After the shot, try as quietly, as persistently as she might, her memory was less clear, and perhaps the fact that it had had that effect upon her might be held to show that it was less than a purposed thing. She had screamed for help. That had been natural. There had been no acting in that. But she did not know now whether she had secured the letters then, or after Gerard went out, and before the palpitating cook came into the room. Nor was she sure when she had laid the pistol on the table, after she had first dropped it on the floor when it went of.
She remembered thinking that her finger marks ought to be wiped away—she thought that was after Gerard had come in, and she had said that whoever had shot Daniel must have left by the window, and he had gone out to look round the lawn. She could not remember wiping it, nor with what it had been done, but she supposed she had, or there would have been evidence against her which would not have been overlooked.
She saw, looking back, that it was queer that Gerard should have gone out so readily to look round, unless, indeed, he were relying on the probability that a murderer would not linger at the scene of his crime. He was not of a courageous reputation. But she knew now that he had left that window himself only two minutes before she entered. She had heard his voice in dispute with Sir Daniel as she had gone into the kitchen, and he must only just have left and entered the study as she came back to see the postman at the door. He had not gone out in bold pursuit of some strange shedder of human blood, but to ask Tommy whether anyone had entered by the study window, after he came out, or had left before his present appearance.
When he had come back with a half-frightened, half-curious Tommy, and the more phlegmatic Bulger behind him, and they had lifted a dead or dying man on to the couch, he had looked at her with eyes that were more scared than before. And when they were alone together a few minutes later, in that brief interval between the police (summoned on the telephone by her own instructions, and Pauline’s frightened voice) had appeared, he had looked at her in the same puzzled, terrified way, and had said: “I can’t make it out. I can’t see who it could be. I was with him two minutes before.” And then, as she only answered, her coolness returning before the panic he showed and the danger signal his words supplied: “It must have been very quick,” he had added, with visibly trembling lips, “They’ll think it was you or me.”
“Well,” she had said firmly, “we shall say it wasn’t, and we should know better than they. We were here and they weren’t.”
“I hadn’t left him two minutes,” he had said again, in a helpless way.
“It must have been more than you thought.”
“And Tommy says nobody went out.”
“Tommy! You surely don’t take anything he says seriously; he may have been looking up at the clouds.”
He had said nothing to that, but gone out to the garden again, and when Superintendent Trackfield questioned the boy half an hour later, he had a pound note in his pocket and an urgent instruction to say that he had not seen Mr. Gerard come out of the window on the first occasion.
As the Superintendent’s questions had, very naturally, been directed more particularly to ascertaining whether he had seen anyone come out after the shot had been fired, or go in before, Tommy had sustained this examination quite easily. And it was only next morning, when Gerard had told her what he had done, that she had given him reason to doubt the wisdom of such a bribe.
After that she had held her ground, lying no more than she must. She had resolved, with a clear wisdom, to speak and act just as she would have done if her tale had been really true—if, in fact, she had run into the room at the sound of the shot, to find her husband dead on the floor. By this means she not only took the course best calculated to impress others with her own sincerity, and the truth of the tale she told, but it had even begun to assume an illusion of reality to her own mind.
She was not sure that she could not have rested mentally content with that artificial memory, nor that it might not have gradually blurred the event itself, if the trouble had ended there. Even now, as she faced it with determination to put nothing aside, to condone nothing that she had done, she saw it as a tragedy in the Greek sense, in which evil comes from the hands of surrounding fates, rather than as the logical consequence of human action, or retribution for human sin. It was at least half true that it was a thing that she had not meant, and perhaps better than that. But the trouble had not ended there. There was the death of Gerard Denton to face, and that might prove to be the more difficult thing. Well, at least she would not be a coward. She would face what she had done, and the cause she had.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
It had been deliberately done. She must not disguise that. But the provocation, as it seemed to her—it might almost be called the necessity—had been very great. As they had talked on the Highcombe road, she had seen, with that unflinching clarity of mind that would not avoid the logic of facts, however sinister they might be, that they were approaching a point when it would be Gerard or she who must face a criminal trial, with its almost certain consequence of conviction and penal misery, or a shameful death. And it would be Gerard’s fault and not hers. The fact that it was her hand by whom Sir Daniel had died was incidental, not being the immediate cause of the danger to which she came. She was outfacing that. But Gerard’s weakness and folly were drawing her back to the edge of the hateful pit.
For his cry was the same as it had been in the earlier day, but had become more insistent now. Women were seldom hanged. It would be fifteen years for her at the worst, and perhaps less. Fifteen years! In a gaol! She said no to that. She said that if he told the truth (in a frugal way), she would ask no more, and he would have no cause for the cowardly panic in which he shook. But he could not be relied on, even for that. He was full of fears that he would not be believed. That Tommy would have been persuaded to lie. That he would be detained at the police station, and never escape alive from the cruel blundering hands of the law.
She had not disguised from herself that there was a risk of that. And thence a risk for herself.
It was not only that Gerard, being so cornered, and thinking only of how best he could save his own neck from the rope, might be sufficiently circumstantial in details known only to themselves to obtain credence which would turn suspicion upon herself to an over-whelming degree. It was that, paradoxically enough, in the light of that which she was about to do, she knew that she could not let him stand in such a peril, and not come forward with the truth that would set him free. Hating and despising him as she did it, and cursing his cowardice as the cause, she yet knew that that was what she would do.
She had been afraid to turn back, leaving him in the mood he was, and afraid of the way he talked on the public road. An old woman had passed them with a curious look, overhearing something that he had said in too loud a voice. It is in such ways that gossip starts.
It had been with no other purpose than to draw him to a quieter path, while she made a last effort to stir within him a manhood that was not there, that she had proposed that they should turn to the quarry path. A path where it was thousands to one that no one would be at that chilly hour, which was yet too early for it to be the resort of wandering lovers from Beacon’s Cross.
“Come this way,” she had said, “we can talk quietly here.” Honestly, she could not say when the thought of release had come; but it had been deliberately in her mind while she had continued further than he would have gone, where the path narrowed along the sheer edge of the pit.
And at last he had made it an easy thing. He had, naturally, walked on the outer side. There was not much room for two, walking abreast, unless one should be content to be torn on the brambled hedge. And as he talked in his agitation he had not been careful of where he went.
That was true, but she would not fool herself about that. At the last, it had been deliberately done. She remembered the thought that it must not be so that he could catch at her to save himself, so that she might be dragged to the same death. And the
n it had proved to be such an easy thing! She need not have pushed nearly so hard as she did. He would have overbalanced at a mere touch, and in ten seconds he must have died.
It had been far, far the best thing—might you not call it the only way?
No, not that, not the only way. Not, perhaps, the one most to her honour at this tribunal of her own mind, which she would not shirk. How much could be fairly said? It had been—paradoxically again she found some comfort in this—what Sir Daniel would have wished her to do. She was quite sure about that. He would have thought it better a thousand times that Gerard should come to a futile end than that the whole scandal should be exposed, and his wife degraded to a felon’s cell and a felon’s doom. Let it be settled amongst themselves. That was how he would have preferred it to be.
Thinking thus she saw that, had it been left to them, there would have been no cause for a second death. It was the interference of their fellow men, who would not be content unless they should know how Sir Daniel died. She must not turn aside to consider the ethics of that. It was her own conduct, her own guilt, that concerned her now.
And the fact was that she had pushed a man to his death, to escape the risk of social ruin, of shame, of possible death, and of the degradations of prison life which are worse than any possible death could be. She had done that in no moment of panic, in no mood of weakness to be repented in stronger hours, but deliberately, in the extremity of her own fear. And she would do it again. If she were to be honest with her own soul, she must recognize that. Given the same extremity of danger—through the weakness, or folly, or possible treachery of a man of Gerard Denton’s type—she would do it again. She had no doubt about that. Yet, if he had been in peril of being hanged for her deed, she would have spoken the truth to save him, at whatever cost to herself. She recognized that, seeing just how base she was, and no more. And having faced these things, from the first pleasure of sin to the last (if last it were) of the bitter fruit that it bore, what should she do now?
She knew that there were some who would say that it was her duty now to confess and expiate her sin, handing herself over to the retribution that would be dealt out by her fellow men, but what use would there be in that? It would do evil to herself, wrecking her life. But was there any living man or woman or child to whom it would do the slightest conceivable good? It would bring peace, they would say, to her own soul. But even if that were true, and that such peace could be reached in no better way, which were two propositions of some apparent improbability, it would still be no more than a higher selfishness which would regard that as a decisive argument.
Apart from that, it might be said that it would complete Redwin’s revenge. And, when she looked at the events of the last three weeks in a broader way than that of her own personal part therein, she saw that it was by his act, if not by his hand, that her husband and her husband’s brother had come to their violent ends. That was the fruit that Redwin’s revenge, really aimed at herself, had already borne. She could confess that they had died by her acts, and so make that revenge complete. He would read of it and be glad. (She did not know that he now had his own troubles, which would limit his opportunities of learning the news of the day.) That would be the one certain consequence, if she should make confession of the blood that was on her hands. She would complete Redwin’s revenge. And the house would be broken up, the servants discharged.
She saw it in her imagination, desolate and empty, and the garden neglected and overgrown. She could see no result beyond that. Would it not be a nobler, as well as a saner thing, to put the past out of her thoughts and serve the present as best she could, reconstructing her life to some better purpose, both for herself and others, than it would be likely to serve in a prison cell?
Resolving thus, she got up. She had told Pauline not to disturb her till she should ring for tea. Now she touched the bell. She had done with introspection and vain regrets. “The moving finger writes, and having writ.…” No one can alter the past. She must concern herself with that which would be written tomorrow; with that which was being written today.
Pauline came in with the tea. There was a letter upon the tray, and it was addressed to her in George Mansell’s hand—the hand of the man who had passed into the desert silence two years ago, and since been reported dead.
She saw all that it meant—that it must mean—before she tore it open with a hand that trembled as it had not done for any stress of the past weeks. For she read the verdict of Heaven that she was to be punished, beyond the customs or imaginations of men, with the burden of a great joy.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Chief Inspector Pinkey saw the Assistant Commissioner. He laid two letters before him.
“These,” he said, “were among Forsyth’s papers at the room where he was caught.”
Sir Arthur Renfrew read them.
“I suppose,” he said, “you connect them with the Denton case?”
“Yes, and with the hints he gave that we were not on the right track.”
Sir Arthur was silent for some time, recalling the circumstances of the case as they had been reported to him, in a very clear and logical mind.
“They raise questions,” he said.
“Yes, several.”
“Remotely, they give a motive for suicide.”
“It wasn’t that.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“I never have felt quite satisfied.”
“You mean that the local police may have been right after all?”
“Yes. I don’t know what conclusion I might have come to at last. Gerard Denton’s suicide really took it out of our hands.”
“There are the verdicts of the Coroner’s juries. But when new evidence comes to our hands.”
“Yes, but how far does it go, at the most? We might possibly work up a case. We might get a committal. A conviction wouldn’t be easy.”
“You think it’s a case where we should let sleeping dogs lie?”
“We don’t want to head for trouble we needn’t have. And I’m a long way from being sure now, let alone seeing a case that could be legally proved.”
“What sort of a woman is she?”
“Cool. Attractive. Got brains.”
“The cold-blooded sort, I suppose? The type that we usually meet in this class of crime?”
“Not exactly. Not cold-blooded, I should say. Self-control, yes.”
“Is she a type that might do the same thing again?”
“Normally, no. Presuming she did it once—I should say not.”
Sir Arthur was a conscientious man, to whom expediency was not the sole god of the official mind. If he thought it right to reopen the case, he might not be deterred by the fact that it would be difficult, and possibly troublesome, with risks to the prestige of his office, if it should go wrong, all of which could be avoided by letting it lie quiet. He had imagination also that would look at times to the consequences of official acts, which were not always pleasant considerations. He said: “I won’t decide now. You can leave the letters with me. Ask me about it tomorrow.”
When Inspector Pinkey had left, he read the letters with care, considering what they revealed, both of their writers and those to whom they were addressed, and also what their evidential value might be.
One, which had been retained by Redwin when he had sent the packet containing the others to Sir Daniel, was from George to Adelaide. A love-letter with an old date. The other was from Adelaide Denton to “Mr. Redwin,” written a few days before her husband’s murder. Its phrases were carefully ambiguous, but, in the light of the other letter, and the fact that they had been pinned together as being parts of one matter, the meaning was not beyond reading by Sir Arthur’s experienced eyes.
“Blackmail,” he said to himself, “but beyond that.…” It was a long way from convicting Adelaide Denton of her husband’s murder. And to do that, Gerard Denton’s part in the matter must be defined or cleared out of the way. And there was the verdict of the Coroner’s jury. Even
if it were wrong, of which there was no proof, it was hard to say how or by whose hand he had died, if it had not been his own. And there was no case of a miscarriage of justice having occurred from which the living might suffer now. The verdicts had applied only to those who were dead. And the case which must be reopened, if at all, to such dubious ends had been closed in an officially satisfactory way.
“No,” he said at length, “I don’t see that we can do anything more. I think we must let it be.”
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY S. FOWLER WRIGHT
Arresting Delia: An Inspector Cleveland Classic Crime Novel
The Attic Murder: An Inspector Combridge & Mr. Jellipot Classic Crime Novel
The Bell Street Murders: An Inspector Combridge & Mr. Jellipot Classic Crime Novel
Beyond the Rim: A Lost Race Fantasy
Black Widow: A Classic Crime Novel
The Blue Room: A Novel of an Alternate Future
The British Colonies: No Surrender to Nazi Germany!
The Capone Caper: Mr. Jellipot vs. the King of Crime: A Classic Crime Novel
Cortéz: For God and Spain: An Historical Novel
Crime & Co.: An Inspector Cleveland Classic Crime Novel
Dante’s Inferno
Dante’s Paradiso
Dante’s Purgatorio
David the King: An Historical Novel
Dawn: A Novel of Global Warming
Dead by Saturday: An Inspector Cleveland Classic Crime Novel
Deluge: A Novel of Global Warming
Dream; or, The Simian Maid: A Fantasy of Prehistory (Marguerite Cranleigh #1)
Black Widow Page 20
