Love Lies Bleeding

‘What about opening the back, then?’

For answer Stagge went to the sergeant’s Gladstone bag, took from it a jar of grey powder, and with a camel-hair brush dusted this on to the glass and silver of the watch. He stared for a moment, blew off the powder, and picked up the sheet of paper with Somers’ fingerprints on it. For two or three minutes he was absorbed in the comparison, which he made with the help of a pocket lens.

‘Somers’ own prints are on it,’ he said at last, ‘and no one else’s. Which is what you’d expect.’ He prised off the back of the watch and studied its mechanism. ‘Broken, all right,’ he commented. ‘And deliberately broken, I’d say.’

‘To give a wrong impression of the time of death?’ the headmaster ventured.

‘Five to nine,’ Stagge pointed out. ‘Not a very sensible choice. And the glass isn’t smashed.’

Wells had returned from his inspection of the blotting pads, and was hovering inquisitively at the edge of their little group. ‘I saw Mr Somers at ten o’clock, sir,’ he said. ‘Alive and well.’

‘Ah,’ said Stagge. ‘We’ll have a word about that in a minute.’

The doctor, who had been dosing himself impatiently with snuff during this interchange, said, ‘Can he be taken away now?’

‘All right,’ Stagge agreed. ‘But don’t you go away, Stanford,’ he added hastily. ‘We’ve got another body to look at yet.’

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