Crime scene: 162 mystery solving puzzles to find out who the murderer is

Chapter 68 Mrs. Burton's Lies
At 3:30 in the morning, the phone rang next to Detective Conrad Smith's bed.A woman's voice came from the phone: "Are you Mr. Smith?"

"Yes. Who are you?" "My name is Alice Burton. Come quickly, Mr. Smith, my husband has been murdered."

Smith took down her address.Outside the door, the north wind howled and the snow fell heavily. "This damn weather, it's really cold!" Smith said as he put on his overcoat and a thick woolen scarf. Forty minutes later he arrived at Mrs Burton's house.

Alice Burton, who seemed to have been expecting the arrival of the detective, immediately opened the door for Smith when the doorbell rang.As soon as Smith entered the room, he felt that the room was very warm, so he couldn't help taking off his scarf and coat.Mrs. Burton was in her nightgown and slippers, with unkempt hair and a pale face."The body is upstairs," she told Smith.

"Please talk about the specifics," Smith said.

"My husband and I fell asleep at 11:45 at night. I didn't know what happened. I woke up at about 3:25. It was strange to hear that my husband had no breath at all. After careful inspection, I realized that He's dead. He was killed."

"and after?"

"I'll come downstairs and call you right away. Then I saw the window was wide open." She pointed to the open window. "The murderer must have come in through that window, and then out through that window."

Smith walked to the window, only to feel the fierce cold wind blowing straight into the room, he shrank his neck and hurriedly closed the window.He turned to Mrs. Burton, who was still sobbing. "Let the autopsy be done by the police and the coroner. Maybe you'd like to tell me the truth before they get here!"

When Mrs. Burton heard what Smith said, her face became paler: "What do you mean?" Detective Smith sneered: "Because you didn't tell me the truth just now."

Why did Detective Smith think that Mrs. Burton was not telling the truth?
[Answer] It took Smith at least 40 minutes to get to Burton's house from the time he got the call.If, as Mrs. Burton said, she had discovered that the window was open before she called, the temperature of the room would have dropped on a cold, snowy night.But when Smith first entered Burton's house, he felt that the room was very warm.

(End of this chapter)