ed the door with the keys
that the Marquise had given into her care the night before; but she
told me herself that when she started to meet the train at five o'clock
the door was shut. Mlle. Therese had put her keys under her pillow, and
my bunch had never left my possession."

"Is it not possible," the magistrate suggested, "that someone may have
got in during the day, hidden himself, and have committed the crime when
night came? Remember, M. Dollon, the bolt inside Mme. de Langrune's
bedroom door has been wrenched away: that means that the murderer made
his entrance by that door, and made it by force."

But the steward shook his head.

"No, sir, nobody could have secreted himself in the chateau during the
day; people are always coming to the kitchen, so the back door is under
constant supervision; and all yesterday afternoon there were gardeners
at work on the lawn in front of the main entrance; if any stranger had
presented himself there he would certainly have been seen; and finally,
Mme. de Langrune had given orders, which I always attended to myself, to
keep the door locked through which one gets down to the cellars. So the
murderer could not have hidden in the basement, and where else could he
have hidden? Not in the rooms on the ground floor: there was company to
dinner last night, and all the rooms were used more or less; the
Marquise, or some one of the guests, would certainly have discovered
him. So he would have had to be upstairs, either on the first or second
floor: that is most unlikely: it would have been very risky; besides,
the big house-dog is fastened up at the foot of the staircase during the
day, and he would not have let any stranger pass him: either the dog
must have known the man, or at all events some meat must have been
thrown to him; but there are no traces to show that anything of the sort
was done."

The magistrate was much perplexed.

"Then the crime is inexplicable, M. Dollon. You have just told me
yourself that there was no one in the chateau but Mme. de Langrune, the
two young people Therese and Charles, and the two maids: it certainly is
not any one of those who can be the guilty person, for the way in which
the crime was committed, and the force of the blows dealt, show that
the criminal was a man--a professional murderer in fact. Consequently
the guilty person must have got in from outside. Come now, have you no
suspicions at all?"

The steward raised his arms and let them fal