Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

As they reached the first-floor landing, after the girl had identified the kitchen, Robert said:

“Miss Kane said that the second flight of stairs was covered in �something hard,’ but the same carpet continues up from the first flight.”

“Only to the curve,” Marion said. “The bit that �shows.’ Round the corner it is drugget. A Victorian way of economising. Nowadays if you are poor you buy less expensive carpet and use it all the way up. But those were still the days when what the neighbours thought mattered.

The girl had been right about the third flight, too. The treads of the short flight to the attic were bare.

The all-important attic was a low square little box of a room, with the ceiling slanting abruptly down on three sides in conformity with the slate roof outside. It was lit only by the round window looking out to the front. A short stretch of slates sloped from below the window to the low white parapet.

The attic was completely bare of furnishing. Unnaturally bare, Robert thought, for so convenient and accessible a store-room.

“There used to be stuff here when we first came,” Marion said, as if answering him. “But when we found that we should be without help half the time we got rid of it.”

Grant turned to the girl with a questioning air.

“The bed was in that corner,” she said, pointing to the corner away from the window. “And next it was the wooden commode. And in this corner behind the door there were three empty travelling-cases – two suitcases and a trunk with a flat top. There was a chair but she took it away after I tried to break the window.” She referred to Marion without emotion, as if she were not present. “There is where I tried to break the window.”

It seemed to Robert that the crack looked much more than a few weeks old; but there was no denying that the crack was there.

Grant crossed to the far corner and bent to examine the bare floor, but it did not need close examination. Even from where he was standing by the door Robert could see the marks of castors on the floor where the bed had stood.

“There was a bed there,” Marion said. “It was one of the things we got rid of.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Let me think.