The time of death he fixed as approximately from eight to fourteen hours prior to the time he had made his examination.
Kittering produced a bloodstained carving knife. “I call your attention to this knife, Doctor, and ask you if this is the knife which you found imbedded in the body of the decedent?”
“It is,” the doctor said.
Kittering asked that the knife be marked for identification as People’s Exhibit A.
“No objection,” Mason drawled.
“Can you,” Kittering asked, “fix the time of death any more definitely than that, Doctor?”
“Not in relation to the time when I examined the body, but I can fix it very definitely in regard to the contents of the stomach.”
“What do you mean, Doctor?”
“I mean that in examining the contents of the stomach, and submitting them to an examination for the purposes of detecting the possible presence of poison, we found that the person in question had died approximately two hours after a meal consisting primarily of mutton, probably in the form of chops, green peas, and potatoes, had been consumed... In order to explain my answer, I may state that while the time of death as fixed in postmortem depends upon various elastic factors such as rigor mortis, the cooling of the body, etc., and is, therefore, subject to a certain amount of individual variation, the processes of digestion are more uniform; and by examining the state to which those digestive processes have progressed prior to death, we can, when there is food in the stomach, fix the time of death with much greater nicety.”
“Can you,” Kittering asked, “fix the exact time of death?”