Mr Polton Explains by R.Austin Freeman

Author:R.Austin Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mr Polton Explains
ISBN: 9780755128709
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The Ruins

In the medico-legal mind the idea of horror, I suppose, hardly has a place. It is not only that sensibilities tend to become dulled by repeated impacts, but that the emotions are, as it were, insulated by the concentration of attention on technical matters. Speaking, however, dispassionately, I must admit that the body which had been disinterred from the ruins of the burned house was about as horrible an object as I had ever seen. Even the coroner’s officer, whose emotional epidermis might well have grown fairly tough, looked at that corpse with an undisguised shudder, while as to Polton, he was positively appalled. As he stood by the table and stared with bulging eyes at the dreadful thing, I surmised that he was enjoying the thrill of his life. He was in a very ecstasy of horror.

To both these observers, I think, Thorndyke’s proceedings imparted an added touch of gruesomeness; for my colleague – as I have hinted – saw in that hideous object nothing but a technical problem, and he proceeded in the most impassive and matter-of-fact way to examine it feature by feature and note down his observations as if he were drawing up an inventory. I need not enter into details as to its appearance. It will easily be imagined that a body which had been exposed to such intense heat that not only was most of its flesh reduced to mere animal charcoal, but the very bones, in places, were incinerated to chalky whiteness, was not a pleasant object to look on. But I think that what most appalled both Polton and the officer was the strange posture that it had assumed: a posture suggesting some sort of struggle or as if the man had been writhing in agony or shrinking from a threatened attack. The body and limbs were contorted in the strangest manner, the arms crooked, the hands thrust forward, and the skeleton fingers bent like hooks.

“Good Lord, Sir!” Polton whispered, “how the poor creature must have suffered! And it almost looks as if someone had been holding him down.”

“It really does,” the coroner’s officer agreed; “as if somebody was attacking him and wouldn’t let him escape.”

“It does look rather horrid,” I admitted, “but I don’t think you need worry too much about the position of the limbs. This contortion is almost certainly due to shrinkage of the muscles after death as the heat dried them. What do you think, Thorndyke?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “It is not possible to draw any conclusions from the posture of a body that has been burned to the extent that this has, and burned so unequally. You notice that, whereas the feet are practically incinerated, there are actually traces of the clothing on the chest; apparently a suit of pyjamas, to judge by what is left of the buttons.”

At this moment the door of the mortuary opened to admit a newcomer, in whom we recognized a Dr Robertson, the divisional surgeon and an old acquaintance of us both.

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