This wound gaped
very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half
an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled with blood, and
blood is shed freely on the clothing. But the wound on the deceased
contained only a little blood-clot. There was hardly any blood on the
clothing, and I had already noticed that there was none on the sand
where the body had lain."
"And you consider this quite conclusive?" the magistrate asked
doubtfully.
"I do," answered Thorndyke. "But there was other evidence which was
beyond all question. The weapon had partially divided both the aorta and
the pulmonary artery--the main arteries of the body. Now, during life,
these great vessels are full of blood at a high internal pressure,
whereas after death they become almost empty. It follows that, if this
wound had been inflicted during life, the cavity in which those vessels
lie would have become filled with blood. As a matter of fact, it
contained practically no blood, only the merest oozing from some small
veins, so that it is certain that the wound was inflicted after death.
The presence and nature of the poison I ascertained by analyzing certain
secretions from the body, and the analysis enabled me to judge that the
quantity of the poison was large; but the contents of the stomach were
sent to Professor Copland for more exact examination.
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