Colonel Janssen blurted in German, "You know? How do you know?"
When Lieutenant Heydekampf translated, the three POWs stopped chewing in unison.
Ignoring the commandant, Dietrich lifted Jack Cray's baseball bat that had been leaning against a wall. He rolled it in his hands, examining it. "How do you hold this?"
Harry Bell wiped his hands on his pants before reaching for the bat. "You right-handed?"
When Heydekampf changed the words to German, Dietrich nodded.
"Right hand over left, feet a little wider than shoulder-width, a bit of a crouch." Bell swung the bat slowly a few times then passed it back. "I'd toss you a few easy ones, but we don't have a ball."
Dietrich swung awkwardly several times. He shook his head. "Balls should be struck with the feet, not a piece of wood."
Bell smiled at the interpretation, then lifted another cruller from the table.
SAO Hornsby said dryly, "You have succeeded in disarming us, Inspector Dietrich. Why don't you continue?"
Instead, Dietrich resumed his examination of the ward, not a wild flying-squad toss, but a visual inventory respecting the POWs' few possessions. He did not open the fruit crates that served as trunks near the bunks. He did not rifle through packets of letters. He stepped around a support post in the center of the ward. He still carried the American's bat. He came to the laundry bucket in which was floating a shirt. All eyes in the room followed him.
Dietrich dipped a finger into the wash bucket then brought the finger to his mouth. He inhaled sharply, then grimaced. "Needs a little more soap."
Heydekampf translated. Captain Davis laughed around a cruller.
Dietrich said, "Your challenge was to make Jack Cray look dead. A fractured skull — one smashed against cobblestones from a great height — has a certain damaged appearance."
Colonel Janssen protested, "It looks just like Cray's did."
"He had a ruptured eye socket, or so it seemed." Dietrich breathed on a hand. His cell on Prinz Albrecht Strasse had been warmer than the Colditz ward. "But what Cray did, or one of you did, was to pull down his lower eyelid and put a small slice on the inside of the eyelid with a knife. The tiny blood vessels there bleed profusely, and will fill the eye with blood. And, although Colonel Janssen and Lieutenant Heydekampf didn't report any blackening around the American's shattered eye, you POWs may have dabbed a little chimney soot on his cheekbones to make it look bruised. Altogether, it would have been a convincing replica of a ruptured eye socket."
Heydekampf had fallen into meter with the detective. He interpreted as Dietrich spoke, not waiting for pauses.
"Bleeding ears are a classic sign of a fractured skull," the inspector said. "And Jack Cray's ears had blood in them. But it wasn't Cray's blood, was it? One of you gentlemen cut yourself with a blade, on your arm or thigh or somewhere else, collected the blood in a cup, and at the right time, poured it into Cray's ears. If I were to search you, I would find such a gash."
Ian Hornsby wiped cruller crumbs from the corners of his mouth. His face was a carefully composed mask.
The detective was wearing black trousers and a fur-lined waistcoat that he had procured from the haberdashery with Himmler's letter. Dietrich's shoes were also new, and squeaked when he walked. He said, "Cray also appeared to have shattered his shoulders and arms when he hit the courtyard."
Heydekampf nodded fervently as he translated. Then he added, "His arms were bent crazily, as loose as rope. His elbows were touching behind his back."
"It must have been a difficult task, Group Captain Hornsby." Dietrich walked to the support post, a roughly milled timber felled in a Saxon forest in the eighteenth century. "Cray stood with his back against this post, or another post somewhere nearby. One or two of you pinned him in place so he wouldn't slip around the column. Then two more of you dislocated his shoulders."
Colonel Janssen's mouth opened. He shifted his gaze to Senior Allied Officer Hornsby.
Dietrich explained, "The shoulder socket is shallow. A few people can dislocate their own shoulders, called a voluntary dislocator. But it's a rare talent, and more probably you had to force Cray's shoulder from the socket. You used this post as a fulcrum."
Heydekampf held up his hand. "Inspector, I don't know the English word for fulcrum."
Dietrich flicked a finger, indicating it did not matter. "You used this post as a brace, gripped his arm, and levered the ball of his shoulder bone out of the socket. The result was a grotesque, inhuman shape, a hollow in Cray's- shoulder where the joint once was, and the aim sticking out behind The pain must have been excruciating, but I doubt Cray called out. Am I right?"
Harry Bell helped himself to a chair. He gave Hornsby the slightest of glances.
Dietrich had not expected an answer. He continued, "The Reich's Office of Medical Information gathers statistics regarding accidental deaths and suicides " The inspector brought up the bat again, peering at the label carved midway along the wood. "Who is Lou Gehng?"
"A baseball player," Bell answered after Heydckampf's interpretation. “Like Babe Ruth?"
Bell raised an eyebrow "Yes, like the Babe."
"Why would Cray carve this Gehng's name on a bat?"
"Most baseball bats have a famous player's name on them. Cray carved Gehng's name on his homemade bat to make it look authentic." Dietrich pursed his lips, examining Gehng's name. The Office of Medical Records reports that a person who falls three stories has a fifty percent chance of surviving. A person who falls four stories has a fifteen percent chance And someone who falls five stories, like Jack Cray ostensibly did, has virtually no chance," Janssen nodded vigorously.
"Lieutenant Burke, who is now in the punishment ward, was escaping with Cray," Dietrich said. "Both were on the roof above us. Cray must have lost his grip, slid down the steep shingles, then fallen five stories to a certain death. But none of that happened."
"I saw him fall, Inspector," Heydekampf almost shouted. "Lieutenant, you saw him land." Dietrich moved to the barred window for the second time. The bars were iron, with a width slightly less than a man's wrist. "Cray landed in the yard below this very window." Dietrich walked along the wall to the next barred casement. "These bars would resist almost any force."
He gripped the baseball bat as Major Bell had instructed him. He brought it back, then swung mightily at the iron bars. With a ring the bat bounced off the iron. The bar left a sizable dent in the wood. Dietrich smashed the iron a second time, and again the bat ricocheted off the iron. The bat suffered a second scar. The iron was unscathed.
"But now I go to the window below which the American landed."
Dietrich moved along the wall. "This time I'm just going to yank the bars with my hand."
Dietrich lowered the bat to the floor. He gripped the bar and pulled. It easily came off in his hand. When he gripped the second rod and tugged, it also came away from the window.
The inspector held up both metal shafts. "Burke was up on the roof, five floors above the courtyard, and had two escape suitcases. Sitting on the peak of the roofline, he shoved one case down the shingles, where it fell five floors to the courtyard. It left a swath of broken moss, and the roof looked like a man had slipped down the shingles."
Janssen added in a bemused tone, "And Burke must have thrown those two loose shingles along with the suitcases to make it seem like the American had desperately grabbed at something as he slipped, and had pulled the shingles loose."
"The fistfight over the bagpipes was a planned distraction," Dietrich went on. "The instant the brawl began, Burke pushed the suitcase down the roof and, at the same instant, you POWs pulled aside the bars and Cray leaped from this first-floor window. Cray fell ten feet, not five floors."
"But I saw him fall," Heydekampf objected.
"You heard Cray scream, and turned in time to see him fall a few feet and bounce off the courtyard stones. Lieutenant, your imagination filled in much of his fall. He dropped only from this first-floor window. To further convince you, Burke kicked his legs and slid around a bit up on the roof, and made it look like he had almost fallen."
Heydekampf did not bother translating these last revelations.
Apparently resigned to the course of the conversation, Commandant Janssen offered, "If you look at the tips of those bars, you'll see the mortar used to stick them back in place."
Dietrich brought up an iron shaft. Dry powdery paste was at the tip.
"It's made from the old mortar in the stone walls," Janssen said wearily. "They probably scraped it off the wall with a nail or spoon, then mixed the powder with water. The mortar reconstituted and became sticky, just as it was when these walls were constructed many years ago, and they dabbed it onto the ends of the bars and replaced them right after Cray went through the window."
Dietrich held up his hand to Heydekampf to stop him from interpreting, then asked Janssen, "Where do you suspect the POWs got the metal saw or file to cut the bars?"
The commandant lifted his palms. "From a maintenance crew probably. The POWs will steal absolutely anything left untended for more than two seconds. Or perhaps they have picked the shop lock. They can get into the shop and infirmary and kitchen at will, it seems. The prisoners undoubtedly have a hardware store's inventory hidden around the castle."
Dietrich nodded to Heydekampf, who again began translating when the inspector said, "Jack Cray's willpower can be measured by his posture after he landed on the stone court below this window. His arms were dislocated, and surely he was in a great deal of pain. He hit the stones, and he remained motionless in a rag doll's limp posture. A man who is badly wounded will reflexively curl up into a ball, but a dead man has a sprawled, boneless look to him. That's how you found Jack Cray. His flaccid posture alone would have led you to think he was dead."
"He wasn't breathing," Heydekampf blurted in German.
"He was breathing, very shallowly and slowly under his loose coat, and in checking everything else, you missed it."
Dietrich placed the bars on the floor and returned to the table. Hornsby and Bell had finished their crullers, but David Davis still had one in each hand, taking bites out of each alternately and as rapidly as he could as if afraid the German inspector might abruptly take them back.
"But he had no pulse," Heydekampf argued.
"I
swear it."
"You are correct, Lieutenant. Jack Cray had no pulse. You and Colonel Janssen are not surgeons, so you cannot be faulted for failing to detect the American's ruse." Dietrich brought out two lengths of rubber tubing from his jacket pocket.
Bell again glanced at Hornsby.
The inspector said, "This is surgical tubing. When a surgeon amputates an arm or does some other invasive procedure on an arm, he wraps this tubing around the patient's upper arm, right under the shoulder. He pulls it tight. It prevents bleeding during the operation. And it blocks off all detectable pulse."
Colonel Janssen's face whitened. His eyes darted to SAO Hornsby, whose features remained unreadable.
"The tourniquet can remain in place up to two hours without damage to the arm," Dietrich went on. "Cray had tourniquets around both arms under his shirt and coat. Maybe not surgical tubing, maybe lengths of twine. But the tourniquets were there."
As he interpreted, Heydekampf’s voice lowered to a chagrined whisper. The POWs leaned toward him to hear the translation.
The inspector asked, "You remember the blood on Cray's neck? It seemed to have flowed there from his bleeding ears and eye. In fact, it had been smeared there just before he went through the windows. Probably the same POWs blood that was in his ears."
"Whatever for?" the commandant asked. His shoulders were hunched forward, as if the inspector's revelations were blows with Cray's bat.
"So you wouldn't check his carotid pulse in his neck."
Heydekampf closed his eyes. "Of course."
"When it's easy to check his wrists, no sense bloodying your hands by checking the pulse in his neck."
Janssen said quietly, "So that's how he did it. It's clear now. And I've never heard of anything like it, not from Colditz or any other POW camp."
"That's not quite all of it," Dietrich said, a note of apology in his voice. "Your report indicated that Major Bell and Captain Davis placed the American in the burial bag. To make him fit into the gunnysack, they had to relocate the arm. Another excruciating ordeal for Cray, who again remained silent, not calling out in pain. They also surreptitiously threw a knife into the bag, if Cray didn't already have one in his clothes, so Cray could cut himself out of the bag. And they may have removed the tourniquets, or Cray might have done it himself. The POWs who dug the grave made sure it was shallow."
Janssen only nodded.
"And then there was the shortness of the ceremony at the grave," Dietrich continued. "None of the POWs offered to speak a few words over the body, saying they didn't know Cray well enough. Group Captain Hornsby, you and the others knew that Cray could last only a few minutes below ground."
David Davis struggled, trying to keep a grin from his face.
"How did Cray know when the burial party had left?" Heydekampf asked.
"Maybe as he lay underground he could hear you. More likely he simply waited as long as he could, until his air was gone. The minister who read the service and who saw Cray rise from the earth estimates Cray was in the grave less than ten minutes. There was some air in the gunnysack When it ran out, he came up, hoping no one was watching. Cray didn't know the pastor was nearby, in the orchard. The American probably never saw the pastor."
Hornsby's head came up. He had not known about the minister seeing Cray emerge from the ground. So that was how the Germans were alerted so quickly.
Otto Dietrich replaced the American's bat where he had found it, leaning it against the wall. He stepped toward the ward's door "Colonel Janssen assures me that you have a radio hidden in the castle, and that in all likelihood you received coded orders over the radio to help Jack Cray escape this castle."