“Yeah. Then you heard him walking to the foyer, and then you heard noises. What kind of noises?”
“I don’t know. Just noises, movements. It is far away, and doors were closed. The noises were faint.”
“Voices?”
“No. I didn’t hear any.”
“Did you hear your husband closing the foyer door after he got there?”
“No. I wouldn’t hear that unless it banged.”
“Then we’ll try this. Since you were listening to his footsteps, even if you couldn’t hear them any more after he got into the drawing-room, there was a moment when you figured that he had reached the foyer. You know what I mean, the feeling that he was there. When I say Now, that will mean that he has just reached the foyer, and you begin feeling the time, the passing of time. Feel it as near the same as you can, and when it’s time for the first shot to go off, you say Now.—Get it? Now.”
I looked at the second hand of my watch; it went crawling up from the 30. She said, “ Now.”
I stared at her. “My God, that was only six seconds.”
She nodded. “It was as short as that, I’m sure it was.”