Effingham had taken his tray and retired to the pantry. Doctor Marcy pulled at his cigar until it glowed redly; then he looked over at me.
"You're Hildebrand of the 'Hundred,' I hear," he began abruptly.
"Yes."
"Consequently you ought to know of something that has been bothering me more than a little. Has it ever been intimated to you that there was anything peculiar about the death of your cousin?"
"Francis Graeme! Why, no; nothing has been said to me."
"Well, I don't think his death was a natural one."
It startled me, the assured manner in which he spoke; in an instant, the atmosphere of this quiet country room seemed to have grown tense and heavy. "Go on," I said briefly.
"As you know," continued Doctor Marcy, "Mr. Graeme died suddenly on Tuesday, June 21, presumably from heart failure or a cerebral hemorrhage. As a matter of record, my routine certificate gives the latter as the cause of death. The fact of a brain lesion was fully established, as I'll explain later, but I'm not at all satisfied as to the predisposing cause."
"Yes."
"You'll understand what I'm driving at when I tell you that I saw Francis Graeme professionally that very morning, and I know that he was in the best of health for a man of his age. He had been thinking of taking out additional life insurance, and as I am the county examiner for the company, he asked me to drop in Tuesday morning and go over him. Mind you, I had been his regular physician for a number of years, long before he came to the 'Hundred,' and I knew him inside and out. A straighter, cleaner man never lived, and he had always kept himself in top condition; I had never discovered the least sign of any degenerative process.