RIGOR MORTIS CONTURBAT ME • by Timons Esaias

The police detective opened the car door and stepped firmly into the puddle. He trotted out of the puddle into a singularly damp snowdrift. Cursing, he slogged onto the path where he waited for the sergeant to walk around. The little house before him and the one eighty yards down the way were the only habitations in the rather lonely cul-de-sac.

Detective Mousty (‘That’s Moose-tea, ma’am.’) took instant and unconditional dislike to both habitations. He had long felt that the services of the police ought not be extended to inconvenient locations or to places that reminded him of his great-grandmother’s. Matter of principle.

Sergeant Bolcox (badge #247), mumbling unquotably, informed the detective of the presence of Detective Johnstown and Coroner’s Deputy Evans-Woltz (last of that name), a deceased, and the lab crew.

“The ambulance,” sighed the detective, “is in a ditch down the road. Permanently, by the look of it. What’s Evan-Warts here for?”

“Kmbictrnzs.”

“Complications, eh?” crisped Mousty. “We’ll see about that.”

He marched purposefully up to the house, squelching wonderfully.

At the door he took the full impact of the coroner’s sneeze.

“Lord, I’m sorry, Mousty. Awfully. Marched into the line of fire, you did. Lord these winter colds.” He handkerchiefed his nose, his little finger held out high. “Most irritating case here, and all in my lap.”

The two stepped apart to permit the exit of the photographer.

The two stepped back into range.

“Johnstown’s out back checking the locks. No break-in though. Place was completely… ahhh… snowbound… all prints a…AhH…ah…counted… f… snkee…or.”

Mousty looked around at the post-hurricane-like ruin of the living room and…

The two stepped apart to make passage for the print-assistant.

They stepped back together and Mousty nearly asked, “What do you mean, ‘no break-in?'” but
the two stepped apart to allow the egress of the print-man.

The two stepped back together.

“What do you mean, ‘no break-in?'” asked the detective.

The two were forced to step very far apart for a sinfully rotund policeman who had no business being there.

The two stepped back together.

“The deceased was a secret drinker. During every binge he hid a bottle from himself. Tore the house apart looking for it when he started the next one. Old lady next door told us the sad story.”

“What’s her part in it?”

The two stepped apart from sheer force of habit; but no-one was there. They stepped back together, oblivious.

“Found him,” responded Johnstown, from the dining room door, where he had arrived just in time for the last dance. “Called us. Obnoxious business. All round. If there were less nosey old wimen there’d be fewer bodies found, mark me. Might as well looksee. In here.”

Three pairs of muddy leather shoes containing three men mercifully hidden in three worn trenchcoats, gathered around the item on the dining room floor. The item was an octogenarian male body, very frail, of a plastically white appearance, dressed in cord-waisted pajama bottoms, and perfuming the air with the bouquet of an inexpensive, but authoritative, brandy.

“Disgusting.”

“Decidedly.”

“So what is the problem, Johnstown? Seems a simple death by drowning, as it were.”

“Right!” said that worthy, without conviction. “Evidence that no-one entered. I could probably state that unequivocally. Neighbor lady says he drank and that when he did, he’d rip the house apart. We find him dead, house ransacked, strong odor of alcohol on deceased, and alcohol spills on the carpet.”

“So?”

“No bottle.”

“You’re joking. Ahh… but he must have hidden it!”

“You know it. I know it. But we’ve done this place inside, outside, upside, and down. No bottle. When I tell the chief there’s no bottle, he’ll have a Scotland Yard Murder Squad out here.”

Three heads encased in three crushed hats considered the recalcitrance of evidence and of chief detectives.

“My problem’s worse,” moaned the deputy coroner. He looked defeated by Life.

“How’s that then?”

“We have the time of death narrowed down. ‘Neighbor lady,’ as Johnstown here calls the old snoop, is quite definite about seeing him in the window yesterday evening at 7. She also says he had a nervous habit of winding his watch all the time. When we got here the thing had stopped. She tells us that he always said it wound down after ten hours. That’s why he always was winding it.”

“Should have bought a new one,” complained Johnstown.

“You’d think so. These old folks.”

“I mean ta say,” opined Johnstown. “Look around you, gentlemen. Reasonably nice furniture. Nice piano. Pictures. Such a man could afford a new watch.”

“You can’t tell people anything. And now look at him; dead.”

Three minds judged the fitness of fate.

“So?”

“Eh? Oh, the problem. Well it’s the rigor has me disturbed. Absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be normal. But, nothing.” He lifted an impenitently supple limb in demonstration, little finger held out.

“Difficult.”

“And you know how Jemkits is about the rigor. I can see an inquest over this one and they always want to know about the rigor, never fails. Have to have it neat and tidy or it’s everybody playing bally Sherlock Homes.”

They all snorted assent. Mousty jotted some notes, “Dead 10-12 hours. No rigor. Might have forgotten to wind it, the watch.”

“Simple. But not, ah…”

“Elegant.”

“Just so.”

All took notes.

“Well, where are you two having breakfast?” asked Mousty. “We can worry the thing out a bit, over coffee.”

“There’s the pub about a mile. I suggest…”

The body snored decisively.

All three took notes furiously.

The body rolled over, revealing a bottle tucked into the pajama waist.

All three checked their watches, took a note, and pocketed the notebooks.

“Right; well!”

“Yes. Hu-kem.”

“All we can do here, I expect.”


Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in twenty-two languages. He has also been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and won the Asimov’s Readers Award. His story “Norbert and the System” has appeared in a textbook, and in college curricula. He was shortlisted for the 2019 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize. His full-length Louis-Award-winning collection of poetry — Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek — was brought out by Concrete Wolf.


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