Murder in the Queen's Armes by Aaron Elkins

"Why then, we’ve ruled out half the world already, haven’t we?"
    "Three-quarters," Gideon said.
    "Three-quarters?"
    "Seventy-five percent of the world is nonwhite, and we can eliminate every one of them. So we really are making progress, you see. We’ve already narrowed it down to only a billion or so, out of a possible four billion. Half a billion, really, or even a little less, since we know he’s a male." Now why, Gideon wondered, am I being cute?
    "Fancy," Bagshawe said. "Four billion people. Who would have thought?"
    "And that’s not all," said Merrill. "We have an idea of his age now. That is to say, Professor Oliver has: approximately thirty-five years of age."
    "Approximately? Would that be, say, thirty to forty?"
    "Say thirty-four to thirty-five," Gideon said, drawing it a bit finer than the evidence warranted. Bagshawe had him showing off now. There was something about this peaceable, lumbering policeman that threw one off one’s stride. Quite an advantage for a detective, Gideon imagined.
    "Indeed, now? Well, that certainly is something. A thirty-five-year-old Caucasian; quite helpful, quite helpful."
    "I haven’t had a thorough look at the skeleton yet," Gideon said. "I might be able to turn up something else."
    "Do you think you could? I’d be most appreciative. Now, Dr. Merrill, I was just looking for your report, but I seem to have misplaced it."
    "No, Inspector, I haven’t completed it yet. Why don’t I just come along and finish it right now? The file’s in your office. I imagine Professor Oliver would welcome the chance to work without having me underfoot."
     
     
     

EIGHT
     
     
       WORKING alone suited Gideon, who depended more than most on intuition. To have to explain or defend what he was doing as he went along could throw him off the track or make him lose a glimmer of insight that might flash only once.
    Alone, he went quickly over the skeletal system with a probe and gloved fingertips, looking for anything that might catch his attention. He had fought down his initial queasy reaction and was able to work objectively, if not quite with Merrill’s zest. The trick was to "unfocus" on the mutilated body that seemed to be rotting before his eyes, and think in terms of a series of bony condyles, fossae, foramina, and diaphyses to be dispassionately examined one at a time.
    On the torso the only thing even moderately interesting was the existence of osteophytic growths—the bony excrescences of arthritis—on three of the five lumbar vertebrae, just above the hips. This was not rheumatoid arthritis, which can strike at any time, but the "normal" degeneration of bone surfaces that came to everyone with age. That was what made it odd. You’d expect vertebrae like these in a man of seventy, not one half that age.
    Strange, too, that only three vertebrae should be affected. That suggested the growths and lipping were the results of localized trauma—of which he could find no other sign—or of some sort of long-term stress on the lower back. Gideon studied them for a while, finally gave up, and tucked the problem into a corner of his mind.
    On the right forearm, masked by swollen, blackened soft tissue, he found something he did understand. Both bones, the ulna and the radius, were shattered, the only signs of antemortem injury other than the fractured hyoid and thyroid. The direction of the splintering and the way the lower parts of the shafts had ridden up over the upper made it clear that they had been broken by a single blow on the outside (the little-finger side) of the forearm. It was precisely the kind of damage done when a victim instinctively flings his arm up over his face to protect it against a club-wielding assailant—the so-called nightstick fracture.
    It was also a serviceable explanation of how someone had managed to stand in front of a big, presumably healthy man like this one and choke him to death. Assuming that the blow had come before the strangling (there was no way