The sergeant was in the act of replacing the sheet, with the air of a showman who has just given an exhibition, when there came a sharp rapping on the mortuary door. The officer finished spreading the sheet with official precision, and having ushered me out into the lobby, turned the key and admitted three persons, holding the door open after they had entered for me to go out. But the appearance of the new-comers inclined me to linger. One of them was a local constable, evidently in official charge; a second was a labouring man, very muddy and wet, who carried a small sack; while in the third I thought I scented a professional brother.
The sergeant continued to hold the door open.
"Nothing more I can do for you, sir?" he asked genially.
"Is that the divisional surgeon?" I inquired.
"Yes. I am the divisional surgeon," the new-comer answered. "Did you want anything of me?"
"This," said the sergeant, "is a medical gentleman who has got permission from the coroner to inspect the remains. He is acting for the family of the deceased--I mean, for the family of Mr. Bellingham," he added in answer to an inquiring glance from the surgeon.
"I see," said the latter. "Well, they have found the rest of the trunk, including, I understand, the ribs that were missing from the other part. Isn't that so, Davis?"
"Yes, sir," replied the constable. "Inspector Badger says all the ribs is here, and all the bones of the neck as well."
"The inspector seems to be an anatomist," I remarked.
The sergeant grinned. "He's a very knowing gentleman, is Mr. Badger. He came down here this morning quite early and spent a long time looking over the bones and checking them by some notes in his pocket-book. I fancy he's got something on, but he was precious close about it."
Here the sergeant shut up rather suddenly--perhaps contrasting his own conduct with that of his superior.
"Let us have these new bones out on the table," said the police-surgeon. "Take that sheet off, and don't shoot them out as if they were coals. Hand them out carefully."
The labourer fished out the wet and muddy bones one by one from the sack, and as he laid them on the table the surgeon arranged them in their proper relative positions.
"This has been a neatly executed job," he remarked; "none of your clumsy hacking with a chopper or a saw. The bones have been cleanly separated at the joints. The fellow who did this must have had some anatomical knowledge, unless he was a butcher, which, by the way, is not impossible. He has used his knife uncommonly skilfully, and you notice that each arm was taken off with the scapula attached, just as a butcher takes off a shoulder of mutton. Are there any more bones in that bag?"