“Oh, what a fine detective! Look at him, mon petit—does a man stabbed to the heart fall like that—neatly with his feet together, and his arms to his side? No. Again does a man lie down on his back and permit himself to be stabbed without raising a hand to defend himself? It is absurd, is it not? But see here—and here—” He flashed the torch along the ground. I saw curious irregular marks in the soft dirt. “He was dragged here after he was dead. Half dragged, half carried by two people. Their tracks do not show on the hard ground outside, and here they have been careful to obliterate them—but one of the two was a woman, my young friend.”
“A woman?”
“Yes.”
“But if the tracks are obliterated, how do you know?”
“Because, blurred as they are, the prints of the woman’s shoe are unmistakable. Also, by this—” And, leaning forward, he drew something from the handle of the dagger and held it up for me to see. It was a woman’s long black hair—similar to the one Poirot had taken from the arm-chair in the library.
With a slightly ironic smile he wound it round the dagger again.
“We will leave things as they are as much as possible,” he explained. “It pleases the examining magistrate. Eh bien, do you notice anything else?”
I was forced to shake my head.
“Look at his hands.”
I did. The nails were broken and discoloured, and the skin was hard. It hardly enlightened me as much as I should have liked it to have done. I looked up at Giraud.