The loneliness of the deserted wing was like a moving shuddering thing in the desolation of the silence and the darkness. It was as though the echoing corridor and the empty rooms were whispering, with the appeal of the forgotten, for friendly human companionship and light to disperse the horror of sinister shapes and brooding shadows which lurked in the abode of murder. Colwyn entered the bedroom where Mrs. Heredith had been murdered, and by the ray of his electric torch crossed to the bedside and switched on the light. He stood there motionless for a while, trying to picture the manner and the method of the murder. If Hazel Rath had spoken the truth, the murderer had stood where he was now standing when the girl entered the room in the darkness. Had the light from the corridor, streaming through the open door, revealed her approaching figure to him? How long had he been there in the darkness, waiting for the moment to kill the woman on the bed? If Nepcote was the murderer he must have entered almost immediately before, because he could not have reached the moat-house until nearly half-past seven, and the shot was fired at twenty minutes to eight. How had he known that Mrs. Heredith was there alone, in the darkness? A secret assignation might have been the explanation if the time had been after, instead of before the household's departure for the evening. But even the most wanton pair of lovers would hesitate to indulge their passion while the risk of chance discovery and exposure was so great. As he pondered over the two stories Colwyn did not attempt to shut his eyes to the fact that Hazel, on her own showing, fitted into the crime more completely than Nepcote. She had ample opportunities to slip into the room and murder the woman who had supplanted her. She had really strengthened the case against herself by the damaging admission that she had sought Mrs. Heredith's room in secret just before the crime was committed. Her explanation of the scream and the shot was so improbable as to sound incredible. It was not to be wondered that Scotland Yard preferred to believe that it was the apparition of the frantic girl, revolver in hand, which had caused her affrighted victim to utter one wild scream before the shot was fired which ended her life.