"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 eyes fixed on his. "Please, sir----" "Yes, Ann, go on," prompted the detective encouragingly. But the woman didn't go on; there crept into her face instead an obstinate look, her mouth closed tightly, and her hands ceased twitching. "I've told you everything, sir," she said quietly. "You've not told me you found the meter turned on when you got up next morning," replied the detective sternly. The woman's fat face turned haggard with anxiety, and then she began to cry softly with her apron to her eyes. "Why did you not tell us this, Ann?" "If you please, sir, I thought that the master mightn't like it if he knew. He's very particular about having the gas turned off at night, and he might have thought I had forgotten it." Colwyn gave her another searching look. "Even if that were true, Ann, you have no right to keep back anything that may tend to shield the guilty, or injure the innocent." "I didn't think it mattered, sir." "You still say that you heard nothing after you went to bed?" "No, sir. I fell asleep as soon as I got into bed." "So you said before, but you did not tell us the whole truth yesterday, you know, and I do not know whether to believe you now."