Mrs. Sidebottom attempted to feel unconcern, but found that impossible. The snoring disturbed her, and it disturbed her the more because she could not satisfy herself whence the sound came.
’Perhaps it is the cook,’ she said. ’She may be occupying the room overhead, and cooks are given to stertorous breathing. Standing over the stoves predisposes them to it.’
Finally, irritated, resolved to ascertain whence the sound proceeded, Mrs. Sidebottom left her bed. Her fire was burning. She did not light a candle. She drew on a dressing-gown, and stole into the study, and thence through the door (which, on account of the smoke; had been left ajar) upon the landing-place.
The gaslight in the hall below was left burning but lowered all night, and the moon shone in through a window.
’I do believe the sound proceeds from the spare room,’ she said, and softly she stole to the door and turned the handle.
’There can be no one there,’ she thought, ’because I was offered the room, and yet the snoring certainly seems to proceed from it. No one can be there—this must be an acoustic delusion.’
Noiselessly, timidly, she half opened the door. The hinges did not creak. She looked in inquisitively. The blind was drawn down, but the moon, shining through it, filled the room with suffused light.
Mrs. Sidebottom’s eyes sought the bed. On it, where had lain the body found in the canal, and much in the same position as that had been placed there, lay the figure of a man, black against the white coverlet, in a great-coat. The face was not visible—the curtain interposed and concealed it.
Mrs. Sidebottom’s heart stood still. A sense of sickness and faintness stole over her. She dared not take a step further to obtain a glimpse of the face, and she feared to see it.
With trembling hand she closed the door, and stood on the landing with beating heart, recovering herself. ’What a fool I am to be frightened!’ she said, after a minute, and with a sigh of relief. ’Of course—the doctor.’
In one of his essays, Goldsmith relates the anecdote of a painter who set up a picture in the market-place, with a pot of black paint and a brush beside it, and the inscription, ’Please indicate faults.’
When in the evening he revisited his picture, he found it smudged out eventually, as everyone had discovered and marked out a blemish. Next day he set up a replica of the picture, with paint and brush as before, and the inscription, ’Please indicate beauties.’