"Were you here?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where is Mr. Enstone?"
"In the bedroom, sir."
They moved back across the lobby, with the assistant manager assuming the lead. Teal stopped. "Will you be in your office if I want you?" he asked, with great politeness; and the assistant manager seemed to disappear from the scene even before the door of the suite closed behind him.
Lewis Enstone was dead. He lay on his back beside the bed, with his head half rolled over to one side, in such a way that both the entrance and the exit of the bullet which had killed him could be seen. It had been fired squarely into his right eye, leaving the ugly trail which only a heavy-calibre bullet fired at close range can leave… The gun lay under the fingers of his right hand.
"Thumb on the trigger," Teal noted aloud.
He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on a pair of gloves, pink-faced and unemotional. Simon observed the room. An ordinary, very tidy bedroom, barren of anything unusual except the subdued costliness of furnishing. Two windows, both shut and fastened. On a table in one corner, the only sign of disorder, the remains of a carelessly-opened parcel. Brown paper, ends of string, a plain cardboard box — empty. The millionaire had gone no further towards undressing than loosening his tie and undoing his collar.
"What happened?" asked Mr. Teal.
"Mr. Enstone had had friends to dinner, sir," explained Fowler. "A Mr. Costello—"