I uncovered a stash of oil lamps in a cabinet, and enough lamp oil to fill half a dozen of them. While I bustled about trimming wicks and lighting lamps, the four men, after a bit of nervous hemming and hawing, picked up Resnick and laid him on the long wooden table I had cleared. Binkie stood watching them with her arms crossed, looking stern and vigilant.
Dad whisked back the blanket to reveal the late Victor Resnick. He didn't look much like the distinguished figure on the back of the book I'd bought. From our brief acquaintance, I suspected the angry expression on his face was a lot more characteristic than the lofty, noble, farseeing expression the photographer had captured. His face was pale and had a sort of weird bluish color to it. His eyes were open, and his hair and beard wildly disheveled. The impulse to run screaming out of the room fought in my mind with an irrational urge to close his eyes, smooth his hair, and remove a little bit of seaweed tangled in his beard.
"Hmm," Dad said. That knocked some of the fright out of me, and replaced it with irritation. I hate it when doctors do that. "Hmm" can mean just about anything. "How soon can I get this disgustingly healthy person out of my office and go on to someone with an interesting ailment?" or "Yikes! How can I possibly break it to her that she's got maybe six weeks to live?" or "Chinese or tacos for lunch?" Give me a doctor who babbles out exactly what he's thinking.
Dr. Peabody looked faint. He examined the body visually, but from rather a distance, with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. Dad was doing his Sherlock Holmes act, inspecting every inch of Victor Resnick with great attention. Jeb scrutinized the Anchor Inn's kitchen fixtures as if he planned on buying the joint. Michael was snapping pictures frantically. Only Binkie and I paid attention to Dad's examination. I wondered what he found so interesting about Victor Resnick's fingernails.
"Let's turn him over," Dad said after a while.
Binkie and I supervised again while the men did the turning.
Dad repeated his detailed inspection on this side of Resnick, with particular attention, naturally, to the head wound, which didn't look all that bad now. I thought I had seen quite a lot of blood on Resnick's head when we first found him floating facedown in the pool, but there wasn't much when you looked at it close-up. Had a lot of it washed off while we were hauling him up here to the Anchor Inn? Or had I overreacted when I first saw him--when I thought, for a heartbeat, that it might be Dad. Close-up, the wound looked so small that I wondered how it could have been fatal.
"Very interesting," Dad said at last. "Let's turn him over again."
"So, did he die of drowning or from getting hit on the head?" Jeb asked when the body was right side up again.
"Neither," Dad said.
"Neither? Then how the blazes did he die?"
"Electrocution."
Chapter 29
I Am the Only Running Puffin
"Electrocution?" we all chorused.
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"See this small burned spot?" Dad said, indicating the corner of Resnick's mouth. "And this discoloration?" He pointed to the fingernails.
"Don't tell me those tiny burns killed him."
"No, undoubtedly the ventricular fibrillation killed him."
"The what?" Jeb asked.
"Ventricular fibrillation?" I echoed, stumbling over the half-familiar term. "Isn't that what they do in emergency rooms to revive people?"
"That's defibrillation," Dad said. "If a person's heart has stopped or is irregular, you can use a controlled electrical current to get it started, or steadied. But if you take someone with a normally functioning heart and subject them to an electrical shock, it can slow or stop the heart, or mess up the rhythm. Can be fatal."
"So that's why in emergency rooms they always yell, 'Clear!' and make sure no one's touching the patient before they try to defibrillate," I said.
"Oh, right," Jeb said, nodding. "I've seen that on TV."
"Essentially, yes," Dad went on. "Most people who die in low-voltage electrical accidents don't die from burns; it's the v-fib that kills them."
"Dr. Peabody, what do you think?" Jeb asked.
"Oh, Langslow's diagnosis sounds fine to me," Dr. Peabody said. "Electrocution, definitely."
"You can really tell that, without an autopsy?" I asked.
"Well, not for certain," Dad said. "We won't really know for sure until the local ME does a formal autopsy. But I'd put my money on electrocution."
Dr. Peabody nodded vigorously and glanced at his watch.
"What about the wound to the head?" Jeb asked.