The Investigation Read Free Page A

examiner stopped massaging his pointed chin. “The cloth was torn off the rod. To be exact, it had been frayed to the breaking point but it was definitely not cut. That’s certain. It looked … as if someone had bitten it off. I conducted several tests. Under the microscope it looks the same way.”
    In the momentary silence that followed, a distant airplane engine was heard, its sound muffled by the fog.
    “Was anything else missing besides the curtain?” the Chief Inspector asked at last.
    The doctor glanced at Farquart, who nodded his head.
    “Yes, a roll of adhesive tape, a very big roll that had been lying on a table near the door.”
    “Adhesive tape?” The Chief Inspector raised an eyebrow.
    “They use it to hold up the chins … to keep the mouth from opening,” Sorensen explained. “Postmortem beauty treatment,” he added with a sardonic smile.
    “That’s all?”
    “Yes.”
    “What about the corpse in the dissecting laboratory? Was it dressed?”
    “No. But in this case … oh, Gregory’s already told you the whole story, hasn’t he?”
    “I forgot to mention it before…” the lieutenant cut in quickly, experiencing an unpleasant sensation because his memory lapse had been discovered. “The body wasn’t dressed, but the janitor claims he was short one doctor’s coat and two pairs of white pants—the kind the students wear in the summertime. A few pairs of disposable slippers may have been missing also, but the janitor says he never manages to keep an accurate count on them—he says the cleaning woman steals a few every once in a while.”
    The Chief Inspector took a deep breath and tapped on the desk with his eyeglasses.
    “Thank you. Doctor Sciss, may I trouble you now?”
    Without stirring from his casual position, Sciss muttered incoherently and finished writing something in an open notebook which he was supporting on his sharp, protruding knee.
    Then, bending his balding, somewhat birdlike head, Sciss slammed the book closed and slipped it under his chair, pursed his thin lips as if he wanted to whistle, and stood up, rubbing his fingers against his twisted, arthritic joints.
    “I consider your invitation to be a useful novum ,” he said in a high, almost falsetto voice. “It so happens that I generally tend to sound like a lecturer. I hope none of you mind; in any event it’s quite unavoidable. Now then, I have made a thorough study of this series of incidents. As we have seen, the classical methods of investigation—the collection of evidence and the search for motives—have failed completely. Consequently, I have utilized the statistical method of investigation. It offers obvious advantages. We can often define a crime at the scene of its occurrence by the kinds of facts that are connected with it and the kinds that are not. For example, the shape of the bloodstains found near a murdered body may have a connection with the crime, and if so they can say a good deal about the way it was committed. Certain other facts, however—for example, that a cumulus or cirrostratus cloud floated over the scene of the crime on the day of a particular homicide, or that the telephone wires in front of the house where the crime took place are made of aluminum or copper—can be classified as nonessential. As far as our series of incidents is concerned, it is altogether impossible to decide in advance which of the facts accompanying the incidents were connected with the crime and which were not.
    “If it were only a matter of one incident,” Sciss continued, “we would be at an impasse. Fortunately, however, there were several incidents. Now it stands to reason that a virtually unlimited number of objects and phenomena could have been found or observed in the vicinity of the incidents during the critical period. Therefore, to prepare a useful statistical series, we must rely only on those facts that are common to all the incidents, or at any rate, to a substantial majority of the incidents.