midnight
It was only with curiosity that I looked down on the dead face , swollen and livid in the first light of morning . The man had been strangled . His neck , as we say in Scotland , was ` thrawn ' , and that was why he had lain on his back yet with his face turned away from me . He had been dead probably since before midnight . I looked closer , and saw that there was blood on his shirt and hands , but no wound . It was not his blood , but some other 's . Then a few feet off on the path I found a pistol with two chambers empty .