“The thing we want to, get,’ he said, ’is the time of the death. The police are quite clear about how Alexis came here, and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt in the matter, which is a blessing. There’s a train from Wilvercombe that stops at Darley Halt on Thursdays at 10.15, to take people in to Heathbury market. Alexis travelled by that train and got out at the Halt. I think it must have been Alexis all right. He was pretty conspicuous with his black beard and his natty gent’s outfitting. I think we can take that bit as proved. The guard on the train remembered him, and so did three or four of his fellow-travellers. What’s more, his landlady says he left his rooms in time to catch the train, and the booking-clerk: remembers him at Wilvercombe. And, dear Harriet, there is a first return-ticket from Wilvercombe to that Halt that was never given up and never accounted for.’
‘A return-ticket?’asked Harriet.
‘A return-ticket. And that, as you so acutely remark, Sherlock, seems to knock the suicide theory on the head. I said as much to the Super, and what was his reply? That suicides, let alone foreign suicides, were that inconsistent there was no accounting for them.’
‘So they may be, in real life,’ observed Harriet, thoughtfully. ‘One wouldn’t made an intending suicide take a return-ticket in a book but real people are different. It might have been a slip, or just habit or he may not have quite made up his mind to the suicide business.
‘I thought my friend Chief Inspector Parker was the most cautious beggar on the face of the earth, but you beat him. You can knock out habit. I refuse to believe that our dainty Alexis made a habit of travelling to the Halt in order to walk four and a half miles to weep by the sad sea waves. However, we’ll just note the return half of the ticket as—‘something that needs explainin’. Very good. Well, now, there was nobody.else got off at the Halt, though quite a bunch of people got in, so we don’t know what happened to Alexis; but if we allow that he could walk at the moderate rate of three miles an hour, he can’t have got to the Flat-Iron later than, say, II.45.’
‘Stop a minute. How about the tide? When was low water on Thursday?’
‘At 1.15. I’ve been into all that. At 11.45 there would be about five feet of water at the foot of the Flat-Iron, but the rock is ten feet high, and rises gradually from the landward side. At 11.45, or very shortly after, our friend could have walked out dry-shod to the rock and sat upon it.’
‘Good. We know he did go out dry-shod, so that all fits in nicely. What next?’
‘Well, what? Whether he cut his own throat or somebody cut it for him when did he die? It’s an awful pity we’ve lost the body. Even if it turns up now, it won’t tell us a thing. It wasn’t stiff, of course, when you saw it, and you say you can’t tell if it was cold.’
‘If,’ said Harriet, ‘there had been a block of ice on that rock at that time, you could have boiled eggs on it’
‘Tiresome, tiresome. Wait a minute. The blood. How about that? Did you notice whether it was in thick red clots, or whether it was a sort of jelly of white serum, with the red part at the bottom, or anything?’
Harriet shook her head.
‘It wasn’t. It was liquid.’
‘It was what?’—
‘Liquid. When I put any hand into it, it was quite wet. ‘Great Scott! Half a sec. Where was the blood? Splashed all over the place, I suppose.,
‘Not exactly, There was a big pool of it underneath the body — just as though he had leaned over and cut his throat into a basin. It had collected in a sort of hollow in the rock.’ ‘Oh, I see. That explains it. I expect the hollow was full of sea-water left by the tide, and what looked like blood was a mixture of blood and water. I began to think—’
‘But listen! It was quite liquid everywhere. It dripped out of his neck. And when I lifted his head up and disturbed the body, it dripped some more. Horrid!’ ‘But, my darling girl
‘Yes, and listen’ again! When I tried to take his glove off, the leather wasn’t stiff — it was soft and wet. His hands had been lying right under his throat.’
‘Good lord! But-’
‘That was the left hand. The right hand was hanging over the side of the rock and I couldn’t get at it without clambering over him, which I didn’t fancy, somehow, Otherwise, I should have tried that. I was wondering, you see, why the gloves?’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But we know there was nothing wrong with his hands. That doesn’t matter now. It’s the blood — do you realise that, if the blood was still liquid, he can only have been dead a few minutes?’
‘Oh!’ Harriet paused in consternation, ‘What a fool I am! I ought to have known that., And I thought I was deducing things so nicely! He couldn’t have been bleeding slowly to death for some time, I suppose?’
‘With his throat cut to the neck-bone? Dear child, pull yourself together. Look here. Blood clots very quickly — more quickly, of course, on a cold surface. In the ordinary way it will clot almost instantaneously on exposure to the air. I daresay it might take a little longer on a hot surface like the rock you describe so graphically.’ But it couldn’t take more than a few minutes: Say ten, to give it an outside limit.
‘Ten minutes. Oh, Peter!’
‘Yes?’
‘That noise that woke me up. I thought it was a sea-gull. They sound so human. But suppose it was-’
‘It must have been. When was that?’
’Two o’clock. I looked at my watch. And I shouldn’t think it took me more than ten minutes to reach the rock.
But — I say!’
‘Well?’
‘How about your murder-theory? That’s done it in absolutely. If Alexis was murdered at two o’clock, and I was there ten minutes after what became of the murderer?’
Wimsey sat up as suddenly as though he had been stung.
‘Oh, hell!’ he exclaimed: ‘Harriet; dear, sweet, beautiful Harriet, say you were mistaken. We can’t be wrong about the murder. I’ve staked my reputation with Inspector Umpelty that it couldn’t have been suicide. I shall have to leave the country. I shall never hold my head up again. I shall have to go and shoot tigers in fever-haunted jungles, and die, babbling of murder between my swollen and blackened lips. Say that the blood was clotted. Or say there were footprints you overlooked. Or that there was a boat within hail. Say something.’
‘There was a boat, but not within hail; because I hailed it.’
‘Thank God there was a boat! Perhaps I may leave my bones in Old England yet. What do you mean, not within hail because you hailed it? If the murderer was in the boat, naturally he wouldn’t have put back if it had hailed sweet potatoes. I wish you wouldn’t give me such shocks. My nerves are not what they were.’
‘I don’t know much about boats, but this one looked to me a pretty good way, out. The wind was blowing in-shore, you know.’