Markfield examined the object carefully, but his face showed only a certain bewilderment when he looked up at the Inspector again.
“It seems to be a button and a bit of cloth with a picric acid stain on it,” he pointed out with a tinge of irony. “Do you want me to make an expert examination of it? If so, you'd better tell me some more about it, so that I'll know what you want with it.”
Flamborough stared at him for a moment or two, as though trying to read something in his expression, but Markfield seemed in no way put out.
“I'm not a mind-reader, Inspector,” he pointed out. “You'll need to explain clearly what you expect me to do; and I'll have to be told whether I can cut bits out of your specimen for chemical analysis.”
Flamborough saw that his attempt to draw Markfield was not going to be so easy as he had hoped.
“Have a good look at the thing first of all,” he suggested. “Can you remember anything like it?”
Markfield stolidly examined the object once more.
“It's a button and a piece of cloth,” he said at last. “Of course I've seen buttons before, and bits of cloth are not uncommon. I should think that this stain is a picric acid one, but that's a matter for further examination before I could say anything definite. Is that what you wanted?”
Flamborough kept his temper with difficulty.
“What I want to know, Dr. Markfield, is whether you have recently seen anything that you could associate with that thing—any garment from which it might have been torn, or anything of that sort.”