“This is an abominable affair, Jervis,” he said in an ominously quiet voice. “You reject the suggestion of suicide, then?” said I, with a feeling of relief that surprised me. “Absolutely,” he replied. “Murder shouts at us from everything that meets our eye. Look at this poor woman, in her trim nurse’s dress, with her unfinished needlework lying on the table in the next room and that preposterous razor loose in her limp hand. Look at the savage wounds. Four of them, and the first one mortal. The great bloodstain by the door, the great blood-stain on her dress from the neck to the feet. The gashed collar, the cap-string cut right through. Note that the bleeding had practically ceased when she lay down. That is a group of visible facts that is utterly inconsistent with the idea of suicide. But we are wasting time. Let us search the premises thoroughly. The murderer has pretty certainly got away, but as he was in the house when we arrived, any traces will be quite fresh.” As he spoke he took his electric lamp from the research-case and walked to the door. “We can examine this room later,” he said, “but we had better look over the house. If you will stay by the stairs and watch the front and back doors, I will look through the upper rooms.” He ran lightly up the stairs while I kept watch below, but he was absent less than a couple of minutes. “There is no one there,” he reported, “and as there is no basement we will just look at this floor and then examine the grounds.” After a rapid inspection of the ground-floor rooms, including the kitchen, we went out by the back door, which was unbolted, and inspected the grounds. These consisted of a largish garden with a small orchard at the side. In the former we could discover no traces of any kind, but at the end of the path that crossed the orchard we came on a possible clue. The orchard was enclosed by a five-foot fence, the top of which bristled with hooked nails; and at the point opposite to the path, Thorndyke’s lantern brought into view one or two wisps of cloth caught on the hooks. “Someone has been over here,” said Thorndyke, “but as this is an orchard, there is nothing remarkable in the fact. However, there is no fruit on the trees now, and the cloth looks fairly fresh. There are two kinds, you notice: a dark blue and a black and white mixture of some kind.” “Corresponding, probably, to the coat and trousers,” I suggested.