Page:The Secret of Chimneys - 1987.djvu/103

 “Let me see.”

Anthony opened the window and went out on the terrace, looking up at the house.

“Yes, that’s the room all right,” he said. “It’s built out, and occupies all the corner. If the shot had been fired anywhere else, it would have sounded from the left, but this was from behind me or to the right if anything. That’s why I thought of poachers. It’s at the extremity of the wing, you see.”

He stepped back across the threshold, and asked suddenly, as though the idea had just struck him:

“But why do you ask? You know he was shot here, don’t you?”

“Ah!” said the superintendent. “We never know as much as we’d like to know. But, yes, he was shot here all right. Now you said something about trying the windows, didn’t you?”

“Yes. They were fastened from the inside.”

“How many of them did you try?”

“All three of them.”

“Sure of that, sir?”

“I’m in the habit of being sure. Why do you ask?”

“That’s a funny thing,” said the superintendent.

“What’s a funny thing?”

“When the crime was discovered this morning, the middle one was open—not latched, that is to say.”

“Whew!” said Anthony, sinking down on the window seat, and taking out his cigarette case. “That’s rather a blow. That opens up quite a different aspect of the case. It leaves us two alternatives. Either he was killed by some one in the house, and that some one unlatched the window after I had gone to make it look like an outside job—incidentally with me as Little Willie—or else, not to mince matters, I’m lying. I dare say you incline to the second possibility, but, upon my honour, you’re wrong.”

“Nobody’s going to leave this house until I’m through with them, I can tell you that,” said Superintendent Battle grimly.

Anthony looked at him keenly.

“How long have you had the idea that it might be an inside job?” he asked.

Battle smiled.

“I’ve had a notion that way all along. Your trail was a bit