‘Police? There were police in on this thing?’
‘Oh, assuredly. The police do the investigating and report in public to the coroner and his jury. In this case there had been the most exhaustive examination and tests. They knew in the end almost to a mouthful how much neat whisky he had drunk, and at what intervals before his—his death.’
‘And that about his falling backwards—how could they know that?’
‘They went prowling with microscopes. The oil and broken hair were still evident on the edge of the basin. And the skull injury was consistent with a backwards fall against just such an object.’
Cullen calmed down at this, but he looked disorientated.
‘How do you know all this?’ he asked, vaguely; and then with growing suspicion: ‘How did you come to see him anyway?’
‘When I was on my way out I came across the sleeping-car attendant trying to rouse him. The man thought he was just sleeping it off, because the whisky bottle had rolled all over the floor and the compartment smelt as if he had been making a night of it.’
This did not satisfy Tad Cullen. ‘You mean that was the only time you saw him? Just for a moment, lying—lying dead there, and you could recognise him from a snapshot—a not very good snapshot—weeks later?’
‘Yes. I was impressed by his face. Faces are my business; and in a way my hobby. I was interested in the way the slant of the eyebrows gave the face a reckless expression, even—even as it was, without any real expression whatever. And the interest was intensified in a way that was quite accidental.’
‘What was that?’ Cullen was not giving an inch.