“He’s lying on his back now; but after he was shot he lay on his left side till rigor mortis set in,” he pointed out.
The Inspector examined the body carefully.
“I think I see how you get that,” he said. “This left arm’s off the ground a trifle. If he’d been shot here and fell in this position, the arm would have relaxed and followed the lie of the ground. Is that it?”
“Yes, that and the hypostases. You see the marks on the left side of the face.”
“A dead man doesn’t shift himself,” the Inspector observed with an oracular air. “Some one else must have had a motive for dragging him about.”
“Here’s a revolver,” Sir Clinton pointed out, picking it up gingerly to avoid marking it with finger-prints. “You can see, later on, if anything’s to be made out from it.”
He put the revolver carefully down on a part of the ruined wall near at hand and then returned to the body.
“To judge by the rigor mortis,” he said, after making a test, “he must have been dead for a good while—a dozen hours or more.”
“What about that shot that the keeper said he heard?” queried Armadale.
“The time might fit well enough. But rigor mortis is no real criterion, you know, Inspector. It varies too much from case to case.”