Chapter 2 second quarter

The fly bulged out its two bright eyes and made a harsh buzzing sound; the fly's body suddenly arched, like a horse poised to gallop.At this moment, she vaguely saw that the fly had a human face.How did Nell know that this monotonous hum was the end of years of quiet life? She pounced on it, held up the North American Review, and slapped the flies that landed on the window.As she swooped toward the fly, something caught her bare foot and she staggered.She picked up the tangled mass, which turned out to be a row of human upper teeth. She immediately lowered her teeth, and stood respectfully, as if those teeth would accuse her of an offense.

It was actually a set of false teeth, carefully made for Judge Healy by a well-known New York dentist.This set of dentures is a bit brand-new, and they are as bright as the summer sun between the lips when they are worn in the mouth. Out of the corner of her eye, Nell saw a pool of blood congealed on the carpet like a pancake; a small pile of clothes was neatly stacked next to the clot.Nell was all too familiar with these clothes.She did almost all the sewing on the judge's pockets and sleeves. When the maid went downstairs to put on her shoes, she noticed that the banister of the stairs was spattered with blood spots, which were not easy to see because of the red velvet carpet on the stairs.Through the large oval window in the drawing room, Nell saw a swarm of flies in the supposedly clean garden, and decided to go out and have a look.

Flies gather above a pile of garbage.The strong smell hit her nostrils, choking her to tears.Nell pushed a wheelbarrow, thinking of the calf the Healys had allowed the stableman to graze in the pasture.But that was a few years ago. The flies were the bulging-eyed ones Nell had just seen, and the bumblebees with their insane obsession with carrion of anything.There were quite a few flies and wasps, but what was even more numerous was a large group of wriggling white meat balls, a group of worms with pointed tails.They clung to something and wriggled, no, not only wriggled, but also crackled, burrowed, burrowed, and devoured each other... What is under this mass of horrible worms with white slime? ?At one end of the rubbish heap appeared to be low, prickly chestnut bushes and a few creamy…

A tattered white flag was planted on the rubbish pile, and the breeze blew the flag fluttering here and there, without direction. Nelton was suddenly intrigued, and could not help finding out what this mass of worms was, and praying frightfully that it was the stableman's calf she was about to discover.Afraid that she was terribly frightened, she still couldn't help but take a closer look: it was a naked corpse with a broad back, slightly hunched, and two legs that were too short to fit the whole body connected to the fat white buttocks. The left and the right are forked, and it is covered with white maggots in the shape of beans that are constantly wriggling.A large dense group of flies, there are hundreds of them, hovering in the air reluctantly.The back of the corpse's head was completely covered with worms, and there were not hundreds of these white worms, as many as thousands.

Nell kicked the worm pile away and dragged the judge into the cart.Pushing the cart with one hand and supporting the judge's naked body with the other, she walked across the lawn, through the garden, through the hall, and into the judge's study.She lays the judge down on a pile of legal papers and rests his head on her knees.Fistfuls of maggots rained down from the Judge's nose, ears, and slack mouth.She tore at the maggots on the back of the corpse's head, those wriggling little strips of meat were warm, wet, and shone coldly.She caught a few flies with bright eyes that followed her into the room, slapped them to death like revenge, tore off their wings one by one, and threw them randomly, all over the study.Thinking of what he had seen and heard, Nell couldn't help playing his trombone, and the sound of wailing was like howling ghosts and wolves, resounding throughout New England.

Later, when Edna Healy learned from the maid that her husband had died moaning in Lanny's arms, she rushed out and threw a vase at the chief of police.She could not accept that her husband had endured four days of torture before he died. "Boston killed him," she told Commissioner Kurtz later that day, stifling her trembling voice. "This whole city is a loathsome thing. It eats him alive." She insisted that Kurtz take her to see the body.The coroner's deputies had to cut open the beaks of the fly maggots attached to the body one by one, and it took three hours to remove the quarter-inch-long spiral maggots.The moth-eaten flesh was cut off and packed into bags; the backs of the corpses were so swollen that they seemed to be still throbbing with the maggots.The nostrils are almost indistinguishable, and the armpits have been eaten away.Without the support of the dentures, the whole face was loose and sunken, like a discarded accordion.But what was most humiliating, what was most pitiful, was not the fragmentation of the body, or even the fact that it was devoured by a dense swarm of maggots, flies, and wasps, but that he was completely naked.A human corpse sometimes looks like a forked turnip with a human head carved on it.There are certain parts of Judge Healy's body that are never meant to be shown naked to anyone but his wife.

"Well, I've never seen anyone eaten by bugs like this," Kurtz mumbled in the morgue.Two of his men had escorted Edna Healy home. "Maggots!" said coroner Barneyhout, laughing, his teeth bared.The white beans that fell on the ground twisted, and he bent down to pick up one and put it in his palm, the maggot struggled constantly on his chubby palm.He casually threw the maggot into the incinerator, and it burned into a small black coal with a hiss, and then only a wisp of green smoke remained.In fact, what is really appalling is that Healy was left in the yard for four days, and during those four days, he developed a large number of maggots in his body. Unfortunately, Barneyhout's limited knowledge does not realize this. .

"The maid who dragged the body into the house," Kurtz explained, "was trying to get the worms out of the wound, and thought she saw it, and I don't think I know how . . . she heard Judge Healy's dying words moan." "Oh, it's very possible!" Barneyhout laughed casually. "Director, the maggots of flies can only survive in dead tissues." He explained that female flies like to find wounds of domestic animals or rotten tissues. Meat, build nests and lay eggs.If they happen to find wounds in a living person who is unconscious or unable to dislodge them, they may also lay their eggs in them, but these maggots can only feed on dead muscle tissue, that is to say, there is almost no what harm. "The wound on the head was swollen to double or triple its size, which means that the tissue is completely dead, which means that the justice was dead before the worms came and devoured him."

"So this blow to the head not only left a wound," Kurtz said, "it killed him?" "Oh, very likely. The blow to the head was so hard that it knocked out his dentures. You say you found him in the yard?" Kurtz nodded.Barneyhout speculated that the murder was not premeditated, and that if it was a murder, something, such as a pistol or an ax, would usually be used to ensure the murder was successful. "At the very least a dagger is required. No, it seems more like a common burglary. The burglar clubbed the Chancellor in the bedroom over the head, knocking him unconscious, and then threw him out of the house, saving him Getting in the way of searching around the house for valuables. Presumably the burglars didn't expect Healy to be so badly injured," he said.From the tone of his voice, he almost felt sympathy for the thief who miscalculated.

Kurtz stared at Barneyhout with a hint of disapproval in his eyes. "However, nothing in the house was lost at all. There is something even stranger. The justice was stripped of all his clothes, not even his underwear, which were neatly folded aside." He coughed loudly and cleared Throat, as if his throat had been stepped on, "Purse, gold watch chain, watch, all next to the clothes!" On New Street, JT Fields, the publisher of the Poets, was reclining in a chair by the window in his office, reading a selection of poems Longfellow had selected for discussion tonight, when a junior clerk came in to announce a visitor.The slender Augustus Manning was originally waiting in the hall, but now he suddenly appeared at the door of the office in a crisp double-breasted frock coat. On the second floor of a newly renovated building on Tremont Street, I still don't understand.

Manning took off his hat and reached over to stroke his bald spot. "As Treasurer of the Harvard Board of Trustees," he said, "Mr. Fields, I must speak to you about a potential problem that has recently come to our attention. The only thing the publishing company can be proud of is its unimpeachable reputation." "Dr. Manning, I dare say there is no publishing company with a more unblemished reputation than ours." Manning curled his fingers into a steeple shape and let out a long, raspy sound, and Fields couldn't tell whether he was sighing or coughing. "We heard that you plan to publish a literary work translated by Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Fields. Of course, we value Mr. Longfellow's service to Harvard over the years, and his own poetry is indeed first-rate. But for This publication plan and the subject of this work, we have heard some rumors, and we are concerned...” Fields stared at Manning coldly, and Manning's fingertips loosened. "Dear Dr. Manning, you are not ignorant of the social value of the works of my poets. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes." These three resounding names immediately increased the weight of his words . "Mr. Fields, we are discussing in the name of society. Since these authors are completely dependent on your cover, give them a little advice in an appropriate manner. Of course, please don't mention our meeting, I Neither. I know you want to preserve your company's reputation, and I have no doubt that you consider the various implications your publication will have." "Thank you for your trust in me, Dr. Manning." Fields, who had a big shovel-like beard, took a deep breath, controlled his inner excitement, and tried his best to maintain his admirable diplomatic demeanor. "I have thought through all the implications and would like to have them. If you were to terminate Harvard's relationship with us, I would be happy to return the plates to you immediately at no cost to you. But I want you to be clear that if you You are offending me by spreading to the public anything that disparages my author." Osgood, Fields' senior staff, walked in slowly, and Fields told him to lead Dr. Manning around the office building. "No need." Manning stood silently, and it took him a long time to squeeze out these three words from his stiff and noble beard. "Mr. Fields, I suppose you also expect to be happy and long working in this place," he said, casting a cool glance at the gleaming black walnut paneling, "but remember, when the When you can't curb the ambitions of your authors, life will be difficult." He bowed politely, turned and went downstairs. Osgood walked to the door and turned around softly, "If you don't mind, Mr. Fields, I would like to ask, why is Dr. Manning here this afternoon?" "Don't think about it." Having said that, Fields himself let out a long sigh.As Osgood was about to walk out, Fields felt the need to explain, "If we insist on publishing Mr. Longfellow's translation of The Divine Comedy, Manning is determined to revoke Harvard University and our Tickna Fields. All publishing contracts signed by the company." "Ah, that's thousands of dollars! And the benefit that this contract will bring in the next few years is more than ten times that!" Osgood said with a little panic. Fields nodded, looking calm.As a junior clerk, Fields was said to have displayed an uncanny (or, as other clerks put it, "unusual") talent: He could predict the marketability of his work from the demeanor and appearance of his clients.This talent became a resource for other employees to bet on, and those who bet on Fields' inaccurate predictions often ended in failure.Soon after Fields convinced William Tickner to reward authors rather than cheat them, and realized that publicity for poets would increase their popularity, the climate of the publishing industry changed.After becoming a partner, Fields bought The Atlantic and The North American Review, through which he assembled a group of authors.