“The front.”
Mason kept gently urging her forward. He opened the door of the bedroom, pushed a light switch, and paused, surveying the interior. Opal Sunley jerked back away from the door.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t! I won’t! Don’t try to make me!”
“Okay,” Mason said, “take it easy.”
The woman who lay sprawled on the floor in front of the dressing table had quite evidently fallen from the padded bench. She was dressed for the street, even to her hat, which had been pushed to one side of her head when she fell. She was lying on her left side, her left arm stretching out, her left hand clutching at the carpet. The fingers were short, stubby, and competent. The nails were close-cut, uncolored. The right arm lay across the body. The fingers of the right hand still clutched the handle of a grim snub-nosed revolver. She had evidently been shot once, just slightly to one side of the left breast.
Mason walked across the room, bent over, and placed his forefinger on the woman’s left wrist.
The young woman in the doorway stood staring as though torn between a desire to run screaming from the house, and an urge to see every move that was made.
Mason straightened from his examination. “All right,” he said, “we’ll have to notify the police.”
“No, no, no!” she cried. “You mustn’t! You can’t!”
“Why not?”