"Yes. He remarked to me that it was time she returned. I presume that Short had told him."
"Oh! about half-past ten, I should think," replied Nurse Kate. "He said something about it being a bad night to go out to a theatre, and hoped she would not take cold."
"Not in the least. He was never angry when she went to town. He used to say to me, 'My wife's a young woman, nurse. She wants a little amusement sometimes, and I'm sure I don't begrudge it to her.'"
This puzzled me quite as much as it puzzled the detective. I had certainly been under the impression that husband and wife had quarrelled over the latter's frequent absences from home. Indeed, in a household where the wife is young and the husband elderly, quarrels of that character are almost sure to occur sooner or later. As a doctor I knew the causes of domestic infelicity in a good many homes. Men in my profession see a good deal, and hear more. Every doctor could unfold strange tales of queer households if he were not debarred by the bond of professional secrecy.
"You heard no noise during the night?" inquired the inspector.
"None. I'm a light sleeper as a rule, and wake at the slightest sound," the woman replied. "But I heard absolutely nothing."
"Anyone, in order to enter the dead man's room, must have passed your door, I think?"
"Yes, and what's more, the light was burning and my door was ajar. I always kept it so in order to hear if my patient wanted anything."
"Then the murderer could see you as he stood on the landing?"
"No. There's a screen at the end of my bed. He could not see far into the room. But I shudder to think that to-night I've had an assassin a dozen feet from me while I slept," she added.
Finding that she could throw no light upon the mysterious affair, the officer turned his attention to the four frightened domestics, each in turn.
All, save one, declared that they heard not a single sound. The one exception was Alice, the under housemaid, a young fair-haired girl, who stated that during the night she had distinctly heard a sound like the low creaking of light shoes on the landing below where they slept.
This first aroused our interest, but on full reflection it seemed so utterly improbable that an assassin would wear a pair of creaky boots when on such an errand that we were inclined to disregard the girl's statement as a piece of imagination. The feminine mind is much given to fiction on occasions of tragic events.