"Because there wasn’t half enough blood scattered about the place. She was dead when the shot was fired’ must have been dead for some minutes, I suspect. There was no heart-action to lift the blood in her body, so consequently it sank under gravity and left her skull nearly empty of it. Then when the shot was fired, only the merest trickle came from the wound. I think that’s right, isn’t it, doctor?"
"It’s quite on the cards," Dr. Ringwood agreed. "Certainly there wasn’t the normal amount of bleeding that one might have expected."
"Then the really important point is: how did she come to die. This is where we rely on you, doctor. Go ahead, please, and see what you make of it."
Dr. Ringwood went over to the arm-chair and began his examination of the dead girl. His glance travelled first to the open eyes, which seemed curiously dark; and a very brief inspection of their abnormal appearance suggested one possible verdict.
"It looks as if she’d had a dose of one of these mydriatic drugsвЂ"atropine, or something of that sort. The eye-pupils are markedly dilated," he pronounced.
Sir Clinton refrained from glancing at the Inspector.
"I suppose you couldn’t make a guess at the time of death?" he inquired.
Dr. Ringwood tested the stiffness of the limbs, but from his face they gathered that it was almost a purely formal experiment.
"I’m not going to bluff about the thing. You know yourselves that rigor mortis is only the roughest test; and when there’s an unknown poison to complicate matters, I simply couldn’t give you a figure that would be worth the breath spent on it. She’s been dead for some hours and you could have guessed that for yourselves."
"Congratulations, doctor! There are so few people in this world who have the honesty to say: I don’t know, when they’re questioned on their own speciality. Now you might have a look at the wound, if you don’t mind."
While Dr. Ringwood was carrying out this part of his examination, Inspector Flamborough occupied himself in a search of the room. An ejaculation from him brought Sir Clinton to his side, and the Inspector pointed to a dark patch on the floor which had hitherto been concealed by one of the displaced chairs.
"There’s quite a big pool of blood here, sir," he said tilting the chair so that the Chief Constable could see it better. "What do you make of that?"
Sir Clinton looked at him quizzically.
"Think you’ve caught me tripping, Inspector? Not in this, I’m afraid. That’s not the girl’s blood at all. Unless I’m far out, it’s young Hassendean’s. Now, while you’re about it, will you have a good look for empty cartridge-cases on the floor. There ought to be three of them."
The Inspector set to work, industriously grovelling on the floor as he searched under the heavier articles of furniture in the room.
"Well, doctor, what do you make of it?" Sir Clinton asked, when he saw that Ringwood had completed his examination.
"It’s plain enough on the surface," the doctor answered, as he turned away from the body. "She must have been shot at quite close quarters, just above the ear. Her hair is singed with the flame of the powder. The bullet went clean through the head and then into the padded ear-piece of the chair. I expect it’s stuck there. You can see for yourself that the shot didn’t produce any twitch in the body; the position she’s sitting in shows that well enough. I’m quite prepared to bet that she was dead before the shot was fired."
"The P.M. will clear that up for us definitely, if the poison can be detected," Sir Clinton answered. "But these vegetable poisons are sometimes the very devil to spot, if they’re at all out-of-the-way ones."
He turned back to the Inspector, who was now on his feet again, dusting the knees of his trousers.
"I’ve found three cartridge-cases sure enough, sir," he reported. "Two of them are under that couch over there; the third’s in the corner near the window. I didn’t pick them up. We’ll need to make a plan of this room, I expect; and it’s safest to leave things as they are, so as to be sure of the exact spots."
Sir Clinton signified his approval.
"On the face of things, judging by the way an automatic ejects its cartridge, one might say that the single case near the window came from the shot that killed the girl. The other two, which landed somewhere near each other, might represent the two shots that made the wounds in young Hassendean’s lung. But tha’s mere speculation. Let’s have a look at the pistol, Inspector."
Flamborough put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, stooped down, picked up the pistol gingerly, and drew a rough outline of its position on the floor with a piece of chalk.
"Try it for finger-prints, sir?" he inquired. "I’ve got an insufflator in the car."
Receiving permission, he hurried off to procure his powder-sprayer, and in a few minutes he had treated the pistol with the revealing medium. As he did so, his face showed deepening disappointment.
