“The wound has been thoroughly cleansed, closed and stopped with a carbolic plug before interment,” Dr. O’Reilly said. He was a middle-aged, grizzled man, with a face whereon many recent sleepless nights had left their traces. “I have not thought it necessary to do anything in the way of dissection. The bullet is not present, it has passed clean through the body, between the ribs both back and front, piercing the heart on its way. The death must have been instantaneous.”
Hewitt quickly examined the two wounds, back and front, as the doctor turned the body over, and then asked: “Perhaps, Dr. O’Reilly, you have had some experience of a gunshot wound before this?”
The doctor smiled grimly. “I think so,” he answered, with just enough of brogue in his words to hint his nationality and no more. “I was an army surgeon for a good many years before I came to Cullanin, and saw service in Ashanti and in India.”
“Come then,” Hewitt said, “you’re an expert. Would it have been possible for the shot to have been fired from behind?”
“Oh, no. See! the bullet entering makes a wound of quite a different character from that of the bullet leaving.”
“A large revolver, I should think; perhaps of the regulation size; that is, I should judge the bullet to have been a conical one of about the size fitted to such a weapon--smaller than that from a rifle.”
“Can you form an idea of from what distance the shot was fired?”
Dr. O’Reilly shook his head. “The clothes have all been burned,” he said, “and the wound has been washed, otherwise one might have looked for powder blackening.”
“Did you know either the dead man or Dr. Main personally?”
“Only very slightly. I may say I saw just such a pistol as might cause that sort of wound in Main’s hands the day before he gave out that Rewse had been attacked by small-pox. I drove past the cottage as he stood in the doorway with it in his hand. He had the breach opened, and seemed to be either loading or unloading it--which it was I couldn’t say.”
“Very good, doctor, that may be important. Now is there any single circumstance, incident or conjecture that you can tell me of in regard to this case that you have not already mentioned?”
Doctor O’Reilly thought for a moment, and replied in the negative. “I heard, of course,” he said, “of the reported new case of small-pox, and that Main had taken the case in hand himself. I was indeed relieved to hear it, for I had already more on my hands than one man can safely be expected to attend to. The cottage was fairly isolated, and there could have been nothing gained by removal to an asylum--indeed there was practically no accommodation. So far as I can make out nobody seems to have seen young Rewse, alive or dead, after Main had announced that he had the small-pox. He seems to have done everything himself, laying out the body and all, and you may be pretty sure that none of the strangers about was particularly anxious to have anything to do with it. The undertaker (there is only one here, and he is down with the small-pox himself now) was as much overworked as I was myself, and was glad enough to send off a coffin by a market cart and leave the laying out and screwing down to Main, since he had got those orders. Main made out the death certificate himself, and, since he was trebly qualified, everything seemed in order.”