The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr Page A

from Miles’s glass door—and sat down. And, in the few seconds’ interval while the set was warming up, she heard a woman’s voice speaking behind Miles’s glass door.
    “Now, she was startled a good deal. She knew Miles’s usual dislike of having anybody in his room when he could avoid it; and, furthermore, she knew everybody in the house was out… or was supposed to be out. The first thought that came into her head (she told me next morning) was a strong suspicion of Margaret, the maid. She knew Miles’s reputation as an old rip. Margaret’s a good-looking girl; and Mrs. Joe swears she’s often thought Miles was casting an eye in her direction; and Margaret was sometimes allowed in the room when nobody else was. (That’s excluding the nurse, but then Miss Corbett wasn’t what you’d call a good-looker or inclined towards dalliance.) So there sat Mrs. Joe while the radio began to tinkle, glaring at it and putting together in a rush every suspicious circumstance: Miles’s anxiety to be left alone that night, his bad temper when somebody knocked at the door, and she—didn’t like it.”
    Mark hesitated, and glanced shrewdly at Henderson before he spoke the last three words. Henderson was fidgeting.
    “So she got up, as quietly as she could, and went over to the glass door. There was a faint sound as though the voice were still speaking, but the radio was on now, and she couldn’t make out anything at all. And then she saw a vantage-point. A heavy brown-velvet curtain was drawn close over the door, but it had been pulled a little crookedly when it was closed. At the extreme left of the door, rather high up, there was a chink where the curtain made a bulge; and another at the right of the door, lower down. By straining, you could see through either of them with one eye. She looked first through the left-hand one, and then moved across and peeped through the other. There was no light in the sun porch except that bridge lamp at the other end, so there wasn’t much chance of her being seen from the other side. … Well, what she saw put her moral scruples at rest and convinced her that nothing of sexual luridness was going on. She had expected to find an appropriate through-the-keyhole drama, on patterned lines of wifely horror; maybe it was a let-down, but somehow the lines had got all crooked. …
    “Through the chink to the left, she could see nothing except the wall directly opposite her across the room, rather high up. In that wall (which is the rear wall of the house) there are two windows. Between the windows stands a very high-backed curious Carolean chair; and on the wall, which is panelled in walnut, hangs a small Greuze head of which Uncle Miles was fond. She could see the chair and had a good view of the painting; but no human beings. Then she looked through the chink at the right.
    “This time she saw Miles and some one else. There was the bed, its head against the wall on her right-hand, its side facing her. The only light in the room was that same dim shaded light over the head of the bed. Miles was sitting up in bed, in his dressing-gown, with an open book face downwards on his lap; and he was looking straight towards the glass door in the direction of Mrs. Joe—but not at her.
    “Facing him, her back to the glass door, stood a small woman. Remember that the light was dim, and she was in silhouette against it. She did not move; she was a kind of cloud; but it seemed a trifle strange that she did not move at all. Still, Mrs. Joe was close enough to make out every detail of her costume. And she describes it simply as ‘just exactly like that one in the gallery… you know.’ She explained which one she meant, that picture supposed to be the Marquise de Brinvilliers, but yet she would not mention it directly by name; just as you”—he looked at Henderson—”will never say, ‘the crypt.’ but only ‘that place.’
    “Now, what puzzled me for a second was why she should have thought