Deadly Communion

39

AMELIA LYDGATE HAD MADE an informal arrangement with Professor Mathias, the terms of which were dictated by Mathias’s neurotic illness and satisfied by the peculiarity of Amelia’s character. In return for tidying his instruments Professor Mathias was happy for Amelia to sit in the morgue and observe him at work. It was an arrangement that had been negotiated, for the most part, without the use of language. The Englishwoman and the old professor enjoyed a curious and unexpected rapport. Indeed, the understanding that they had reached could not have been achieved using words alone, with their hard edges and explicit meanings. The indelicacy of such a conversation would have required Professor Mathias to admit the severity of his condition, which was something he was not prepared to do.

When she entered the morgue Amelia found the professor sitting on a stool, contemplating the body of a young woman: too young, she thought immediately, to have died naturally.

‘Another victim?’ she asked.

The professor nodded and without taking his gaze from the corpse, said: ‘Cäcilie Roster. A singer. Inspector Rheinhardt found her this morning in the gardens of the Belvedere palace. This …’ he picked up a retort containing a metal object ‘… had been inserted into her brain.’

‘Another hatpin?’

‘Yes. Although of a different design to those used by the perpetrator to kill Adele Zeiler and Bathild Babel.’

Amelia took off her coat, hung it up, and crossed the floor. The woman’s body was covered with sheets but her head was still exposed. It was as if she was in bed, sleeping. The woman possessed an attractive face with well-proportioned features and a mane of yellow curls.

‘When will it end?’ said Amelia pitifully.

The professor sighed and presented her with a few sheets of paper. ‘Here is my report. Read it if you are interested.’

Amelia sat down next to the professor and studied his findings. When she had finished, she discreetly rearranged the instruments on his trolley before positioning herself at the head of the autopsy table. Mathias joined her and lifted the dead woman’s chin with a crooked finger.

‘I liked that gay young wench, Her two cheeks so red, Her mouth and her handsome brow, Her hair, so blonde and curly …’

‘A poem?’

‘“Early Love” — by Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty.’

‘I am afraid, Herr professor, I am not familiar with his work.’

‘He was the most gifted lyric poet of the Göttingen circle. You are English. I would not expect you to be conversant with our great poets.’ Overcome with sentiment, the professor took a comb from his pocket and began to run it through the dead woman’s hair. ‘Hölty also wrote a rather lovely “Dirge to the Moon”. The last verse is very affecting: Soon, dearest friend, Oh, soon will beam, Your silvery sheen, Over the tombstone mine …’

If Amelia was impressed by the lyric genius of Hölty, she did not show it.

Mathias finished styling the dead woman’s curls but before returning the comb to his pocket he noticed that a few strands had become caught in its teeth. He began to pick them out. The routine ease of his movements came to a halt when he discovered a darker hair. He held it beneath the electric light.

‘Black,’ he said, flatly.

The professor and the Englishwoman looked at each other.

‘Someone else’s?’

Mathias pulled the extremities of the black hair to make it taut. Then, turning to Amelia, he made her party to his thinking by means of an impromptu lecture: ‘The shaft of a hair is covered with a close-set layer of transparent scales — the cuticle — and beneath these are the differentiated cells of the cortex and medulla. The structure of a hair shaft resembles that of a pencil. The paint or varnish corresponds with the cuticle, the wood of the pencil corresponds with the cortex, and the central column of lead corresponds with the medulla. Hair pigment, which gives the hair its colour, is distributed through the medulla and cortex.’ The professor paused and his eyes appeared to expand behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. ‘A head of hair is not always uniform with respect to colour. Take your own, for example. It is quite clearly comprised of many shades of red.’

‘But a black hair among blonde?’

‘It happens’

‘Are there tests to determine whether two different-coloured hairs belong to the same person?’

‘Indeed there are. Two hairs from the same head might be different in colour, but they will show marked morphological similarities — for example, breadth, scale pattern, or shape of tip. Further, one can observe the contours of transverse sections, together with the character and proportions of the various layers.’

‘How very interesting.’

Professor Mathias touched the black hair very gently, bending the shaft. He then did the same with a blonde hair.

‘The black hair is more bristly than the blonde.’ His expression showed that he considered that black hair’s resistance a promising indication. ‘Miss Lydgate. Your eyesight is superior to mine.’ He tapped the lenses of his spectacles emphatically. ‘Would you set up the microscope and prepare two slides: black and blonde.’

Mathias passed her the black hair and one of the blonde hairs which she took with great, almost exaggerated, care.

Amelia did as she was instructed and switched on an electric lamp. She bent over the eyepiece of the microscope and rotated the turret until she had found an appropriate objective.

‘Let us begin with breadth,’ said Professor Mathias. ‘What do you see?’

‘The black hair is thicker.’

‘And the tip of each hair?’

‘The black hair is sharper — the blonde hair more rounded.’

‘Now the cuticle. Can you see the scales?’

Amelia increased the magnification.

‘Yes.’

‘Are there differences in scale size — or distribution?’

‘No.’

‘Now the bulb. Although the bulb has fewer differentiating features than the shaft, it can also provide us with very valuable information. A plump bulb — and the presence of traces of the ruptured hair sheath — is typical of a healthy hair that has been detached by force, while a shrunken and wrinkled bulb — without any sheath — is typical of dead or diseased hairs.’

‘Herr professor?’

Amelia’s voice contained a note of excitement.

‘Yes.’

‘There is something rather odd … a reflection perhaps.’ She changed the position of the lamp without lifting her head. ‘No. It is not a reflection. How strange.’

‘What is?’

‘The black hair. The shaft is entirely black — but just above the bulb … it is blonde.’

‘May I see?’

Amelia stepped aside and allowed Professor Mathias to look down the barrel of the microscope.

‘It has been dyed.’

‘Oh …’ said Amelia.

‘You sound disappointed, Miss Lydgate.’

Mathias turned to look at her.

‘I was hoping,’ said Amelia, ‘that we had chanced upon a piece of useful evidence, a hair from the head of the perpetrator. But now we must suppose that this hair belongs to another female entertainer.’

‘Must we?’ said the professor.