Chapter 172: Paris [2]
“Hmm… Now that the professor’s explained it, it makes sense.”
“Right? Look at that cross-section. It wasn’t done in one clean stroke.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“And that stab wound over there. At first glance, it looks deep, but if you look closely, it’s actually quite shallow.”
Professor Liston continued speaking in his usual dignified tone. Normally, seeing a corpse like this would have left me shaken, but today felt different. There was a certain calm professionalism in the air. A quiet authority.
And it made sense. This man might be the most experienced knife-wielder in human history. It was eerie to say out loud, but even in the twenty-first century, there probably were not many people who had cut open as many bodies as he had. Sure, there were legendary warriors who sliced people down in battle, or cut themselves to show resolve, but even those paled in comparison. Liston performed hundreds of surgeries a month.
“What’s going on here?!”
The moment we—well, mostly the others—started their technical discussion, the surrounding crowd began to scatter. I was surprised to notice that many of them looked like upper-class visitors. Judging from their clean clothes and scented perfume, they were clearly wealthy. I suppose only people with enough leisure time and morbid curiosity would come to view corpses for fun.
Ah. So that was the guy who shouted. Either a police officer or a security guard. Honestly, it was more shocking to see children, barely older than toddlers, staring silently at the corpse without flinching. And now this man showed up, fuming.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, right?
So I stepped forward and put on a face full of remorse.
“Oh, sorry about this.”
It was only when I tried explaining in English that I remembered this was France, and the French hated the British as much as the British hated the French.
“What… this?”
Oh, and there was another thing. I was Asian. It had not even occurred to me before, since I had been sticking close to Dr. Liston all this time. No one ever dared give me a second glance when he was around.
“Ah, haha… these are doctors from London. We’re here to attend a conference—”
“Why are you here?” the guard interrupted.
Sensing the shift in mood, our coachman rushed over. Despite being British, he had the practiced smile of someone who had lived in Paris for a while. Apparently, being a doctor was a universal get-out-of-jail-free card, even in the nineteenth century. A bit ironic, considering it was also a profession that regularly killed people.
Still, the guard’s face softened a little.
“There’s no place like this Morgue in London.”
“Aha. So London is lacking in advanced culture?” the guard quipped. “British people have no artistic sense at all.”
“That’s right!” the coachman laughed. “Anyway… do you see that man over there?”
“You mean the bodyguard? He looks… unusual.”
“Oh no. That’s Dr. Liston.”
“Ah!”
“You know him?”
“Sword Master Liston? I heard he’s an Englishman, but a true warrior.”
“That…”
I could not understand their French, but I could read the mood. The coachman looked oddly smug, and the guard’s demeanor had warmed considerably.
“Yes. He’s… uh, a man of martial prowess.”
Suddenly, the guard’s expression changed. I had seen that look before.
When was it?
Ah, yes. When I was attacked by bandits.
“Ugh! Take everything! Just spare my life!”
He had screamed so much. In contrast, our group of doctors stayed calm. There were only five of us, but Liston had beaten down more than ten sailors barehanded. Well, technically with the sheath of his sword. I remembered casually slicing off the arm of the first attacker, and that was the moment they all made that face. That dazed, panicked expression.
“But what’s that man saying now?”
“Ah… we’re analyzing the wound to infer the killer.”
“Huh? Are you detectives?”
“Oh, no, not exactly…”
The coachman looked flustered and sent a desperate glance my way. I had been standing off to the side, eavesdropping, but now I stepped in.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re talking about the cause of death. But they want to know why we’re trying to guess the culprit.”
“Ah. Can you translate for me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
It was a fair question. But honestly, they should not have had to ask. Just by looking at the expressions on the crowd’s faces, I could tell they were all playing armchair detective. Everyone here was channeling their inner Conan.
“Dr. Liston and I sometimes help the police catch criminals in London.”
“Oh… really? But how?”
“Who better to interpret a wound than a skilled surgeon?”
“Ah… I always thought he was just a warrior.”
“He’s more famous as a surgeon. Well… both, I guess. Want to hear our theory?”
“I see.”
Only then did I realize the man was not just a guard. He was a police officer. Knowing someone like him might actually be useful, especially with how unstable Paris seemed these days. July Revolution, right? From what little I remembered of world history, things did not exactly get better afterward. The chaos just continued.
Even if that was not entirely accurate…
Just look at London. The police might be incompetent, but they were still better than nothing.
And honestly, hadn’t we already helped out here? We amputated their chief’s mother’s legs. People must be confused as hell.
“What?”
“I think he’s from the Paris police… and he’d like help with the investigation.”
So I took him to Dr. Liston. When the officer stood face to face with the professor, he lowered his eyes instinctively. No one mocked him for it. That was not cowardice. That was wisdom.
“Aha. I’ve already got a few ideas,” Liston said. “If I could just get behind that damn glass…”
“They say you can go in.”
“Oh? That’s great. Let’s go.”
“Sure.”
And just like that, we were allowed behind the display glass at the Paris Morgue. The onlookers watched us with envy, their eyes wide with curiosity. I wondered if they realized that in the twenty-first century, no one wanted to work in forensic medicine. Come to think of it, when had any society ever welcomed jobs that dealt with corpses?
“Here it is.”
“Ack, the smell…”
“Well, it is a closed room.”
“Still… why on earth are they displaying something like this?”
Liston’s words made the police officer twitch slightly, maybe from a blow to his national pride, but he said nothing. Unless he planned to pull a gun, Liston was not someone you could easily challenge.
“Well, let’s start with a few observations…”
“Yeah, now’s not the time to criticize the French for their questionable taste.”
Liston stepped forward. There was a faint odor, but nothing compared to the dissection labs we were used to. The body was not that decomposed either. It was far enough away that ordinary people might struggle to make sense of it, but we had trained for this. We stepped in without hesitation.
This time, I joined in. Something inside me wanted to be useful.
You’re watching again…
The only thing that bothered me was the growing crowd behind the glass. There were more people now. Not dozens. Hundreds.
“Look here, Pyeong.”
“Yes?”
“If you look here… the knife didn’t go very deep.”
Liston inserted his gloved hand into the wound and pried it open. The incision widened, but the abdominal cavity was not exposed. It was only skin-deep.
“See? And out of the four stab wounds, only one reached the internal organs.”
“That one… hit the aorta.”
“Exactly. That’s what killed him.”
“Wait… but this—”
I paused. Something about the angle of the wounds felt off. Too vertical.
If both the victim and assailant were standing, would the stabs really be this straight?
“My forensic knowledge is basic, but… this doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think he was stabbed while lying down.”
“Lying down?”
“Yes. All four stabs follow the same downward trajectory.”
“Oh… you’re right. Maybe he couldn’t resist. Or maybe he was killed first, then stabbed postmortem. You wouldn’t be able to restrain a healthy man long enough to do this. I would have killed him first and then started cutting.”
Exactly. But even then, why would a person lie still and let someone stab them four times?
Unless…
They were under anesthesia?
“Could the killer have drugged him?”
“Anesthesia? Huh… that makes sense.”
“But who would voluntarily inhale gas that puts them under…?”
“No, no. I heard the French use ether for anesthesia.”
“Ah… right. They do like doing the opposite of us.”
That was true. Even with cars, France adopted right-hand driving first, while Britain insisted on staying left. It was like the two nations competed at being contrarian.
“Anyway, if that’s the case… they could have soaked a handkerchief in ether. Or laced a drink with it.”
“Which means the culprit might be someone who handles ether. Or at least someone who bought some recently.”
The officer’s eyes widened. He looked excited, like he finally had something solid to go on.
Still, this was the nineteenth century. Investigation mostly meant wandering around and asking witnesses. The criminal arrest rate was abysmal. No wonder people clung to the fantasy of detectives like Sherlock Holmes.
“This is a huge clue. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Go catch him, then. Let us know when you do.”
“Why? You want to see his face?”
“Well, why not? Can’t we?”
“N-no. I’ll make sure you see him first.”
And with that, the officer ran off, eyes blazing and ready to chase down his suspect. Only then did the coachman exhale deeply and mutter,
“Let’s get out of here. I shouldn’t have brought you here…”