So it was eventually decided, that Barrod, Poole and a surgeon should proceed to Brooklands Cemetery that night, exhume the body by arrangement with the Cemetery authorities, and carry out a preliminary investigation on the spot. If there was the smallest suspicious sign, the body was to be brought to London and subjected to expert examination. If not, it was to be re-buried at once and a further conference would be held the next day to decide whether or not to drop the case. As the three officials travelled down to Brooklands by the 5.10 train that evening, Poole thought that Chief Inspector Barrod was treating him with more respect than he had previously done, but he did not discuss the case upon which they were engaged. Probably, thought Poole, he did not want to commit himself. Instead, the talk turned entirely on another case which had just closed, and in which the police-surgeon had been actively engaged. The train reached Brooklands at 5.55 and as soon as it was dark the work of the exhumation began. It took nearly an hour to bring the coffin to the surface and even then the actual exposure of the body took some time, owing to its being enclosed in a lead shell, a possibility which neither Barrod nor Poole had taken into account. At last the grisly work of unwinding was completed and the body laid upon a table. Naturally, after ten days, the flesh was beginning to show signs of decomposition, and to Poole’s untrained eye it appeared as if these marks might conceal what he was looking for. But the doctor had no such misgivings. Running his eye and his fingers rapidly over the chest, he shook his head. “Nothing here,” he said. “Turn it over.” “It would be on the back,” muttered Poole. The nauseating odour emitted by the moving of the body drove Poole to the door for a breath of fresh air. When he returned, he found the more hardened Barrod and the surgeon closely examining a mark upon the left centre of the back. The whole surface was stained, as was inevitable, but in one spot there was a deeper and more clearly defined stain. The surgeon pressed it gently with his sensitive fingers, then, producing a magnifying-glass, turned the beam of a powerful electric torch on to the spot and examined it with minute attention. After a couple of minutes he straightened his back. “Yes,” he said, “this is more than ordinary post-mortem staining; there clearly has been rupture of small capillary vessels. That means a blow, and from the look of it, a violent and concentrated blow.” CHAPTER X The Inquest