oms."

"What time was that?" asked the detective.

"Just half-past ten. I happened to glance at the kitchen clock at the
time. Charles, who had been told that he wouldn't be wanted upstairs
again, had gone to bed quite half an hour before, but I didn't go until
I had folded some clothes which I had airing in front of the kitchen
fire. When I did get to bed, and was just falling off to sleep, I
suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to turn off the gas at the
meter. I got out of bed again, lit my candle, and went up the passage to
the meter, which is just under the foot of the stairs, turned off the
gas, and went back to bed."

"Did you notice the time then?"

"The kitchen clock was just chiming eleven as I got back to my bed."

"You are sure it was not twelve?"

"Quite sure, sir."

"Did you hear any sound upstairs?"

"No, sir. It was as quiet as the dead."

"Was it raining at that time?"

"It started to rain heavens hard just as I got back to bed, but before
that the wind was moaning round the house, as it do moan in these parts,
and I knew we was in for a storm. I was glad enough to get back to my
warm bed."

"You might have seen something, if you had been a little later. The
staircase is the only way the body could have been brought down from
_there_." The detective pointed to the room above where the dead man
lay.

The woman trembled violently.

"It's God's mercy I didn't see something," she said, and her voice fell
to a husky whisper. "I should 'a' died wi' fright if I had seen _it_
being brought downstairs. All day long I've been thanking God I didn't
see anything."

"Do nobody else but you and Charles sleep downstairs?"

"Nobody, sir. I sleep in a small room off the kitchen, but Charles
sleeps in one of the rooms in the passage which leads off the kitchen,
the first room, not far from my own. But that'd been no help to me if
I'd seen anything. I might have screamed the house down before Charles
would have heard me, he being stone deaf."

"Quite true, Ann. And now is that all you have to tell me about the
gas?"

The woman seemed to have some difficulty in replying, but finally she
stammered out in an embarrassed voice, plucking at her apron the while:

"Yes, sir."

"Look at me, Ann, and tell me the truth. Come now, it will be better for
everybody."

The countrywoman looked at the detective with whitening face, and there
was something in his penetrating gaze that kept her frightened eye