The Saint in the Sun (18 page)

“That’s what it is,” Corrington told him. “And this first building we’re coming to was the old servants’ quarters. Now it’s part of our Medical School, temporarily, until they finish the new buildings.”

“How are the mighty fallen,” Simon murmured, thinking also of Mr Cardman, who despite his thriftiness, when the hotel and himself were equally in flower, would probably never have dreamed of using any entrance but the front.

The semi-basement storage room to which they were admitted by recognition of Dr Corrington had even fewer prospects as a tourist attraction, having been converted into something like a giant filing or safe-deposit vault smelling of formaldehyde and the clammy by-products of refrigeration. The individual in charge, however, was contrastingly warm and cheerful-perhaps because, as he immediately explained, he was only temporarily replacing the regular incumbent, hospitalized for a minor ailment, and did not think he wanted to make a career of it.

“Yeah, I remember that one, because I’m still lookin’ to see where they come from,” he said without hesitation. “Like kids collect stamps or car tags. This was the only one I had from Lake Worth since I been on the job. Come in only yesterday. I know exactly where I put him.”

Simon said to Corrington: “Would there be any chance of getting some friendly pathologist on the faculty to take a look at it? I don’t mean a regular autopsy, but enough to see if there might be prima facie grounds to ask for one.”

“Good heavens, that would be completely out of order! I couldn’t ask anyone to risk losing his job like that.”

“Well, then, at least see if you can’t get this body put on one side for a few days, just long enough for me to-“

“Here,” said the temporary custodian of cadavers.

He had pulled out one of the oversize drawers banked along one wall, in which the pathetic but essential materials for scientific study were impersonally stored.

Simon looked in, at the naked corpse of a short flabby male in his fifties, with a round face and a snub Irish nose, and felt for a second as if the terrazzo floor was falling from under him.

He finally recovered his voice.

“That isn’t Cardman,” he stated.

“Are you sure?” Corrington asked dubiously. “Death sometimes seems to change people-“

Simon took out the snapshot that he had borrowed from Mrs Yanstead, and showed it.

“As much as that?”

“This is the one from Lake Worth, anyhow,” said the custodian.

“Couldn’t you possibly be mistaken?” insisted the Saint. “May I look in the other drawers?”

“If you think I’m an idiot,” was the aggrieved retort, “help yourself. And I’ll get my book and look up the record.”

Simon accepted the invitation literally, and pulled open every other drawer. There was no face in any of them that could ever have been the face in the snapshot, even allowing for the maximum transfigurations of death. But the custodian returned more stubbornly affirmative than ever.

“That’s the one,” he said. “Come from Prend’s Funeral Home in Lake Worth.”

“Could it by any chance have been taken out for dissection and another body put in the same drawer since?”

“Not by any chance. There’s been no cadavers taken out for two days.”

Simon caught the Professor’s eye and indicated with a slight motion of his head that they should leave.

Outside, he said: “I think we’ve got to believe him. On the other hand, I’m not mistaken either. Which leaves only one possible explanation. Cardman’s body was switched for another one before the coffin was delivered here.”

“In order to hide something?”

“Exactly. Because somebody was afraid that when it was taken apart in the lab, some professor or precocious student might notice that there was something wrong with it-something that didn’t gibe with the assigned diagnosis. I suppose that in spite of the anonymity angle, a body would have to go to the lab with some presumed cause of death attached to it, so that the students could be warned about what was normal and what was abnormal?”

“I don’t really know how they handle that here. But-“

“Anyhow, all that matters now is to prevent the trail getting any more confused. The guy in charge in there positively identifies the body he showed us as the one he received from Lake Worth. I have a picture that contradicts him. It shouldn’t be any problem to decide who’s right, with witnesses who knew Cardman, dental charts, maybe even fingerprints-just so long as nothing is messed up. Now, surely you can arrange somehow to get this body put on ice, so to speak, for at least twentyfour hours, till I fill in the holes that the police would pick on.”

“Why don’t you let me take you to the head of the Department-“

“Because it would take too long, and I’d start getting entangled in red tape, which makes me break out in a rash. And if the police clomp into this too soon, with their big boots, they could still louse it up or be too late. Just give me this much leeway, Dr Corrington. Make sure, somehow, that nothing happens to that body. Even if I’m as wrong as anyone can be, it’ll be just as useful a cadaver tomorrow. And what on earth could you be accused of if you merely helped to keep it untouched for one day?”

The Professor Emeritus cogitated this carefully and profoundly, and finally came up with a grin that was as young as the season.

“They’re going to retire me as it is,” he said. “Now they’ll have to accuse me of being a juvenile delinquent.”

When Simon Templar got back to Palm Beach, it was late enough for the telephone to report no reply from Mr Prend’s Funeral Home (as he found it was actually listed) or from Ernest Cardman’s recent number, now maintained by Mrs Yanstead. He was less surprised to learn from the Tradewind Motel that Mr Otterly’s room also did not answer, and did not even bother to try the minor palazzo where Betty Winchester was guesting.

He called Corrington’s home and learned that the body which was not Cardman’s had been set aside pending further developments; and with that reassurance he was able to enjoy a quiet dinner at the Petite Marmite, and go to bed early with a book for company, and sleep for eight hours without a troublesome thought about death, murder, or deceit. Some of which stemmed from a hunch hardening into certainty that he now had all the threads of this incident gathered up and ready to be tied.

At ten o’clock in the morning, which seemed to him a safe and uncomplicating time, he arrived at Prend’s Funeral Home. This was an edifice of modest but calculated dignity, rather suggestive of a miniature White House, located far enough from any cemetery to offer a choice of processional routes to suit all budgets. A touch on the bell button elicited a deep tolling from within, of a cathedral solemnity which could only irreverently have been called a chime; and after a suitable pause the door oozed ponderously open, disclosing the over-extended hair and rabbit features of Mr Prend himself.

Except for the physical shell, however, it was an effort to connect this apparition with the celebrant whom Simon had seen Twisting at the Peppermint Lounge. In vocational costume, instead of a snazzy Madras jacket and light tight pants, Mr Prend wore a suit of dull definitive black and sufficiently antique cut to underline its impregnable propriety. His face was composed into pliable blobs and blanks of potential compassion, attention, tolerance, efficiency, sympathy, and a ruthless ability to distinguish the cheapskates from the sincere mourners who would blow the works for a properly expensive casket. Only the red-rimmed eyes behind his semi-invisible bifocals might have caused an initiated cynic to wonder if he had spent another night at the Peppermint Lounge or elsewhere, but to less mundane observers they could still have passed for nothing worse than the penalties of excessive condolence.

“Good morning, sir,” intoned Mr Prend, with infinite discretion. “Can I help you?”

His voice was as consciously deep as the door-bell, and the Saint was hard put to sustain his own gravity.

He used his Miami Guardian masquerade again to get as far as the reception room, which was furnished in ebony wood and black leather, with a very deep purple carpet and matching velvet drapes, and gray walls on one of which hung a large chromolithograph of the Resurrection.

“There are not many questions I can answer,” Mr Prend warned him. “As far as most details are concerned, I am bound by professional secrecy, just like a doctor or a lawyer.”

“As a matter of general principle,” Simon said, “how do you handle a body that’s been willed to a hospital?”

“No differently from any other, for most of the proceedings. We embalm it and dress it and lay it in a casket for those who may wish to look their last on the remains-“

“Why embalm it, if it’s going to be dissected anyway?”

“That makes the preservation even more important. And the institutions prefer us to do it. It is an art which we are highly trained for and experienced in.”

“Is the body complete? I mean, with all its innards?”

Mr Prend winced.

“Of course. Without the internal organs, it would be of much less value for research.”

“So then do they have a regular funeral?”

“That is entirely at the option of the relatives. There can be a procession to a church, if they wish, or a ceremony can be performed in the chapel which is attached to most of the better Funeral Homes. If the purpose of your article is to enlighten readers who may be thinking of bequeathing their remains to a research institution, you can assure them that everything can be handled with dignity and as reverently as any other disposal.”

“Up to the point where the coffin isn’t buried or cremated.”

“That is the only difference. The mourners leave, having paid all their respects to the loved one, and as far as they are concerned it is all over. The Funeral Director then takes charge of the remains and delivers them as soon as possible to the designated institution, from whom he obtains a receipt. And that is the end of it.”

It was coming to one of those situations where the Saint mentally craved the gesture of lighting a cigarette, but he knew that a genuine reporter from the Miami Guardian would have been too respectful of his surroundings and the pompous side of Mr Prend to succumb to it.

“In the case of Mr Cardman, whom you processed recently,” he said, “how did that work out?”

“There was a simple service in our chapel, attended only by his immediate kin. And the remains were delivered to the University of Miami, as he wished, the next day.”

“So they were here overnight, after any of the relatives saw them.”

“Yes.”

“The night during which your place was burgled, wasn’t it?”

Mr Prend seemed to make an effort of recollection.

“Yes, it would have been that night.”

“Then is it possible,” said the Saint, “that the real object of whoever broke in was to switch Cardman’s body for another one that you had here?”

“Preposterous!” Prend ejaculated. “What makes you think-“

“The body that you delivered to the University of Miami has already been un-identified: whoever it is, it isn’t Cardman.”

Mr Prend stared at him stiffly.

“But why would anyone do that?” he protested mechanically.

“To destroy the evidence of a murder. Someone who knew the ropes realized that if Cardman’s body went to the University- which was something they hadn’t counted on till that part of the will showed up-somebody in the lab might spot the signs of poisoning in those internal organs. The easy answer was a switch to another coffin that was booked for something final like a crematorium.”

Mr Prend’s roseate optics kindled at last like the tail lights of a car whose driver has belatedly trampled the brakes.

“That could explain it!” he gasped. “I never thought of it before … But who? Mr Cardman’s niece was so charming. His nephew was a little difficult. But-“

“Neither of them made the funeral arrangements, did they? Being comparative strangers in town, they’d have had to ask someone who lived here to recommend an undertaker. Someone with previous experience.”

“Yes, I suppose so. We rely a great deal on recommendations.”

“In Cardman’s case, it was probably Mrs Yanstead.”

“Yes-yes, I suppose it was.”

“Aloysius,” said the Saint chummily, “how much of the take did she cut you in on for shuffling the bodies?”

Mr Prend remained rigid for so long that Simon wondered briefly whether he had inadvertently become a candidate for his own services. But at last his catalepsy resolved itself into the wrathful indignation which after all was the only plausible form it could have taken.

“How dare you-“

“Aloysius,” said the Saint, still more mildly, “according to your own explanation, Cardman’s body would have to be switched for another one which wasn’t going to be inspected by tender-hearted relatives who might actually look at it and start screaming about the new face you put on Uncle George. Nobody who busted in here out of the blue would know which of the corpses you had in stock would be good for the switch. Only the boss could have handled everything-but also been smart enough to set up some evidence of a bogus burglary to make it look like an outside job, just in case something went sour and he had to answer embarrassing questions. Should I take it that you’re all organized and set up and ready to take a murder rap?”

“What gives you the right to talk about a murder?”

“I believe that’s called an educated guess. First, you look for a motive. Anyone who expected to inherit his money could have that. And might have had an awful shock when a will turned up that left it all to somebody else. Then we ask, if he was poisoned-and he certainly wasn’t shot or stabbed-who had the best chance to do it? At least two people. But who would have been most aware of the risks of poisoning, which have tripped up so many amateurs? Who would have been best placed to mislead the doctor about symptoms? Who would have realized first that Cardman’s surprise bequest of his body to the University could upset the whole beautiful applecart, who would know enough about the routines to see how it could still be propped up, who would know the local undertakers and which one would be most likely to go along with a little persuasion-“