A Point of Law by John Maddox Roberts Page B

the priests of the temple to see a haughty physician using his hands like a common surgeon. As each wound was spread wider he leaned over, examined it, and made wise sounds. Finally, he stepped back.
    “Well?” I said.
    “No doubt about it, this man is dead.”
    “It is good to be in the presence of genius. What else?”
    “Someone was being—how shall I put this?—rather delicate about this murder. We have the marks of at least three different blades, any one of which would have been quite sufficient to cause death, but they were used to deal wounds that were grievous, some of them fatal over a matter of hours or days, yet not causing immediate death.”
    “Cato noted the inefficiency of the blows,” I said, “and he is not a particularly observant man.”
    “The cut to the great vessel of the neck”—Asklepiodes pointed to the wound below the left ear—“would have been fatal within seconds, yet I believe it was dealt last, as if the man were being too leisurely about dying. All these stabs to the abdomen for instance. A single stab here,” he pointed to the apex of the rib arch just below the sternum, “angled slightly upward, would have pierced the heart and brought about immediate death. I have the distinct impression that these men did not
want
their victim to die quickly.”
    “You mentioned three weapons.”
    “At least three, possibly more.”
    “Can you describe them?”
    “There were two types: one narrow-bladed, the other broad. I see wounds produced by at least one of these narrow blades. The dagger was no more than an inch wide, its cross-section of a flattened diamond shape. There were at least two broad-bladed daggers used: both were in excess of two inches wide, one made of rather thin steel with a thickened midrib for rigidity. The other was of stouter metal without the midrib. Instead it had three parallel grooves to add strength and rigidity to the blade, as well as to lighten it and confer better balance.” As physician to the gladiators of the Statilian
ludus
, his knowledge of edged weapons was comprehensive.
    “Like a soldier’s
pugio?”
I asked.
    “
Pugios
have such blades.”
    “And all the weapons were double-edged? These cuts look likethey were made by a
sica
.” I referred to the curved, single-edged knife favored by street thugs.
    “These were not delivered as cuts. The wounds are very asymmetrical. In each case the blade was stabbed in, then dragged from right to left as it was withdrawn. This is characteristic of a right-handed assailant. The gash thus opened is wide, but not very deep. A typical
sica
cut is symmetrical and deepest in the center.”
    “So we are looking at a minimum of three murderers?” I asked.
    “At least three knife wielders and possibly more. But there were others involved.”
    “How so?”
    “You notice that there are no wounds to the hands and arms?”
    “I wondered at that.”
    “Any man, seeing hostile blades attacking his body, will try to ward them off instinctively. For this many weapons to have landed on his torso, he should have received many cuts on his arms and hands.”
    “He was held.”
    “Held from behind, hence no wounds in the back.”
    “Is it possible he was bound?” I asked.
    “A man being killed struggles hard against bindings. It leaves deep ligature marks on the wrists, and this man has none. I believe that, had the body not bled out so thoroughly, we should see bruises on the shoulders and arms, where at least two strong men held him fast while he was stabbed.”
    Hermes spoke up. “Might he have been asleep? If he was lying on his back there’d be no wounds there, and by the time he woke up he might have been too weak to defend himself.”
    “No,” Asklepiodes said, “these blows were not delivered downward. The angle of entry would be quite different.”
    “Besides,” I said, “he was stabbed through his tunic.” I looked around and found a temple slave. “Bring us the dead man’s garments.” He