agency of death, whether microbic or otherwise. As a rule, rigor does not set in for sixteen to twenty-four
hours, depending upon the condition of the patient before death, temperature and a dozen other things.
Normally, it does not disappear for forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Usually a rapid setting-in of the
stiffening means as rapid a disappearance, and vice versa. Diabetics stiffen quicker than others. A sudden
brain injury, like shooting, is even swifter. In this case, the rigor had begun instantaneously with death,
and must have completed its cycle in the astonishingly short time of less than five hours-for the attendant
told me that he had examined the body about ten o'clock and he had thought that stiffening had not yet
set in. As a matter of fact, it had come and gone.
The results of the autopsy can be told in two sentences. There was no ascertainable reason why Peters
should not be alive. And he was dead!