The window of his bedroom was so small that it was difficult to get
through, and there was a drop of more than eight feet from the ledge to
the hillside. After one or two attempts Colwyn got out feet foremost,
and when half way through wriggled his body round until he was able to
grasp the window-ledge and drop to the ground. The fall caused his heels
to sink deeply into the clay of the hillside, which was moist and sticky
after the rain.
Colwyn closely examined the impression his heels had made, and then
walked along until he stood underneath the window of the next room. It
was an easy matter to climb through this window, which was larger, and
closer to the ground--five feet from the hillside, at the most. Colwyn
sprang on to the ledge, and tried the window with his hand. It was
unlocked. He pushed up the lower pane, and entered the room.
From the window he walked straight to the bedside, noting, as he walked,
that his footsteps left on the carpet crumbs of the red earth from
outside, similar to those which had been found in the room the morning
after the murder. He next examined the broken incandescent burner in the
chandelier in the middle of the room, and took careful measurements of
the distances between the gas jet, the bedside and the door, observing,
as he did so, that the gaslight was almost in a line with the foot of
the bed. That was a point he had marked previously when Superintendent
Galloway had suggested that the incandescent burner was broken by the
murderer striking it with the corpse he was carrying. Colwyn had found
it difficult to accept that point of view at the time, but now, in the
light of recent discoveries, and the new theory of the crime which was
gradually taking shape in his mind, it seemed almost incredible that the
murderer, staggering under the weight of his ghastly burden, should have
taken anything but the shortest track to the door.
After examining the bed with an attentive eye, Colwyn next looked for
the small door in the wall. It was not apparent: the wall-paper appeared
to cover the whole of the wall on that side of the room in unbroken
continuity. But a closer inspection revealed a slight fissure or crack,
barely noticeable in the dark green wall-paper, extending an inch or so
beyond a small picture suspended near the door of the room. When the
picture was taken down the crack was more apparent, for it ran nearly
the whole length of the space. The door had been papered over when the
room was last papered, which was a long time ago, judging by the dingy
condition of the wall-paper, and the crack had been caused by the
shrinking of the woodwork of the door, as Colwyn had noticed the
previous night.
Colwyn let himself out of the room with the key Peggy had given him,
locked the door behind him, and took the key down to the kitchen. It was
still very early, and nobody was stirring. Having hung the key on the
hook of the dresser, he returned to his room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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