At the first glance the peculiar and
conspicuous colour of the hair struck me as suspicious. But there were
three facts, each of which was in itself sufficient to prove that the
hair was probably not that of the murderer.
"In the first place there was the condition of the hand. When a person,
at the moment of death, grasps any object firmly, there is set up a
condition known as cadaveric spasm. The muscular contraction passes
immediately into _rigor mortis_, or death-stiffening, and the object
remains grasped by the dead hand until the rigidity passes off. In this
case the hand was perfectly rigid, but it did not grasp the hair at all.
The little tress lay in the palm quite loosely and the hand was only
partially closed. Obviously the hair had been placed in it after death.
The other two facts had reference to the condition of the hair itself.
Now, when a lock of hair is torn from the head, it is evident that all
the roots will be found at the same end of the lock. But in the present
instance this was not the case; the lock of hair which lay in the dead
woman's hand had roots at both ends, and so could not have been torn
from the head of the murderer.
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