The Frightened Man by Kenneth Cameron Read Free Book Online

he could have been seen to narrow his eyes, a kind of blink; looking closer, a dilation of the pupils would have been visible. The widespread effort to show no reaction made the theatre quite silent as even breathing stopped.
    Stella Minter lay on her back, nude, legs together, head sticking a few inches beyond the end of the table so that her light-brown hair fell back and down and the slash across her throat gaped. She was painfully thin; her ribs showed clearly; but her breasts, flattened by her position, were nonetheless large, the aureoles dark. Her skin was greenish-grey, the light unkind to it; she had no hint of warmth, of the pink that is life. Using a cheap pair of opera glasses picked up on the way, Denton could see the curled, grey-brown edges of wounds on her breasts and abdomen. Two inches below the navel, the abdomen was open, and unidentifiable organs lay on her joined thighs, as grey now as pickled specimens. Denton counted eleven wounds on the upper half of the torso. Visible blood was brown but very scanty; the body, he thought, had been washed. The bloody sheets of his wedding night. Not a lot, but it seemed so, his new wife in tears, wanting to wash the sheet before it was discovered. So much of women was about blood .
    ‘The subject is a woman, somewhat but not excessively undernourished, height—’ Parmentier gestured; the assistant handed him one end of a tape, and Parmentier walked to the feet. The assistant muttered to him. ‘Five feet, four and one-quarter inches.’ He let go of the tape. ‘Age—’ He walked to the middle of the body, felt over first one hip and then the other; walked to the head, felt the top of the head; returned to the middle and leaned over the pubis, apparently studying the rather sparse, sandy hair. ‘Perhaps sixteen or seventeen; if we had time, we would excise one tip of the pelvis to study bone growth.’ He started again for the head and paused at the breasts, again leaned forward until his eyes were directly above the right breast. With his left hand, he touched the nipple, rubbed the tips of the fingers together, sniffed them, then leaned still farther and examined the other breast. ‘Evidence of lactation in both breasts, which also appear to be engorged.’ He straightened. He looked halfway around the circle of men. ‘What does this suggest to us, gentlemen?’ He waited and waited until somebody at last said in a gruff but hesitant voice, ‘Had a baby?’
    ‘Recent parturition, exactly, albeit crudely put. We speculate tentatively that subject has given birth within perhaps six months.’
    He continued up to the head and examined the face, then the top of the head, parting the hair with one hand. The assistant made measurements - circumference of the skull, eye-line to back of the head, ear-to-ear width.
    ‘I find two contusions on the right side of the face, one on the maxillary, one two inches lower.’
    Denton studied the face through the glasses. The bruise on the cheekbone was blue-grey. He hit her and hit her.
    Parmentier straightened. ‘In certain cases, we would remove the cranium.’
    He took a step backwards and spread his hands a little wider than his hips; the scalpel caught a light, winked.
    ‘The subject has been virtually exsanguinated,’ he said. ‘Exsanguination was undoubtedly the result of wounds visible even before examination - as you can perhaps see. However, as to which wound was the principal cause—’ He raised his heavy eyebrows. ‘Note the throat.’ He touched the body again, this time at the tip of the small chin. Pushing with one finger, he tried to force the head back; when it would not move because of its position on the table, he signalled to his assistant, and the man took the shoulders and drew the body a few inches towards him. The wound gaped wider and the head sank back. The surgeon probed the cut with a finger, then forced the head farther back still, reaching in with his left thumb and index finger. ‘The