, go on.’

‘Fowler has been found.’

‘Well, that’s good news!’

‘Or, rather, his dead body has been found.’

This announcement caused Dr Rogers to drop his slice of toast, sending a cascade of butter and marmalade down the front of his dressing gown.

While he wiped this away with a serviette and retrieved the toast from the floor, I explained, ‘Mr Lewis and I found Fowler’s body on the gravel road behind the school—in exactly the same spot where we had expected to find it yesterday, after what we saw on the roof . . .’

I trailed away because the Head was glaring at me, blinking furiously. ‘Dead?’ he said in a voice hushed by disbelief.

‘Cold and stiff. He’s been dead for some hours. Probably since Jack and I saw him die yesterday. Would you like me to make the phone call to the police, sir?’

Dr Rogers nodded, and then told me to use the phone in the hallway, just inside the front door.

As I walked to the hall and picked up the phone, he brushed past me, muttering about needing to get changed before the police arrived and ‘the whole horrible business begins’.

With one foot on the stairs he turned back and said, ‘The boys will have to be told, of course. Perhaps I shall get the Dean to make an announcement at chapel this morning. Yes, that would be best—he would be tactful.’

Dr Rogers mounted the stairs, and I heard a click on the phone as the operator at the village exchange came on the line. I asked for the police, and a moment later there was another click and then the sound of a phone ringing.

‘Police cottage—Butler speaking,’ growled the voice on the end of the line.

I knew that the local police cottage did not employ a butler, but rather that I was speaking to the village bobby, Constable Bernard Butler.

‘There’s been a death at the school’ was all I said.

‘What? A death? One of the boys?’ he asked.

‘One of the masters,’ I replied.

‘Right then, I’m on my way.’

As soon as he was off the line I rang the exchange again and asked for Dr Marcus Green. His wife answered the phone and handed it over her husband, saying, ‘It’s the school calling, dear.’

I explained that there had been a violent death and that he would be needed in his capacity as the local police surgeon. Like Constable Butler, the doctor promised to come at once.

As I was hanging up, Dr Adrian Rogers was coming back downstairs, clad now in his usual dark grey suit and academic gown.

I told him the police and the doctor were on their way, and then explained that I should get back to where Jack was standing guard over the body. He nodded and waved me away.

From the Head’s house I hurried next door to Dean Cowper’s. Warnie was up and breakfasting, so I began to tell him the news. Just as I started the Dean walked into the room, so I began my tale again from the beginning. Warnie gaped at me open mouthed while the Dean muttered seriously, ‘The news will have to be broken to the boys—very carefully, of course.’

‘I think the Head is rather hoping that you will do that,’ I said. Cowper nodded and said he would give some careful thought as to how it could best be expressed. Warnie and I then left him and hurried out to the gravel road behind the school.

We found Jack standing, deep in thought, over the corpse of Dave Fowler. Warnie was bubbling over with all the predictable questions.

Jack replied, ‘We don’t have the answers, old chap. All we have at the moment is a very strange puzzle.’

Warnie looked upwards at the stone balustrade that edged the roof of the Old School, and then muttered, ‘Where on earth has this chap been since yesterday? How can he tumble off the roof and take hours to hit the ground? Dashed fishy, that’s what I call it.’

Constable Bernard Butler came bursting through the rear doorway from the school, his uniform tunic unbuttoned and flapping in the morning breeze.

He stood and stared, open mouthed, at the body of Dave Fowler. Then he slowly did up his silver buttons and pulled a notebook from his pocket.

Jack and I had to repeat the events of yesterday several times before they finally sank in and ended up as scribbled notes in the policeman’s small book.

It was during one of these repetitions that Dr Green arrived. He knelt down and felt the skin of the corpse, then lifted one arm, or tried to.

‘Rigor mortis is fully developed,’ the doctor said, ‘and the body is completely cold. Death occurred at least eight hours ago. Constable, may I roll the body over?’

‘Should we wait until Inspector Locke gets here?’ asked the hapless policeman, clearly out of his depth. ‘In fact, I need to go and call district headquarters—the inspector needs to be informed at once.’

Tucking his notebook into his tunic pocket he bustled away in search of a telephone.

‘Well, I’m rolling the body over,’ said Dr Green. ‘I’ve seen the position of the corpse, and there’s nothing to be gained by leaving it untouched.’

It was odd to see a human body being rolled over and not flapping flaccidly around, but moving as stiff as a piece of hardboard.

As the doctor pushed the body over onto its back, he said, ‘Well, I think we have cause of death, gentlemen.’

There, protruding from the stomach of the corpse, was the handle of a long, narrow knife. The blade was completely invisible, being buried in Dave Fowler’s stomach.

The long silence that followed was broken by Jack, who asked, ‘Was it the knife wound that killed him then? Not the fall?’

‘Actually, it could have been either,’ Dr Green admitted, ‘or a combination of both. The autopsy should tell us more.’

The doctor straightened up, blinking in the early morning sunlight, and then asked, ‘Is this how you found him? I mean, when you discovered the body, was it in the position in which I first saw it? Face down?’

Jack and I both said yes, it was.

‘That is strange then,’ the medical man went on, ‘because of the post-mortem lividity.’

‘The what?’ asked Warnie.

‘The marks you can see that look like large bruises. That’s where the blood pooled after death—post-mortem lividity. Those marks show that he landed on his back, and that he lay on his back for some time. But you found him lying face down. That’s very odd.’

Detective Inspector Sexton Locke turned out to be a tall, thin man with a hawk-like face. He was accompanied by Sergeant Jack Drake, a solidly built, red-faced man. Both seemed unshaken by the sight of the dead body or by the strange tale that Jack and I had to tell.

Locke very quickly impressed me with his quiet, unflustered intelligence.

He paced around the body of Dave Fowler where it was still lying on the gravel road, looking and listening as Dr Green gave a brief explanation of what he’d found in his first, superficial examination. When the doctor had finished, Locke ordered two uniformed constables who’d come with him to borrow a stretcher and remove the body.

‘Take the victim straight to the mortuary,’ said Locke. ‘And doctor, how quickly can you get the autopsy underway?’

‘I can do it this afternoon,’ Green replied, snapping closed the clasps on his Gladstone bag. ‘There are a few patients I must see this morning, but I’ll close the surgery this afternoon and attend to this matter.’

Locke thanked him and waited until the body had been removed.

‘Now, Mr Lewis, Mr Morris,’ he said turning to us, ‘are you sure that this wound we’ve seen on the corpse this morning is the wound you saw inflicted yesterday afternoon?’

‘There’s little room for doubt,’ boomed Jack in his confident lecture room voice. ‘There’s room for unanswered questions, room for perplexing puzzles, but no room for doubt that Morris and I saw exactly this wound inflicted.’

Sergeant Drake scribbled this down in his notebook.

Inspector Locke stood for a moment in silent contemplation—and it wasn’t hard to imagine what must have been racing through his mind. He had undoubtedly seen violent death before, but never like this, and never surrounded by the baffling story that surrounded this one.

‘Drake,’ he said, snapping out of his reverie.

‘Yes, sir,’ replied his faithful sergeant, all eager attention.

‘We’ll start by understanding something about the victim—and that means talking, in the first instance, to the Head Master. And gentlemen,’ he added turning to us, ‘if you’ll hold yourselves available I’ll have some more questions for you shortly.’

With these words the inspector and his sergeant strode off purposefully back through the archway to the close, leaving Jack, Warnie and me standing in the middle of the now deserted gravel road.

Jack relit his pipe, which had gone out, as Warnie scratched his chin and looked first up at the stone balustrade above our heads and then at the spot where the body had, eventually, fallen.

‘John Dickson Carr,’ he said at last. ‘Detective writer fellow. Writes about “impossible crimes”. This would suit him to a tee. A corpse that floats invisibly in mid-air overnight and then tumbles to the ground in the morning . . . huh . . . he’d come up with a cracking solution for that.’

‘Unfortunately, he’s not here to spin out some elaborate and clever explanation for us,’ I grumbled.

Warnie started pacing down the length of the road, keeping a close eye on the gravel beneath his feet as he walked, perhaps hoping it might reveal its secrets if only he looked at it hard enough and long enough.