The Altered Case Read Online Free PDF

glanced around her, the vast blue sky, the flat, rich green landscape. ‘It’s just one of those conditions, one of those medical conditions that will remain a mystery until medical knowledge advances sufficiently to explain just what it is that causes a young person in perfect health to suddenly fall down dead in mid stride, as if the life force within them has been suddenly extracted by some unseen power.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I have puzzled that many, many times.’
    â€˜I am sure you have and I am sorry we do not have an answer for you, and from what I know, Clarissa’s case appears typical. Just twenty years old, and just too good to be true, non-smoker, non-drinker, active in his local scout group, churchgoing, bank employee with a promising future, and yesterday he was taking a stroll along the banks of the river after attending Holy Communion and he just collapsed. He was Condition Purple upon his arrival at York District Hospital. And his family . . . they’re still numb with shock.’
    â€˜I attended Sunday School when I was a nipper,’ Hennessey said. ‘we had the most formidable teacher who told us that “Even if we are perfect, the Almighty can still and will punish us in some way. It is just the way of the world”. I know what he meant now.’
    â€˜Yes . . . just the way of it,’ Louise D’Acre echoed. ‘It’s an unidentified medical condition, so it will remain a syndrome, until . . .’
    â€˜Until . . .’ Hennessey repeated, ‘until . . .’
    â€˜But anyway,’ Louise D’Acre said with finality, ‘we have our own job to do.’
    â€˜Yes,’ he replied, ‘you’re right; come on, I’ll show you.’
    Inside the inflatable tent both Hennessey and Dr D’Acre found the air very difficult to breathe and both gave thanks that it was the slightly cooler month of September and that they were there after a morning’s rainfall. They both knew that if it was earlier in the year, in the high summer, the air in the tent would be nearly unbreathable. Dr D’Acre stood on the lip of the neatly excavated hole and peered into it. She saw, perhaps four feet below the surface of the field, two skeletons, human, adult, both lying on their side as if gently facing each other. Even their arms seemed to be interlinked.
    â€˜Adult human,’ Dr D’Acre observed, ‘one male and one female. They are highly likely to be white European, although there is a possibility that they could be Asian. They are definitely not Afro-Caribbean. It’s quite a deep grave. Unlawful disposals are usually in much shallower pits, in my experience anyway.’
    â€˜And in mine,’ Hennessey growled. ‘Somebody had time to dig this hole.’
    â€˜I can’t tell at a glance how long they have been buried,’ Dr D’Acre continued, ‘but I see no flesh or internal organs, so quite some time, and no bits of non-degradable items of clothing either, such as zip fasteners or wooden toggles. So they may have been naked when buried.’
    â€˜We think they were buried thirty years ago.’
    â€˜You can be as sure as that?’ Louise D’Acre glanced at Hennessey.
    â€˜Yes, we can,’ Hennessey replied, and he then related the tale told by Cyrus Middleton and Tony Allerton.
    â€˜That’s an interesting story.’ Louise D’Acre glanced at the skeletons. ‘It definitely marks the time of burial . . . thirty years ago this month. A story to dine out on and taking thirty years to come forward . . . but having said that I can understand the way memories are buried by the mind and only surface much later, often only when the person concerned is able to deal with it.’ She paused. ‘You know I once read an account of an incident in the United States, wherein a young girl, when aged about five years old, witnessed her father murder her friend and bury