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.

Half an hour before the alarm was given would be a quarter to eleven.

I have no doubt that what she heard was the report of the gun, and that this was the real instant of the murder.
"If this is so, we have now to determine what Barker and Mrs.Douglas, presuming that they are not the actual murderers, could have been doing from quarter to eleven, when the sound of the shot brought them down, until quarter past eleven, when they rang the bell and summoned the servants.