Instead of looking for matches, you’d be better off to examine the bed.”

After the examination of the bed, Dukovsky reported:

“I found no blood, or any other suspicious spots. No torn linen either. I saw the signs of somebody’s teeth on the pillow. Besides this, on the bed, I found the remains of a strange liquid, which smells and tastes like beer. The arrangement of the objects on the bed suggests to me that some struggle was going on there.”

“I know without you that there was a struggle! Nobody is asking you about a struggle! Instead of looking for a struggle, you’d better …”

“One boot is here, the other one is missing.”

“Yes, and what?”

“This means that he was strangled when he was taking off his boots. He did not have enough time to take off his second boot, but they …”

“What are you talking about? How do you know that they strangled him?”

“Because there are traces of teeth on the pillow. The pillow itself is very scrambled and thrown two steps away from the bed.”

“You talk too much, you’re like a chatterbox! Go to the garden. You should have a good look at the garden instead of staying here, and I can examine the room better than you.”

When the investigators came into the garden, they searched the grass. The grass under the window was flattened. A patch of thistles under the window was smashed. Dukovsky found several broken branches and a piece of cotton cloth on them. On one of the upturned heads of the flowers, he found a dark-blue woolen thread.

“What color were the clothes he was last seen wearing?” Dukovsky asked Post.

“Yellow.”

“Excellent. This means that they wore blue.”

Several of these thistle blossoms were cut, and carefully wrapped in paper. At that moment, two more people arrived at the scene: the court officer Svistakovsky and the doctor Tutuev. The court officer greeted them, and at the same time started to satisfy his curiosity. The doctor, a gaunt and slim man with fallen eyes, a long nose, and a sharp chin, sat on the stump of the nearby tree, greeting none and asking nothing. He sighed and said,

“And the Austrians are excited again! I don’t understand, what do they want? Well, Austria, again Austria! This is the sphere of your political influence. I hold you responsible for this tension, for this state of affairs …”

The examination of the window brought no results. But the examination of the garden and the bush next to the window gave many useful clues to the detectives. For example, Dukovsky managed to trace a long dark line on the grass. It consisted of a series of spots, and stretched for several steps in the garden. The line ended at the lilac bush with a big brown spot. It was where they found a boot, which matched the one in the bedroom.

“This is old blood,” said Dukovsky, examining the spots.

The doctor, when he heard the word “blood,” stood up lazily, and cast a fast sliding glance at the spots.

“Yes, this is blood.”

“This means that he was not strangled, if it’s blood,” said Rusty, looking mockingly at Dukovsky.

“They strangled him in the bedroom, and here they became afraid that he might come back to life. Therefore, they hit him here with a sharp object. The blood spot under the bush indicates that he was there for a rather long time, while they were looking for means to remove his body from the garden.”

“And what about the boot?”

“It supports my version that he was killed when he was taking off his boots before going to bed. He took off one boot, but the other one, I mean the one in the garden, had only been partially removed. Then it fell off his foot while they dragged the body across the garden.”

“You are smart, I can see that,” Rusty smiled. “You are very clever! And when are you going to stop talking? Instead of talking so much, you should take a sample of the blood-stained grass for analysis.”

After they made a sketch of the garden, the detective went to the estate manager to write a report and to have breakfast. There, they continued their conversation.

“The watch and the money—everything is intact,” Rusty began. “He was apparently not killed for money.”

“And he was killed by an intelligent man too,” inserted Dukovsky.

“How did you come to this conclusion?”

“I have a Swedish match as proof of this.