‘Certainly; but if I am your assistant in the evening I shall expect to be your assistant in the morning – I should very much like to see the scene of the crime.’
‘I have no objection. The house on Haverstock Hill is at present shut up and in charge of a caretaker, but the solicitors who are managing the late Mrs Hannaford’s estate have given me permission to go over it and examine it.’
The next day at eleven o’clock I met Dorcas outside Mrs Hannaford’s house, and the caretaker, who had received his instructions, admitted us. He was the gardener, and an old servant, and had been present during the police investigation. The bedroom in which Mr Hannaford and his wife slept on the fatal night was on the floor above. Dorcas told me to go upstairs, shut the door, lie down on the bed, and listen. Directly a noise in the room below attracted my attention, I was to jump up, open the door and call out.
I obeyed her instructions and listened intently, but lying on the bed I heard nothing for a long time. It must have been quite a quarter of an hour when suddenly I heard a sound as of a door opening with a cracking sound. I leapt up, ran to the balusters, and called over, ‘I heard that!’
‘All right, then, come down,’ said Dorcas, who was standing in the hall with the caretaker.
She explained to me that she had been moving about the drawing-room with the man, and they had both made as much noise with their feet as they could. They had even opened and shut the drawing-room door, but nothing had attracted my attention. Then Dorcas had sent the man to open the front door. It had opened with the cracking sound that I had heard.
‘Now,’ said Dorcas to the caretaker, ‘you were here when the police were coming and going – did the front door always make a sound like that?’
‘Yes, madam. The door had swollen or warped, or something, and it was always difficult to open. Mrs Hannaford spoke about it once and was going to have it eased.’
‘That’s it, then,’ said Dorcas to me. ‘The probability is that it was the noise made by the opening of that front door which first attracted the attention of the murdered woman.’
‘That was Hannaford going out – if his story is correct.’
‘No; Hannaford went out in a rage. He would pull the door open violently, and probably bang it to. That she would understand. It was when the door opened again with a sharp crack that she listened, thinking it was her husband come back.’
‘But she was murdered in the drawing- room!’
‘Yes. My theory, therefore, is that after the opening of the front door she expected her husband to come upstairs. He didn’t do so, and she concluded that he had gone into one of the rooms downstairs to spend the night, and she got up and came down to find him and ask him to get over his temper and come back to bed. She went into the drawing-room to see if he was there, and was struck down from behind before she had time to utter a cry. The servants heard nothing, remember.’
‘They said so at the inquest – yes.’
‘Now come into the drawing-room. This is where the caretaker tells me the body was found – here in the centre of the room – the poker with which the fatal blow had been struck was lying between the body and the fireplace. The absence of a cry and the position of the body show that when Mrs Hannaford opened the door she saw no one (I am, of course, presuming that the murderer was not her husband) and she came in further. But there must have been someone in the room or she couldn’t have been murdered in it.’
‘That is indisputable; but he might not have been in the room at the time – the person might have been hiding in the hall and followed her in.’
‘To suppose that we must presume that the murderer came into the room, took the poker from the fireplace, and went out again in order to come in again. That poker was secured, I am convinced, when the intruder heard footsteps coming down the stair. He picked up the poker and then concealed himself here.’
‘Then why, my dear Dorcas, shouldn’t he have remained concealed until Mrs Hannaford had gone out of the room again?’
‘I think she was turning to go when he rushed out and struck her down. He probably thought that she had heard the noise of the door, and might go and alarm the servants.’
‘But just now you said she came in believing that her husband had returned and was in one of the rooms.’
‘The intruder could hardly be in possession of her thoughts.’
‘In the meantime he could have got out at the front door.’
‘Yes; but if his object was robbery he would have to go without the plunder. He struck the woman down in order to have time to get what he wanted.’
‘Then you think he left her here senseless while he searched the house?’
‘Nobody got anything by searching the house, ma’am,’ broke in the caretaker. ‘The police satisfied themselves that nothing had been disturbed. Every door was locked, the plate was all complete, not a bit of jewellery or anything was missing. The servants were all examined about that, and the detectives went over every room and every cupboard to prove it wasn’t no burglar broke in or anything of that sort. Besides, the windows were all fastened.’
‘What he says is quite true,’ said Dorcas to me, ‘but something alarmed Mrs Hannaford in the night and brought her to the drawing-room in her nightdress. If it was, as
