THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS PART 7

Enter the pathologist, Doctor Grimm

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

7. Doctor Grimm Speaks Out.

While the two teenagers were accompanyine Police Constable Pierce to the Brumpton Police Station where he thought they might be expected to make statements about the shooting in the cottage in the woods, the elderly Winifred Winterbotham collapsed in a sea of confusion.

It had been a long time since she had enjoyed any kind of grip on reality and now she watched as her world was slowly dismantled, yet at the back of her mind there was a secret that might be unearthed, one that she wanted to keep hidden forever. Several of the newly arrived on the scene female police officers tried to engage her in conversation, but gthey might as well have not been there for all the response she gave.

Doctor Henry Grimm, besides being a plump and rather officious man who would have given anything to be six inches taller, was the Home Office pathologist working in Brumpton and surrounding district, and when he saw the last mortal remains of Ada Winterbotham he took a step back, and swallowed.

“The lady is deceased,” he proclaimed when he hd settled himself, “and had I come here twenty years ago I’d probably have said the same.”

Everyone present had known she had passed away some time ago, so his diagnosis wasn’t unexpected. What was more a subject for debate and the subject of a macabre sweepstake was how long ago she had slithered from the world of the living into the world of the dead, and the best Dr Grimm could come up with was his statement which included the term twenty years. A specialist in the subject of bones would be needed to give a more precise date for her decease.

But Mr Grimm was nothing if he wasn’t thorough, and he described the woman’s remains in as great a detail as he could into a small recorder that he kept with him everywhere he went. And there was precious little to mention other than occasional references to skeletal remains. However, he intended to get to the bottom of what might have caused her death. The woman had clearly been ancient at the time of her decease, but he wanted to make an intelligent estimate as to when that might have been, and why it had happened, and to that end and much to his own surprise he found an unexpected clue.

“Ah-ha, what have we here?” he exclaimed, and one of the newly-arrived police women, being of an inquisitive nature, watched closely as he pointed to what he described as an impossible shattering of a bone that was almost out of sight under a mass of other parts of the skeleton.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Let us see,” he replied, and he carefully poked around until he found what he was looking for.

“Ah-ha!” he exclaimed for a second time, ”we have a cause of death, and it is so clear cut that there can be no dispute!” And he carefully picked up something that was almost buried within the skeleton, and held it aloft for all to see.

“A bullet!” he exclaimed with almost magisterial confidence, “nine millimetre by the look of it, and quite clearly been here since the poor soul was shot!”

“Suicide?” asked the policewoman, warming to a story she would tell herself in the deliciousness of her bed when she was alone but didn’t want to be.

“Probably not,” suggested the pathologist, “because if it was suicide I would expect to be finding the weapon clutched in her bony fingers, and as you can see it isn’t there.”

“So murder?” she asked with eyes so wide open it was clear she was mentally incorporating the grisly scene into a nocturnal drama in which a variety of people she didn’t think much of perished.

“I couldn’t possibly say,” replied Dr. Grimm, “and it is most unwise to speculate over such matters until we are absolutely certain,” and he gently tucked the deadly piece of metal into a small plastic bag, which he held out for his assistant to deal with.

The policewoman, who was young enough to still have a vigorous imagination, retreated and hissed to a second policewoman standing next to her new position, “murder! It must be murder! Else where is the gun?”

“But who would have done such a thing?” asked the other, less imaginative, officer.

“There’s the mad woman they’re taking to the station! It can only have been her!”

“Or maybe a thwarted lover intent on revenge for being let down at the moment of… of… something I don’t like to mention, which is why she’s in bed!”

“Don’t like to mention? Are you a prude, Felicia? You are, aren’t you? Don’t like to mention such things as a climax?”

“Really Ruby, you are rude!”

“It’s only nature, Felicia, everyone does it even if they’re not actually married!”

“Well, I’m not married and I don’t!”

The pathologist clapped his hands. He was going to make a verbal pronouncement at the end of his examination of the last remaints of Ada Winterbotham.

“Please, officers,” he rumbled, “in the absence of a senior officer I’ll tell you sll. This lady, defined to me as Ada Winterbotham, being of advanced years, possibly eighty or so, died as the result of being shot, possibly in the heart, by a nine millimetre or similar callibre gun. Otherwise her bones are in good order showing no sign of disease other than the gradual wear and tear of her age.”

“Was it murder?” asked Felicity.

Dr Grimm frowned at her. “I couldn’t possibly say,” he told her again, and he swept out of the room.

The skeletal remains of Ada were then very carefully collected together in preparation of being sent to the forensic lab where the good lady would be scrutinized yet again, this time to try and determine who might ave shot her. But amongst the officers present the favourite culprit was her daughter because she was the only person who could have been in the room, and it was known that she owned a gun, and could use it.

By the time that Enid and Andrew in the company of P.C. Pierce reached the police station in Brumpton after having stopped off at a cafe for refreshment on the way, the news of what the pathologist had found was in the air, at least in the air of the police station.

“So it was murder, was it,” murmured P.C Pierce, the tone of his voice indicating that he was happy to have found himself involved in a murder enquiry, because such things were few and far between in Brumpton.

“But it can’t have been Winifred,” insisted Enid when the discussion turned to who might have pulled the trigger, “I know it can’t have been.”

“But she nearly shot me!” pointed out Andrew.

“Yes, dear, but she didn’t mean to,” murmured Enid, “and think about it: she didn’t even know her mother was dead!”

But all Anthony could think was she called me dear...

© Peter Rogerson 18.01.23

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