Death at Charity's Point (4 page)

“Of course. Still…”

“I’ll be blunt with you, Mr. Coyne. There is no other reasonable explanation. The presence of the note leaves no question in my mind.”

“I’d like to see that note,” I said.

“And you shall. But why don’t you just let me explain the whole thing in my own way, first. Then we’ll look at the note. And then if you still have questions I’ll be happy to answer them.”

He peered at me over his glasses, his eyebrows arched.

“That would be fine,” I said.

“Good.” He hitched himself forward in his chair and glanced up at the ceiling for a moment before he spoke. “I was called on the morning of Friday, May first, by Dr. Berman, the local Medical Examiner. I suppose you understand that in Massachusetts each county district has its own examiner, what the quaint law of the Commonwealth calls a ‘discreet physician.’ They’re not forensic pathologists—not usually pathologists at all, in fact, but simply M.D.’s appointed by the Governor for five-year terms. The police call them in cases of unattended, violent, or suspicious deaths. Their job is to determine the cause and manner of death. I emphasize the word ‘manner,’ Mr. Coyne. It’s not enough to know
how
a person dies. The circumstances of his death are at least of equal importance.”

I nodded, feeling very much like a college sophomore sitting at the feet of a distinguished professor.

His eyes roamed the walls of the tiny office as he spoke in his precise, clipped manner. “By the time I was called in, the police and Dr. Berman had done their jobs. The note had been found, and they had pretty well reconstructed the manner of death. Because the death had been unattended—not to mention violent—a forensic autopsy was required. Dr. Berman is not authorized to perform such autopsies. That is my bailiwick.”

I leaned forward in my seat and nodded.

Dr. Clapp stared at me briefly, then shifted his attention to the wall over my left shoulder. “Here’s what happened: On the evening of April 30, George Gresham drove his automobile to a place called North Cove Beach, outside of Manchester. He parked and locked it at the municipal lot there. He was wearing a suit and tie. He walked from the parking lot up to the top of a high bluff that overlooks the ocean. The view is spectacular from there. It’s a popular spot for lovers.” Dr. Clapp permitted himself a wry smile. “Also with jumpers. Nine suicides have been attributed to jumps from Charity’s Point in the last twelve years. Ten, counting Mr. Gresham. Anyway, he climbed out to the tip of Charity’s Point, took off his jacket, folded it, and laid it on the ground. The suicide note was in the inside pocket of the jacket, sealed. Then he leaped to his death. His body was discovered on the beach the next morning by a young lady who was out for her morning jog. Frightful experience for her.”

“I can imagine,” I murmured.

“Indeed. Mr. Gresham’s body sustained quite a beating. It did raise some doubt about the specific cause of his death. Until the note was found, in fact, there was considerable doubt about the entire matter.”

I was finding the discussion—and Dr. Clapp’s clinical tone—a trifle disconcerting. I wanted a cigarette. But the black lung on Dr. Clapp’s desk seemed to be staring at me.

“When I arrived, unfortunately, the body had been removed to a local funeral home,” he continued. “I performed the autopsy there. Not ideal conditions, but that’s how our system works. Although by then the problem was really academic.”

“Academic?”

“A body washed up on the beach, a suicide note. Most commonly, that spells suicide. Logical, eh?”

I shrugged.

“We have a saying, Mr. Coyne. We say, ‘the commonest things most commonly happen.’ It’s a guide, understand. We’re not enslaved by it. It’s not like your mystery stories, where what
appears
to be is dramatically different from what really is, where you need a slick sleuth to uncoil a tangled web of clues.”

I averted my eyes. This mild gentleman had me properly pegged.

“We’re not, as I said, enslaved by that principle,” the doctor said, his eyes crinkling as if he had read my mind. “But we do find that, by and large, what seems to be, usually is.”

“But not always,” I said, perhaps a bit defensively.

“Of course not. We’d both be out of business, if the commonest things
always
happened.” He chuckled, and I smiled at his joke.

“I’m afraid I was hoping that something uncommon happened to George Gresham,” I said.

He shook his head. “Our findings don’t seem to bear you out.”

“Can you tell me what you did find?”

“Oh, yes. I have a report, of course. You’re welcome to read it. But you’ll find it pretty technical, I expect. Here’s what happens. My first task is to try to estimate the time of death, which, as I’m sure you know, is a
most
inexact science. If you should hear a pathologist claim that he can say with any certainty when someone died—even committing himself to an estimate within a couple of hours—on the basis of examining the body, don’t trust that pathologist. It’s mainly a lot of guesswork. You see, for pathological purposes we define death as the cessation of the heartbeat. Brain death occurs subsequently within minutes. The organs begin to ‘die’ shortly thereafter. As they do, the body ceases to produce heat. Hence, our single most important tool in estimating time of death is the amount of heat loss. So, of course, we take its temperature, both external and internal.”

He paused for a moment, adjusting some of the papers on his desk. I waited.

“But there are so many variables. The body does not lose its heat at a regular, predictable rate. It tends to retain its heat for a while—longer or shorter depending on the temperature of the atmosphere. In the desert you might come upon a body with a ‘normal’ temperature that has been dead for hours. In the Arctic, it would lose its heat rapidly, depending on how heavily clothed it was, how much body fat it had, the position of the body, and so forth. Mr. Gresham’s body posed special problems, since it presumably had been immersed in the Atlantic Ocean. Which is pretty cold in April. Suffice it to say that I recorded his temperature, but attributed no particular significance to it.”

He peered at me. “What about rigor mortis?” I asked.

He smiled. “We place little faith in rigor these days, partly because it’s difficult to measure, and partly because, as in the case of body temperature, there are so many variables that can intervene. Crudely speaking, complete rigor occurs within the first twelve hours after death, lasts approximately twelve hours, then gradually disappears over the next twelve to twenty-four hours. Rigor begins in the small muscles—mouth, eyelids—and progresses to the larger muscles. Again, crudely, it begins at the head and moves down the body to the legs. Nysten’s Law.” Dr. Clapp shrugged. “Of little practical value. Take Mr. Gresham’s body. Rigor had only begun to occur. The chill of the ocean will inhibit rigor mortis. Conversely, of course, extreme heat will accelerate it.”

“So you weren’t able to estimate time of death?”

“I can put a frame on it. You, Mr. Coyne, could do the same.” I frowned, and he allowed himself a chuckle. “On the basis of when he was last seen alive, and when he was found dead, you see. It doesn’t take a forensic pathologist to draw conclusions from those data.”

“When
was
he last seen? Alive, I mean.”

“At the end of dinner. Around seven. No one we could find at the school could recall seeing him after dinnertime.” Dr. Clapp peered at me over the tops of his half-moon lenses. “We have investigated this case very thoroughly. The local police have been most cooperative. Everyone of any consequence—and several of no consequence whatever—at the school has been interrogated. Mr. Gresham’s room has been secured and thoroughly searched and examined. Everything that has been found—and there really wasn’t much; Mr. Gresham appears to have lived a simple life—only seems to confirm our conclusion.”

“Please tell me about your medical—your pathological—findings.”

Dr. Clapp removed his glasses and rubbed them absent-mindedly on the front of his white smock. Then he placed them back on the bridge of his nose, hooking them over each ear with the crook of his forefinger. He moved some papers on his desk, then held up a manila folder. He peered at the writing on the tab. “Here it is.” He opened it in front of him and extracted a sheaf of black-and-white photographs. He handed them to me. “Police photos. The body as it was found on the beach.” One showed Gresham’s body curled fetally on the shimmering wet sand, necktie loosened around his throat, dress shirt with cuffs rolled halfway up his forearms, oxfords laced to his feet. A close-up focused on what had been George Gresham’s face—a white, pulpy mass, oddly bloodless, jagged bits of bone around his nose and eye sockets, forehead laid open so that a big flap of pale flesh hung down over his brow. And his eyes—his eyes were gone. The photos showed dozens of tiny sandcrabs in the act of pecking and jabbing at the empty places where Gresham’s eyes had been. There were pockmarks on his face and the backs of his hands. “What you see are mostly wounds made by seagulls. They had only begun on his face and the backs of his hands. If the body had washed up somewhere else, and had not been discovered by the girl jogging on the beach the morning after he died, there would have been little more than a skeleton and teeth left.” I shuddered.

I held up one of the close-ups, which showed Gresham’s fist clenched tightly against his chest. “What’s the significance of this?”

“Cadaveric spasm,” he replied. “Interesting phenomenon. That photo suggests that Mr. Gresham was immersed in the ocean at the moment he died. Notice—you can see it pretty clearly—” the doctor jabbed at the photograph with his blunt forefinger “—the string of seaweed in his hand. What happens is that the fists clench spasmodically at the precise instant of death. Different from the gradual stiffening of the muscles in rigor mortis. This is one powerful, final electric impulse from brain to hand. The grip can be superhuman. So we know with certainty that this man was clutching at seaweed at the moment his heart beat for the last time. Presumably somewhere at the bottom of the sea. That particular variety of seaweed, our biologists tell me, is a sort of moss that grows only on rocks under the water, so we can pretty well eliminate the possibility that he was out of water at the instant of his death.”

I stared at the picture of George Gresham’s fist for a moment, trying to imagine the frantic desperation of a man being sucked along the ocean’s floor, grasping at the slimy rocks as death struck him. I passed the photos back to the doctor.

“Now these,” he continued, handing me a second sheaf of pictures, “are the pathological photographs. You’ll see immediately why we decided to autopsy the body.”

I saw. George Gresham’s nude body lay flat on a narrow chrome table. It was a mass of scrapes, tears, welts, and bumps. It had undergone a terrible beating from ankle to skull. Hardly a square inch had been left unmarked.

“It looks like he was beaten up and kicked around,” I said.

“Doesn’t it!” Dr. Clapp’s voice echoed the horror that I felt. I liked him for that. “The work of the rocks and the surf, we surmise. He took inhuman punishment down there at the bottom of the ocean before he died. Inhuman!”

“But how do you know? Couldn’t he have been beaten up and thrown over the edge? Couldn’t those marks have been made by a knife or a club or something?”

“No. Look.” He took off his glasses and pointed at the photograph with them. “They’re random, shapeless. The gashes are jagged—tears, really, not incisions like you’d get with a knife or similar weapon. And the welts—each different. Some blunt, some sharper, none alike.”

“Fists couldn’t have done that? A man with a rock in his hand?”

“No.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am sure, Mr. Coyne. I’ve examined hundreds of dead bodies, and hundreds more that were living. I’ve studied for a lifetime. I’m a specialist. This is my business.”

“So you’re saying that most of this—this damage to his body—occurred after he actually died. Is that it?”

“As a pathologist, I admit I can’t tell you for sure. We can’t determine with certainty whether lacerations, abrasions, or bruises occurred immediately before or after death. In either case, there’s going to be some oozing of blood and fluids into the area. Post-mortem wounds look like ante-mortem wounds. It’s still an area of study for us. We have some hope that microscopic examination of the enzymes that flood into the area can help us identify ante-mortem wounds—but even then, our best hope is to distinguish wounds at least an hour old at time of death. No, if any of Mr. Gresham’s wounds occurred before he died, I couldn’t tell you which ones.”

I held out my hands, palms up. “Then…?”

“Right, of course, Mr. Coyne. Some of those wounds might have been administered prior to his leap into the ocean. That is possible.”

“So how can you eliminate…?”

“Foul play?” He smiled. “Of course, we can’t. Not with absolute certainty. But the evidence doesn’t point to it. Naturally, if we could place another person at Charity’s Point with George Gresham on the evening of April 30, we’d have a different story. We need opportunity—that’s the person—and motive. Then we might be talking murder. We found nothing remotely resembling either opportunity or motive. That left us with accident. The note pretty much dispelled both theories. My autopsy found no natural cause to suspect. The police found the note. Ergo, suicide. I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” I said. “Me too. So he drowned.”

Dr. Clapp leaned back in his chair and made a steeple of his fingers. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment.

“Drowned. Yes, I guess you’d say he drowned.” He looked hard at me. “In the sense that he didn’t die from the fractured ribs, the fracture at the base of his skull, the punctured lung, or the burst testicle—yes, he drowned. His lungs and stomach were full of sea water. There was bile in his lungs as well, indicating he had inspired regurgitated material. Official cause of death is listed as cardiac arrest from drowning. You see, when someone drowns, he takes huge quantities of sea water into his stomach and lungs. And when he can’t breathe, he suffers from hypoxia—lack of blood oxygen. He thrashes around, he gasps for air, he regurgitates and inspires water, and he panics. Large doses of adrenalin are secreted into the system. Adrenalin plus hypoxia produces cardiac arrest. The heart fails. That is death.”