Les histoires de Ducky

Vous pourrez sur cette page ajouter toutes les anecdotes du Dr. Mallard. Nous pourrons ainsi tous élargir notre culture générale ;-)
(Pour raccourcir: G= Gibbs, D= Ducky, T= Tony, K= Kate,... )

SAISON 1


1.1. Yankee White

G: I think DiNozzo´s right. A naval aviator stroking at this age?
D: He could have been born with an aneurysm. They´re time bombs in the body. I remember this young promising basso profundo in London. He was only 27 when he keeled over in the middle of an Otello aria.
K: Who the hell are you people? 

K: I owe you an apology, Doctor.
D: Please, it´s Ducky to my associates. I´m just relieved we straightened it out. It´s inconsistencies like this, start conspiracy theories. It reminds me of a case once in New Orleans. A jealous husband shot his wife off a Mardi Gras float right under the clock at the corner of Basin street and…
G: Come on, Duck, give it a rest. She´s got work to do.
D: I´ll tell you the rest later. 

1.2. Hung out to dry

1.3. Seadog 

D: The South Pacific has a number of different refreshments. I remember one. Where was it? New Guinea or Timor? Well, whatever the case, the natives had this delightfully refreshing drink. It wasn´t till years later I discovered it was made from a mixture of rum punch and water buffalo urine. To Abby, please, Gerald. They´d never seen a white man, and my life was in jeopardy until…
M: I´ve got to report in.
D: There´s a phone over there. Oh, well. You´ll enjoy this, Commander. As I was saying, my life was in jeopardy until I cured the chief´s wife of a terrible yeast infection. 

1.4. The Immortals 

D: Do you know why they drive on the left-hand side of the road in England? Dates back to medieval times. Most people were, and still are, right-handed. It allowed them to slash at one another when passing on horseback. Why, you might ask, doesn´t this hold true for the rest of Europe?
K: Why the chain on the waist? 

D: Yes, I suppose gazing directly into an exposed digestive system doesn´t aid the actual process.
T: Not after the meal we just had.
D: Yes, I´m sorry about that, my friend, but sometimes gaining valuable insight requires suffering small indignities. I recall one case, a young woman, not much older than yourself. She ingested a small piece of jewellery…
G: Ducky? 

A: I´ve already surpassed the third level of the fortress and made it into the dungeon corridor of the castle´s inner stronghold. After, of course, slaying two gnomes, a drunken dwarf, and a frenzied ogre.
D: Of course. You know, this reminds me of something…Actually, I can´t think of a thing it reminds me of. 

1.5. The Curse 

G: Ducky, I´m not interested in what happened to him after he died.
D: I´m surprised to hear you say that, Gibbs. You know post-mortem details can be extremely revealing. Remember that case four years ago, where the young marine was buried in an anthill up to his neck?
G: Duck, eight years ago. How did he die?
D: Well, it can´t be eight years. No, I know it wasn´t! Four years ago, your third wifw hit you over the head with a baseball bat. And I distinctly remember the ant-eaten marine on that table there when I stitched you up.
G: Ducky, how did our young lieutenant die?

A: Fore!
D: Never do that again.
A: I´m sorry, I didn´t know you were going to get all freaked out.
D: Well, it´s an automatic reflex when one is a golfer, Abigail.
A: Please don´t call me Abigail.
D: Then don´t yell “fore” when I have a niblick in my hand.
A: A niblick? Sounds like a sex act.
D: Yes, that´s what I thought it was the first time I heard the term. A niblick is what a nine-iron used to be called when golf was the province of Scottish nobles, not the democratic “lovely walk spoiled” by the week-end duffer. 

1.6. High Seas
1.7. Sub Rosa

1.8. Minimum Security

D: Although I did find a gallbladder once with almost a kilo of large stones. Of course, the victim was a sumo wrestler who weighed over 200 kilos. He was in the middle of a bout, he just went…
Gerald: They´re stones, Doc. 

D: Quite a collection.
A: Yeah, I´m trying to match a scent I found on Sa´id´s clothes.
D: I don’t see Chanel No. 5.
A: Does anyone wear that anymore.
D: My mother does.
A: Really?
D: Ever since Marylin Monroe confessed that Chanel No. 5 was all she wore to bed.
A: So, does your mother…
D: Unfortunately, yes. Makes for terribly awkward slumber parties. 

1.9. Marine Down 

D: Do you know what a trocar is, Tony?
T: I’m guessing it’s not an alien on Star Trek.
D: It’s from the French. Trocart. Three quarts. It’s used to enter the abdominal cavity so that the lungs and other major organs can be drained of fluids.  

D: I discovered that the carotid artery showed absolutely no sign of decay. Yes, I once saw a similar case in West Germany, where a young boy…
G: Duck, we don’t have time for stories on this one.
D: Fine. But first, I’d like to ask a question. Do you people find me boring?
G: No.
K: Of course not.
T: Absolutely not.
G: Can we get back to this now?
D: Yes. 

1.10. Left for dead 

D: Do you know why graves are six feet deep, Gibbs?
G: I do.
D: Yeah, six feet is the minimum depth at which the smell of a decomposing corpse cannot attract wild animals. Of course, there are exceptions. A polar bear can smell…
G: Duck, I said I knew.
D: Sorry. 

G: Found a couple of arrowheads.
D: Yeah, this one’s an arrowhead, but this one’s a shark’s tooth, and, ho, not more than a few thousand years old.
T: That recent?
D: Oh, yes. Any older and it would be black and fossilised.
T: How did it get into Rock Creek Park?
D: Pre-Columbian Indians. You know, they either found a dead shark on shore or procured it from a Casimiroid tribe. Oh, we have to notify ARPA.
G: After we’re done here.
D: Come on, Gibbs. It’s a $250,000 fine for disturbing an archeological site.…

D: Yeah, wouldn’t it be fascinating if our Jane Doe was unknowingly interred atop a prehistoric burial? It happened to me once before, you know. In ’68. Or was it ’67? No matter. 

D: We found a 40-75 calibre bullet lodged in the Comanche’s femur. Now, since the 40-75 cavalry carbine was introduced in 1873, we have an approximate date to work with. 

ME: Ducky, I should do this autopsy.
D: Now, now, Digger, I can cite you a dozen cases where the local authority was usurped by an ongoing federal investigation. Look at Lincoln’s assassination. He was shot at the Ford theatre, only a few blocks from here. Now, that is an autopsy I would…
(D&ME together)
D: 79.1
ME: 72.3
D: My God, Digger. When did your department last update its field kits? You’re probe’s so old, it could’ve been used on Typhoid Mary. Were you as amazed by her story as I was, Digger? A healthy woman making all those people sick and not having a clue. Can you imagine not having a clue, Digger?
ME: You know, you’re right. Our equipment is outdated. We’re backed up at the lab anyway. He’s all yours, Ducky. 

1.11. Eye Spy 

D: Only nine percent of the world’s population is left-handed. Interestingly, that percentage has remained the same since prehistoric times. Archeologists have been able to determine this by examining cave paintings more than 10,000 years old.
Gerald: Don’t you think we should notify Gibbs?
D: In due time. Curiously enough, the Yanomami tribe in the Amazon are 23% left-handed.

1.12. My other left foot 

D: I wonder if they still have the Eurail pass. Yeah. In the summer of my 18th year, my grandfather gave me a Eurail pass to celebrate my advancement to university. I traveled to nine different countries. Met an Austrian girl named Gisella who left her fingerprints on my heart. Visited all the major museums of Europe. The artwork was extraordinary. Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Renoir. Botticelli.
T: I like saying Botticelli.
D: And that brings me to Christy Brown, the Irish poet and painter. Yes, he suffered from cerebral palsy. Learned to paint with his foot. Quite remarkable. He wrote an autobiography, My Left Foot which became an exceptional film starring Daniel Day-Lewis.
G: That’s the right foot. 

D: You know, I recall a case in the Forensic Journal where the only evidence was a thumb found in the coin return of a pay phone.
G: Yeah? And?
D: Well, that’s the only part I remember. 

1.13. One shot, one kill

1.14. The Good Samaritan  

D: This reminds me of the tale of the traveler who was beaten and left by the highway.
Charlie: How so?
D: Oh, a man from Samaria came by. Yes, he saw the poor fellow, picked him up, carried him in his arms to an inn. Bathed his wounds, bandaged him and left money to feed him. This was unusual because the Samarians were considered outcasts and of low moral fibre. Yeah, but from then on, he’s been known as the “Good Samaritan”.
Charlie: Man, you can talk. 

D: Do you know why they call them dum-dum bullets?
Gerald: No.
D: In the late 1890s, the British military developed them in India at the Dum-Dum arsenal. Yes, their use in warfare was banned at the first International Peace Conference in 1899 at The Hague.
Gerald: I actually find that interesting.
D: As opposed to what? 

D: Oh, I just go where evidence takes me. I recall a case in my early career, yeah, before we had the benefit of all this marvellous technology. A young man, barely 20 years old, he had jelly from a doughnut on his face.
G: Ducky?
D: Yes? 

1.15. Enigma

1.16. Bête noire

D: Don’t recognise the uniform? I’m not surprised. The royal navies of the world wear almost identical uniforms. In fact, during World War II, British naval officers whose ships went down in the Channel, passed themselves off in Antwerp as German submariners who… Good God. 

D: What is it you want?
Ari: In due time, Doctor…
D: Mallard.
Ari: Like the famous English A-four steam locomotive.
D: Most people think of waterfowl.
Ari: The Mallard ran from London to Edinburgh for decades. In 1938, it attained a speed of over 200 kilometers an hour.
D: Two hundred and two.
Ari: A world record. Although the Germans claimed it was set in a slight downgrade. Typical. 

1.17. The truth is out there
1.18. Unsealed
1.19. Dead man talking
1.20. Missing

1.21. Split decision 

D: I’ve only seen this one time before. In a Somali village called M’butatu. A young sheepherder made this mistake of impregnating the daughters of a local warlord.
T: And they cored him out like an apple?
D: I can assure you, Tony, they take such things very seriously in Somalia. 
D: Yeah, well, as they say in the high country markets of Sri Lanka there’s more than one way to skin a mongoose. Actually, there are three.
G: Ducky. 

1.22. A Weak link

1.23. Reveille

D: This reminds me of a butcher I met in China.
P: He murdered someone and chopped up the body?
D: No, no. Claimed his big toe could predict earthquakes. Said it tingled for hours before a quake struck anywhere in the world. Left foot. Yes, when I assured him that many seismic events occur daily all around the globe, he became very excited. Said that explained why his big toe always tingled.
P: Didn’t you point out the fallacy of his logic, Doctor?
D: Oh, no, no, no. He was so happy. I hadn’t the heart.
P: Are you making this up, Doctor Mallard?
D: Good grief, no. When one spends one’s career traveling around the globe, one haa an unlimited supply of mysterious and intriguing tales.

SAISON 2

2.1. See no evil

M: Is it a common occurrence, Ducky, dismembered bodies in barrels of alcohol?

D: Well, now that you mention it, I did have a great uncle who drowned in a vat of alcohol.

M: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

D: Of course, he reportedly climbed out three times to go to the bathroom.

2.2 The Good Wives Club

D: This actually reminds me of my days at Edinburgh Medical College.

T: You took a tunnel to get to school, Ducky?

D: No, the morgue was tiny. Yeah, we had a fellow student who suffered terribly from claustrophobia. Constantly hyperventilating. Yes, one day he decided to overcome his fear. Yeah, he shut himself in one of the morgue drawers. Well, the ventilation was awful, of course. He asked us not to disturb him for 24 hours. We were very impressed with his gumption.

P: Did it work?

D: Unfortunately, not. No. He died of a massive coronary. So you see, people can be frightened to death.

2.3. Vanished

2.4. Lt. Jane Doe

D: Because I suspect the good doctor will be a tad grumpy as well.

P: Why's that?

D: He lost the coin toss.

M: What coin toss, Ducky?

D: The one that in two hours will send me to London to the assembly of the collegium mortem scrutantium.

M: Of course.

K: The Society of Medical Examiners.

D: Very good, Kate.

K: Four years of Latin has finally paid off.

D: Do you know who founded the society?

K: Not a clue.

D: Leonardo Da Vinci himself.

K: Wow.

D: Wow, indeed. Yes, we can trace the roots of our society, dedicated to the history of forensic sciences, to one formed by Leonardo in the same year that he began the Mona Lisa. In fact, that transcendent painting is the symbol...

G: Duck, do you want to meet with your society in London or give us a lecture?

D: Quite right. I do have a plane to catch.

D: Did you know that Leonardo Da Vinci never gave the Mona Lisa to the patron who commissioned it?

G: Nope.

D: Instead, he carried the painting with him for the rest of his life.

 

A: I sent a copy to an expert I met at a forensics conference at the Greenbrier. It's such a sweet place. They have golf, tennis, falconry...

D: Falconry? I hunted with a falcon in Scotland in my youth.

A: It's so cool.

D: Yeah. Almost a lost art, I'm afraid.

G: Like forensic reporting?

2.5. The Bone Yard

2.6. Terminal Leave

 D: Alexander the Great had a dog. A mastiff named Peritas. Yeah, nobody laughed about her. When she died, he led the funeral procession. Built monuments to her. Ordered yearly celebrations in her memory.

 2.7. Call of Silence

G: Well?

D: I'm a medical examiner, not a psychiatrist.

G: I won't sue you, Duck.

D: Well, he reminds me of my great-uncle William, in Bristol. We'd visit every Christmas. He was always apologizing for sitting naked at the dinner table.

G: He wasn't naked, was he?

D: No. Aunt Gertrude was. I'm sorry, Gibbs. My point is my uncle was a little dotty, as is your Mr Yost.

2.8. Heart break.

D: Actually, Tony, we shouldn't disregard the notion. Stories of the phenomenon go way back, to the Bible, in fact, although it wasn't popularized until Dickens.

P: Charles Dickens?

D: Yes. He used spontaneous combustion to kill off one of his characters, Mr Krook, in the novel Bleak House. It caused a minor uproar. Dickens was accused of perpetuating the age-old superstition.

T: I saw that movie.

D: The silent version or the British miniseries?

T: They were talking.

 

D: You know, when I was a young ME, we used to recreate crime scenes using interns.

A: You also used to listen to records and do the jitterbug.

D: Actually, I was quite the hoofer.

 

D: These were used by Army surgeons Joseph Woodward and Edward Kurtis at the post mortem of Abraham Lincoln and performed in a guest bedroom at the White House. The Lincoln bedroom, hence the popular misconception. Lincoln never slept there.

2.9. Forced entry

D: Several South American tribes were known to ritualistically pluck the eyes of their enemies to discourage them being followed. Of course, they were cannibals so they did...

G: You know, I don't think we're dealing with cannibals here, Duck.

D: No, I should think not. Well, not this far north.

 

D: You know, the Romans considered dying during the act of love to be a great honour, Mr Grotinski.

G: Yeah? What would they think about videotaping it?

D: From some of the murals I've seen in Pompeii, I think they'd rather enjoy it.

T: That's an Italian thing, Ducky.

2.12. Doppelgänger

D: In the Eighteenth century, the Corpus Callosum was believed to house the soul. It wasn’t until the Mid-Twentieth century, actually, that scientists determined it’s a thick bundle of nerve fibers to transfer information between the right and left hemispheres of the brain.

2.13. The meat puzzle

 D: Madame Curie, one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers, once said, “There is nothing in life to be feared. It is only to be understood.” I think it’s safe to say that Madame Curie never set her eyes on a meat puzzle.

2.14. Witness

D: Their making your death appear a robbery was a very amateurish attempt at a red herring.
J: I’ve always found that a very curios expression.
D: Yes, it is, isn’t it? You know the derivation? Fox and hounds.
J: How’s that Doctor Mallard?
D: Well, the only practical way to cure a herring is by smoking and salting. Yes, it turns the fish a crimson red and gives it a very distinctive smell. In the early Fifteenth Century, they used to train their hounds to hunt foxes by dragging a red herring along the ground on a piece of string to leave a trail of scent for the dogs to follow. Then later on, they would drag a red herring across the scent trail of a real fox to test the dog’s ability to ignore a false sent or false clue. Hence the term red herring became to mean a false clue designed to fool one’s opponent.
J: It’s fascinating.
D: Yeah. Thank you. Do you know the etymology of the phrase, white elephant?
J: You know, I should really get this up to Abby.
D: Oh, because of its rarity, the King of Siam declared all white elephants his personal property.

2.17. An eye for an eye

D: Did you know the word autopsy comes from the Greek, meaning to see for one’s self?
J: They didn’t offer Greek at my high school.
D: Oh perhaps we should try Latin then. Are you familiar with the term keratoplasty?
J: Ah, cornea transplant surgery.

-

D:They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul.

-

D: Jethro, did you know that corneal transplantation dates back to nineteen oh five? One source of tissue back then were prisoners on death row.

 2.18. Bikini Wax

D: It looks like some sort of paraffin wax. Yeah, it reminds me of a product my grandfather used to use. He put a little of it on either end of his moustache. Gave it the handlebar look.
J: Well, doesn’t make sense.
D: Well, it was well before your time. Back then it was a very popular look. It epitomized high society.

2.20. Red cell

D: Each of these young men had their necks broken in a violent and identical fashion, I think by someone using their bare hands.
J: Well, how’s that?
D: Ah, well it’s a very specific technique. [...] One hand is placed firmly on the jaw here, and the other hand …
[...]
G: We used it to silence enemy sentries. One hand on the jaw, the other behind the head of the individual. Sixty-six pounds of torque and snap! Your eyes are on the back of your head.

2.21. Hometown hero

D: The male pelvis is shaped like a butterfly. The female’s is wider and has larger superior and inferior apertures to facilitate child birth.[...] The pubic symphysis is an excellent yardstick of age… [...] It’s corrugated in a woman’s teens, and then smoothes out during her twenties and thirties.
----
D: The hyoid bone. Do you know what makes it unique?
J: No, Doctor.
D: (SINGS) Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones… the shoulder bone connected to the neck bone. The neck bone connected to the head bone. The hyoid bone, Mister Palmer. To what is it connected?
J: Uh… nothing.
D: Correct. Of the two hundred and six bones in the human body, the hyoid is the only one not articulated to any other.
J: Cool.
D: Its name derives from the Greek. Ah, U-O-I-Ds. Shaped like a “U.”

 

SAISON 3 :

3.4. Silver War

D: You know, in the nineteen seventies, grave-robbers raided a Southern Colonel’s cast-iron casket. They took his weapons, his jewelry, and for some strange reason, the poor man’s head. When the local authorities found the hundred year old decomposing corpse, they assumed he was recently decapitated. They opened a murder investigation.

----

D: During times of war mapmakers often add terrain or change the declination of north and south in order to confuse…
Z: Confuse the enemy before it fell into the wrong hands.

 

3.9. Frame up

D: Actually, I think it was the killer trying to remove his marks.
G: Like all sex killers after Bundy?
D: Yes, after Theodore Bundy was identified and caught by his crooked lower teeth, sadistic biters have been forced to excise their evidence.