Of course I never expected you to have arrived at any
conclusion, as I had, because I had ten minutes in which to examine that
apple, and to do what I did with it. But, at least, you should have seen
the possibility of evidence in it.
"First, now, the apple was white. A bitten apple, as you must have
observed, turns of a reddish brown color if left to stand long. Different
kinds of apples brown with different rapidities, and the browning always
begins at the core. This is one of the twenty thousand tiny things that
few people take the trouble to notice, but which it is useful for a man in
my position to know. A russet will brown quite quickly. The apple on the
sideboard was, as near as I could tell, a Newtown pippin or other apple of
that kind, which will brown at the core in from twenty minutes to half an
hour, and in other parts in a quarter of an hour more. When we saw it, it
was white, with barely a tinge of brown about the exposed core. Inference,
somebody had been eating it fifteen or twenty minutes before, perhaps a
little longer--an inference supported by the fact that it was only partly
eaten.
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