I have some little difficulty in saying what I then observed; for indeed, though I looked intently enough on the dead face and figure, and noticed much about them that is not to my present purpose, I took in for myself very little that bore on that problem of detection which has since interested me so much. I cannot now distinguish the things which I really saw upon hearing the others mention them from the things which I imagine myself seeing because I knew they were mentioned then or later. In fact I saw chiefly with the eyes of the Sergeant, who set about his inquiries with a quiet promptitude that surprised me in one whom I knew only as a burly, steady, slow-speaking, heavy member of the force.
There was little to note about the barely furnished room which showed no traces of disorder. On the top of some drawers on the left of the bed-head lay a curious, old-fashioned gold watch with the watchkey by it, a pocketknife, a pencil, a ring of keys and a purse, the last containing a good deal of money. On a small table on the other side of the bed stood a candlestick, the candle burnt to the socket; by it lay two closed books. Under the table near the bed lay, as if it had fallen from the dead man’s hand or off his bed, a book with several leaves crumpled and torn, as if, in his first alarm, or as he died, Peters had caught them in a spasmodic clutch. I looked to see what it was, merely from the natural wish to know what had occupied my friend’s mind in his last hour. It was Borrow’s Bible in Spain. When I saw the title an indistinct recollection came to me of some very recent mention of the book by someone, and with it came a faint sense that it was important I should make this recollection clear. But either I was too much stunned as yet to follow out the thought, or I put it aside as a foolish trick of my brain, and the recollection, whatever it was, is gone. The position of the body and the arrangement of the pillows gave no sign of any struggle having taken place. They looked as if when he was murdered he had been sitting up in bed to read. He could hardly have fallen asleep so, for his head would have found but an uncomfortable rest on the iron bedstead. But I repeat, I did not observe this myself, and I cannot be sure that anybody noted it accurately at the time.
The surgeon stepped quickly to the body, slightly raised the left arm, drew aside the already open jacket of the sleeping suit, and silently indicated the cause of death. This was a knife, a curious, long, narrow, sharp knife for surgical use, which the murderer had left there, driven home between two of his victim’s ribs. I say “the murderer,” for the surgeon’s first words were, “Not suicide.” I had no suspicion of suicide, but thought that he pronounced this judgment rather hastily, and that the Sergeant was right when he asked him to examine the posture of the body more closely. He did so, still, as I thought, perfunctorily, and gave certain reasons which did not impress either my judgment or my memory. I was more convinced by his remark that he had studied in Berlin and was familiar with the appearances of suicide. I may say at once that it appeared afterwards, at the inquest, that there was reason to think that Peters had not had such a knife, for he never locked up drawers or cupboards, and his servants knew all his few possessions well. It appeared, too, that the owner of the knife had taken precautions against being traced, by carefully obliterating the maker’s name and other marks on it with a file.
In the midst of our observations in the room a vexatious interruption happened. I have forgotten to say that the servants had been sent out of the room by the police-sergeant, and that, almost immediately after, the constable who brought the doctor had been sent down to examine the outside of the house. For some reason he was slow in setting about this; it is possible that he stopped to talk to the servants, but in any case, he went out through the kitchen, and explored first the back of the house, where he thought he knew of an easy way of making an entrance. Meanwhile the neighbours, who had collected about the gate, had been drawn by their curiosity into the garden, and by the time the constable had got round to the front of the house several were wandering about the drive and the lawn which lay between it and the road. They had no more harmful intention than that of gazing and gaping at the windows, but it led to the very serious consequence that a number of tracks had now been made in the snow which might very possibly frustrate a search for the traces of the criminal. This the Sergeant now noticed from the window.
As for the actual carriage-drive I was fortunately able to remember (and it was the only useful
