“Try the bathroom,” Bardin said, his voice sharpening.
They crossed the room to the bathroom door and opened it. They looked into the most elaborately equipped bathroom they had ever seen, but their eyes had no interest for the luxury nor the glittering plumbing. Their attention became riveted on the sunken bath.
Ralph Jordan lay in the waterless bath, his head sunk on his chest. He was wearing a wine-coloured dressing-gown over a pair of pale blue lounging pyjamas. The walls of the bath and the front of his dressing-gown were stained red. He held in his right hand an old-fashioned cut-throat razor. The blood on the thin blade looked like scarlet paint.
Bardin pushed past Conrad and touched Jordan’s hand.
“Deader than a joint of beef: chilled beef at that.”
He took hold of a long lock of Jordan’s hair and lifted his head.
Conrad grimaced as he caught sight of the deep gash across Jordan’s throat: so deep it had severed the wind-pipe.
“Well, that’s that,” Bardin said, stepping back. “Like I said: an open and shut case. He went out there, knocked her off, then came back here and cut his throat. Very considerate of him. It makes a nice tidy job — for me, anyway.” He groped for a cigarette, lit it and blew a cloud of smoke into the dead man’s face. “Looks like Doc Holmes is going to have a busy night.”
Conrad was moving around the bathroom. He discovered an electric razor on the wall.
“Odd he should have a cut-throat razor. You’d have to go to a good many homes these days to find one, and you wouldn’t have thought Jordan would have kept one so handy.”