“First, we go back to known facts, and reason from them,” Sergeant Holcomb said. “We know that Fremont C. Sabin intended to go to his cabin on Monday, the fifth, in order to take advantage of the opening of fishing season on the sixth. We know that he actually did go there; we know that he was alive at ten o’clock in the evening of the fifth, because he talked with his secretary on the telephone. We know that he went to bed, that he wound the alarm clock and set the alarm. We know that the alarm went off at five-thirty. We know that he arose, went out, and caught a limit of fish. It is problematical how long it would take him to catch a limit, but, in discussing fishing conditions with other anglers on the creek, it would seem that with the utmost good fortune he could not possibly have caught a limit before nine-thirty o’clock. He returned to the cabin, then, at between ten and eleven in the morning. He had already had a breakfast, two eggs, probably scrambled, some bacon and some coffee. He was once more hungry. He opened a can of beans, warmed those up and ate them. He did this before he even bothered to put his fish in the icebox. He left his fish in the creel, intending to put them in the icebox as soon as he had washed them. But he was hungry enough to want to finish with his lunch before he put the fish away. In the ordinary course of things, he would have put those fish away immediately after he had eaten, probably before he had even washed his dishes. He didn’t do that.”
“Why don’t you place the time as being later than noon?” the coroner asked.
“Those are the little things,” Sergeant Holcomb said, with very evident pride, “which a trained investigator notices, and which others don’t. Now, the body was clothed in a light sweater and slacks. From the observations which I made on the temperature in that cabin, I found that it varies quite sharply. The shade is such that the sun doesn’t get on the roof good until after eleven o’clock. Thereafter it heats up very rapidly until about four o’clock, when once more shade strikes the roof, and it cools off quite rapidly thereafter, becoming cold at night.
“Now, there was a fire laid in the fireplace. That fire hadn’t been lit, which shows that it wasn’t late enough in the evening for it to have become cold. From noon until around four in the afternoon, it would have been too hot for a person to have been comfortable in a sweater. The records show that the fifth, sixth and seventh were three very warm days — that is, it was warm during the daytime. Up there at that elevation it cooled off quite rapidly at night. It was necessary to have a fire in the evening, in order to keep from being uncomfortably cool. That cabin, you understand, is just a mountain cabin, rather light in construction, and not insulated against conditions of temperature, as a house in the city would be.”
“I see,” the coroner remarked approvingly. “Then you feel that Mr. Sabin must have returned and had his second breakfast — or lunch — before the sun got on the roof?”
“That’s right.”
“I think that covers the situation very comprehensively,” the coroner said.
“May I ask a question or two?” Mason inquired.
“Certainly.”
“How do you know,” Mason asked, “that Mr. Sabin didn’t meet his death, say, for instance, on Wednesday, the seventh, instead of on the sixth?”