Free The Corpse in Oozak's Pond by Charlotte MacLeod Page A

certificate, the old man’s heart must have been remarkably sound, considering his age, and the old lady’s lungs as clear as a bell. And vice versa, I may add. If Chief Ottermole doesn’t mind, I’d like to take some bits and pieces back for analysis.”
    “Take all you want,” said the chief. “They won’t be needing them anymore. How about the guy we fished out of the pond?”
    “A straightforward case of murder.”
    “Huh? How come not suicide? Couldn’t he simply have filled his pockets with rocks to weigh him down an’ jumped in?”
    “Not after somebody ran an ice pick into the base of his skull, he couldn’t. In fact, I’m wondering if he may have been left lying around somewhere for a day or two before he was put into the pond. There are certain signs not altogether consistent with immediate immersion in icy water and none whatever of drowning.”
    “Then one person acting alone may have killed him and had to wait some time for help in dumping the body, do you think?” said Shandy.
    “It’s a possibility. He may have been driven across country in a car with a heater running, for all I know, though I can’t imagine why. I’m not saying the weapon was in fact an ice pick, but an ice pick would have made exactly the kind of wound he received. Driving it into his neck wouldn’t have taken any great amount of strength if it was sharp enough, which it obviously was. Getting a tall, well-nourished corpse into the pond would have taken more than average strength and was most likely done by more than one person. Unless he was considerate enough to be lying facedown on a toboggan when he was stabbed.”
    “With his pockets full of rocks.”
    “You do slay with panache over here, I must say. Could you lend me a couple of buckets for the stomachs, Goulson?”
    “Better bring a spare,” mumbled Fred Ottermole. They weren’t actually in the room where the autopsy had been taking place, but they were closer to it than he wished he were. Ottermole was still suffering from the morning’s injudicious combination of corpse and crullers.
    Seeing a relapse on the way, Shandy hastened to change the subject. “What can you tell us about the murdered man, Doctor? We still don’t have an identification, as Goulson must have told you, and we’d welcome any ideas you may have. Did you get any, er, Holmesian hints from his hands, for instance?”
    “Well, he wasn’t a surgeon or a golfer.” The coroner displayed his own calluses as evidence. “He may have done a fair amount of physical labor when he was younger, but not all that much in recent years. He was in excellent physical condition for a man his age, which would be between sixty and sixty-five, I’d say; well nourished but not fat, didn’t smoke or drink to excess, and spent a lot of time outdoors. He might possibly have been a construction foreman who’d worked his way up from the pick-and-shovel brigade or something on that general line, but that’s only a guess.”
    “What about his teeth?”
    “They’d been freshly pulled. By an amateur using a hammer and chisel, from the looks of the gums.”
    “My God! To hamper identification, I suppose.”
    “Oh, yes. The fingertips have been sandpapered, too. Quite a home handyman’s job all around. I haven’t had time to prowl through that beard, but I’d suggest you have Goulson get rid of it. There may be a scar or birthmark underneath that would give you a clue. We took some pictures of him all nicely dried and combed out before I began my examination, by the way.”
    “We got some, too,” Fred Ottermole bragged. “We had a photographer on the scene when we hauled him out of the pond.”
    “By George, Chief Ottermole, you’re an organizer. I don’t see how you run such a tight department with such a tiny staff, the lowest budget in the county, and the highest percentage of murders.”
    “We got no more murders than anyplace else,” Ottermole protested. “It’s just that we don’t