“No, I didn’t touch it at all. One could see he was dead without touching him.”
“Did you notice a note lying on the blotter half concealed by his body?”
“No.”
“Did you interfere in any way with the clock?”
“I never touched the clock. I seem to remember a clock lying overturned on the table, but I never touched it.”
“Now as to this pistol of yours, when did you last see it?”
Lawrence Redding reflected.
“It’s hard to say exactly.”
“Where do you keep it?”
“Oh, in a litter of odds and ends in the sitting-room in my cottage. On one of the shelves of the bookcase.”
“You left it lying about carelessly?”
“Yes. I really didn’t think about it. It was just there.”
“So that anyone who came to your cottage could have seen it?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t remember when you last saw it?”
Lawrence drew his brows together in a frown of recollection.
“I’m almost sure it was there the day before yesterday. I remember pushing it aside to get an old pipe. I think it was the day before yesterday—but it may have been the day before that.”