“Beyond the east wing?” muttered Inspector Aylesbury. “Now, let me see.” He turned ponderously in his chair, gazing out of the windows. “We look out on the south here? You say the sound of the shot came from the east?”
“So it seemed to me.”
“Oh.” This piece of information seemed badly to puzzle him. “And what then?”
“I was so startled that I ran to the door before I remembered that I could not walk.”
She glanced aside at me with a tired smile, and laid her hand upon my arm in an oddly caressing way, as if to say, “He is so stupid; I should not have expressed myself in that way.”
Truly enough the Inspector misunderstood, for:
“I don’t follow what you mean, Madame,” he declared. “You say you forgot that you could not walk?”
“No, no, I expressed myself wrongly,” Madame replied in a weary voice. “The fright, the terror, gave me strength to stagger to the door, and there I fell and swooned.”
“Oh, I see. You speak of fright and terror. Were these caused by the sound of the shot?”
“For some reason my cousin believed himself to be in peril,” explained Madame. “He went in dread of assassination, you understand? Very well, he caused me to feel this dread, also. When I heard the shot, something told me, something told me that—” she paused, and suddenly placing her hands before her face, added in a whisper—“that it had come.”