She had no moral shrinking from what she had done. She even felt a certain exultation, tinged with an unease which had nothing to do with fear of the hangman. She took it for granted that her own life was, in effect, at an end, and this gave her an immense freedom.
She went into Rita’s room. It held a faint fragrance of unknown flowers. Spread on the bed was the light green dress and the yellow bodice.
“Oh, I wish I had been Rita!”
She took off all her clothes, put on Rita’s. Last, the yellow bodice and the light green dress. Then a spot of Rita’s scent on her hair and the merest dab behind the ears.
“I do look nice! What a pity! It’s only waste. I wonder what was wrong with me?”
Downstairs and into the air. Her life’s history floated before her. Rita’s clothes helped her to review her past from the angle of a young woman who had no fear that men would lure her on with flattery and then laugh at her. She was actually thinking of the classical master when Herbert’s arms closed round her. For a moment she let her head rest on his shoulder, then realized that he had mistaken her for Rita.
The need for personal explanation shattered the mood in which she had wanted to break the news to him. Besides, she saw now that it would save him so little that she was entitled to think of herself. Tomorrow, when they found the body, life for her would end. Tonight she would enjoy an hour of his soothing friendliness for the last time.
When she had made him believe the hallucination theory, she indulged in the child’s game of make-believe — “Let’s pretend” — that things were as yesterday, and that she had not murdered Rita. She nearly told him about her gift of the cottage, but it would have meant discussion, and she wanted to ask him a question. As the minutes passed the question became more and more important to her. The answer, if it were the right one, would help her to face the gallows with a calm mind.
“Have another brandy.”
“Just a little one, and then I must hop off. Another thing Rita wants to do when we’re married—”
She shirked putting the question to him directly. She produced her scrapbook to help her approach. The whole of the first page was taken by one ebullient baby who had advertized a milk food. Herbert grinned and turned the pages. “Ah, I used to know one just like that — same expression and everything! And when they look like that, they grab your nose if you get too close. This is a jolly book. Why have you never shown it to me before?”
“Herbert, are you and Rita going to have babies?”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t. I’ve got a bit in the stocking, and so has she.”
“Oh, I am glad!” There was a turbulence in her that he must have sensed.
“And I’m glad you’re glad. Ruth, dear, you can scream for the village policeman if you like, but I’m going to kiss you.”
When he kissed her, Ruth knew what it was that had been wrong with her. She also knew that to talk of robbing a man of fatherhood did not belong in a tuppenny novelette.
“I’m only thirty-seven; there’s still time,” she told herself when he had gone. Murder could never be justified, and she would never so deceive herself. But a form of atonement for having taken life seemed to be open to her.
On the following morning, at about seven-fifteen, Herbert Cudden’s landlady took his shoes out of doors with a view to cleaning them. It was, in a sense, unfortunate for Scotland Yard that Police-Sergeant Tottle happened to amble by on his bicycle.
“Good morning, Mr. Tottle. Your George’s garden is a credit to the family. Oo! You don’t ’appen to have had a nice murder, I suppose? Look at these!”
She held up the shoes. The rim of the sole and the back of one heel was caked with dried blood.
“Don’t you touch ’em until I’ve seen ’em,” barked the sergeant.
“Don’t be silly! I was only joking — it can’t be human blood. They’re Mr. Cudden’s. As if—”
The sergeant took the shoes and examined them.
“Take me up to his room,” he ordered.
When he had succeeded in waking Herbert Cudden, the latter’s reactions were, from the police point of view, ideal.
“Oh, my God!” It was almost like a woman’s scream. “I shall go mad.” He leaped out of bed, thrust Wellingtons over his pyjamas. “You’d better come with me, Sergeant. Give me those shoes.”
“Here, what’s it all about, Mr. Cudden?”
“Oh, shut up, please! I must see Miss Watlington at once, or I tell you I shall go mad. Hang on to the shoes if you like, but come with me.”
Ruth was startled into wakefulness by hearing her name called while Herbert and the sergeant were still fifty yards from the cottage. She was in her dressing gown and at the doorway almost as soon as they were.
“That hallucination!” Herbert was out of breath. “Blood on my shoes — show them to her. Look! It wasn’t hallucination, Ruth. Rita was murdered on the bank and thrown in. We must drag Drunkard’s Leap.”
“Will one of you please explain—”
“Oh, all right then! I’ll tell you.”
It was Herbert who poured out the tale of the previous evening’s experiences, of his discussion with Ruth, and the reasons for their joint conclusion that he had suffered an hallucination.
“Then as I understand it, after what you’d seen, or what you only thought you’d seen, you came to this cottage, and — is this your mackintosh by any chance?”
The mackintosh was hanging on a peg in the hall. The sergeant pulled it out fanwise. The whole of the seat and part of the back were covered with congealed blood.
“How did that blood get there? On your mackintosh and on your shoes?”
“It must be her blood. That must have been done when I flopped on to the bench.”
“And what’s the matter with your hand that you’ve got that bandage?”
“Oh, hell to these footling questions! Sergeant, for heaven’s sake, do something! Can’t you see that she has been murdered?”
The sergeant had never handled murder. This was unlike any he had read about. For one thing, the suspect was directing the investigation!
While Tottle, at Ruth’s suggestion, was ringing the Lynmouth police to find out whether Rita had spent the night at Calder’s bungalow, Ruth went upstairs to dress.
On a hanger on the door was the yellow underbodice. She put it in her wardrobe. Over a chair hung the pale green sleeveless dress. As she picked it up, she caught her breath. At the back, a little above the waistline, was a distinct blood stain. For a moment she had a sense of eerieness, as if blood would meet her everywhere. Then she remembered.
“That was done when Herbert put his arm round me before I bound up his hand.”
She dropped the dress into the laundry basket — on top of the bloodstained yellow jumper. She looked down at them, trying to assess their danger to herself. Then she shrugged her shoulders, and went on dressing. She had an almost superstitious belief that if destiny intended her to atone for her crime it would protect her from the police.
By ten they had found the body in Drunkard’s Leap, its position explained by the fact that the iron bracket had jammed between two outcrops of rock some eight feet below the surface. By mid-day the county police were in the village in force. Detailed statements were taken from Cudden and Ruth, covering everything, even including Ruth’s visit to her solicitor to arrange for the conveyance of the cottage to Herbert Cudden and his wife. The police took away for microscopic analysis Herbert’s mackintosh and shoes and Ruth’s yellow jumper and the pale green sleeveless dress. The analysis revealed that the blood on Herbert’s garments had been exposed to the air for at least half an hour before it had adhered — which bore out his statements about the times of his movements.