Cleek came toward her and smiled down into her pale face.
"If you would be so kind, Miss McCall, as to take up your position as it was last night when—when the murder was committed, I should be exceedingly grateful. Thanks very much. You really needn't be so frightened, you know. It's only a sort of grim dress rehearsal after the show instead of before. Just to get some sort of idea.
"Now, then, Sir Andrew, I take it, sat here in this chair"—he seated himself forthwith at the desk, and looked about him. "And you, Mr. Duggan, were in the centre, opposite, with your sister here at your left. You were at your husband's right hand, a little way back, Lady Paula? Oh, I see—just halfway behind his chair, in case he might need you. Of course, of course. The right position for a lord's lady to be.... Now, let me see. You, Miss Dowd, stood at the left hand, right back against the wall, with Miss Debenham on your left—oh, a little forward, eh? And Miss McCall on the other side of her. That's it. Now, I suppose, we are all in our places. Now, Mr. Narkom, if you'd be so good as to take up my present position and represent the ill-fated gentleman for one moment, I'll hop up and look about a bit. The scene's set, and we'll try and reconstruct the drama from anything any one would like to tell me. I believe one of the windows was open, was it not, Lady Paula?"
He turned to her so swiftly that she was taken back, and in her nervousness went a shade pale under her olive tan.
"I—don't know, Mr. Deland. I really never noticed...."
"But I did." It was Catherine Dowd who spoke, a note of decision in her clear voice. "The centre window was open, Mr. Deland—from the bottom. Wide open."
"Yes—of course it was," Maud Duggan broke in excitedly. "I remember noticing how the curtains blew while poor Father was speaking. Don't you, Ross?"
He shook his head miserably.
"I don't remember anything but what actually took place," he returned, in a low, unhappy voice. "I was so furious, Maud; you must remember the ignominy of—of Father calling in everyone like this to see my name struck out of the will! If he'd done it in private, even, it would not have been so bad, but in front of others, people who were not of our family"—his glance travelled from Johanna's mouse-like countenance to the inscrutable Catherine's. "It—it seemed hardly cricket to me, and I was boiling over. I wish to God I hadn't been! It would have made it much easier to bear—now!"
"My poor Ross!"