"Well, we're waiting for this suggestion!"
"Oh!—Well, it seems to me that when this lady, whose shadow excited the young gentleman so much, disappeared as if it went forward, perhaps it did go forward, perhaps she ran out of the room. You can see—if you don't mind stopping to think about it—that she must have been standing right opposite the door. If she had been quarreling with Mr. Ingham, he may have bolted the door after her. I don't know if you've looked—but the button for the lights is right there—in the panel of the wall between the door and the bedroom arch. Mr. Ingham was a very nervous, emotional person. If there had been a scene, he might very well have meant to switch the lights out after her, too. If he had his finger on the button when the bullet struck him, he might very well, in the shock, have pressed it. And then the lights would have gone out, almost as if the bullet had put them out, just as the young man says. But, of course, if this were what had happened, you would have thought of it for yourself." And she looked up meekly at him, with her sweet smile.
The coroner smiled, too, with compressed lips, and putting his hands in his pockets, threw back his head. "And how do you think, then, that—if he was killed instantly, as the doctors have testified,—the corpse walked into the bedroom, where it was found?"
"Ah!" said Christina, "I can't account for everything! I'm not an observer, like you! But there has never been, has there, a doctor who was ever wrong? Of course, I don't pretend to know."
"Well, it's a pretty theory, my dear young lady, and I'm sure you mean to work it out for us all you can. So give us a hint where this bullet, coming through an open window, was fired from."
"It could have been fired from the apartment opposite. Across the entrance-court. You remember, the policeman who went in there found that the windows exactly—do you call it 'tallied'?"
"Very good, Miss Hope. If it were an unoccupied apartment. But it is occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Willing, and Mrs. Willing was in the apartment the entire evening."
"Yes," said Christina, turning and looking pleasantly at the lady mentioned, "alone." Then she was silent.
After a staggered instant, the coroner asked, "And what became of this lady who ran out into the hall?"
"Well, of course," said Christina, sweetly, "if it was Mrs. Willing—"