I wait for McCreadie to speak, to be sure he’s in that room. When hemurmurs something, I creep out and take up position behind the door, where I can peer through the crack. It isn’t a perfect sight line. I see the legs of the body, which are oddly drawn up, as if the corpse stiffened in a seated position. The two men block the corpse’s upper half.
“In my expert opinion,” Gray says, “the cause of death is murder.”
McCreadie gives a sharp laugh. “You always were the clever one.”
Murder? That surprises me. Yet McCreadiehadmentioned an intellectual puzzle. Is this more than a body snatching?
“Have you notified Addington?” Gray asks.
McCreadie grumbles something unintelligible and definitely uncomplimentary about this Addington fellow. Then he says, “I’ll need to fetch him within the hour, so you need to work quickly.”
Gray only grunts. A tap of metal. I peer through to see him leaning over the body, prodding at it.
“My preliminary assessment is that this part seems to have been inflicted postmortem.”
“You’re certain of that?”
A low growl from Gray. “No, Hugh, I’m not certain at all. That’s why I called it a preliminary assessment. You will get a proper ruling from Addington.”
“If I expected a proper anything from him, you wouldn’t be here.”
“I would certainly be here. It is my laboratory.”
“Laboratory”? That must be the Victorian word for an undertaker’s preparation room. It still makes no sense. McCreadie brought a murder victim to an undertaker, and then he’s bringing the coronerherefor the autopsy?
“I would agree all this seems postmortem,” McCreadie says. “What I want is your professional opinion.”
“You lack faith in your own judgment,” Gray says. “It is a poor quality in a criminal officer.”
“I lack faith in my medical expertise, because I am not amedicalofficer, Duncan.”
“It doesn’t take a doctor to realize how much simpler it would be to do all this if your theatrical property is already dead.”
“Theatrical property?”
“A ‘prop’ as they call it these days. Yes, that is disrespectful to the young man, but there is not anyone here to judge me for my callow phrasing.”
“I meant, why do you call him a prop?”
“Because all this is clearly staging. One does not do this to a body unless one has a message to convey.”
“Or unless one is a madman.”
“Madmen still have messages, perhaps more than those in possession of their faculties. I have no opinions on the mental state of this killer. My interest is the body, which isn’t all that interesting.”
McCreadie sputters. “How can you call this ‘not interesting’? It is the most bizarre murder I have ever seen.”
That has me twisting and craning to see more.
“The staging is interesting. My concern is the murder, which is terribly pedestrian. Simple strangulation.” Gray lifts something out with what looks like tweezers. “You’re looking for woven rough cord. Hemp, I believe. Likely rope.”
McCreadie lifts something. “Like this?”
Dangling from his hand is a length of old rope. Exactly like the one used to strangle me.