“Did you hear what I said to you?” angrily demanded Barrant.  “Were you not told not to interfere with these rooms in any way?  You have no right up here.”

“More right than you have to come into a house like a thief,” retorted Thalassa coldly.  “I have my work to do.  The place must be looked after, whether I’m spied on or not.”

“I advise you not to take that tone with me,” replied the detective.  “As you are here, you had better come into this room again, and shut the door behind you.  I have some questions I want to put to you.”

Thalassa followed Barrant into the room and stood by the table, the rays of the swinging-lamp throwing his brown face into sharp outline.  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

“I want you to tell me everything that happened in this house on the night your master was found dead.”

“There’s not much to tell,” began Thalassa slowly.  “When it happened I was down in the cellar, breaking some coal.  I heered my wife call out to me from the kitchen.  I went up from the cellar, and she was standing at the kitchen door, shaking like a leaf with fright.  She said there’d been a terrible crash right over her head in Mr. Turold’s study.  I took a lamp and went upstairs, and knocked at the door, but I got no reply.  I knocked three times as loud as I could, but there wasn’t a sound.  At that I gets afeered myself, so I put on my hat and coat to go across to the churchtown to fetch Dr. Ravenshaw.  Then a knock come to the front door, and when I opened the door there was the doctor and Mr. and Mrs. Pendleton.”

“How long was that after the crash upstairs?”

“No longer than it took me to go upstairs, knock at the door, and getting no answer, go downstairs to put on my coat and hat.  I was just winding a comforter round my throat when I heered the knock.”

“It did not occur to you to break in the door of your master’s room when you got no answer and found it locked?”

“No it never, and you wouldn’t have done it in my place.”

“You heard no sound of a shot?”

“Not down in the cellar.  I fancy I heered the sound of the clock falling.  It came to me all muffled like, though it frightened her rarely.”  He pointed downward to the kitchen.  “And it frightened the dog, too, started it barking.”

“Is that the dog I heard whining downstairs?”

“Maybe it is.  I’ve got it shut up in the cellar.”

“Whose dog is it?”

“His.”  Thalassa’s eyes travelled towards Robert Turold’s bedroom.

“Is it howling through grief?”

“More like from fright.  Dogs are like people, frightened of their own shadows, sometimes.  I shut it up because it kept trying to get upstairs to his room.  It’s a queer surly sort of brute, but fond enough of him.  He used to take it out for long walks.’?

“What kind of dog is it?”

“A retriever.”

“So that’s all that happened that night, is it?” said Barrant, in a meditative voice.  “You have told me all?”