Malice in Cornwall (10 page)

As he examined the stacks of magazines more closely,
it became clear that the material had been further organized, with a librarian's precision, according to the general anatomical theme of each publication. After he had seen enough, he took some pains to rearrange the magazines at random, then he closed and locked the safe door and secured the false front of the escritoire.

He smiled as he turned off the light. That should get the little bugger going.

At seven twenty-two the next morning Sir Reginald Quick arrived in the cathedral city of Truro on the Inter-City Sleeper from London. Powell and Black met him at the station, a bear of a man with an unruly mop of white hair and an animated red face that made him look like he was constantly on the verge of some vascular catastrophe. He had a stentorian voice that had put the fear of God into more than one inexperienced policeman.

“What do you call this hour, Powell? I call it uncivilized! Do you think I can sleep on these damn trains? Privatize the lot of them, then we'll see some bloody service, by God!”

“Good morning, Reggie,” Powell said cheerfully. (The renowned Home Office pathologist refused to be called Sir Reginald by those he was on reasonable terms with— “too damned stuffy!”) “You know Bill Black, of course.”

Sir Reggie scowled. “I need a cup of coffee.”

They located a small cafe near the station.

Powell attempted to smooth the waters. “You know I wouldn't have dragged you out here if I didn't think it
was necessary. This is not your run-of-the-mill Jane Doe case.”

Sir Reggie grunted. “All right, you've piqued my interest. Did you know that the local coroner has already complained about us sticking our noses in? My initial reaction was
screw
him. But you'd better fill me in, sparing not the slightest detail, before I change my mind.”

Powell grinned and proceeded to put Sir Reggie in the picture, with the occasional pointed question from the pathologist.

“Well, something is not bloody right, that's clear enough,” Sir Reggie concluded when Powell finished. “Have you sent that sample of yours off to the lab yet? No? Then let's have a look at it, man!”

Powell handed the vial over.

Sir Reggie held it up to the light, peering intently at the contents. “Could be, it just could be,” he muttered.

“Would you care to enlighten us?” Powell said.

“Not particularly. Unlike you detective chaps, I never speculate. I only pronounce the truth. When I know for certain, I'll tell you.”

Powell bit his tongue. Unlike you and your coterie of boffins, he felt like saying, we poor working sods don't have the luxury of living in an ivory tower. But he was satisfied so far. Sir Reggie had taken the bait and seemed securely hooked. And if anyone could get to the bottom of this business, he could.

A few minutes later, they dropped Sir Reggie off at the hospital and then proceeded to the police station in Tre-golls Road. There was a message from Butts waiting for them. Powell rang up the Coastguard Regional Rescue
Coordination Centre in Falmouth and was put through to the Operations Centre. He spoke to the watch officer to whom his earlier inquiry had been referred. Apparently a young woman had gone overboard from a motor launch off Torquay a little over three weeks ago. She was still missing and presumed drowned. Though clearly the most promising lead so far, the timing didn't quite seem to fit. He spent the next half hour interviewing the coastguard officer on the subject of ocean temperatures, tides, and currents in the English Channel and along the north coast of Cornwall. When he was done, there was still an hour or so to kill, so Powell had Black drop him off at Truro Cathedral, while the sergeant went off in search of a bookstore. At twelve-thirty Black returned to pick him up and they drove to the hospital to collect Sir Reggie.

“I must have my lunch!” Sir Reggie roared as he piled into the car. “And none of your damn curry, Powell! A goodly wedge of Melton Mowbray is what I need!”

Sergeant Black smiled happily and looked for the nearest pub. Here was a man after his own heart.

Sir Reggie wiped his thick lips with the back of his hand. “That was bloody marvelous and if you're not going to have that pasty, I will.”

Powell pushed the local variety of meat and vegetable pie over and watched as Sir Reggie made short work of it, washing it down with a half-pint of bitter. Sir Reggie leaned back in his chair and belched.

“Now, then, what can you tell us?” Powell said. With Sir Reggie, the direct approach was usually best. Unlike many scientific types who perceived themselves as being
superior to lesser mortals, Sir Reggie tended not to pontificate or obfuscate, and he was generally happy to share his knowledge with anyone he considered in possession of the wit to appreciate it.

“As you said, an interesting case,” he began. “First off, I can tell you that dental records won't help us very much. Ha. Ha.”

Powell and Black laughed politely.

“We're dealing with a female, approximately five feet four inches, in her early to midthirties,” he continued, serious now. “There's not much to go on by way of an ID. No distinguishing features. Fingerprints are going to be a bit ticklish given the state of decomposition. The flesh of the right hand is more or less intact, but the skin has loosened considerably from exposure to the elements.” He selected a soggy chip from his plate and chewed on it thoughtfully. “And
adipocere
has set in.”

“Adipocere?”
Powell and Black said in unison.

“A waxy deposit that sometimes appears subcuta-neously in bodies that have been immersed in water. It causes the ridges that form fingerprints to disappear. One can, however, peel the skin from the fingertips and occasionally get a good print or two. I've had a go with this one, so we'll see what the chaps in Fingerprint Section can do with it. But the exercise will only yield a useful result if her prints are on record somewhere, which, from a statistical point of view, is highly unlikely.”

Powell nodded. “Any indication of the cause of death?”

The pathologist shrugged. “No obvious signs of foul play. My instincts tell me that we're dealing with a
drowning, but then there's your little sample to consider. Occasionally you chaps do contribute something useful to these investigations.”

Powell smiled. “We aim to please.”

Sir Reggie rummaged around in the pocket of his tatty tweed jacket and eventually extracted Powell's vial. He next produced a well-used handkerchief and spread it out on the table. He removed the cap from the vial and tapped the contents onto the handkerchief. Before Powell could protest, he said, “Don't worry, I've kept a portion aside for a legal sample. Here, have a look at this.”

Powell examined the tiny heap of material: a mixture of sand, unidentifiable debris, and several clumps of black fiber or hair, as far as he could tell. He hadn't paid much attention to it previously, content to leave such matters to the lab analysts. Sergeant Black leaned over to have a closer look.

Sir Reggie peered at the sample. “See this black stuff? I've had a look at it under a microscope. Know what it is?” He stared critically at Powell as if the chief superintendent were a fresh-faced medical student.

“I don't have a microscope, and I prefer not to speculate.”

Sir Reggie snorted. “Well done, Powell; there's hope for you yet. But don't pass it off too lightly—it's the key to your mystery, or at least part of it. Those black strands are the rhizomorphs of a fungus,
Armillaria mellea.
It causes wood rot, but that's not its most interesting quality.
Armillaria mellea
exhibits a curious property known as bioluminescence.” He paused for effect. “In other words, the bloody stuff glows in the dark!”

Powell felt a surge of energy pass through him. “I don't understand—it couldn't grow in the sea, could it?”

“Of course not. Its natural habitats are woodlots and lumberyards. Luminous wood has been known since Pliny's time,” Sir Reggie continued. “We now know that it's the fungus growing in the decaying wood that actually gives off the light. As long as it's kept moist and is actively growing, it will give off a fairly strong light, which in the case of
Armillaria
has a slight bluish green quality. During the war, pieces of infected wood along roads where timber was hauled, or in lumberyards, were occasionally reported to the authorities at night by people who suspected they might be signaling beacons or incendiary devices planted by the enemy. Fascinating, don't you think?”

“Fascinating. But how does a corpse washed up on a beach in north Cornwall get contaminated with a luminous wood-rotting fungus?”

“Don't ask me. You're the detective.”

“Would the stuff survive in salt water?”

“I'm not a bloody mycologist,” Sir Reggie said gruffly, “but my guess would be no, at least not for long.”

“You mentioned that the fungus gives off a fairly strong light; the body was glowing quite faintly when I saw it—I thought I was imagining it at first.”

Sir Reggie frowned. “The conditions would have to be just right—it would have to be pitch-black, for one thing. And didn't you say it was raining on the night in question? Some of it may have washed off.”

“Is it possible that someone deliberately doctored the body with the fungus? Sprinkled it with the stuff, or something like that?”

“Anything's possible.”

Powell shook his head skeptically. “Someone running around Cornwall scattering luminous fungus like bloody fairy dust. It doesn't make any sense. The Riddle was reported independently by several different people; they can't all be in on it. So whoever is responsible would have to get to the body first, tart it up with the fungus, and then bugger off, leaving it for the next passerby to stumble on. And this would presumably have to be repeated, as the stuff would wash off when the body drifted out with the tide again. Unless …”

“Yes?”

“When I know for certain, I'll tell you.”

Sir Reggie smiled carnivorously. “I suppose I deserved that. In any case, it is a bit of a puzzler, and it gets even more interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fixing the time of death is not an exact science at the best of times; I sometimes think that black magic is a better description of the process involved. Nonetheless, it's my opinion that your Riddle has been dead for longer than it might appear at first glance. Corpses basically decompose in two ways,” he went on to explain, “from the autolytic action of the body's own enzymes and from putrefaction caused by bacteria escaping the digestive tract. Immersion in cold seawater and limited exposure to sunlight has evidently slowed the rate of decomposition in this case. A superficial examination of the body would suggest a period of perhaps seven or eight days since the time of death. However, if one confined one's attention to the condition of the internal organs, which are pretty far
gone, one would be persuaded to place the time of death considerably earlier, fourteen to sixteen days ago, perhaps.”

“I'm given to understand that the mean ocean temperature off Cornwall at this time of year is about forty-five degrees,” Powell observed.

“The rate of decomposition slows considerably below fifty degrees, still …” Sir Reggie frowned. “It's almost as if the bloody thing has been partially embalmed in some fashion. And from the outside in, which is not the usual way of doing things.”

Curiouser and curiouser. Then Powell remembered how he'd been struck by the absence of a strong odor when he'd first examined the body. He mentioned the fact to Sir Reggie.

The pathologist nodded. “That fits, although it's getting bloody ripe now. I can tell you. In any case, I've ordered some tests. I'll let you know if I come up with anything earthshaking.”

“What about the legs? Dr. Harris thought that they'd been amputated with a saw.”

Sir Reggie laughed uproariously, as if this were the funniest thing he'd ever heard. “Your Dr. Harris is a very astute chap,” he said, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief and sending the flotsam and jetsam that had comprised Powell's sample flying in all directions. “The majority of his conclusions were substantially correct, but on that particular point he was dead wrong. Sharks probably chewed ‘em off first, then the abrasive action of the sand finished the job. smoothing off the ends of the femurs as the body moved up and down the beach with
the changing tides. So the culprit is not a hacksaw, but rather a piece of sandpaper. Ha ha!”

Powell and Black looked at each other.

Sir Reggie consulted his watch. “Now, then, my train leaves at three twenty-four. If you drop me off at the station now, I'll have time for a quick snooze. And I'd advise you chaps to hop to it; you've got your work cut out for you.”

Powell was on the verge of mentioning the woman reported drowned off Torquay, but decided he'd better wait until he'd seen the official coastguard report. For the time being, he preferred to let Sir Reggie work things out for himself.

As they sped along the A30 past prosperous-looking farms, it occurred to Powell that they had more on their plates than they'd originally bargained for. Not murder, perhaps, but something very peculiar nonetheless. And nothing they had learned so far was inconsistent with the conclusion that it was in fact the Riddle of Penrick lying on a slab in the Treliske Hospital morgue. He turned to Sergeant Black. “As soon as we get back, I'm going to have a word with that fisherman of yours, Colin what's-his-name?”

“Wilcox, sir.”

“Right. Tell me, what do make of Sir Reggie's revelations?”

Black frowned. “I think if we can figure out the
why
, the
how
will fall into place, sir. I keep thinking about what Wilcox said about the murder of that girl in the Sixties.”

Powell nodded. A detective-sergeant on the same
wavelength as his super is a gift from heaven. “I'll have to ask Buttie about it. He's lived around here all his life; he should be familiar with the case. The murdered girl's father, Roger Trevenney, still lives near Penrick. According to Dr. Harris he's not very well, so I'm reluctant to bother him unless it's absolutely necessary.” He sighed. “And there's no reason to suppose there's any connection at this point.”