“No doubt,” said he. “But let us not interrupt Mademoiselle.”
“I touched the wall first,” Ann resumed, “just at the angle of the corridor and the hall.”
“The corridor with the windows on to the courtyard on the one side and the doors of the receptions on the other?” Hanaud asked.
“Yes.”
“Were the curtains drawn across all those windows too, Mademoiselle?”
“Yes. There was not a glimmer of light anywhere. I felt my way along the wall to my right—that is, in the hall, of course, not the corridor—until my hands slipped off the surface and touched nothing. I had reached the embrasure of the doorway. I felt for the doorknob, turned it and entered the room. The light switch was in the wall at the side of the door, close to my left hand. I snapped it down. I think that I was still half asleep when I turned the light on in the treasure-room, as we called it. But the next moment I was wide awake—oh, I have never been more wide awake in my life. My fingers indeed were hardly off the switch after turning the light on, before they were back again turning the light off. But this time I eased the switch up very carefully, so that there should be no snap—no, not the tiniest sound to betray me. There was so short an interval between the two movements of my hand that I had just time to notice the clock on the top of the marquetry cabinet in the middle of the wall opposite to me, and then once more I stood in darkness, but stock still and holding my breath—a little frightened—yes, no doubt a little frightened, but more astonished than frightened. For in the inner wall of the room, at the other end, close by the window, there,”—and Ann pointed to the second of those shuttered windows which stared so blankly on the garden—“the door which was always locked since Simon Harlowe’s death stood open and a bright light burned beyond.”
Betty Harlowe uttered a little cry.
“That door?” she exclaimed, now at last really troubled. “It stood open? How can that have been?”
Hanaud shifted his position in his chair, and asked her a question.
“On which side of the door was the key, Mademoiselle?”
“On Madame’s, if the key was in the lock at all.”
“Oh! You don’t remember whether it was?”
“No,” said Betty. “Of course both Ann and I were in and out of Madame’s bedroom when she was ill, but there was a dressing-room between the bedroom and the communicating door of my room, so that we should not have noticed.”
“To be sure,” Hanaud agreed. “The dressing-room in which the nurse might have slept and did when Madame had a seizure. Do you remember whether the communicating door was still open or unlocked on the next morning?”
Betty frowned and reflected, and shook her head.
“I cannot remember. We were all in great trouble. There was so much to do. I did not notice.”
“No. Indeed why should you?” said Hanaud. He turned back to Ann. “Before you go on with this curious story, Mademoiselle, tell me this! Was the light beyond the open door, a light in the dressing-room or in the room beyond the dressing-room, Madame Harlowe’s bedroom, or didn’t you notice?”
“In the far room, I think,” Ann answered confidently. “There would have been more light in the treasure-room otherwise. The treasure-room is long no doubt, but where I stood I was completely in darkness. There was only this panel of yellow light in the open doorway. It lay in a band straight across the carpet and it lit up the sedan chair opposite the doorway until it all glistened like silver.”
“Oho, there is a sedan chair in that museum?” said Hanaud lightly. “It will be interesting to see. So the light, Mademoiselle, came from the far room?”
“The light and—and the voices,” said Ann with a quaver in her throat.
“Voices!” cried Hanaud. He sat up straight in his chair, whilst Betty Harlowe went as white as a ghost. “Voices! What is this? Did you recognise those voices?”
“One, Madame’s. There was no mistaking it. It was loud and violent for a moment. Then it went off into a mumble of groans. The other voice only spoke once and very few words and very clearly. But it spoke in a whisper. There was too a sound of—movements.”
“Movements!” said Hanaud sharply; and with his voice his face seemed to sharpen too. “Here’s a word which does not help us much. A procession moves. So does the chair if I push it. So does my hand if I cover a mouth and stop a cry. Is it that sort of movement you mean, Mademoiselle?”
Under the stern insistence of his questions Ann Upcott suddenly weakened.
“Oh, I am afraid so,” she said with a loud cry, and she clapped her hands to her face. “I never understood until this morning when you spoke of how the arrow might be used. Oh, I shall never forgive myself. I stood in the darkness, a few yards away—no more—I stood quite still and listened and just beyond the lighted doorway Madame was being killed!” She drew her hands from her face and beat upon her knees with her clenched fists in a frenzy.
“ ‘Yes, I believe that now!’ Madame cried in the hoarse, harsh voice we knew: ‘Stripped, eh? Stripped to the skin!’ and she laughed wildly; and then came the sound, as though—yes, it might have been that!—as though she were forced down and held, and Madame’s voice died to a mumble and then silence—and then the other voice in a low clear whisper, ‘That will do now.’ And all the while I stood in the darkness—oh!”
“What did you do after that clear whisper reached your ears?” Hanaud commanded. “Take your hands from your face, if you please, and let me hear.”
Ann Upcott obeyed him. She flung her head back with the tears streaming down her
