the dead man's arm in
such a strenuous grip that the livid impression had remained after death.

The discovery was significant enough, but Barrant was not at that moment
prepared to say how much it portended. It seemed certain that the marks
had not been made by Robert Turold himself. Their position suggested a
left-hand clutch, though only a finger-print expert could definitely
determine that point. Even if they were not, it was too far-fetched a
supposition to imagine a man gripping his own arm hard enough to bruise
it.

The relative weight of this discovery was, in Barrant's mind, weakened by
the fact that the marks might have been caused by the persons who had
carried the body from the next room. Nevertheless, the marks must be
regarded as infirmative testimony, however slight, of the fallibility of
the circumstantial deductions which had been made from the discovery of
the body in a locked room, with windows which could not be reached from
the outside.

The presumption of suicide rested on the theory that the circumstances
excluded any other hypothesis. But Barrant reflected that he did not know
enough about the case to accept that assumption as warranted by the facts.
The one certainty was that the study could not have been reached from the
outside. Barrant had noted the back windows before entering the house; his
subsequent interior examination had strengthened his conviction that they
were inaccessible. Underneath the study windows there was only the
narrowest ledge of rock between that side of the house and the edge of the
cliffs. A descent from the windows with a rope was hazardously possible,
but ascent and entrance by that means was out of the question.

On the other hand, the theory of interior inaccessibility had a flaw in
it, due to the presence of five different people in the room before the
police arrived. Their actions and motives would have to be most carefully
weighed and sifted before the implication of the discovery of the
finger-marks could be determined.

The rather breathless entrance of Inspector Dawfield put an end to
Barrant's reflections. He explained that Sergeant Pengowan, in his anxiety
to maintain the correctness of his official report, had taken him to
various breakneck positions at the back of the house and along the cliffs
in order to demonstrate the impossibility of anybody entering Robert
Turold's rooms from outside. The sergeant was at that moment engaged in a
room downstairs