Nothing has been moved, you say? Who opened the
windows?"
"They were open when we came in," said Mr. Marchmont. "Last night was
very hot, you remember. Nothing whatever has been moved."
Thorndyke produced from his bag a small folding camera, a telescopic
tripod, a surveyor's measuring-tape, a boxwood scale, and a
sketch-block. He set up the camera in a corner, and exposed a plate,
taking a general view of the room, and including the corpse. Then he
moved to the door and made a second exposure.
"Will you stand in front of the clock, Jervis," he said, "and raise
your hand as if winding it? Thanks; keep like that while I expose a
plate."
I remained thus, in the position that the dead man was assumed to have
occupied at the moment of the murder, while the plate was exposed, and
then, before I moved, Thorndyke marked the position of my feet with a
blackboard chalk. He next set up the tripod over the chalk marks, and
took two photographs from that position, and finally photographed the
body itself.
The photographic operations being concluded, he next proceeded, with
remarkable skill and rapidity, to lay out on the sketch-block a
ground-plan of the room, showing the exact position of the various
objects, on a scale of a quarter of an inch to the foot--a process that
the inspector was inclined to view with some impatience.
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