The person who opened the door, and who occupied a little den at the back of the entrance-hall, was a woman of about forty, cleaner and fresher looking than the generality of portresses and caretakers. She was decently attired in a smart cotton gown, which fitted her buxom figure to perfection. Her face was clean, and her cap spotless. She had a pleasant open countenance, and Heathcote felt that he might believe anything she told him. He asked if there were any apartments to be let in the house. No, the portress told him. There were only old-established families living there. There had not been a floor to let for three years. "Indeed! Not the third floor, for example?" "No. But why does Monsieur inquire especially about the third floor?" the portress-asked, looking at him keenly with her bright black eyes. "I confess to having a particular curiosity about the third floor," replied Heathcote, judging that frankness would serve him best with this outspoken matron, "and if by any chance the family were absent----" "Monsieur would like to indulge a morbid curiosity," interrupted the portress, "to see the rooms which were occupied by a beautiful woman who was murdered. There was a time when I had twenty, forty, fifty such applications in a day, when all the idlers in Paris came here to spy about and to question. If the murder had been done in one of those very rooms instead of in the wood, I should have made my fortune. As it was, people stared and pried and touched things; as if the very curtains and the sofa cushions had been steeped in blood. But that was ten years ago. I wonder that Monsieur should feel any curiosity after all those years." "You were living in this house ten years ago, at the time of the murder?" questioned Heathcote eagerly. "Yes, Monsieur, and for three years before that. I was with Madame Georges from the day she first entered this house to the day she was carried out of it in her coffin. I am Barbe Leroux, born Girot. If you have heard of the murder of Marie Prévol, you must have heard of Barbe Girot, her servant. I was one of the chief witnesses before the _Juge d'Instruction_." "Madame, I have read your evidence," replied Heathcote. "I am deeply interested in the history of that terrible murder, and I rejoice in having met a lady who can, if she pleases, help me to unravel a mystery which baffled the police." "The police!" exclaimed Madame Leroux contemptuously; "the police are a parcel of no-great-things, or they would have found the man who killed my mistress and Monsieur de Maucroix in a week." "Provided that he stopped in Paris to be found. But it seems evident that he got away from Paris, and instantly, or he would have been taken red-handed." "I have reason to know that he was in Paris long after the murder," said Barbe decisively.