Chapter 30 Chapter 29 The Missing Witness

I ran wildly, shouted, and killed someone. "Mr. Raymond!" The voice was low and urgent. I heard it in my sleep, so I woke up and looked around.It was just dawn, and by the morning light, I saw someone standing at the door of the restaurant. This person was the homeless woman who had just moved in the night before.Angry and confused, I was about to send her away when, to my great shock, she pulled a red handkerchief from her pocket, which I recognized as Q. "take a look." As he spoke, he advanced quickly, slipping a note into my hand.Then without saying a word or looking at him, he closed the door and went out, leaving the room.

Shocked, I took the paper to the window, and in the growing morning light saw the following lines scrawled: Here she is, I see her.In the room marked with a cross in the bottom sketch.Wait until eight o'clock to go upstairs, and I will try to get Mrs. Belden out of the house. Then there is a sketch of the upstairs layout. So Hannah was indeed in the back room directly above the dining room, and I didn't mishear the footsteps upstairs last night.I am relieved, but also thrilled that a key witness in the Leavenworth murder will be face to face with me.We have every reason to believe that Hannah knows the horrific inside story of the murder.I lay down again and tried to sleep for another hour, but I quickly dismissed the idea and listened contentedly to the sounds the house and neighbors left and right started to wake up to.

Q closed the door, so I could only faintly hear Mrs. Belden coming downstairs.However, as soon as she entered the kitchen and found that the homeless woman left without saying goodbye and the back door was open, she immediately let out a short and surprised exclamation, which I heard clearly, and was not sure whether Q made a mistake by leaving so abruptly .Yet he did not misjudge Mrs. Belden's personality, for as soon as she entered the room next to mine she was busy preparing breakfast, and I could hear her muttering to herself. "Poor thing! She's not used to being shut up all night after living so long in the field."

What a pain to eat this breakfast!Dining as if nothing had happened, but being careful not to slip the tongue--hope I don't have to do this drudgery again!But in the end the ordeal was over and I was able to wait in my room to face Hannah, which was a moment of great anticipation and fear.Time passed slowly by minute by minute, the clock struck eight times, and the vibration of the pendulum stopped. Immediately there was a loud knock on the back door, and a little boy rushed into the kitchen, shouting at the top of his voice. "Papa's fit! Oh, Mrs. Belden! Papa's fit, come on!"

I got up naturally and went to the kitchen, where I saw Mrs. Belden's worried face on the porch. "There's a poor lumberjack down the street who's had a heart attack," she said. "I'm going to see him, can you watch the house for me? I shouldn't be away for long." Before I could answer, she grabbed a shawl and wrapped it around her head, and followed the boy into the street.The little boy was quite emotional. The house was suddenly dead silent, and I was overwhelmed with a terror I had never felt before.I wanted to leave the kitchen and go up the stairs to Hannah, but there seemed to be nothing I could do.But as soon as I got up the stairs, I found that the fear just now had turned into calmness, and instead I was more eager to try, hoping to use brute force to open the door at the top of the stairs. Although my nature is not like this, it may not be inappropriate for this occasion.

I came to a large room, apparently where Mrs. Belden had slept the previous night.I stopped only briefly to notice the signs of her restless sleep last night, and continued towards the door marked with a cross in Q's sketch for me.The door was made of pine boards, lightly painted.I stopped at the door and listened carefully.All was silent.I lifted the latch to push the door in, but it was locked from the inside.I stopped again and put my ear close to the keyhole.There was no sound in it, quieter than a grave.Panicked and overwhelmed, I looked around and asked myself what to do.Suddenly I remembered the sketch Q had drawn for me, that there was a door leading to the same room from across the hall.I immediately went around and tried to push it away with my hands.Unfortunately, the door was locked as tightly as before.In the end, when I was at a loss, I decided to use brute force to break in.I called Hannah by name for the first time and ordered her to open the door, but there was no response, so I said in a stern tone, "Hannah Chester, your hiding place has been exposed, if you still If you don’t open the door, don’t blame me for breaking in. Open the door immediately and save us trouble.”

Still no response. I took a step back and slammed on the door with all my strength.The door creaked, but remained firmly shut.I paused to make sure there was no movement inside, and slammed on the door again.This time, he exhausted all his breastfeeding strength, finally broke the hinge of the door, and rushed into the room.The room was stuffy, cold and dark, and it took me a while to come back to my senses and look around to see where I was.Fortunately, I observed it before proceeding to the next step.After a while, I saw a beautiful Irish face staring at me, pale and motionless, with clothes scattered on the bed beside me.The bed was against the wall on the same side as mine.

Affected by the dead atmosphere, if you hadn't prepared yourself just now, you might be completely at a loss now.Facing the silent body not far away, I unconsciously felt timid and anxious, and realized that her body lying under the patchwork quilt was like marble.I asked myself, is sleep really so similar to death?I was in front of a sleeping woman, there was no doubt about it, there was too much evidence of life in the room, such as the clothes placed in a circle on the floor before going to bed, and the dinner plate placed haphazardly on the chair by the door No matter how you look at the food inside, you can recognize that it is exactly the same as our breakfast dishes.Everything in the room did have signs of life, and it was the beginning of a new day no matter how you looked at it.

Her brow, however, was as white as an unpainted stud.His eyes were half-open but lifeless, and his arms were half-dragged, motionless.No matter how deeply asleep the unconscious body is, the eyelids should not be completely undisturbed.No matter how dull the ear is, it should be able to be awakened by the way I yelled just now.So I mustered up the courage, bent down and raised the hand with only the obvious scar, hoping to speak to her.Anything is fine as long as it wakes her up.However, as soon as my hand touched hers, an unspeakable sense of dread took over. Her hands were not only cold but also stiff.I let go of her hand in astonishment, took a step back, and looked at her face again.God!How can a living person look like this?Who ever sleeps so pale and so still?I bent down to her lips again, but there was no breath, not a breath.Shocked from the bottom of my heart, I decided to try one last time.I pulled off her clothes and put my hand on her heart.Her heart was beating like a stone.