The Alienist - Caleb Carr [54]
Kreizler, Sara, and I all stopped in mid-chew and looked at each other. “Knife marks?” Kreizler said quietly. “There was no mention of knife marks in any of the reports.”
“Yes, I know!” Lucius said jovially. The conversation, though gruesome, seemed to be relaxing him; the wine didn’t hurt, either. “It really was strange. But there they were—some very narrow grooves on the malar bone and supraorbital ridge, along with some additional cuts on the sphenoid.”
They were virtually the same words Kreizler had used to Theodore and me in describing Giorgio Santorelli’s body.
“At first glance,” Lucius continued, “one might’ve been led to believe that the various cuts were unconnected, indications of separate jabs of a blade. But they seemed to me to bear a relation to each other, so I tried an experiment. There’s a fairly good cutlery store in the neighborhood of your Institute, Doctor, which also sells hunting knives. I went there and bought the kind of blade I thought was probably used, in three different lengths—nine-inch, ten-inch, and eleven.” He fumbled in the inside pocket of his jacket. “The largest proved the best fit.”
At that he dropped a gleaming knife of what seemed gigantic proportions onto the center of the table. Its handle was made of deer antler, the hilt was brass, and the steel of the blade was engraved with a picture of a stag in some brush.
“The Arkansas toothpick,” Marcus said. “It’s unclear whether Jim Bowie or his brother originally designed the thing, back in the early thirties, but we do know that most of them are now manufactured by one of the Sheffield firms, in England, for export to our western states. It can be used for hunting, but it’s basically a fighting knife. For hand-to-hand combat.”
“Could it be used,” I said, again remembering Giorgio Santorelli, “as a—well, as a carving and chopping instrument? I mean, would it be heavy enough, and hold a fine edge?”
“Absolutely,” Marcus answered. “The edge depends on the quality of the steel, and in a knife this size, especially if it’s manufactured in Sheffield, you tend to get high-quality, hard steel.” He caught himself, and looked at me with the same suspicious puzzlement he had shown that afternoon. “Why do you ask?”
“It looks expensive,” Sara said, deliberately changing the subject. “Is it?”
“Sure,” Marcus said. “Durable, though. One of these would last you years.”
Kreizler was staring at the knife: this, his gaze seemed to say, is what he uses.
“The marks on the sphenoid,” Lucius resumed, “were created at the same time that the cutting edge dug into the malar bone and the supraorbital ridge. It’s perfectly natural, since he was working in such a small area—the eye socket of a child’s skull—with such a large instrument. Still, for all that, it was probably a skillful job. The damage could have been much greater. Now…” He took a large sip of wine. “If you want to know what he was doing, or why, there we can only speculate. Possibly he was selling body parts to anatomists and medical colleges. Although he would probably have taken more than just the eyes, in that case. It’s somewhat confusing.”
None of us could say anything to that. We stared at the knife, myself at least afraid to touch it, as the waiters appeared again with plates of saddle of lamb à la Colbert and bottles of Château Lagrange.
“Admirable,” Kreizler said. He finally looked up at Lucius, whose fat face was starting to turn red with the wine. “A truly splendid job, Detective Sergeant.”
“Oh, that’s not all of it,” Lucius answered, digging into his lamb.
“Eat slowly,” Marcus whispered. “Remember your stomach.”
Lucius paid no heed. “That’s not all,” he repeated. “There were some very interesting fractures of the frontal and parietal