"Look here," he said, "I just wanted a word with you about old Fentiman. Frightfully confidential, and all that. But it seems the exact time of the poor old blighter's departure has become an important item. Question of succession. Get me? They don't want a row made. Asked me, as friend of the family and all that, don't y' know, to barge round and ask questions. Obviously, you're the first man to come to. What's your opinion? Medical opinion, apart from anything else?"
Penberthy raised his eyebrows.
"Oh? there's a question, is there? Thought there might be. That lawyer-fellow, what's-his-name, was here the other day, trying to pin me down. Seemed to think one can say to a minute when a man died by looking at his back teeth. I told him it wasn't possible. Once give these birds an opinion, and the next thing is, you find yourself in a witness-box, swearing to it."
"I know. But one gets a general idea."
"Oh, yes. Only you have to check up your ideas by other things—facts, and so on. You can't just theorize."
"Very dangerous things, theories. F'r instance—take this case—I've seen one or two stiff 'uns in my short life, and, if I'd started theorizin' about this business, just from the look of the body, d'you know what I'd have said?"
"God knows what a layman would say about a medical question," retorted the doctor, with a sour little grin.
"Hear, hear!—Well, I should have said he'd been dead a long time."
"That's pretty vague."
"You said yourself that rigor was well advanced. Give it, say, six hours to set in and—when did it pass off?"