“It was this way,” she began, and her face drew itself into delicious wrinkles, as she chose her words. “I had been, ever since dinner, almost, on the terrace.”
“Alone?”
“Oh, no. Different people were there. Coming and going, you know. Well, at last, I chanced to be there alone——”
“Who had been with you latest?”
“Let me see,” and the palpable effort to remember was too pronounced to be real, “I guess—yes, I’m sure it was Barry,—Mr. Barry Stannard. And he went away——”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. For a stroll with the dogs, probably. I was about to go upstairs to my room, when I heard a sound in the studio that seemed queer.”
“How, queer?”
“As if somebody were calling me—I mean, calling for somebody.”
“Did you hear your name?” and Lamson caught at the straw.