admit?”
“That you were on the balcony.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Then how did your slipper get there?”
“It fell from my foot.”
Lieutenant Valcour stood up abruptly. “You will have to pardon me, Mrs. Endicott,” he said, “while I search this room.”
“You misunderstand me. I mean exactly what I say. I wasn’t on the balcony, and the slipper did fall off my foot. If you must know it, I was straddling the window sill.”
“What stopped you from going out, Mrs. Endicott?”
“The sound of the shooting. It unnerved me. I almost fell back into the room and closed the window. I knew that I had dropped a slipper outside, but the idea of doing anything further than hurrying back into bed terrified me.”
Lieutenant Valcour examined the slipper he still held in his hand. “This is a slipper for the left foot,” he said. “And in that case, when you were straddling the window it is the foot which must have been on the outside. Isn’t that so?”
“That’s rather elementary, isn’t it?”
“Quite. But it serves to prove that at the moment when the shots were fired you could look along the balcony toward the windows of your husband’s room. Did you?”
“I imagine so. I’m not quite certain, really. It was absolutely dark out there.”