Without access to a lab I can't say for sure, hedges the Coroner, but I'm almost 90% sure that these three people were each killed by a fatal gunshot wound.He stands from where he'd been kneeling over the Coppersmith, gently poking the bloody hole in her blouse with the tip of his ball point pen. The Copywriter, ashamed at having killed such a wholesome looking woman, stands silent. He nods. They both nod. Both regard the bodies and nod. The Coroner wipes his pen off with a paper napkin, crumples it, and throws the napkin on the ground. The Copywriter regards this littering, thinks of saying something, but - checked by guilt of the death he caused - simply nods. Shame, they both say. Real shame.
You think the girl killed the other two? ventures the Copywriter.
I'm no Forensic Pathologist, says the Coroner, rocking back on his heels, but I think that may have been the case. The other possibility, given the rate of decomposition, and smell of that first one - the one in shop clothes - is that one died, and then the other, and then she died. All on different days.
Were you... (the Copywriter fidgets) ...called here by the police?
Oh no, says the Coroner. I'm here for a duel.
The Copywriter lets burst a great sigh of relief: Oh, thank Christ, he says. In that case, I shot the girl.
Really? asks the Coroner.
Well, I had to, he says. Unspoken rules. And the fact that she was aiming at me.
So without access to a lab, I was right: death by fatal gunshot wound.
As fatal as they come.
That correspondence corse really paid off.
The two men spend the rest of the afternoon rummaging around for gloves to haul the corpses (one already swelling in the heat) to the fresh graves by the north fence. They look all about, spend time examining the South Pointing Marmot, debate whether to play a game of chess, until the Coroner finally spots the hole in the oak, and he boosts the Copywriter up and empties the hole of its treasures.
They go through papers, a statue of a white nine-tailed fox, a grocery list, the List of the Dead --
What's written on the back? asks the Copywriter. He looks. It takes a second for him to deduce the series.
Archbishop, Archer, Armorer... Coppersmith, Copywriter, and you're a --
Coroner, nods the Coroner. And I dabble in watercolor, but not too seriously, he adds.
Then where the hell, scans the Copywriter, is that bastard of an Art Director. He said got called for a duel....
The Copywriter looks in vein. He crumples up the list in anger. It was only in envy of the brilliance of the Art Director's unique exit from the firm - the first to excuse himself from the ad world due to a duel - that led the Copywriter to do the same three months later - not expecting that he'd actually be called to a duel two days after quitting.
While the Copywriter fumes, the Coroner carefully reads the Caretakers' Contract. He gets the Copywriter's attention. They both read over the fine print. Every day, the Coroner points out, they're supposed to remove the bodies every day.
Bastard! cries the Copywriter.
They raise their guns, their guns go off.
