"Yes."

"What a horrible thing! Why, only the day before yesterday I met her
on the stairs."

It was a banal statement, and Theydon knew it, but he blurted out the
first crazy words that would serve to cloak the monstrous thought
which leaped into his brain. And a picture danced before his mind's
eye, a picture, not of the fair and gracious woman who had been done
to death, but of a sweet-voiced girl in a white satin dress who was
saying to a fine-looking man standing by her side: "Dad, aren't you
coming home with me?"

His blurred senses were conscious of the strange medley produced by
the familiar noises of a railway station blending with the quietly
authoritative voice of the chief inspector.

"Mr. Furneaux and I have the inquiry in hand, Mr. Theydon," the
detective was saying. "We called at your flat, and Bates told us of
the sounds you both heard about 11:30 last night. I'm afraid we have
rather upset you by coming here, but Bates was unable to say what time
you would return home, so I thought you would not mind if we
accompanied him in order to find out the hour at which it would be
convenient for you to meet us at your flat-- this evening, of course."

"You have certainly given me the shock of my life," Theydon gasped.
"That poor woman dead, murdered! It's too awful! How was she killed?"

"She was strangled."