Free The Best of Gerald Kersh by Gerald Kersh Page B

with silks on a canvas background. She was especially good at crewelling roses for cushion covers. The needle she favoured – she had packets and packets of them – was the Cumberland Crewel Gold Eye, one of which had found its way, nobody knew how, through her skull and into her brain. But how could it possibly have found its way there? – that was the question.
    There was no lack of conjecture, you may be sure. Doctors cited dozens of instances of women – tailoresses and dressmakers, particularly – who had suddenly fallen dead through having needles embedded in various vital organs. Involuntary muscular contractions, it was demonstrated, could easily send an accidentally- stuck-in needle, or portion of a needle, working its way between the muscles for extraordinary distances, until itreached, for example, the heart….
    The coroner was inclined to accept this as a solution, and declare a verdict of Death by Misadventure. Only the doctor wouldn’t have that. Such cases, he said, had come to his attention, especially in the East End of London; and, in every case, the needle extracted had been in a certain way corroded, or calcified, as the case might be. In the case of Miss Lily Pantile, the crewel needle – upon the evidence of a noted pathologist – had been driven into the skull from the outside, with superhuman force. Part of the gold eye of the needle had been found protruding from the deceased’s scalp…. What did the coroner make of that? – the doctor asked.
    The coroner was not anxious to make anything of it but routine inquiry.
    In the opinion of the doctor, could an able-bodied man have driven a needle through a human skull with his fingers?
    Definitely, no.
    Might this needle, then, have been driven into Miss Pantile’s skull with some instrument, such as a hammer?
    Possibly; but only by someone of ‘preternatural skill’ in the use of fine steel instruments of exceptional delicacy ….
    The doctor reminded the coroner that even experienced needlewomen frequently broke far heavier needles than this gold-headed crewel needle, working with cloth of close texture. The human skull, the doctor said – calling the coroner, with his forensic experience, to witness – was a most remarkably difficult thing to penetrate, even with a specially designed instrument like a trephine.
    The coroner said that one had, however, to admit the possibility of a crewel needle being driven through amiddle-aged woman’s skull with a hammer, in the hands of a highly-skilled man.
    … So it went on, d’you see. The doctor lost his temper and invited anyone to produce an engraver, say, or cabinet-maker, to drive a crewel needle through a human skull with a hammer ‘with such consummate dexterity’ – they were his words, sir – as to leave the needle unbroken, and the surrounding skin unmarked, as was the case with Miss Pantile.
    There, d’you see, the coroner had him. He said, in substance: ‘You have proved that this needle could not have found its way into the late Miss Pantile’s brain from inside. You have also proved that this needle could not have found its way into Miss Pantile’s brain from outside .’
    Reprimanding somebody for laughing, then, he declared an Open Verdict.
    So the case was closed. A verdict is a verdict, but coroners are only coroners, even though they may be backed by the Home Office pathologist. And somehow or other, for me, this verdict was not good enough. If I had been that coroner, I thought to myself, I would have made it: Wilful Murder by a Person, or Persons, Unknown .
    All fine and large. But what person, or what persons, known or unknown, with specialised skill enough to get into a sealed house, and into a locked room, hammer a fine needle into a lady’s skull, and get out again, locking all the doors behind him, or them, from the inside – all without waking an eight-year-old girl sleeping by the side of the victim?
    Furthermore, there was the question of Motive. Robbery ?