“The key is always hung on the nail when they are out?”
“Yes. If any one of them is out it is left there. There is only one key. The family is out a great deal, and it saves bringing some one down from the servants’ rooms at the top of the house.”
But I think my knowledge of the key bothered her, for some reason. And as I read over my questions, certainly they indicated a suspicion that the situation was less simple than it appeared. She shot a quick glance at me.
“Did you examine the revolver when you picked it up?”
“I, monsieur? Non!” Then her fears, whatever they were, got the best of her. “I know nothing but what I tell you. I was out. I can prove that that is so. I went to a pharmacy; the clerk will remember. I will go with you, monsieur, and he will tell you that I used the telephone there.”
I daresay my business of cross-examination, of watching evidence helped me to my next question.
“You went out to telephone when there is a telephone in the house?”
But here again, as once or twice before, a veil dropped between us. She avoided my eyes. “There are things one does not want the family to hear,” she muttered. Then, having determined on a course of action, she followed it. “I am looking for another position. I do not like it here. The children are spoiled. I only came for a month’s trial.”
“Elliott’s, at the corner of State Avenue and McKee Street.”
I told her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the pharmacy, and she muttered something about the children and went up the stairs. When Sperry came back with the opiate she was nowhere in sight, and he was considerably annoyed.
“She knows something,” I told him. “She is frightened.”
“Now see here, Horace,” he said, “suppose we had come in here, without the thought of that seance behind us? We’d have accepted the thing as it appears to be, wouldn’t we? There may be a dozen explanations for that sponge, and for the razor strop. What in heaven’s name has a razor strop to do with it anyhow? One bullet was fired, and the revolver has one empty chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shaving in order to commit suicide, but that’s no argument that it can’t be done, and as to the key--how do I know that my own back door key isn’t hung outside on a nail sometimes?”