GAMES OF THE HANGMAN Page 6

  Fitzduane made a gesture, and Buckley paused.

  "Forgive me," said Fitzduane. "I'm familiar with some of these terms, but I think it would be wiser to consider me an ignorant layman."

  Buckley chuckled apologetically. He selected a pipe from a rack on his desk and began to fill it with tobacco. There was the flare of a match followed by the sounds of heavy puffing. "Rudolf died from asphyxia," continued Buckley. "He strangled himself to death, though I doubt that was his intention. The tree he chose and the branch he jumped from gave him a drop of about one meter eighty. We can't be quite sure because he may have jumped up and off the branch, thus increasing the drop.

  "To use layman's terminology, I expect he intended to break his neck. He would have wanted the cervical segments to fracture, as happens, or is supposed to happen, in a judicial hanging. In reality, outside official executions, where the hangman has the advantage of training or practice, the neck rarely breaks. Rudolf was a strong, fit young man. His neck did not break.

  "You will recall, of course, that I stated during the inquest that death was instantaneous. That was not the truth, merely a convention we tend to adhere to for the relatives' sake. The true facts are always in the written report given to the coroner."

  "What about the marks on his hands?" asked Fitzduane. "There are scratches on the fingertips as well. They look like the signs of a struggle."

  "Perhaps they do," said Buckley, "but if there was a struggle that resulted in the victim being hanged by another, it's virtually certain there would be some sign on the victim's body. In this case I examined the body with particular care for the very good reason that I was working in another man's territory and didn't want to leave any possibilities unchecked—and I had rather more time than I tend to have with the work load here. Be that as it may, there were no signs of the bruising you might expect if another party were involved. The marks on the hands and fingers are entirely consistent with two things: first, the victim's ascent of the tree, which marked the palms of his hands and the insides of his fingers." He paused to puff at his pipe.

  "And second?" prompted Fitzduane.

  "Second, the convulsing of the victim as he hung there and slowly asphyxiated. The distance between the trunk of the tree and the body, based now upon my observation of these slides, but originally on the sergeant's measurements, indicates that the body would indeed have brushed against the tree as it spasmed or, more specifically, that the fingertips would have rubbed against the bark of the trunk. Such convulsions can be quite violent."

  "I'm sorry I asked," said Fitzduane.

  Buckley smiled slightly. "In addition, I took samples from under the deceased's fingernails and subjected them to various tests and microscopic examinations. The findings were consistent with what I have just said. Also, I should point out that in the event of a struggle it is not uncommon to find traces of the assailant's skin, tissue, and blood in the nail scrapings. No such traces were found in this case." He looked toward Fitzduane. Half glasses glinted through the smoke.

  Fitzduane marshaled his thoughts. "Very well. If we accept that there is no evidence of strangulation, forcible hanging, or indeed any sort of physical pressure, how about the possibility that he killed himself while drugged or even while under hypnosis?"

  Buckley grinned. "Great stuff," he said. "I mentioned earlier that I had taken particular care with this fellow. The fact is that I did a number of things I wouldn't normally do on the basis of the evidence available, and it wasn't only because I was off my patch. It was also because the fellow was a foreigner and, as like as not, there would be another autopsy when his body arrived home. There would be hell to pay if our verdicts differed, as has happened before—to a colleague, in fact. Very embarrassing.

  "So in this case," continued Buckley, "although there was no evidence of foul play and no suspicious circumstances, I took extensive samples of blood, hair, urine, stomach contents, and so on, and sent them for examination in Dublin. I thought there was some possibility that he might have been under the influence of some self-administered drug, and I requested the toxicological tests as an extra precaution."

  "And?" said Fitzduane.

  "Nothing found," said Buckley. "A very healthy young man, apart from being hanged, that is. Mind you, I'm not saying it was absolutely impossible. There are a staggering number of drugs and chemicals available today. What I am saying is that we found no evidence that he was drugged or poisoned in any way. The lab people are well practiced and expert, and it is unlikely they would have missed an alien substance in the body. A more likely possibility would be that a more remote substance might take longer to identify. But let me repeat, no alien substance was found."

  "What about hypnosis?" Fitzduane wasn't sure he believed in such a possibility himself, but Buckley was the expert, and he'd seen some decidedly odd things in the Congo.

  "I don't know," said Buckley in a deadpan voice. "There could have been a witch doctor hidden in the tree. All I can say is that I didn't find a shiny gold watch dangling in front of his eyes when I carried out the examination."

  Fitzduane didn't feel particularly amused. He knew pathologists had a reputation for ghoulish humor, but the blown-up images of Rudolf on the screen weren't doing much for his own sense of fun.

  Buckley was not insensitive to his reaction. "More seriously," he went on, "the evidence available suggests that it is most unlikely an individual will deliberately cause himself harm even when under hypnosis. The survival instinct is strong. Of course, there are recorded circumstances of quite extraordinarily happenings in Africa, India, and so on, but in those cases the victim was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that a witch doctor or whoever had the power to put a spell on him that could result in his death."

  "Preconditioned?"

  "Preconditioned," said Buckley. "An unlikely happening for a young man brought up in the heartland of Western capitalism."

  Fitzduane smiled. "Unlikely."

  Buckley switched the projector off and allowed it to cool for a few minutes. The room was now lit only by the reflecting glow of an angle desk lamp. Fitzduane stood up and stretched. One way or another he had been sitting for most of the day, and he was tired and stiff from the long drive.

  Click! The lower two-thirds of Rudolf von Graffenlaub filled the screen. Buckley pressed the button on the illuminated pointer, and the little arrow of light indicated the stained area around the crotch of the dead youth's jeans.

  "You will observe," said Buckley in his lecturer's voice, "that the deceased's bowels evacuated as he was dying. You may think that this indicates poisoning or something of that sort. Such is not the case. In fact, it is reasonably common, though not inevitable, for such an occurrence to take place during the convulsions of dying. It is also not uncommon in the case of a male for ejaculation to take place. As it happens, in this case there was no evidence of ejaculation.

  "Police inquiries disclosed that the deceased attended breakfast in the college refectory a couple of hours before his death. This gave me a little concern when I read the report before making my examination, since it's my experience that suicides rarely eat much in the period immediately prior to the taking of life. However, on examination of the stomach contents, I was relieved to find that he had not actually eaten at breakfast, though he had drunk some tea."

  "Yet another indication of suicide," said Fitzduane.

  "Well, if that was what he was contemplating, it was scarcely surprising that Mr. von Graffenlaub's mouth felt somewhat dry at the time." Buckley reverted to his lecturer's monotone. "You will observe that the zip of the jeans is fully done up and the penis is not exposed. That tends to eliminate the possibility of a sexual perversion that went wrong."

  "Of what?" said Fitzduane, taken aback.

  "It's part of the world of bondage, masochism, and similar perversions," said Buckley mildly, "and it's not confined to high fliers in London or Los Angeles. It happens wherever there are people, such as in this good Cathol
ic city of Cork. You see, partial asphyxia can be a sexual stimulant. This is often discovered accidentally, such as when schoolboys are wrestling. The next thing you know some youngster is locking himself in the bathroom or lavatory and playing games with ropes or chains around his neck as an aid to masturbation. Then something goes wrong, and he slips or puts the rope in the wrong place. He just nicks the vagus, and that's it. He's work for the likes of me. His parents have forced the bathroom lock or whatever, and there is little Johnny, cyanosed, looking just like Rudolf here except for his penis hanging out and dribbling semen. And often porno magazines all over the place."

  "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, though 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 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 waited, his brandy virtually untasted. Suddenly Buckley stood up, 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 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.

  "Could be," said Buckley, "but you had better widen your horizon to include boyfriend in your search. Rudolf may have swung both ways, but he had the unmistakable physical characteristics of someone who engaged regularly in homosexual activities."

  "You'd better explain," said Fitzduane.

  Buckley drained his brandy and replaced his jacket. He remained standing. "The small matter of a somewhat dilated and keratinized anal orifice. There isn't much privacy on a pathologist's slab."

  Fitzduane raised his eyebrows. "I'll ke
ep that in mind."

  "By the way," said Buckley, "there was a second postmortem in Bern, and the Bernese agreed with my findings. Suicide, no question."

  "Looks like it," said Fitzduane, "but if I run across something, would it be practicable to exhume the body and run more tests? How long has one got in this kind of situation?"

  Buckley laughed. "You're back to witch doctors," he said, "because conventional pathologists won't be much use to you. The remains were cremated."

  Chapter 6

  Fitzduane's Land Rover splashed through the town of Portlaoise. A few miles farther on he stopped at a hotel to stretch his legs and phone Murrough on the island. He heard the news about the second hanging with a sense of shock and foreboding. He remembered Toni Hoffman from the inquest. She had been a close friend of Rudi's and had been summoned to give evidence about his state of mind. When she had been called by the coroner, she hadn't been able to speak. She had just stood there, ashen-faced, shaking her head, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.

  The coroner had been sympathetic and had dismissed her after a brief, abortive effort at questioning. Fitzduane had thought at the time that she looked as much petrified with fear as grief-struck, but then they had moved on to another witness with more to say, and he had put the incident out of his mind.

  He tried to avoid thinking what she must have looked like at the end of a rope with her head half off. He wasn't successful.

  Pierre Danelle, principal of Draker College, was not pleased. It was a not uncommon state with him, since he could not, even charitably, be described as a happy man. The word misanthrope would be closer to the mark. He was, in the view of most of his students, a miserable son of a bitch.

  On this particular day Danelle was even more miserable than normal, and he was also annoyed. He read the school charter again. It incorporated various clauses taken from von Draker's will, and unfortunately the founder had been quite specific in his instructions, which for greater clarity were expressed in French, German, and English.