'Sat on the backstairs, on guard. The storm came up around eleven fifteen. Started with a lot of wind. Rain coming down in buckets by twelve o'clock. Maybe the storm woke you, Alice.'
'Maybe,' said Alice. None of them noticed that the chauffeur called her Alice.
'The Three Graces had all gone to bed by the time I took up my post,' Fred went on. 'I wouldn't know about Gertrude, though, come to think of it. She's downstairs. She could have been roaming around. But I saw hide nor hair of them from where I was. Isabel's door, which I could see, was closed all the time, and she didn't pass me.'
Alice said slowly, 'Just after I woke up I thought I heard a sound.'
'Yes?' said Duff.
'A funny litde sound. I heard it once before. When I was on my way downstairs I heard it as if it were down there. The evening Innes was hurt. The doctor was here. I was going down after his bag. It's a little sound in the throat. I can't describe it.'
'You heard it again last night!' Fred said with excitement.
'When have you heard it?' Duff asked him. 'Or haven't you?'
'I think I know what she means. I heard it right after the lamp fell. As if it were up here.'
'The same sound, you think?'
'I think so,' Fred said. 'And Josephine tells me she heard something like it, too, down at the foot of the hill, just before we left here in the car, just before our accident.'
'Just before something happens, you hear noises,' said Duff. 'Three of you each heard at different times a small indescribable sound?'
'Nothing happened after I heard it the first time,' Alice pointed out.
'How do we know?' Duff said.
'But . . .'
'No two of you heard it at the same time, I take it?'
'No, but something makes that sound. Doesn't it mean— What can it mean?'
'We must keep it in mind,' said Duff, 'although if the sounds weren't identical, you see, it needn't mean anything. Unless . . . Mr. Whitlock, do you know of any such sound? Has one of your sisters the habit of clearing her throat or coughing or anything of the sort?'
'I couldn't tell you,' said Innes. 'Not that I can remember. I'm so useless. I just don't know.' He flung his palms up on the bedspread.
'Tell me,' said Duff suddenly to Alice, 'what was the feeling? How do you imagine die person felt who made that sound? Was there a feeling to it? If so, what was it? Don't say. You try to remember, too, Fred. What feeling does it suggest to you? Make up your minds before you hear each other's judgment. Don't analyze. Just try to remember your first quick impression.'
'I think I know,' said Alice in a moment
'Me, too,' said Fred. Duff nodded. 'It was dirty,' Fred said. 'Something mean about it.'
'I thought it was triumphant,'' said Alice, 'and satisfied and excited, too.'
'Thank you,' said Duff. 'Now, what happened after twelve o'clock?'
'I woke up,' said Alice, 'and I couldn't get to sleep. I began to feel cold. Finally I got to worrying about Fred's being cold because it was freezing, really. Besides, I couldn't sleep. So I got up and came out here. That was about two o'clock, I guess.'
'Was the heat coming into your room as usual when you first went to bed? Do you remember?'
'Yes, it was. I'm quite sure.'
'That's helpful,' said Duff. 'Because, of course, the heat stopped coming up through out the rest of the house after the deed was done. The heat was normal at eleven ten?'
'Oh, yes, I know it was.'
'Then the deed was not done until after eleven ten. Fred, nobody moved in the upstairs hall after that hour?'
'Nobody,' said Fred. 'Nobody that I saw.'
'Could anyone have come up the front stairs without your seeing them?'
'Maud might have,' Fred admitted, 'if she turned sharp at the very top step and went off the hall toward her own room. I can't see that part. I should think I would have heard her.'
'I did hear her,' said Alice in a low voice.
'But nobody came this way, to Isabel's room?'
'Nobody, until Alice came.'
'And after that?'
'We smelled it. I mean Alice did. I'd been sitting there so long, I guess I wouldn't have noticed it for a while longer.'
'Mr. Whitlock, you had fallen asleep with the help of a drug? And you smelled nothing?'
Innes plucked at his spread. His eyes went miserably to Alice. 'Very few people know this,' he said, 'and it's
