"Yes," Hastings said, preoccupied, and added: "Let me have it again."
He took off his spectacles and, screwing into his right eye a jeweller's glass, studied it for several minutes. If he made an important discovery, he did not communicate it to Crown.
"It made an ugly hole," was all he said.
"You see the blood on it?" Crown prompted.
"Oh, yes; lucky the rain stopped when it did."
"When did it stop—out here?" Crown inquired.
"About eleven; a few minutes after I'd gone up to bed."
"So she was killed between eleven and midnight?"
"No doubt about that. Her hat had fallen from her head and was bottom up beside her. The inside of the crown and all the lower brim was dry as a bone, while the outside, even where it did not touch the wet grass, was wet. That showed there wasn't any rain after she was struck down."
The sheriff was impressed by the other's keenness of observation.