"I suppose so," replied Brendon, "unless Mrs. Jersey had a visitor last night."
"She might have had," said Leonard. "When I locked the sitting-room door, and that was about half-past eleven I think, I heard the closing of the front door."
"The deuce you did."
"Yes, I put my head out and listened to see if all was quiet. I distinctly heard the front door close."
"She must have had a visitor," said Brendon, thoughtfully; "yet as she alone could have let that visitor out, and as she must have been alive to do so, the visitor cannot be the assassin."
"The visitor might have killed her and then have closed the door himself."
"Himself? How do you know the visitor was a man? It might have been a woman. Besides, Miss Bull told me that the door was locked as usual, and that she took the key this morning to open it from Mrs. Jersey's pocket. No, Train, the person who killed Mrs. Jersey is in the house. But were I you I should say as little as possible to the inspector about this."
Leonard took this advice, and, when questioned, simply stated that he had retired to bed at eleven and had heard nothing. Brendon made a similar statement, and Quex saw no reason to doubt their evidence.
He questioned all the boarders and all the servants, but could learn nothing likely to throw any light on the darkness which concealed the crime. No one had heard a noise in the night, no one had heard a scream, and it was conclusively proved that every one in the house was in bed by eleven o'clock; the majority, indeed, before that hour. Jarvey had been the last to retire, at half-past ten o'clock, and then he had left Madame in her sitting-room with a book and a glass of negus. She sent him off in a hurry and with, as he expressed it, "a flea in his ear"--being somewhat out of temper. It was thus apparent that Margery, who saw Madame at the striking of the hour, was the last person to see her alive. Mrs. Jersey went to her own sitting-room and there had been struck down.
"It was about twelve o'clock that she was stabbed," said the doctor, after he had made his examination; "but I can go only by the condition of the body. I should say a little before or after twelve. She was stabbed in the neck with a sharp instrument."