"Not very long," replied Penreath. "After she went out of the room I sat on the bedside. I did not close the small door I had discovered, or replace the wardrobe. I was too overwhelmed. In a little while—perhaps ten minutes—I saw a light shine through the hole again. I went to it and looked through—God knows why—and I saw somebody walking stealthily into the room, carrying a candle. He went to the bedside and, with a groan, lifted the body on to his shoulders, and carried it out of the room. I crept to my door, and looked out and saw him descending the stairs. God in heaven, what a horror, what a horror!
"I waited to see no more. I shut the door in the wall, pulled the wardrobe back into its place and determined to leave the accursed inn as soon as it was daylight. In my cell at nights, when I hear the footsteps of the warder sounding along the corridor and dying away in the distance, it reminds me of how I stood at the door that night, listening to the sound of the footsteps stumbling down the staircase."
"You heard the footsteps distinctly, then?" said the detective.
"Distinctly and clearly. The staircase is a stone one, as you know."
"Did you put your boots out to be cleaned before you went to bed?"
"Yes."
"And were they there when you looked out of the door?"
"I do not remember. But I know they were there in the morning, dirty and covered with clay. I took them in, and was about to put them on, when the servant knocked at the door with a cup of morning tea. I answered the door with the boots in my hand. She offered to clean them for me, and was taking them away, but I called her back and said I would not wait for them. I was too anxious to get away from the place."
"Do you remember when you lost the rubber heel of one of them?"
"It must have been when I was walking the previous day. They were only put on the day before. I happened to mention to a bootmaker at Durrington that my left heel had become jarred with walking. He recommended me to try rubber heels to lessen the strain, and he put them on for me. I had never worn them before, and found them very uncomfortable when I was walking along the marshes. They seemed to hold and stick in the wet ground."