General Mason took an electric torch from his pocket, snapped it on, and directed the beam towards the ground. A warder had been standing motionless near the fence; and the General gestured with his light.
`Stand at the gate of the Bloody Tower,' he said, `and don't let anybody come near… Now, gentlemen. I don't think we need to climb this fence. I've been down once before.'
Just before the beam of his flashlight moved down the steps, Rampole felt almost a physical nausea. Then he saw it.
The thing lay with its head near the foot of the stairs, on its right side, and sprawled as though it had rolled down the entire flight of steps. Philip Driscoll wore a suit of heavy tweed, with plus fours, golf stockings, and thick shoes. As General Mason's light moved along the body, they saw the dull gleam of several inches of steel projecting from the left breast. Apparently the wound had not bled much.
The face was flung up towards them, just as the chest was slightly arched to show the bolt in the heart. White and waxy, the face was, with eyelids nearly closed; it had a stupid, sponged expression which would not have been terrifying at all but for the hat.
That opera hat had not been crushed in the fall. It was much too large for Philip Driscoll; whether it had been jammed on or merely dropped on his head, it came down nearly to his eyes, and flattened out his ears grotesquely.
General Mason switched off the light.
'You see?' he said out of the dimness. `If that hat hadn't looked so weird, I shouldn't have taken it off at all, and seen your name inside it… Mr Hadley, do you want to make an examination now, or shall you wait for the police surgeon?'
`Give me your torch, please,' the chief-inspector requested. He snapped on the light again and swung it round. `How did you happen to find him, General?'
`There's more of a story connected with that,' the deputy governor replied, `than I can tell you: The prelude to it you can hear from the people who saw him here when he arrived, earlier in the afternoon.'