The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem Page A

but he was only half-listening to the constable, his attention attracted by a small, light-colored bit of wood shaving stuck to the frame of the broken window and by the deep though not very clear impression of a bare foot in the snow next to the wall. He bent down to get a better look. The snow was all churned up, as if something very heavy had been dragged through it. Here and there he could make out some flat-bottomed oblong depressions; they looked as if they had been made by pressing a large-sized loaf of bread into the snow. Noticing something yellowish in one of them, Gregory bent over still more and picked up a few more curled shavings. Twisting his head around, he looked at the second window for a moment. It was closed and painted over with whitewash. Then, stepping backward a little, he knelt on one knee to brush some of the snow aside, stood up again, and with his eyes followed the course of the strange signs. He took a deep breath. Standing erect, with his hands in his pockets, he glanced at the white space between the bushes, the mortuary, and the first gravestone. The deep, misshapen prints began under the broken window, looped around in an arc to the door, then zigzagged right and left as if a drunk had been pushing a heavy bag. Sorensen stood off to the side, watching all this without much interest.
    “Why isn’t there a padlock on the door?” Gregory asked the constable. “Was there one before?”
    “There was, Lieutenant, but it broke. The gravedigger was supposed to take it to the blacksmith but he forgot, and when he finally remembered it was Sunday, and so on. You know how it is,” the constable shrugged.
    Gregory, not saying a word, moved closer to the unshapely canvas mound, carefully lifted the edge of the stiff sheet, then pulled the whole thing off and threw it to the side.
    This revealed a naked body. It was resting on its side with its arms and legs bent, as if it were kneeling on something invisible or pushing against something. A wide furrow in the snow extended from the lower part of the body to directly under the window. About two paces beyond the body’s head was the doorstep. The snow in that space was smooth.
    “Why don’t you examine him,” Gregory suggested, getting up again. The blood rushed to his face. “Who is he?” he asked the constable, who was in the process of pulling his cap down over his eyes to protect them from the sun.
    “Hansel, sir. John Hansel. He owned a small dyeing plant near here.”
    Gregory watched while Sorensen, wearing a pair of rubber gloves he had taken out of an ordinary briefcase, felt the corpse’s legs and hands, drew back the eyelids, and examined the spinal curvature.
    “Was he a German?”
    “I don’t know, sir. Maybe by ancestry, but I never heard anything about it. His parents always lived around here.”
    “When did he die?”
    “Yesterday morning, sir. The doctor said it was a heart attack. He had a heart condition for a long time and wasn’t supposed to work anymore but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything after his wife left him for another guy.”
    “Were there any other bodies in the mortuary?”
    Sorensen stood up, brushed his knee with a handkerchief, rubbed an invisible spot off his sleeve, and carefully slipped the rubber gloves back into his briefcase.
    “There was one the day before yesterday, sir, but it’s already been buried. The funeral was yesterday, at noon.”
    “So this is the only body that’s been here since noon yesterday?”
    “That’s right sir, only this one.”
    “Well, Doctor?”
    Gregory walked over to Sorensen. They stood together under a willow bush for a moment, but the melting snow on its branches soon began to drip on them.
    “What can I tell you?”
    Sorensen sounded annoyed.
    “Death took place about twenty-four hours ago. The stains on the jaw as you can see, indicate rigor mortis.”
    “What about the extremities? Well, speak up—don’t you have anything to tell