“You heard no other sound?” the coroner asked. “There was no one with Mr. Armstrong when he entered?”
“It was perfectly dark. There were no voices and I heard nothing. There was just the opening of the door, the shot, and the sound of somebody falling.”
“Then, while you went through the drawing-room and up-stairs to alarm the household, the criminal, whoever it was, could have escaped by the east door?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. That will do.”
I flatter myself that the coroner got little enough out of me. I saw Mr. Jamieson smiling to himself, and the coroner gave me up, after a time. I admitted I had found the body, said I had not known who it was until Mr. Jarvis told me, and ended by looking up at Barbara Fitzhugh and saying that in renting the house I had not expected to be involved in any family scandal. At which she turned purple.
The verdict was that Arnold Armstrong had met his death at the hands of a person or persons unknown, and we all prepared to leave. Barbara Fitzhugh flounced out without waiting to speak to me, but Mr. Harton came up, as I knew he would.
“You have decided to give up the house, I hope, Miss Innes,” he said. “Mrs. Armstrong has wired me again.”
“I am not going to give it up,” I maintained, “until I understand some things that are puzzling me. The day that the murderer is discovered, I will leave.”
“Then, judging by what I have heard, you will be back in the city very soon,” he said. And I knew that he suspected the discredited cashier of the Traders’ Bank.