Their position suggested a left-hand clutch, though only a finger-print expert could definitely determine that point.

Even if they were not, it was too far-fetched a supposition to imagine a man gripping his own arm hard enough to bruise it.
The relative weight of this discovery was, in Barrant's mind, weakened by the fact that the marks might have been caused by the persons who had carried the body from the next room.

Nevertheless, the marks must be regarded as infirmative testimony, however slight, of the fallibility of the circumstantial deductions which had been made from the discovery of the body in a locked room, with windows which could not be reached from the outside.
The presumption of suicide rested on the theory that the circumstances excluded any other hypothesis.

But Barrant reflected that he did not know enough about the case to accept that assumption as warranted by the facts.
The one certainty was that the study could not have been reached from the outside.

Barrant had noted the back windows before entering the house; his subsequent interior examination had strengthened his conviction that they were inaccessible.