"Why?" asked Mr. Murbles. "What did you expect to find on the clothes?"
"My dear sir, consider what day it was. November 11th. Is it conceivable that, if the old man had been walking in the streets as a free agent on Armistice Day, he would have gone into the Club without his Flanders poppy? A patriotic, military old bird like that? It was really unthinkable."
"Then where was he? And how did he get into the Club? He was there, you know."
"True; he was there—in a state of advanced rigor. In fact, according to Penberthy's account, which, by the way, I had checked by the woman who laid out the body later, the rigor was even then beginning to pass off. Making every possible allowance for the warmth of the room and so on, he must have been dead long before ten in the morning, which was his usual time for going to the Club."
"But, my dear lad, bless my soul, that's impossible. He couldn't have been carried in there dead. Somebody would have noticed it."
"So they would. And the odd thing is that nobody ever saw him arrive at all. What is more, nobody saw him leave for the last time on the previous evening. General Fentiman—one of the best-known figures in the Club! And he seems to have become suddenly invisible. That won't do, you know."
"What is your idea, then? That he slept the night in the Club?"
"I think he slept a very peaceful and untroubled sleep that night—in the Club."
"You shock me inexpressibly," said Mr. Murbles. "I understand you to suggest that he died—"
"Some time the previous evening. Yes."