The mysterious gunshot in Anna Wetherell’s room turns an argument over an undisclosed location into a physical puzzle: a pistol is fired at close range, but Anna is unharmed and no impact can be found. The scene first resembles a sudden suicide attempt, then resists that explanation as Aubert Gascoigne and Joseph Pritchard test what happened. Its force comes from the gap between an unmistakable report and the absence of the damage a shot should have left.

The confrontation and the shot

Pritchard presses Anna to tell him where something is, escalating from a demand to an insult and another lunge. The object or place he wants her to reveal is not identified in this scene; the withholding itself is the immediate cause of the confrontation. When he advances, Anna reaches into her clothing and produces a small, single-loading muff pistol. Its compact size makes it easy to conceal, but the passage also stresses that it is capable of causing grave harm at close range.

The pistol is initially pointed the wrong way for Anna to use. She has to turn it in her hand, and the action becomes confused when several things happen together: Pritchard steps back and stumbles against the edge of a rug; a door bursts open and someone cries out; Anna turns toward the disturbance and moves forward. In that instant, the pistol fires while directed at her own breast. The sequence establishes the shot’s immediate circumstances without establishing whether Anna intended to fire at herself. Her startled movement, the awkward handling of the weapon, and the sudden noise at the door leave intention uncertain.

No injury, no visible impact

For a moment the people in the room do not move. Gascoigne then rushes to Anna and examines her. Although the pistol has been fired, her neck is unmarked, there is no blood, and she is breathing. Anna reaches toward her throat, while Gascoigne accuses her of having staged another scare with a harmless load. His anger is interrupted by a sob, making his reaction a mixture of alarm and reproach rather than calm certainty about what occurred.

The physical evidence soon complicates his accusation. The barrel is hot and there is a smell of gunpowder, but Pritchard sees neither a spent casing nor a hole in the smooth wall behind Anna. The three people look over the room and at Anna, but the expected trace of a bullet is absent. Pritchard lets the pistol hang from one finger before Gascoigne takes it and opens the barrel to inspect it. The weapon, which had seemed to offer a straightforward explanation for the incident, becomes the focus of an inquiry: it has apparently discharged, yet the room offers no visible account of where the shot went.

Reconstructing the discharge

Anna gets up and retrieves a tin box from beside the bed. Seven cartridges are rolling on a scrap of brown paper. Gascoigne touches them, passes the pistol back to Anna, and asks her to repeat the handling. She loads it again, this time turning the barrel sideways, fitting a cartridge into the breech, closing the barrel correctly, and cocking the weapon before handing it to him. Pritchard sees her as terrified and mechanically compliant. The repetition is therefore not simply a technical demonstration: it places Anna’s movements under observation while leaving her state of mind difficult to read.

Gascoigne steps away and fires at the bed’s headboard. This second discharge produces a clear result: a hole appears in the centre of the pillow, and the headboard behind it is checked. The contrast with the earlier shot is decisive. When the pistol is fired under observation, it leaves an evident mark; when it was directed toward Anna, no corresponding damage was found on her or the wall. The test confirms that the weapon can fire and that its ordinary discharge has a trace, but it does not recreate the first shot’s unexplained outcome.

The cartridge and the unresolved ending

After examining the headboard, Gascoigne asks what happened to the first cartridge. The witnesses look at the second cartridge, now visible and misshapen in his hand, and then exchange glances. Pritchard interprets the look between Anna and Gascoigne as one of understanding. The scene does not spell out what they have understood, identify the first cartridge’s condition, or give a complete mechanical explanation for the absent impact. Its ending offers recognition without exposition: the damaged cartridge becomes a concrete clue, while the meaning of that clue remains withheld.

The event thus moves through three incompatible impressions: an apparent self-inflicted shot, a suspected feint, and a discharge whose visible evidence does not match its apparent direction. The careful replay makes the discrepancy more legible without closing it. Anna’s room becomes a temporary site of examination, and the pistol changes from concealed means of defense into an object scrutinized for what it can prove. The final exchange preserves the incident’s central uncertainty: the shot is real enough to prompt a test, but its first result cannot be reconciled with the marks left by the second.