ed. "The entrance door at
the bottom of the staircase is kept locked."

"There are such things as skeleton keys," commented the detective.

Musard opened the door of the death-chamber and switched on the light.
Caldew walked at once to the bedside. He drew away the covering which
had been placed over the face of the young wife, and stood looking at
her.

Death had invested her with pathos, but not with dignity. On the pallor
of the death mask the tinted lips, the spots of rouge, the pencilled
eyebrows of the dead face, were as clearly revealed as print on a white
page. The lips were parted; the small white teeth were showing beneath
the upper lip. The little nose rose in the sharp outline of death;
between the half-closed eyelids the darkened blue eyes looked out
vacantly. The thick, fair hair, spotted with blood, flowed in disordered
waves over the white pillow; the numerous rings on the dead hands blazed
and glittered with hard brilliance in the electric light.

It was these costly jewels on the murdered girl's hands which prompted
the question which sprang to the detective's lips:

"Did the murderer take anything?" he asked. "Has anything been missed?"

"No," said Miss Heredith. "Nothing has been taken."

"Mrs. Heredith had more jewellery than this, I suppose?" pursued the
detective. "Brooches and necklaces, and that kind of thing. Where were
they kept?"

"Mrs. Heredith's jewel-case is downstairs, in the safe in the library,"
replied Miss Heredith. She did not feel called upon to add the
additional information that she had taken it there herself, and locked
it up, not half an hour before.

Detective Caldew made a mental note of the fact that the motive for the
crime was not robbery, unless, indeed, the murderer had become flurried,
and fled. His eye, glancing round the room, was attracted by the window
curtains, which were stirring faintly. He flung them back, and saw the
open window.

"How long has this window been open?" he asked.

Miss Heredith gave her reasons for believing that the window was closed
when she left Violet to go downstairs to the dining-room. Caldew
listened thoughtfully, and nodded his head in quick comprehension when
she added the information that the bedroom window was nearly twenty feet
from the ground.

"You think the murderer did not jump out of the window," he said. "The
more important point is, did he get in that way? It is not a difficult
matter to scale a wall to reach a wi