The body had been removed from the scene of the tragedy. There was a dark stain on the floor where it had lain, but otherwise there was nothing to suggest that a tragedy had ever occurred. The sun poured in through the three windows, flooding the room with light, and bringing out the mellow tone of the old panelling. Anthony looked around him with approval.
“Very nice,” he commented. “Nothing much to beat old England, is there?”
“Did it seem to you at first it was in this room the shot was fired?” asked the superintendent, not replying to Anthony’s eulogium.
“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.”