Annihilation by Isabel Ostrander

Orbit told of the afternoon's tragic experience again in detail for the inspector's benefit and McCarty and Dennis listened carefully, but it differed in no way from his first description. At its conclusion the medical examiner's assistant was announced. The inspector descended with Orbit but McCarty and his colleague discreetly effaced themselves.

"We're leaving just when it's getting good! " Dennis sighed with morbid relish as they went down the steps and out into the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. "I'd like to have had a good look by ourselves around that conservatory! That doctor may be all right for the fashionable, expensive ailments of the crowd around this neighborhood, but I've been fighting fires too long not to know what asphyxiation means and 'twas not that killed the poor young thing in that great vault of a room with the windows open wide behind her! -How the devil do you suppose she did come to die, Mac?"