“Obviously self-inflicted, of course?” he observed.
The doctor raised the dangling hand and scrutinised the fingers that held the revolver. “Obviously. The grip is properly adjusted and must have been applied during life.” With an effort he loosened the clasp of the dead fingers and handed the weapon across the table to the inspector.
The latter twirled the chamber thoughtfully before opening it. “Not fully loaded, but only one chamber fired,” he announced, and made another note.
“Edges of wound blackened and traces of powder on surrounding skin,” supplied the doctor.
The inspector extracted the empty shell and fitted the bullet carefully into it, comparing the latter with the bullets of the unfired cartridges.
“Why do you do that?” Roger asked with interest. “You know the bullet must have been fired from that revolver.”
“It’s not my job to know anything, sir,” returned the inspector, a little huffily. “My job is to collect evidence.”
“Oh, I wasn’t meaning that you weren’t acting perfectly correctly,” Roger said hastily. “But I’ve never seen anything of this sort before, and I was wondering why you were taking such pains to collect evidence when the cause of death is so obvious.”
“Well, sir, it isn’t my business to determine the cause of death,” the inspector explained, unbending slightly before the other’s obvious interest. “That’s the coroner’s job. All I have to do is to assemble all the available evidence that I can find, however trivial it may seem. Then I lay it before him, and he directs the jury accordingly. That is the correct procedure.”
Roger retired into the background. “I said there weren’t any flies on this bird,” he muttered to Alec, who had been a silent but none the less interested spectator of the proceedings. “That’s the third time he’s wiped the floor with me.”