I knew from my law experience that suicide is either a desperate
impulse or a cold-blooded and calculated finality. A man who kills
himself while dressing comes under the former classification, and
will usually seize the first method at hand. But there was
something else, too. Shaving is an automatic process. It completes
itself. My wife has an irritated conviction that if the house
caught fire while I was in the midst of the process, I would complete
it and rinse the soap from my face before I caught up the
fire-extinguisher.

Had he killed himself, or had Elinor killed him? Was she the sort
to sacrifice herself to a violent impulse? Would she choose the
hard way, when there was the easy one of the divorce court? I
thought not. And the same was true of Ellingham. Here were two
people, both of them careful of appearance, if not of fact. There
was another possibility, too. That he had learned something while
he was dressing, had attacked or threatened her with a razor, and
she had killed him in self-defence.

I had reached that point when Sperry came down the staircase,
ushering out the detectives and the medical man. He came to the
library door and stood looking at me, with his face rather paler
than usual.

"I'll take you up now," he said. "She's in her room, in bed, and
she has had an opiate."

"Was he shot above the ear?"