Чье тело? / Whose Body?

’ Lord! �Modifying factors – age – muscular state – or febrile diseases – or where temperature of environment is high’ – and so on and so on – any bloomin’ thing. Never mind. You can run the argument for what it’s worth to Sugg. He won’t know any better.” He tossed the book away. “Come back to facts. What did you make of the body?”

“Well,” said the detective, “not very much – I was puzzled – frankly. I should say he had been a rich man, but self-made, and that his good fortune had come to him fairly recently.

“Ah, you noticed the calluses on the hands – I thought you wouldn’t miss that.”

“Both his feet were badly blistered – he had been wearing tight shoes.”

“Walking a long way in them, too,” said Lord Peter, “to get such blisters as that. Didn’t that strike you as odd, in a person evidently well off?”

“Well, I don’t know. The blisters were two or three days old. He might have got stuck in the suburbs one night, perhaps – last train gone and no taxi – and had to walk home.

“Possibly.”

“There were some little red marks all over his back and one leg I couldn’t quite account for.”

“I saw them.”

“What did you make of them?”

“I’ll tell you afterwards. Go on.”

“He was very long-sighted – oddly long-sighted for a man in the prime of life; the glasses were like a very old man’s. By the way, they had a very beautiful and remarkable chain of flat links chased with a pattern.

“I’ve just put an advertisement in the Times about it,” said Lord Peter. “Go on.”

“He had had the glasses some time – they had been mended twice.”

“Beautiful, Parker, beautiful. Did you realize the importance of that?”

“Not specially, I’m afraid – why?”

“Never mind – go on.”

“He was probably a sullen, ill-tempered man – his nails were filed down to the quick as though he habitually bit them, and his fingers were bitten as well.

“Did you examine the room at all? I didn’t get a chance.”

“I couldn’t find much in the way of footprints. Sugg & Co. had tramped all over the place, to say nothing of little Thipps and the maid, but I noticed a very indefinite patch just behind the head of the bath, as though something damp might have stood there.