Some Danger Involved by Will Thomas Read Free Book Online

killers had settled upon a representation. The nails piercing the hands would not have supported the body, and abrasions on the forearms showed that they had been tied to the cross with stout rope.
    From where I stood at the foot of the table, I looked at the victim, with his fine Semitic features, the long hair and beard. I suppose I had blacked out from the sudden shock of finding Christ on a postmortem table in Tower Road. Now I saw the man, Louis Pokrzywa. Poor blighter, I thought. Whatever did you do to deserve this?
    “He really did look like Christ,” I remarked. “Or at least, as I pictured him.”
    “Close enough, if it matters, lad,” Barker sniffed. “But Isaiah fifty-three two states, ‘He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.’ ”
    Just then a man came bustling into the room, and Barker continued his examination. He had a hawk nose, steel gray eyes, and white hair combed severely back and falling straight to his shoulders, like a music impresario. He wore a smock displaying every type of bodily fluid and gore a human corpse can produce, with a respectable collar and tie peeping out the top.
    “Hello, Barker,” he said. “Are you almost done here?”
    “Yes, Dr. Vandeleur,” my employer responded. “I am. Did you get your postmortem?”
    “No, blast the luck. I would have loved to test the strain on the musculature of the arms and rib cage. One doesn’t get the opportunity to examine a crucified body every day. A paper in front of the British Medical Association would have made me famous. But there’s no question about the cause of death. It was that knife wound, straight up into the heart.”
    “So he was not alive when he was crucified?”
    “No, but he was for the drubbing they gave him. I’d say he must have received ten blows at least, some to the face, some to the rib cage. Either an entire party went at him, or one fellow who was hopping mad.”
    “Any other marks?” Barker prompted.
    “Scratches, splinters, and creosote smears on his back, where he was hoisted up the telegraph pole.”
    “Telegraph pole?” I wondered aloud.
    “Yes, they found him this morning in Petticoat Lane, hoisted up a pole right in the middle of the Jewish quarter of the City. That took brass,” Vandeleur said.
    “And brains,” Barker added. “They must have moved swiftly in the fog last night and set him up before the first vendors came with their barrows. Now the Sunday market is at its busiest, wearing away any clues they left. Llewelyn, would you please find Constable Morrow, and bring the beam and rope?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    There were two benches in the hallway, the first occupied by three biblical patriarchs who could only be the rabbi and his assistants waiting to claim the body, and the other by P. C. Morrow, looking somewhat improved. He had a long coil of rope over his shoulder and a length of wood across his knees. I motioned for him to bring them in. I noticed he followed me reluctantly.
    Barker plucked the stout board out of the constable’s hands the moment he saw it. It was a rough-hewn piece of wood, about five feet long, and gray with age. My employer turned it over. The entire length of the back had been written on in chalk. The legend read “The Anti-Semite League. Psalm 22:14.”
    Barker quoted it from memory. “ ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.’ ”
    “Not a bad description,” Vandeleur said. “His bones would have been out of joint while he was suspended, and the thrust of the knife up under the sternum into the lower left ventricle would have produced a watery discharge with the blood.”
    “A Bible-quoting group of killers. I don’t like it,” Barker rumbled, his chin buried in his coat. “Murder and faith make nasty bedfellows. Hand me the rope there, Constable.”
    My employer took the rope and counted the