The lovely narrator raised her chin. “I hit him, gentlemen. With the stone. With all my strength. And — God help me — I think it was as much because of the way in which he looked at me, so contemptuously, as it was because of anything I feared that he might do.
“I hit him, and he fell backward, with a broad smear of blood across his forehead. I have the impression that only one of his eyes was still open, and that it was looking at me with the most intense surprise. He fell backward, and rolled halfway over on the carpet, and was still.
“I was perfectly sure, looking down at his smashed face, that he was dead. Dead. And I swear to you that at that moment I felt nothing but relief … but for a moment only. Then the horror began. Not an intrinsic horror at what I had done — that came to me too, but later — but horror at the fact that what I had just done was certain to be discovered, and at other discoveries that must flow from that. Even though I might — I almost certainly would — be able to plead self defence and avoid any legal penalty, yet inevitably enough information must be made public to bring ruin down upon me — and disgrace upon Richard, whom I loved…
“I suppose that in that moment I was half mad with shock and grief. Not, you understand, grief for the one who, as I thought, lay dead—”
My friend interrupted. “As you thought?”
“As — let me finish, and in a moment you will understand.”
“Then pray continue.”
“My eye fell on the door of the lumber room — there.” It was a plain, small, inconspicuous door, set in the wall between bookcases, some eight or ten feet from the desk. “I seized Hayden by the ankles — to take him by the hands would have meant touching his skin, and the thought of that was utterly abhorrent to me — and I dragged him into there.”
“May I?”
“Of course.”
Taking up the lamp from the desk, my friend moved to open the small door, which was unlocked. The lamplight shining in revealed a dusty storage closet. Its walls and floor were of stone, its ceiling of solid wood; there was no window, or any other door. The chamber was half-filled with a miscellany of boxes, crates, and bundles, none larger than a bushel, and all covered with a fine film of dust that might well have lain undisturbed for the past year.
Our client joined us looking in. She said: “The room was very much as you see it now. My father uses it chiefly for storage of things he has brought back from his various travels and then never finds time to catalogue, or else judges at second thought to be not worthy of display.
“I dragged Hayden — or his body — in there, and left him on the dusty floor.
“Understand that this was not part of any thought-out plan for concealing what I had done. It was only a shocked reaction, like that of a child trying to hide the pieces of a broken vase. Hardly aware of what I was doing, I came back here to the middle of the room, and picked up from the carpet the stone that had done the deed. I carried it into the lumber-room also, and threw it on top of that which lay on the floor already. I then came out of the lumber-room and closed its door, and locked it — though it is rarely if ever locked — with a key I knew was kept in the top drawer of my father’s desk.
“Then, with my mind still whirling in terror, I looked around. The letters, where were they? Still in Hayden’s pocket, for now I remembered distinctly seeing him replace them there. It might be wise to get them out, but for the moment I could not think of touching him again.
“And there was blood on the carpet. I had noted that already, in my frenzied panic. But now, as my mind made its first adjustment back toward sanity, I saw that the spots were only two or three in number, and so small against the dark pattern that no one entering the study casually would be in the least likely to notice them. Here, gentlemen, is where they were — over the past year they have faded almost to invisibility.”
My companion had crouched down and whipped out a magnifying glass, with which he scrutinized closely the indicated section of the carpet. He stood up frowning. “Pray continue,” he said again, his voice non-committal.
“I was still hovering near the desk, in a state of near-panic, not knowing what to do, when as in a nightmare I heard a brisk knock on the door to the hall, and the voice of my beloved Richard. A moment later, before I could say anything at all, the hall door opened and Richard came in. From the look on his face, I knew immediately that he was aware, at least, that something was gravely wrong.
“My fiancé evidently already knew much more about Hayden than I had ever suspected. Perhaps the duke, Richard’s father, had employed investigators — to this day I do not know what had made my dear one suspicious of me. But he was full of suspicion on that day, and with cause — though not with as great cause as he feared.
“Richard confronted me. ‘He was seen coming in here, the man Hayden. Do you tell me that he is not here now?’”
“I do not remember what I said in reply. I must, however, have looked the very picture of guilt.
“Richard looked quickly round the study, even peering behind pieces of furniture where a man might possibly have had room to lie concealed. It took him only a moment to do so; the furniture was then very much as it is now, and offered, as you can see, little in the way of hiding places.
“He tried the door of the lumber-room then, and I was sure for a moment that my heart had stopped.
“‘This door is locked. Do you know, Louise, where the key is kept?’”
“I understood perfectly that he would force the door at once if no key were available. Silently I went to the desk, and got the key from the upper drawer, where, in my confusion I had just replaced it; I handed it to Richard, still without a word. At that moment I knew with certainty that final ruin was upon me, and I could not bear another instant the horror of waiting for the blow to fall. I thought that after Richard had seen what I had done, then, in that moment of his greatest shock, I might appeal to him. I could only hope that he loved me as truly and deeply as I did him.
“But his gaze was black and forbidding as he took the key from my hand and turned away. He was in the lumber-room for only a few moments, but I need not tell you what an eternity they seemed to me. When he reappeared, his face was altered; yet even as I gazed at him in despair, a sudden new hope was born within my breast. For his new expression was not so much one of horror or shock, as one expressing a great relief, even though mingled with shame and bewilderment.
“For a moment he could not speak. Then ‘Darling’, he said at last, and his voice cracked, even as mine had moments earlier. ‘Can you ever forgive me for having doubted you?’”
“Without answering, I pushed past Richard to the door of the lumber-room.
Everything inside, with one great exception, was just as I had seen it a few minutes earlier before I had locked the door. There were the dusty crates and cartons untouched, certainly, by any human hand in the intervening time. There on the floor, in lighter dust and hardly noticeable, were the tracks left by my own feet on my first entrance, and by the horrible burden that I had dragged in with such difficulty. There was the stone with which I had struck the fateful blow — but the piece of stone lay now in the middle of the otherwise empty patch of bare floor. Of the body of the man I had struck down there was not the smallest trace.”
My friend the detective emitted a faint sigh, expressing what, in the circumstances, seemed a rather inhuman degree of intellectual satisfaction. ‘Most interesting indeed,” he murmured soothingly. “And then?”
“There is very little more that I can tell you. I murmured something to Richard; he, assuming that my state of near-collapse was all his fault for behaving, as he said, brutally, made amends to the best of his ability. To make the story short, we were married as planned. Hayden’s name has never since been mentioned between us. Our life together has been largely uneventful, and in all outward aspects happy. But I tell you, gentlemen — since that day I have lived in inward terror … either I am mad, and therefore doomed, and imagined the whole ghastly scene in which I murdered Hayden; or I did not imagine it. Then he was only stunned. He somehow extricated himself from that lumber-room. He is lying in wait for me. Somewhere, sometime … neither of you know him, what he can be like … he still has the letters, yet he has in mind some revenge that would be even more horrible … I tell you I can bear it no longer…” The lady sank into a chair, struggling to control herself.