I have been trying some experiments after you left us this afternoon, and I find that no noise which MacDonald can make in the study can penetrate to me in the pantry when the doors are all shut.
"It is otherwise, however, from the housekeeper's room.

It is not so far down the corridor, and from it I could vaguely hear a voice when it was very loudly raised.

The sound from a shotgun is to some extent muffled when the discharge is at very close range, as it undoubtedly was in this instance.

It would not be very loud, and yet in the silence of the night it should have easily penetrated to Mrs.Allen's room.

She is, as she has told us, somewhat deaf; but none the less she mentioned in her evidence that she did hear something like a door slamming half an hour before the alarm was given.