Chương 4: Plain Words

I heard her small steps coming down the corridor even before the door swung open with vigour. Sister Amalia entered the room, smiling that smile of hers which had long ago etched its shape permanently into the creases of her face. Of all the people working in the Misericordia, I think she was the only one to never show or utter regret at where her life had taken her.

"I just went by the coemeterium, Marek. The bell-maker's widow sent a runner, and I need this line signed, right now."

"It's signed."

"It's signed pending. Pending is not signed, as you well know. Why do you always do this, Marek. The Almonry clerk reads pending and then he puts the paper at the bottom of the stack, and next thing the widow's relief stops at the bottom of the stack with it." She came closer, and saw the old man's jaw propped open. Somewhere she lost her momentum and impatience, and she stepped closer, curious.

"What have you found."

"Someone took four teeth out of his lower jaw, and recently. On purpose." She looked a moment, and I could see her thoughts working. I always appreciated her insights, and would rarely hesitate to solicit her wisdom.

"He sold them. Poor men sell teeth to the barber-surgeons for denture work, you know that. Four sound teeth from a live man will fetch—""I thought of that, but sold teeth come out one at a time, when the money runs out, over years." I turned the head so she could see, and pointed into the mouth.

"Then you can see the pattern in the age of the scarring. These four came out together, in one sitting, and the sockets are clean and the gum is hardly torn. Also, notice here," and I tilted the head backwards and opened the mouth even further.

"See how there is no bruising or cuts on the inside of the cheek? Most men would need to jerk and tug, resulting in tools slipping and making a mess. This is all… clean, the teeth came out clean, and not a scratch elsewhere inside the mouth. That is not a man selling his teeth."

"Then he was worked on. Men pay to have teeth drawn. Perhaps they were infected, and ached. And he found himself a good dentist?"

"Same problem," I answered.

"No toothache presents in this pattern; four teeth, three on one side and one on the other." Her eyes withdrew and I could see her turning this further over in her thoughts, but then I also saw when her practical senses interrupted her thoughts and brought her back to her purpose here.

"Teeth are teeth, but unless you are making a case that the removal of teeth killed the man, or perhaps they were made of gold or crystals from the East, of incomparable value, then it is not important, not now. What is important right now, is your ledger. I know what Sinon wants you to conclude, and I know you well enough to know that mystery teeth is enough to give you pause. But if you write unresolved on this one… Marek, you know what bureaucrats are like. They will take any excuse to hold back payment.

There is somebody at the other end of that, Vale. There is always somebody."

"There's nobody. He's unclaimed, and it doesn't matter what I write or don't write. He'll get the black tag, and he will be dumped into the pit like the rest. The Silk Guild will be one coat and one crust of bread richer." She looked at me strangely, but I refused to explain.

"Right... But the Almonry reads all your reports, and the people there remember."

"The body says what it says." Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

"Then let it say it in plain words. Removed. That is a fact, Marek. The teeth were removed. Write it down, and then you can keep letting the mystery play out in your head, while the rest of us get on with our days." She held out the certificate for the bell-maker's man, between two fingers.

"This is what I need from you now. Complete this, and take a moment to consider, Marek. You are too—" she drew a deep breath, unsure whether to complete her sentence, and put the paper down on the tray's edge.

"You are too experienced to not know what it is that you are paid for. You were always better at it than the rest of them." She tapped the paper.

"Sign the bell-maker, he's been dead since Tuesday." She left. Paper and pen on the table, and I looked down and reminded myself of the case, before signing it. I knew better than this, she was right. I had stopped counting the number of deaths I had certified while there was still an element of doubt, and I was intimately familiar with the machine of which I was just one of many parts. Varenza ran on money, and that did not stop being a concern once you died. Rather the opposite.

The rules governing the distribution of effects upon death were what kept me in a job, archaic, complex and procedural; branching off from the more straightforward rules (for example, how to manage inheritance when the death resulted from the actions of one that would benefit from that death), to the more complex (what portion of a dead man's pension would be redistributed to his widow upon his death, if that death would have been preventable if the dead person had taken different actions, and in what magnitude).

The rules of testamentum bound us all, living as well as dead.

The old man from the arcade had saved the best for last. I was almost finished, looking down at his left forearm as I was washing it, when my fingers found the ridge. Narrow. Longer than my thumb, running along the bone of the lower forearm under the skin, raised just enough that a cold hand could have missed it entirely.

My first thought was an old fracture, badly set; I have felt a hundred of those, the body's clumsy carpentry leaving a bone protruding; and my second thought was no, because fractures don't run that straight, and they don't have edges, and they don't— I pressed, gently. Something hard moved under the skin, shifted a fraction, and stopped. I stood very still, my fingers where they were. The scar was there when I looked for it. Faint, old, so fine it hid in the creases of the wrist.

A single clean line, opened years ago and stitched closed with thread finer than any beggar should have owned, by expert hands that had done surgery before. Someone had cut this man's arm open, put a thing inside him, and sewn him up around it. Deliberately, carefully, in secret, a long time ago. I stood there with the dead man's wrist in my warm hands. I could open him up, and close this mystery with one cut.

But Sister Amalia's visit was fresh in my mind: I had a job to do, and I was stumbling dangerously close to dereliction if I kept chasing every mystery I could find. Sinon had set the three days himself. Sinon had said process him fast. Sinon had written exposure on the finding page before I had so much as opened the coat, and I had stood at the receiving door and watched him write it and said nothing. But exposure… Was a reasonable conclusion.

I had found no other indications of wounds or actions that could have taken his life. Cherished bread and missing teeth did not kill the man, and the sewn-up scarring at his wrist happened years prior to his death. At this point in my investigation I had to admit that mysteries aside, it was a perfectly valid explanation and conclusion. Exposure. So, my mind told me. Let him go. He will spend his mandated three days with us, black tag around his ankle, and then on black-day the cart will take him.

I write what will keep Sinon happy, what will keep the guilds off his back. And perhaps I revisit the ledger in a year or ten, and think some about this case. Mysteries would keep like good wine. There was no reason to open up his arm. Regardless of what was hidden there, it was not mine. My job is to read the bodies, and to write down my conclusions.

And as with the teeth and the bread; there was no reasonable chain of logic where I could even convince myself that whatever was hidden in his arm could have affected his death. I thought of how many ledgers I had filled with the truth and shelved, unread, in the cold room behind me. And how many reports, detailing value and worth, ownership and inheritance. The brazier ticked. Water dripped from the dead man's hair into the drain channel. His arm was still in my hand, and I pressed again.

The object slid around as I pressed. Tissue had probably grown around it by now, and it was hard to tell its shape, but it appeared a circle, in a hard material. A ring. I looked down at the fine knife on the tray next to us. And then I let go of his arm.