“Then I take it that great force must have been used?”
“Not so much, perhaps, as the nature of the wound seems to imply; but considerable—sufficient, at any rate, to break the piece of iron.”
“It was broken, you say? Was it cast-iron?”
“Yes, of good quality. Off some ornament or design, I should imagine. But it snapped off inside the head at the moment of the occurrence.”
“Curious, is it not, for a person to be killed in such a manner by such an instrument?”
“I have never before met such a case. Were it not for the way in which the body was jammed beneath a hidden drain-pipe, and the effective means taken to destroy the identity, I should have inclined to the belief that some strange accident had happened. At any rate, the murderer must have committed the crime on the spur of the moment, and seized upon the first weapon to hand.”
“You say she was forcibly placed where found?”
“Yes; the workmen’s description left no other idea.”
“Could not the tide have done this?”