Desrolles shrugged his shoulders. Mrs. Evitt murmured something about her poor husband’s watch which had been a good one in its time, till one of the hands broke short off and the works went wrong. Mrs. Rawber had a clock on her bedroom mantelpiece, and had noticed the time when that awful cry awoke her, scared as she was. It was ten minutes after three.
‘And now it wants twenty to four,’ said the sergeant, looking at his watch. ‘If the husband did it, he must have done it a good hour before he gave the alarm; at least that’s my opinion. We shall hear what the doctor says. I’ll go and fetch him. Now, look here, my good people: if you value your own characters, you’ll none of you attempt to leave this house to-night. Your evidence will be wanted at the inquest to-morrow, and the quieter and closer you keep yourselves meanwhile the safer for you.’
‘I shall go back to bed,’ said Desrolles, ‘as I don’t see my way to being of any use.’
‘That’s the best thing you can do,’ said the sergeant, approvingly; ‘and you, ma’am,’ he added, turning to Mrs. Rawber, ‘had better follow the gentleman’s example.’
Mrs. Rawber felt as if her bedroom would be peopled with ghosts, but did not like to give utterance to her fears.
‘I’ll go down and set a light to my parlour fire, and mix myself a wine-glassful of something warm,’ she said. ‘I feel chilled to the marrow of my bones.’
‘You, ma’am, had better wait up here till I come back with the doctor,’ said the policeman.
Desrolles had returned to his room by this time. Mrs. Rawber went downstairs with the policeman, glad of his company so far. He waited politely while she struck a lucifer and lighted her candle, and then he hurried off to find the doctor.
‘There’s company in a fire,’ mused Mrs. Rawber, as she groped for wood and paper in the bottom of a cupboard not wholly innocent of black beetles.
There was company in a glass of hot gin-and-water, too, by-and-by, when the tiny kettle had been coaxed into a boil. Mrs. Rawber was a temperate woman, but she liked what she called her ‘little comforts,’ and an occasional tumbler of gin-and-water was one of them.