“The heart generally fails when you die,” Reggie mumbled: he still stared down at the body and the wonted benignity of his face was lost in expressionless reserve. “Do you know if he has any people down here?”
“It’s possible. There is a married son. I’ll have him looked for.” Lomas sent his inspector off.
“I saw the old man with a woman just before he died,” Reggie murmured, and Lomas put up his eyeglass.
“Did you though? Very sudden, wasn’t it? And he was all alone when he died.”
“When he fell,” Reggie mumbled the correction. “Yes, highly sudden.”
“What was the cause of death, Fortune?”
“I wonder,” Reggie muttered. He went down on his knees by the body, he looked long and closely into the eyes, he opened the clothes . . . and to the eyes he came back again. Then there was a tap at the door and Lomas having conferred there came back and said, “The son and his wife. I’ll tell them. I suppose they can see the body?”
“They’d better see the body,” said Reggie, and as Lomas went out he began to cover and arrange it. He was laying the right arm by the side when he checked and held it up to the light. On the back of the hand was a tiny drop of blood and a red smear. He looked close and found such a hole as a pin might make.
From the room outside came a woman’s cry, then a deep man’s voice in some agitation, and Lomas opened the door. “This is Mr. Fortune, the surgeon who was with your father at once. Major Dean and Mrs. Dean, Fortune.”
Reggie bowed and studied them. The man was a soldierly fellow, with his father’s keen, wary face. But it was the woman Reggie watched, the woman who was saying, “I was with him only half an hour ago,” and twisting her hands nervously.