Then Quarles looked at the wreaths, wanted to know which ones had been left near the coffin when the room was locked for the night, and the wreaths which Sir Arthur pointed out he examined carefully. Then he pointed to a large cross lying on an armchair.
"Has that one been there all the time?"
Sir Arthur explained that two or three wreaths had come late in the evening. He had himself brought them into the room on the morning of the funeral. That cross was one of them.
"Ah, it is a pity you didn't bring them in that night. You might have surprised the villains at work."
"We were in bed by eleven. Do you imagine they began before that?"
"Possibly," said Quarles, as he turned his attention to the coffin. He examined the lid with a lens, for the finger marks, he said, which one might expect to find near the screw holes. Then he studied the sides of the coffin. The two pieces of lead did not appear to interest him very much, but he asked me to push the smaller piece from the foot of the coffin. He examined the lining, felt the padding, tried its thickness with the point of a penknife, and in doing so he slit the lining.
"Sorry," he said. "My old hands are not as steady as they used to be.
Quite a thick padding, and quite a substantial coffin."
He had brought out some of the padding with his knife, and this left part of the floor of the coffin near the foot visible. This he tapped with the handle of his penknife to test its thickness.
"Quite an ordinary coffin—plain but good," he went on, looking at the brass fittings.
"It was my father's wish that it should be so," said Sir Arthur.