"Sir, if you are insinuating that my wife—"
"Oh, let me tell him, Tracey," Mrs. Miles capitulated suddenly, completely. "I was in the closet when Nita was killed, I suppose, but I didn't know she was being killed! Because I was lying in there on the closet floor in a dead faint!"
Dundee stared at the woman incredulously, then suppressed a groan of almost unbearable disappointment. If Flora Miles was telling the truth, here went a-flying his only eye-witness, probably, or rather, his only ear-witness.
"Just when did you faint, Mrs. Miles?" he asked, struggling for patience. "Before or after Nita came into this room?"
"I was just finishing the note, with the light on in the closet, and the door shut, when I heard Nita come into the room. I knew it was Nita because she was singing one of those Broadway songs she is—was—so crazy about. I jerked off the light, and crouched way back in a corner of the closet. A velvet evening wrap fell down over my head, and I was nearly smothering, but I was afraid to try to dislodge it for fear a hanger would fall to the floor and make an awful clatter. And then—and then—" She shuddered, and clung to her husband.
"What caused you to faint, Mrs. Miles?"
"Sir, my wife has heart trouble—"
"What did you hear, Mrs. Miles?" Dundee persisted.
"I couldn't hear very well, all tangled up in the coat and 'way back in the closet, but I did hear a kind of bang or bump—no, no, not a pistol shot!—and because it came from so near me I thought it was Nita or Lydia coming to get something out of the closet, and I'd be discovered, so I—I fainted—" She drew a deep breath and went on: "When I came to I heard Karen scream, and then people running in—. But all the time that awful tune was going on and on—"
"Tune?" Dundee gasped. "Do you mean—Nita Selim's—song?"