A Study in Revenge Read Online Free PDF

were the pair of close-set windows in Horace’s bedroom. The curtain on his right was fully drawn. The left, however, was pulled aside about six inches. He saw a woman’s figure; Phebe Webster was watching him. His eyes settled onto hers for a second, but the distance between them was too great for him to read anything in her gaze. A moment more and she stepped away, letting the curtain drop back into place.

[  Chapter 5  ]
    D EPUTY L EAN STOOD JUST INSIDE THE MORGUE AT THE Maine General Hospital. The space was built mostly underground, which helped keep the room cool. Still, rather than being refreshing, the quality of the air was dulled by the heavy scent of chemicals that, in Lean’s mind anyway, couldn’t fully mask the underlying currents of dead bodies.
    The paunchy, gray-haired surgeon, Dr. Sullivan, was across the room rinsing his hands in a washbasin. In the space between the two men, a table held the laid-out body of Frank Cosgrove. A crisp white sheet covered everything but the man’s charred face.
    “I’m really not certain my services were required to review Mr. Cosgrove’s body yet again. He was already murdered last Sunday. Not as if you can add a second murder charge for digging him back up.” Sullivan dried his hands and threw the towel aside.
    “I do appreciate your indulging me.”
    “That’s it, isn’t it? An indulgence. Not my business at all. Not as if I’m paid any extra for repeating an examination on the likes of this petty thief.”
    “Yes, the examination,” Lean said, trying to steer the surgeon away from whatever was distressing him and back to the business at hand.
    “Well, even without the burns he’s in worse shape than the last time I saw him. He wasn’t embalmed.” He added the last bit with contempt, as if it were a personal failing of the deceased.
    “Is that unusual?”
    “I’m the city physician,” Dr. Sullivan declared with a shrug, annoyed to be bothered with such a question. “Ask the undertaker. The burn marks are posthumous. Common lamp oil, I suspect. There’s a scent of it around his collar and his cuffs.”
    “What about his fingernails?”
    Dr. Sullivan shook his head. “What about them?”
    “Cracked? Any dirt beneath? Signs he’d been digging?”
    Dr. Sullivan’s expression went from inconvenienced to downright exasperated.
    “No, I’m not mad, and I don’t think he crawled from his grave, Doctor. Rather I’m wondering about the people who perpetrated this hoax. How elaborate and detailed were they in their efforts?”
    “No. No signs of dirt under the nails. However, there was dirt all through his hair, in his pockets, and in the cuffs of his trousers.”
    Lean moved closer to the body. “Gathered as he was pulled up out of the burial plot.”
    “It would appear so. By means of a rope, most likely.” Dr. Sullivan took hold of the sheet and lowered it from Cosgrove’s neck down to his waist. He moved the dead man’s arms away from his sides. “See here. Marks around the chest and in the armpits. Inflicted after death.”
    Lean bent in for a look at the discolorations. There were faint scuff marks, signs of stress on the skin, but no actual rope burns. No direct contact. They’d somehow managed to tie a rope around him after he was in his funeral coat, then later dug down to the coffin and pulled him to the surface.
    “Anything else, Doctor?”
    “I have nothing further to add.”
    “Meaning that the body reveals nothing further or that there is something else and you just don’t care to say it?”
    “There is nothing further. I consider my involvement in the matter concluded.”
    Lean continued to stare at the man.
    “Let’s be clear, Deputy. I’m not Virgil Steig. I won’t be sharing his degree of involvement in any of your cases. Nor his fate.”
    “I’m not certain what you’re referring to.”
    “Dr. Steig reviewed a peculiar homicide victim for you shortly before his death.”
    “Dr. Steig suffered a heart attack