The Dante Club Page 0,4

left in his yard was astounding, but Barnicoat did not possess knowledge enough to admit this. The coroner was a political appointee, and the position required no special medical or scientific expertise, only a tolerance for dead bodies.

"The chambermaid who took the body into the house," Kurtz explained. "She was trying to clear the insects from the wound and she thought she saw, I daresay I don't know how..."

Barnicoat coughed for Kurtz to get on with it.

"She heard Judge Healey moan before dying," Kurtz said. "That's what she says, Mr. Barnicoat."

"Oh, very like!" Barnicoat laughed lightheartedly. "Maggots of blowflies can live only on dead tissue, Chief." Which was why, he explained, the female flies looked for wounds on cattle to nest on, or spoiled meat. If they happened to find themselves in a wound of a living being who was unconscious or otherwise incapable of removing them, the maggots could ingest only the dead portions of tissue - which did little harm. "This head wound looks to have doubled or tripled from its original circumference, meaning that all the tissue was dead, meaning that the chief justice was quite finished by the time the insects had their feast."

"So the blow to the head," Kurtz said, "that caused the original wound - that's what killed him?"

"Oh, very like, Chief," said Barnicoat. "And hard enough to knock his teeth out at that. You say he was found in their yard?"

Kurtz nodded. Barnicoat speculated that the killing had not been intentional. An assault with the purpose of murder would have included something to guarantee the enterprise beyond a blow, like a pistol or ax. "Even a dagger. No, this seems more likely an ordinary breaking-in then. The rogue clubs the chief justice on the head in the bedchamber, knocks him out cold, then drops him outside to get him out of the way while he ransacks the house for valuables, probably never once thinking that Healey would have been so hurt," he said, almost sympathetic to the misguided thief.

Kurtz looked right at Barnicoat with an ominous stare. "Only, nothing was taken from the house. Not merely that. The chief justice's clothes were removed and folded up neatly, even down to his drawers." He caught his voice creaking, as if it had been stepped on. "With his wallet, gold chain, and watch all left in a stack by his clothes!"

One of Barnicoat's lobster eyes shot wide open at Kurtz. "He was stripped? And nothing at all was taken?"

"This was plain madness," Kurtz said, the fact hitting him anew for the third or fourth time.

"Think of that!" exclaimed Barnicoat, looking around as though to find more people to tell.

"You and your deputies are to keep this completely confidential, by order of the mayor. You know that, right, Mr. Barnicoat? Not a word outside these walls!"

"Oh, very like, Chief Kurtz." Then Barnicoat laughed quickly, irresponsibly, like a child. "Well, old Healey would have been an awfully fat man to haul about. At least we can trust it was not the grieving widder."

* * *

Kurtz made every plea to logic and emotion when he explained, at Wide Oaks, why he needed time to look into the matter before the public could know what had happened. But Ednah Healey gave no response as her upstairs girl arranged the bedcovers around her.

"You see - well, if there's a circus about us, if the press savages our methods as they do, what can be discovered?"

Her eyes, usually darting and judgmental, were sadly immobilized. Even the maids, who feared her fierce look of reprimand, cried for her current state as much as for the loss of Judge Healey.

Kurtz shrank back, almost ready to surrender. He noticed that Mrs. Healey closed her eyes tightly when Nell Ranney came into the room with tea. "Mr. Barnicoat, the coroner, says that your chambermaid's belief that the chief justice was alive when she found him is scientifically impossible - a hallucination. For Barnicoat can tell by the number of maggots that the chief justice had already passed on."

Ednah Healey turned to Kurtz with a quizzical open look.

"Truly, Mrs. Healey," Kurtz continued with new self-assurance. "The flies' maggots by their nature only eat dead tissue, you see."

"Then he could not have suffered while he was out there?" Mrs. Healey pleaded with a broken voice.

Kurtz shook his head firmly. Before he left Wide Oaks, Ednah called in Nell Ranney and forbade her ever to repeat that most horrific portion of her story again.

"But, Mrs. Healey,