Alice said slowly, "Just after I woke up I thought I heard a sound."
"Yes?" said Duff.
"A funny litde sound. I heard it once before. When I was on my way downstairs I heard it as if it were down there. The evening Innes was hurt. The doctor was here. I was going down after his bag. It's a little sound in the throat. I can't describe it."
"You heard it again last night!" Fred said with excitement.
"When have you heard it?" Duff asked him. "Or haven't you?"
"I think I know what she means. I heard it right after the lamp fell. As if it were up here."
"The same sound, you think?"
"I think so," Fred said. "And Josephine tells me she heard something like it, too, down at the foot of the hill, just before we left here in the car, just before our accident."
"Just before something happens, you hear noises," said Duff. "Three of you each heard at different times a small indescribable sound?"
"Nothing happened after I heard it the first time," Alice pointed out.
"How do we know?" Duff said.
"But . . ."
"No two of you heard it at the same time, I take it?"
"No, but something makes that sound. Doesn't it mean— What can it mean?"
"We must keep it in mind," said Duff, "although if the sounds weren't identical, you see, it needn't mean anything. Unless . . . Mr. Whitlock, do you know of any such sound? Has one of your sisters the habit of clearing her throat or coughing or anything of the sort?"
"I couldn't tell you," said Innes. "Not that I can remember. I'm so useless. I just don't know." He flung his palms up on the bedspread.
"Tell me," said Duff suddenly to Alice, "what was the feeling? How do you imagine die person felt who made that sound? Was there a feeling to it? If so, what was it? Don't say. You try to remember, too, Fred. What feeling does it suggest to you? Make up your minds before you hear each other's judgment. Don't analyze. Just try to remember your first quick impression."
"I think I know," said Alice in a moment
"Me, too," said Fred. Duff nodded. "It was dirty," Fred said. "Something mean about it."
"I thought it was triumphant,'' said Alice, "and satisfied and excited, too."
"Thank you," said Duff. "Now, what happened after twelve o'clock?"
"I woke up," said Alice, "and I couldn't get to sleep. I began to feel cold. Finally I got to worrying about Fred's being cold because it was freezing, really. Besides, I couldn't sleep. So I got up and came out here. That was about two o'clock, I guess."
"Was the heat coming into your room as usual when you first went to bed? Do you remember?"
"Yes, it was. I'm quite sure."
"That's helpful," said Duff. "Because, of course, the heat stopped coming up through out the rest of the house after the deed was done. The heat was normal at eleven ten?"
"Oh, yes, I know it was."
"Then the deed was not done until after eleven ten. Fred, nobody moved in the upstairs hall after that hour?"
"Nobody," said Fred. "Nobody that I saw."
"Could anyone have come up the front stairs without your seeing them?"
"Maud might have," Fred admitted, "if she turned sharp at the very top step and went off the hall toward her own room. I can't see that part. I should think I would have heard her."
"I did hear her," said Alice in a low voice.
"But nobody came this way, to Isabel's room?"
"Nobody, until Alice came."
"And after that?"
"We smelled it. I mean Alice did. I'd been sitting there so long, I guess I wouldn't have noticed it for a while longer."
"Mr. Whitlock, you had fallen asleep with the help of a drug? And you smelled nothing?"
Innes plucked at his spread. His eyes went miserably to Alice. "Very few people know this," he said, "and it's fairly imimportant, but ... I ... I have no sense of smell. You see, we Whitlocks all lack something." He said it as if he hoped it would be a joke, but he was ashamed. He was afraid Alice would recoil from him. He would never in all his life have admitted this, she knew, had he not been forced to.
She tried to smile at him. "You're lucky," she said. "You got off the easiest." But, she thought, never any perfume of flowers or of good cooking or salt in the air. And she did recoil, invisibly.
"Who knows about this lack of yours?" Duff was asking.
"My family."
Alice, thinking of the advantages, began to laugh a little
hysterically. "I wondered how you could get so close to her. Oh . . ." She choked.
"To whom?"
"Maud," said Alice. "Oh, Mr. Duff, she's dreadful!"
"I know what you mean," said Fred, with his nose wrinkled.
"What do you mean?" demanded Innes. "What are you talking about?"
"She smells . . . well. . . like an Indian," said Fred.
"Does she indeed?" Duff said.
Alice put her head in her hands. "I'm sorry, Innes. They're your sisters. Are we crazy, Mr. Duff? Is there something ugly and malign and wicked ... or are we just cruel to think so because we are healthy and they are more or less . . . deformed?"
Duff said, "I've wondered. I think it is remarkably self-critical of you, Alice, to be able to think of that."
Innes said, "Alice is sweet and good."
"I'm not."
He paid no attention. "But please don't think because they're my sisters that any of you have to guard your tongues with me. I never liked them, and they never loved me. Never. I was a little boy, and they were young ladies, and I never felt the slightest warmth from any of them. But they . . . they awe me." His voice sank. "When I get away from here I can make myself believe they don't matter very much. Put them in their place, you know. I can even feel sorry for them.
"But the minute I step back into this house, I believe again. They seem just as important as they think they are. And this house, kept up just as it used to be, and their reputations here, and the whole Whitlock background, sucks me back in. I can't help it. I. . . dislike them. They make me nervous."
Innes wound up with this understatement and looked defiantly at them all.
"They never loved you," said Duff. "Did they love their parents?"
"No. I don't know. Papa used to crack the whip. They'd hover around him like . . . like a chorus, you know. His three daughters. That's what they were. His. Like his coattails. And he got away with it."
"They resented him?"
"I don't know. But I don't think they loved him. If they loved anyone, it would have been their mother. She was dead before I was born, and Gertrude made her into a legend. But I don't know. I wasn't here. She was supposed to be something superfine, and my father was her worthy consort. And my mother wasn't worthy of him. All I know is, they don't. . . aren't affectionate."
"Toward each other?"
"No," said Innes. "Toward anybody."
"You speak as if they were all alike?" Duff made this a question.
"No, no. It's Gertrude, really. Gertrude blames me, you know. Shell always blame me, and she's cold. Maud's not . . . well, you can get along with Maud. She's happy-go-lucky. She doesn't care if you know she doesn't care. So you don't mind so much. Isabel stays away because she's always got some worry of her own. It's Gertrude who t-terrifies me now."
Duff said, calmly, "We are getting into the realm of emotion, and very helpfully so; but have we come to the end of our other set of facts? Let's be sure. Does anything occur to any of you?"
"No. But what occurs to you?" Fred said boldly.
"Only this," Duff said. "These tremendous hot-air pipes that run through the walls magnify sound, don't they? Turning the dampers is not a perfectly silent operation. They were turned while Mr. Whitlock was asleep, and Alice was asleep. And while Fred was in the hall, rather far from any register. Unless any of you heard such a sound."
"There was the storm," Alice said. "It was so noisy."
"Yet you heard the little queer cough?"
"I know," she admitted, "but it came in a kind of lull, and it was near."