The Steam Room Incident
by Marie-Therese Taylor
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: Discovered with the corpse of a young man in the steam room, the retired assistant head of an independent girl's school is being held for questioning in connection with the death.
_____________________________________________________________________
If this is British Justice, I’m disappointed. I’ve been here for hours and I can tell you I’m getting tired of their nonsense. I know they’re not listening because they just keep repeating the same questions over and over. Anyway, they’ve left me alone again.
It’s not very warm in here, and pretty bare except for the three chairs, two for them, one for me, and this shaky table and there’s the tape recorder thing they use to take my statement or whatever they call it. There’s probably a camera somewhere, but, as they haven’t returned my glasses, I can’t be sure. I think I mentioned my glasses. They’ll still be in my locker at the gym no doubt.
I’ve nothing to hide, and nowhere to hide it if I had, considering where they found me – in the steam room. That’s where it all happened.
Visibility was about two feet. I’m guessing of course. Anyway, between that and not having my glasses on – well you don’t, do you, in a swimming pool which is where I’d been before the steam room – it took me a minute to realise I was not alone.
When I did, there was no mistaking I had company. There was a long, low groan then a sort of phlegmatic gurgling, a crackle, and then a crash and the crack of his skull as his body rolled off the marble slab onto the tiled floor. The whole thing was over in seconds I’d say, and that’s what I told them. He was dead. No two ways about it. ‘How could I tell?’ they wanted to know.
For Heaven’s sake!
‘Do you want me to elaborate on the condition of his skull,’ I asked them, ‘all open on one side and the contents spilling onto the wet surface, dribbling away towards the drain in the centre?’.
‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!’ I said.
I shouldn’t have added that, because that was when they suggested that I didn’t appreciate the gravity of my situation. So I described the unnatural twist of both his spine and his right leg and the glassy stare of his eye, the only one that was still in place. He was most definitely dead.
So what would you have done? Screamed for help? Applied First Aid? He was clearly beyond First Aid. Called the attendant? I know, I know, that’s what I should have done, and that’s what they’re saying, but that’s not how the situation presented itself at the time. How did it present itself? To me, this was an opportunity, the sort of opportunity which finer feelings have led me to decline in the past, but which, I could see now, would have to be grasped with, so to speak, both hands, if it was not to be lost forever.
Allow me to explain: in sixty-three years, the only corpse I had ever observed was that of my Great Aunt Esther, although I hesitate to associate great with the old witch. Kissing her cold cheek, which felt curiously damp, seemed a waste of time since she was, and had always been, beyond understanding any display of affection. I did not feel fear or revulsion, just confusion as to the purpose of it all.
I did notice purple patches where blood had pooled, and the experience left me with a natural curiosity about the changes in our bodies when they no longer have life’s vital juices flowing through them. This just seemed a chance in a million to satisfy that curiosity.
The other aspect I should mention concerns the gender of this corpse. I have, by some people’s way of thinking, led a sheltered life. Despite four years at university in the sixties, and a further four in a flat share with a couple of nurses, I have not been exposed to those free sexual exchanges enjoyed by many of my contemporaries. That swinging era never invited me to the party, and while some professions allow access to revelations of the naked and the dead – medicine, certain criminal or artistic vocations – mine did not. As Assistant Headmistress of an Independent Girls’ School in the capital, I’ve just never had the chance to observe the male nude.
I did consider life classes, but I simply cannot draw, and I imagine my ulterior motive would have been discovered immediately. I must add that I never married, and I have always held that certain intimacies belong only between those who have undertaken that commitment so, before this incident in the steam room, I had not been able to have a really good look at a newly dead and, more to the point, unclothed adult male corpse.
It was now or never. I considered that it would probably not be long before someone joined us in the steam room, so I had to work fast.
The first thing I wished to explore was the condition of certain parts of his anatomy – concealed parts. As this was a bathing area, and he was appropriately dressed, you will know to which parts I refer, so I needn’t spell it out. Enough to say that I set about the business at once, peeling back the waistband of his baggy trunks.
He was a slim fellow and it was not difficult to roll the garment down a few inches, but when they reached his hip bone, they stuck. Keeping hold of the trunks with one hand, I eased his hips up an inch or so with the other– just enough to give clearance. They were surprisingly heavy – his hips, his whole bottom half. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised considering I wasn’t getting much in the way of co-operation.
When I had the trunks down as far as his contorted limbs would allow, I had a good look and, I have to say, I was just a little disappointed. I had hoped that seeing things in the flesh would reveal a new dimension which textbooks and photographs could never convey. In my role as tutor and moral guide to young girls, I have made myself familiar with the theory and a basic understanding of the mechanism of the male anatomy and its functions. Yet I could not be certain, for example, if he had been circumcised.
If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Perhaps if I’d had a basis for comparison, I would have known. I wonder if things alter in that region with the trauma of dying? I’ve read that several areas of control are lost at the moment of death. It’s not the sort of thing you think about until it happens – to someone else, obviously.
I was badly positioned and, as I’ve mentioned, the steam made it difficult to see clearly. So, to get a better look, I knelt with one knee on each side so that I was astride his torso, but it didn’t help. I bent down, peering closely to compensate for my short-sightedness so that my face must have been less than a foot from the spot of interest.
That was when I felt a sudden wave of cold air on my shoulder. The steam room door had opened and a young couple stood above me staring in quite understandable distress. I know it must have looked bad – with what was left of him spread all over the floor, his brains, and the rest of him hanging out like that, and me with my face only inches from what had been covered. The girl screamed and the young man pressed the button – the one on the wall for emergencies. Help arrived at once - but not for me.
Now if I tell you I was embarrassed, you will assume it was because I was exposed in this awkward act, kneeling over his middle regions, examining him like that. Wrong. The apparently compromising nature of my situation was nothing compared to the complete mortification of being discovered in the old discoloured swimming costume that I had only this morning rescued from the charity bag because my better one, the one with total control front panels, was in the wash.
I had considered it would be on view for only a few seconds between the changing area and the pool, and thereafter would be hidden under water or disguised by clouds of vapour in the steam room.
Now, to my shame, my inferior attire was exposed to all and sundry as two security personnel escorted me from the steam room in full view of the gawping crowd that had gathered around the spa area. I was acutely aware of the pathetic spectacle I must have made in that suit with the underwiring and all support from where I needed it, gone. One of the staff at the centre offered me a towel for which I was immeasurably grateful.
They put me in a police car, but when we got to the station they pulled into an underground car park, moved me to another plain car, and brought me here. They didn’t use handcuffs. I suppose they assumed I would not make a bid for freedom barefoot, but they did keep a tight grip on my arms, and that was painful. I still have stripes where their fingers pressed and a nasty mark which will probably bruise.
I don’t know where we are. As we came into the building there was no reception area, no desk where they take names and so on. They brought me straight into this room and a young woman brought me a dressing gown sort of thing, but if I thought this small gesture was made in kindness, I was mistaken. It was only so that she could take away the costume for examination and search me. That was very unpleasant – the search.
They’re saying I killed him! I understand why at first they might have thought that. As I said, I know it looks bad, but, as I’m innocent, I assume that once they look into things, once they review his medical history, they will discover what actually killed him. After that I might forgive the misunderstanding. The only remaining inconvenience will be having to reclaim the shabby swimsuit.
If you ask me what I think happened, I would say he dozed off. I get sleepy in there with the heat and the humidity and those hypnotic lights that change colour. He probably rolled off the slab he was lying on, and it was just his bad luck that the surface on which he landed was less forgiving for his fragile cranium than a softer one might have been.
They’re hoping I’ll confess. In between their questions they slip in snippets of information. I’m wise to that game. They want me to incriminate myself – mention something that they will claim only the perpetrator of this supposed crime could have known. I’ve seen this tactic before - on television. Apparently he was foreign.
They asked about poison, who gave it to me? What poison? Anyone could see he fell and cracked his skull. I heard it. Poison! What are they talking about? They said they found poison in his blood. They said he fell after he was poisoned. They think I administered the poison - some chemical absorbed through his skin - and was trying to remove his trunks in case there were traces.
‘Who are you working for?’ they want to know. At least they don’t think I’m a pervert.
All the same, I think I’m in trouble. I’ve asked for a lawyer and they say they’re sorting that out. I hope he won’t be long. I asked them to tell the lawyer to bring a change of clothes, that way I can just leave the old swimsuit behind. Yes, that should take care of things.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Discovered with the corpse of a young man in the steam room, the retired assistant head of an independent girl's school is being held for questioning in connection with the death.
_____________________________________________________________________
If this is British Justice, I’m disappointed. I’ve been here for hours and I can tell you I’m getting tired of their nonsense. I know they’re not listening because they just keep repeating the same questions over and over. Anyway, they’ve left me alone again.
It’s not very warm in here, and pretty bare except for the three chairs, two for them, one for me, and this shaky table and there’s the tape recorder thing they use to take my statement or whatever they call it. There’s probably a camera somewhere, but, as they haven’t returned my glasses, I can’t be sure. I think I mentioned my glasses. They’ll still be in my locker at the gym no doubt.
I’ve nothing to hide, and nowhere to hide it if I had, considering where they found me – in the steam room. That’s where it all happened.
Visibility was about two feet. I’m guessing of course. Anyway, between that and not having my glasses on – well you don’t, do you, in a swimming pool which is where I’d been before the steam room – it took me a minute to realise I was not alone.
When I did, there was no mistaking I had company. There was a long, low groan then a sort of phlegmatic gurgling, a crackle, and then a crash and the crack of his skull as his body rolled off the marble slab onto the tiled floor. The whole thing was over in seconds I’d say, and that’s what I told them. He was dead. No two ways about it. ‘How could I tell?’ they wanted to know.
For Heaven’s sake!
‘Do you want me to elaborate on the condition of his skull,’ I asked them, ‘all open on one side and the contents spilling onto the wet surface, dribbling away towards the drain in the centre?’.
‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!’ I said.
I shouldn’t have added that, because that was when they suggested that I didn’t appreciate the gravity of my situation. So I described the unnatural twist of both his spine and his right leg and the glassy stare of his eye, the only one that was still in place. He was most definitely dead.
So what would you have done? Screamed for help? Applied First Aid? He was clearly beyond First Aid. Called the attendant? I know, I know, that’s what I should have done, and that’s what they’re saying, but that’s not how the situation presented itself at the time. How did it present itself? To me, this was an opportunity, the sort of opportunity which finer feelings have led me to decline in the past, but which, I could see now, would have to be grasped with, so to speak, both hands, if it was not to be lost forever.
Allow me to explain: in sixty-three years, the only corpse I had ever observed was that of my Great Aunt Esther, although I hesitate to associate great with the old witch. Kissing her cold cheek, which felt curiously damp, seemed a waste of time since she was, and had always been, beyond understanding any display of affection. I did not feel fear or revulsion, just confusion as to the purpose of it all.
I did notice purple patches where blood had pooled, and the experience left me with a natural curiosity about the changes in our bodies when they no longer have life’s vital juices flowing through them. This just seemed a chance in a million to satisfy that curiosity.
The other aspect I should mention concerns the gender of this corpse. I have, by some people’s way of thinking, led a sheltered life. Despite four years at university in the sixties, and a further four in a flat share with a couple of nurses, I have not been exposed to those free sexual exchanges enjoyed by many of my contemporaries. That swinging era never invited me to the party, and while some professions allow access to revelations of the naked and the dead – medicine, certain criminal or artistic vocations – mine did not. As Assistant Headmistress of an Independent Girls’ School in the capital, I’ve just never had the chance to observe the male nude.
I did consider life classes, but I simply cannot draw, and I imagine my ulterior motive would have been discovered immediately. I must add that I never married, and I have always held that certain intimacies belong only between those who have undertaken that commitment so, before this incident in the steam room, I had not been able to have a really good look at a newly dead and, more to the point, unclothed adult male corpse.
It was now or never. I considered that it would probably not be long before someone joined us in the steam room, so I had to work fast.
The first thing I wished to explore was the condition of certain parts of his anatomy – concealed parts. As this was a bathing area, and he was appropriately dressed, you will know to which parts I refer, so I needn’t spell it out. Enough to say that I set about the business at once, peeling back the waistband of his baggy trunks.
He was a slim fellow and it was not difficult to roll the garment down a few inches, but when they reached his hip bone, they stuck. Keeping hold of the trunks with one hand, I eased his hips up an inch or so with the other– just enough to give clearance. They were surprisingly heavy – his hips, his whole bottom half. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised considering I wasn’t getting much in the way of co-operation.
When I had the trunks down as far as his contorted limbs would allow, I had a good look and, I have to say, I was just a little disappointed. I had hoped that seeing things in the flesh would reveal a new dimension which textbooks and photographs could never convey. In my role as tutor and moral guide to young girls, I have made myself familiar with the theory and a basic understanding of the mechanism of the male anatomy and its functions. Yet I could not be certain, for example, if he had been circumcised.
If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Perhaps if I’d had a basis for comparison, I would have known. I wonder if things alter in that region with the trauma of dying? I’ve read that several areas of control are lost at the moment of death. It’s not the sort of thing you think about until it happens – to someone else, obviously.
I was badly positioned and, as I’ve mentioned, the steam made it difficult to see clearly. So, to get a better look, I knelt with one knee on each side so that I was astride his torso, but it didn’t help. I bent down, peering closely to compensate for my short-sightedness so that my face must have been less than a foot from the spot of interest.
That was when I felt a sudden wave of cold air on my shoulder. The steam room door had opened and a young couple stood above me staring in quite understandable distress. I know it must have looked bad – with what was left of him spread all over the floor, his brains, and the rest of him hanging out like that, and me with my face only inches from what had been covered. The girl screamed and the young man pressed the button – the one on the wall for emergencies. Help arrived at once - but not for me.
Now if I tell you I was embarrassed, you will assume it was because I was exposed in this awkward act, kneeling over his middle regions, examining him like that. Wrong. The apparently compromising nature of my situation was nothing compared to the complete mortification of being discovered in the old discoloured swimming costume that I had only this morning rescued from the charity bag because my better one, the one with total control front panels, was in the wash.
I had considered it would be on view for only a few seconds between the changing area and the pool, and thereafter would be hidden under water or disguised by clouds of vapour in the steam room.
Now, to my shame, my inferior attire was exposed to all and sundry as two security personnel escorted me from the steam room in full view of the gawping crowd that had gathered around the spa area. I was acutely aware of the pathetic spectacle I must have made in that suit with the underwiring and all support from where I needed it, gone. One of the staff at the centre offered me a towel for which I was immeasurably grateful.
They put me in a police car, but when we got to the station they pulled into an underground car park, moved me to another plain car, and brought me here. They didn’t use handcuffs. I suppose they assumed I would not make a bid for freedom barefoot, but they did keep a tight grip on my arms, and that was painful. I still have stripes where their fingers pressed and a nasty mark which will probably bruise.
I don’t know where we are. As we came into the building there was no reception area, no desk where they take names and so on. They brought me straight into this room and a young woman brought me a dressing gown sort of thing, but if I thought this small gesture was made in kindness, I was mistaken. It was only so that she could take away the costume for examination and search me. That was very unpleasant – the search.
They’re saying I killed him! I understand why at first they might have thought that. As I said, I know it looks bad, but, as I’m innocent, I assume that once they look into things, once they review his medical history, they will discover what actually killed him. After that I might forgive the misunderstanding. The only remaining inconvenience will be having to reclaim the shabby swimsuit.
If you ask me what I think happened, I would say he dozed off. I get sleepy in there with the heat and the humidity and those hypnotic lights that change colour. He probably rolled off the slab he was lying on, and it was just his bad luck that the surface on which he landed was less forgiving for his fragile cranium than a softer one might have been.
They’re hoping I’ll confess. In between their questions they slip in snippets of information. I’m wise to that game. They want me to incriminate myself – mention something that they will claim only the perpetrator of this supposed crime could have known. I’ve seen this tactic before - on television. Apparently he was foreign.
They asked about poison, who gave it to me? What poison? Anyone could see he fell and cracked his skull. I heard it. Poison! What are they talking about? They said they found poison in his blood. They said he fell after he was poisoned. They think I administered the poison - some chemical absorbed through his skin - and was trying to remove his trunks in case there were traces.
‘Who are you working for?’ they want to know. At least they don’t think I’m a pervert.
All the same, I think I’m in trouble. I’ve asked for a lawyer and they say they’re sorting that out. I hope he won’t be long. I asked them to tell the lawyer to bring a change of clothes, that way I can just leave the old swimsuit behind. Yes, that should take care of things.
About the Author
Salford-born Marie-Therese Taylor has been a Scottish resident for more than sixty years. She lives in Edinburgh, but writes anywhere. “Since the acquisition of a bus pass entitles
me to ride free on public transport,” she says, “I have taken up my entitlement
and can be found lugging into your conversation at any time.”