"Ah, these stairs!
They grow steeper for one so corpulent. At last!"
She pushed open the door and went sideways down the narrow passage.
Directly they had entered it they had a view of the room beyond. Madame
cried out, and Duncombe felt all his vague fears spring into a terrified
apprehension of actual evil.
The curtain before the window had been hastily drawn, but the lamp which
the portress carried was sufficient feebly to illuminate the room. The
table-cloth and a broken vase lay upon the floor. A few feet off was an
overturned chair. Upon the canopied bed lay a prostrate figure, the head
thrown back at an unnatural angle, the eyes open but glazed. Duncombe
dared do no more than cast one single horrified glance at it. Madame set
down the lamp upon the table, and made the room hideous with shrieks.
"Good God!" she cried. "It is the little one who is dead!"
Duncombe himself fetched in the gendarmes, and waited whilst they took
voluminous notes of the occurrence. The murder seemed to them and to
Madame to be one of a very common class. The assassin had left no clue
whatever behind him. The poor girl's rings had been torn from her
fingers, her little stock of jewellery ransacked, her purse was empty,
everything of value had been taken.
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