Betty set the music box down carefully without taking her eyes from Burns’s face, but she kept one hand on it, as if it gave her comfort. “We all did it,” she said. “But Mother fired the gun.”
Burns opened his other hand and laid four torn pieces of paper on the desk before Wallace. “I found these too, sir.”
The old Inspector bent his head to fit the scraps together. There was only one sentence, written in ink, dated that morning. “Being of sound mind, I leave all my worldly goods to my daughter, Betty Lorman.” It was signed, “Robert Lorman.”
“It may or may not be true,” Burns said. “Betty’s mother may have asked him not to come around any more and, out of spite, he threatened to show it to the husband.”
“Good thinking, Burns.”
“Well, I figured, sir, that the father being the kind of man he was — a father to both his wife and his child — if he had killed his brother, he’d have gone off alone. There’d be no reason for him to take his wife then. He’d have left her with Betty.”
“All right.” The old Inspector looked tired. “It’s all very neat, but what’s the difference? They’ll probably both get caught. It’s difficult for two people to escape the law forever.”
“There’s one way they could, sir,” Burns said. “If they were dead,” he added softly.
The old Inspector’s eyes could not have been more startled if he had not spent most of his life looking at death and the perpetrators of it. “No,” he said.
“They only killed their bodies,” Betty whispered. “Daddy told me that was all, that I shouldn’t feel alone.” Her eyes were glazed, as if she were thinking — or praying.
“But to leave a child—” the Inspector said.
Before he spoke, Burns looked at Betty. Her eyes were fastened on him in a sort of tense concentration, as if she were willing him to say or do something.
“He prepared her,” Burns said. “He made her strong. He hoped someone would take her. As a matter of fact,” he cleared his throat and hesitated, but only for an instant. “If you’ll give me time… if I can find someone who’ll have me… I wouldn’t mind…” His voice trailed off.
The music box started playing. It was wound tighter and the tinkling notes sounded less off-key, and somehow the tune sounded only tenderly nostalgic now.
“I thought you were afraid of children,” Wallace said gently.
“I was, until now.” Burns smiled at Betty and, surprisingly, a dimple appeared in his left cheek.
“Well, yes, I’ll give you time,” the old Inspector said. “And meanwhile, I have a wife already…”