“This is what I mean.” Anthony pointed to the stain he had been examining. “Look at this mark here, where my finger is. Doesn’t it look different to the others?”
“Can’t say that it does to me, sir. I had a look over that table myself and saw nothing out of the ordinary run.”
“Well, I beg to differ. It not only looks different, it feels different. I notice these things. I’m so psychic, you know!”
Boyd grinned at the chaff, watching with keen interest as Anthony opened a penknife and inserted the blade in the lock of the table’s middle drawer.
“I think,” said Anthony, “that this is one of those old jump locks. Aha! it is.” He pulled open the drawer. “Now, was that stain different? Voilà! It was.”
Boyd peered over Anthony’s shoulder. The drawer was a long one, reaching the whole width of the table. In it were notebooks, pencils, half-used scribbling pads, and, at the back, a pile of notepaper and envelopes.
On the white surface of the topmost envelope of the pile was a dark, brownish-red patch of the size, perhaps, of a half-crown. Boyd examined it eagerly.
“You’re right, sir!” he cried. “It’s blood right enough. I see what you were going to say. This is hardly dry. It must have dripped through that crack where the stain you pointed out was. And the position of that stain is just where the deceased’s head would have fallen if he had been sitting in this chair here and had been hit from behind.”
“Exactly,” said Anthony. “And after the first of those pats on the head Hoode must’ve been unconscious—if not dead. Ergo, if he received the first blow sitting here, as this proves he did, there was no struggle. One doesn’t sit down at one’s desk to resist a man one thinks is going to kill one, does one? What probably happened is that the murderer—who was never suspected to be such by Hoode—got behind him as he sat here, struck one or all of the blows, and then dragged the body over to the hearth to lend a touch of naturalness to the scene of strife he was going to prepare. He must be a clever devil, Boyd. There’s never a stain on the carpet between here and the fireplace. There wouldn’t have been on the table either, only he didn’t happen to spot it.”
The detective nodded. “I agree with you entirely, sir.”