The inspector leaned forward thinking, his large hands clasped before him.
'No,' he said at last. 'Of course there's no help in that theory. I rather
expect we have some way to go before we find out why a man gets up before the
servants are awake, dresses himself awry, and is murdered within sight of his
house early enough to be 'cold and stiff by ten in the morning.'

Trent shook his head. 'We can't build anything on that last consideration.
I've gone into the subject with people who know. I shouldn't wonder,' he
added, 'if the traditional notions about loss of temperature and rigour after
death had occasionally brought an innocent man to the gallows, or near it. Dr.
Stock has them all, I feel sure; most general practitioners of the older
generation have. That Dr. Stock will make an ass of himself at the inquest, is
almost as certain as that tomorrow's sun will rise. I've seen him. He will say
the body must have been dead about so long, because of the degree of coldness
and rigor mortis. I can see him nosing it all out in some textbook that was
out of date when he was a student. Listen, Murch, and I will tell you some
facts which will be a great hindrance to you in your professional career.
There are many things that may hasten or retard the cooling of the body. This
one was lying in the long dewy grass on the shady side of the shed. As for
rigidity, if Manderson died in a struggle, or labouring under sudden emotion,
his corpse might stiffen practically instantaneously; there are dozens of
cases noted, particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On
the other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten hours
after death. You can't hang anybody on rigor mortis nowadays, inspector, much
as you may resent the limitation. No, what we can say is this. If he had been
shot after the hour at which the world begins to get up and go about its
business, it would have been heard, and very likely seen too. In fact, we must
reason, to begin with, at any rate, on the assumption that he wasn't shot at a
time when people might be awake; it isn't done in these parts. Put that time