Page 51 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

“Interesting plant the Mistletoe,” Frazer said, taking the gruesome flail from Horwitz’s hand, and then with the dry dispassionate voice of a curious botanist went on, “Viscum album Loranthacea is a parasiti-
cal evergreen that thrives off the sap of hardwood deciduous trees, especially oak. It’s morphology as you can see here by the remnants at the base where I assume the assailant gripped it are thick waxy leaves, small yellowish flowers and white berries.”
“That’s all very interesting, Professor,” Horwitz said in consternation. “But I am more interested in the How and the Why of the Colonel’s death, rather than a bloody botany lesson.”
“Sorry,” Frazer replied ignoring the truculent nature of the Inspector’s riposte. “I do tend to go off. But there is something about the circumstances of Rodger’s death that is familiar to me. A story I heard a long time ago on an archaeological dig in Syria. We had a Bedouin guide who was a veritable font
of information on the esoteric customs and natural history of the Levant. He told us of a Damascus man who’d desecrated a sacred orchard because of a grudge against a farmer. He decided to take an axe to a hundred-year-old olive tree in the other man’s orchard, that particular tree a progenitor of myriad grafts, used to create virtually all the olive groves on the mountainside going back for a thousand years.
“The villagers lived far away from all civil authority,” he continued, “so a local Shiekh or tribal Chieftain agreed to judge the proceedings. He quickly found the man guilty; but here is the interesting part, not of property damage, but of sacrilege.
“And his punishment?” Graves asked.
“They took a pruning hook to his stomach and cored out his navel. Pulled out a piece of his intestines and nailed it to the tree he’d desecrated.”
“My God,” Eliot said.
“Yes, and that’s not the worst,” Frazer said. “They whipped the poor devil about tree with a scourge, forcing him to disembowel himself as just compensa- tion for the insult to the tree.”
The four men stood in silence; no words suitable to annotate the story just recited. Eliot noted a faraway look in Frazer’s eyes, possibly contemplating the younger Frazer flushed with the discovery of this extraordinary cultural oddity; another kernel of hu- man experience to nest away for his planned writing of the Golden Bough.
“So, you think there’s a possible connection between that sacrificial rite and the method of our murder?” Horwitz asked.
“Perhaps, Frazer responded, “But I’ve often found that the most obvious solution to a problem may be the least palatable over time and often false. But still, I am most intrigued at how a British soldier came to
be murdered in Cambridge and in a manner reflective of homeopathic magic where lives are traded for tree limbs.”
“I find it hard to believe that no one heard any- thing,” Graves said. “Rodgers must have squealed like a stuck pig.”
“The victim was gagged and the murder done in a secluded arbor not visible from the road,” Horwitz said.
“So, James! Do you think it possible the two suspects learned of this mode of punishment from their time at the Front?” Eliot asked.
“Perhaps, but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. As the Chief Inspector has said there are plenty of Brit- ish cutthroats capable of such mayhem.” Then turning to the Inspector, he asked, “Might we speak to this Lieutenant Moore and his companion?”
“Of course, we have them below in the holding cells. But I don’t see what else you’ll get out of them. Based on the circumstantial evidence alone; the two of them following Rodgers to Cambridge; the eyewitness ac- counts of the altercation in the Pub; and your pres- ent suppositions, we have more than enough to hold them on suspicion of murder. And to be quite honest, I have a sixth sense when it comes to sensing guilt
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