His rapt attention stimulated the girl. She, too, sat forward on her seat, shut her eyes, and locked her fingers.
“—then I heard him give a sort of exclamation, or more like a choke—I mean to say, it sounded like a bit of both”—she was evidently trying to live the hours over again—“and then I heard him drop into his armchair; it creaked as though he had fairly fallen into it. After that I heard nothing more for a long while. You know how hard it rained day before yesterday, and what a noise it made coming down, then I wasn't paying any attention—I mean to say I little thought——”
“You heard him drop into his chair”—Pointer's voice was almost hypnotic—“and next——?”
“Nothing for a long while. Then I heard his door shut. Ah, thinks I to myself, he's gone downstairs as usual at four-thirty to the lounge for his tea—tea is included in the board here, you know, sir,—but it must have been him back after 'phoning to the office. Anyhow, I heard him lock his door, and then moving about, opening and shutting drawers very quickly and softly. Like this”—she jumped up and began to open and shut the tabledrawer, with quite a pause between—“packing, I'm sure, sir, which shows that he did mean to go into the country——”
“Never mind what it shows. Sit down and shut your eyes again. You heard him opening and shutting drawers——”
“Oh, yes, and I heard him moving about, too, but so light! I couldn't hear any footsteps, only all the floors here creak fearful. Then”—she went quite pale and fixed a genuinely horrified stare on the Chief Inspector—“I heard him pull the wardrobe out from the wall. I listened to that, of course, sir, for that did catch my ear—what I mean to say, the furniture being my lookout, so to speak, I noticed the way he tugged it. That'll mark the carpet, I thought to myself. Little did I——”
“After the pulling out of the wardrobe, what then?” Pointer's voice was intentionally matter-of-fact.
“Well”—she seemed puzzled as to how to put her recollection into words—“it sounded just as though he dragged the armchair about the room, but so—so—as if it were so heavy, scraping and creaking, and then—then”—her eyes dilated—“I heard the most awful sounds of the chair straining and—and a sort of knocking sound, and yet sort of dragging—oh, sir, I suppose he had just stopped his packing and taken the poison then, and what I heard was his death agonies—if only I'd known, I might have run for a doctor!”
“No, no, Maggie, no one could have helped him. He had taken too much poison.”
“And to think I wondered what larks he was up to in there! Then all got quieter, though I could still hear sort of rustling sounds—what I mean to say, creepy sort of noises, so quiet-like; and then I heard him shove the wardrobe back against the wall, scraping it more than ever, and that's what I don't understand. How could he do that after taking the poison and all?”