“But yes. Of course. She was alone. She could not lift him.”
“I see,” Sperry said thoughtfully. “No, I daresay she couldn’t. Was the revolver on the floor also?”
“Yes, doctor. I myself picked it up.”
To Sperry she showed, I observed, a slight deference, but when she glanced at me, as she did after each reply, I thought her expression slightly altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was explained when Sperry started down the stairs.
“Monsieur is of the police?” she asked, with a Frenchwoman’s timid respect for the constabulary.
I hesitated before I answered. I am a truthful man, and I hate unnecessary lying. But I ask consideration of the circumstances. Neither then nor at any time later was the solving of the Wells mystery the prime motive behind the course I laid out and consistently followed. I felt that we might be on the verge of some great psychic discovery, one which would revolutionize human thought and to a certain extent human action. And toward that end I was prepared to go to almost any length.
“I am making a few investigations,” I told her. “You say Mrs. Wells was alone in the house, except for her husband?”
“The children.”
“Mr. Wells was shaving, I believe, when the—er—impulse overtook him?”
There was no doubt as to her surprise. “Shaving? I think not.”