"Had she been dead long, do you think?"
"Some hours, I should say—five or six, at least."
"Why do you think so?"
"I felt of her limbs; they were as cold as a stone."
"Had she been shot or stabbed?"
"Neither. Suffocated or chloroformed, it seemed to me."
"Was she bound and gagged?"
"Yes, sir; her hands were tied together at the wrists with an ordinary pocket handkerchief. Her heavy woolen-stockinged feet were also tied together; another handkerchief encircled her shins. Around her throat and head was wrapped a sheet. That part of it which encircled the neck made a bandage so tight that it must have stopped her breathing soon after it was put into use. Her mouth was partially filled with another handkerchief."
"Hum," mused Old Spicer, "the murderers were well supplied with handkerchiefs, it seems."
"Yes, sir; and of this last one—the gag—I shall have more to say by and by. The ends of it so fell across her breast that, I should think, in her desperate struggle to breathe, she had probably forced the larger part of the handkerchief from her mouth."