“No, I don’t either. Had Mr. Tracy a valet?”
“No, sir, he didn’t like a man fussing about. I attended him, sir, and a footman helped me out now and then; and Mrs. Fenn, she’s cook and housekeeper, sir, she looked after his clothes, saving what I did myself.”
“Have you any reason to think your master would take his own life?”
“Oh, Lord, no, sir. Begging your pardon, but he was very fond of life, was Mr. Tracy. I thought he died of a fit, sir.”
“Probably he did. A fit or stroke of apoplexy. I begin to think, Inspector, we have no murder mystery on our hands after all.”
“No,” said Farrell, shaking his head, “apparently not.”
“Apparently yes,” said Keeley Moore, quietly. He had been looking at the dead man, and though he had not moved, but had stood for a long time, with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the still figure on the bed, I knew, somehow, that he had made a discovery.
“Stand over here, please, Inspector,” he said, in his calm, matter-of-fact way.
Farrell went and stood beside him, and Moore pointed to a very small circular object that shone like silver, though nearly hidden by the thick and rather long hair of Sampson Tracy.
It was the head of a nail that had been driven into the man’s skull.