Mine Eyes Dazzle

Chapter VIII: The Incident of the Breakthrough

...thoughts on thoughts, a countless throng,
Rush'd chasing countless thoughts along...
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake

"Do you think Goncharovsky is a reliable witness?" Yo-han asked as he left.

He wasn't really interested in the answer. He was using it to lead up to the question he really wanted to ask.

"I suppose so," Courtenay said. "I've never caught him in a lie, anyway. But I don't know him well."

"And what about Kanayama?" Yo-han tried to make the question sound careless.

"Depends on whether he thinks it's rude to be honest. I've never met anyone who can talk in circles so much."

~~~~

Yo-han wandered back to the police station in a state of utter bafflement. For the umpteenth time he went over the facts:

1. Hannay won an award.

2. Hannay had lost his keys and went back to the theatre.

3. Kanayama reported seeing him with an unidentified man. Courtenay believed Kanayama was honest unless he thought it was rude. Was it possible he knew who the man was but thought it would be rude to name him?

4. For reasons unknown, Hannay went upstairs. He fell or was pushed and died as a result.

Yo-han focused on those three important words: for reasons unknown. Why had Hannay gone upstairs? Had the man brought him upstairs? What explanation would he have given?

Had Hannay gone upstairs?

He froze in the middle of the hall. A confused constable had to take a detour around him. The door at the other end of the hall swung closed behind the constable. Yo-han stared at it as if it held the answers to the mystery. Then he turned and headed for the morgue.

Dr. Luo was writing a report when he arrived. 

"What happened to Edward Hannay?" Yo-han demanded, forgetting to be polite.

The doctor paused in the middle of a sentence. "Hannay?" he repeated vaguely. "Hannay? Oh, the foreigner. He fell from a height."

Yo-han barely restrained himself from shouting. "Yes, but did he fall down the stairs?"

"I didn't think so. Fell off a platform, I think. Here," Dr. Luo hunted through a stack of files on his desk and finally produced one. "This is what I wrote. Now I have to finish this report. You'd think a court would accept 'stabbed with a kitchen knife', but if I don't include the exact location..." He trailed off into mumbling about the stupidity of lawyers.

There was a dire shortage of chairs in the morgue. Yo-han took the report out into the main room and sat down on the stairs. He scanned the paper.

The most important line was at the end of a list of Hannay's injuries. All of the injuries on the left side, suggesting a sheer drop from a height.

After that the doctor noted the high level of alcohol in Hannay's blood and the lack of bruises that would have been expected if he fell down the stairs.

Hannay's body had been discovered at the foot of the stairs.

Yo-han returned the report and set off for the university again. This time he went straight to the theatre. The caretaker reluctantly let him in and showed him to where Hannay's body had lain. Yo-han looked at the stairs, then craned his neck and looked straight up.

A sheer drop from a height, Dr. Luo had said.

There was no platform directly overhead. Hannay would have had to fall from the roof.