The detective permitted himself to smile. "Not much chance of keeping her ladyship's name out of it as matters stand, sir. We should have been more likely to do so if you had been as I asked you to be, open with me from the first."
"Umph!" Sir Anthony straightened his broad shoulders. He cast one glance behind him at the couch, then he turned again to the inspector. "I shall plead guilty, you understand. So—well—you will not have much difficulty."
The inspector met his gaze fully.
"No! I suppose not, sir. Under the circumstances I must leave my man Barker in the house. Later on when I have heard from Scotland Yard, I will—"
"You will make the arrest," Sir Anthony finished. "I understand. You will find me ready, inspector!"
Chapter XXVIII
"Six, seven!" It was the clock striking from the little church on the hill. Judith opened her eyes and looked about her vaguely, the oppression on her brain prevented her from thinking coherently, from realizing what had happened. For a time she lay motionless; then something roused the dormant memory, the hazel eyes grew dark and troubled, the curved lips twitched. Slowly Judith raised herself in bed, and gazed round the room fearfully. Every detail of that terrible scene in the study up to the moment she fainted was coming back to her, was being mentally reproduced with the fidelity and the accuracy of a photograph. She hardly knew what she expected to see as she glanced from the closed door leading to Sir Anthony's apartments, to the open one of her own dressing-room, but she asked herself pitifully, was it usual to leave people alone who had confessed to having committed a murder?
What had been passing downstairs while she was unconscious? She was oppressed by a vague, horrible fear—the terror that had made her take upon herself the responsibility for Cyril Stanmore's death hung over her and paralysed her. The detective had been about to arrest Anthony—what if he had disbelieved her, what if already Anthony was in prison?
She pulled herself to the side of the bed and slipped out. Her limbs felt strangely weak and heavy, almost as if they did not belong to her; holding by the furniture she made her way slowly to the other end of the room. The dressing-room was empty.
She did not forget the impulse that had bidden her to take the crime in the Abbey Court flat on her own shoulders. Anthony had been driven mad by jealousy and anger; her responsibility was as great as though her hand had fired the fatal shot. It was her guilty silence that had led to the whole catastrophe. It was right that the punishment should fall upon her!
She went up to her dressing-table mechanically and smoothed her hair. Her eyes wandered over its luxurious plenishings, and rested on the photograph of Anthony in its big silver frame. But though she looked at the old familiar surroundings she felt a curious sense of detachment. She had done with all those things, life was over for her. Only one thing remained now—death. As she thought of death a strange fascination stole over her. It was the only way out of the tangle in which she had become involved. Perhaps, when she was dead, in time Anthony would grow to think more kindly of her—perhaps even if she died now, they would hush things up, Paul would never hear his mother's story. She caught at this last thought feverishly. Yes! That was the only thing she could do now for the sake of the two she loved. She must die—now, to-night—before the keen-eyed detective came to take her away to be pilloried in a criminal court.
But how was she to die? She looked round the room despairingly. Assuredly there was no means of taking her life here. There might be pistols in Anthony's room, but the communication door was locked. Then, like an inspiration, there recurred to her wandering mind a memory of the cool waters of Heron's Moat. That would scarcely be death surely, to sink softly in the clear limpid ripples.
She went across to her wardrobe and drew out a dark loose cloak that would cover her all over, and a garden hat. Then she hesitated. There was a door in her dressing-room that was never used, concealed from view by a hanging cabinet; the key of it was in her possession.
If the detective was having the other door watched, he would never think of this; and from it she could make her way to the back part of the house.
She unlocked the door, then paused again. Dazed and weary though she was, it seemed to her that she must leave some word of farewell for her husband. She went back to her writing-table, and took a pencil and a sheet of paper and wrote quickly:
"I do not ask for forgiveness, Anthony, for it seems to me that forgiveness is well-nigh impossible, but, if ever in the years to come you give a thought to the unhappy woman who was once your wife, try and think of her as kindly as you can for the sake of the first golden days of our love. Tell our boy as little as may be of me, only that his mother loved him very dearly, and that she is dead. I go now to make the only expiation possible for my sin; for it has been my sin all along. When you married me I let you think I was an innocent girl. I did not tell you that five years previously I had been married to Cyril Stanmore, the man who, as C. Warden, died in the Abbey Court flat. My life with him was a veritable hell; he was a libertine, a gambler, and I was his decoy, that was all. The climax came. I refused to obey some particularly degrading command of his, and he told me that our marriage was no marriage, that I was no wife of his! That night I left him! In my hour of direst need I met Canon Rankin. He and his wife were kindness itself to me and I stayed with them until I came to Heron's Carew as Peggy's governess. I had seen Cyril Stanmore's death in the papers. I never doubted that he was dead until he spoke to me outside St. Peter's, on the day of Geraldine Summerhouse's wedding. The rest you know. Life has been one long torture to me since then, and the prospect of rest is very sweet. I dare not ask for pardon from you whom I have so deeply wronged, my dearly loved husband, but I pray you to think in the future as kindly as you can of your poor lost Judith."
Tears from her eyes fell and blotted the paper; more than once she pressed it to her lips. At least Anthony would see it, his hands would touch it, when she would be lying still beneath the water of the Heron's Moat. Then with another lingering look round the room, at the inanimate things that had been so familiar and so dear, she opened the little door behind the hanging cabinet, and went out into the passage.
She listened a minute, there was no sound of any living presence to be heard. She went down slowly by the servants' staircase, meeting no one by the way. As she reached the side entrance at the bottom, she paused, and looked towards the green baize door that gave access to the front part of the house. If only, herself unseen, she could look upon Anthony's face once more, if she could hear his dear voice. Then, with a gesture of despair she passed out and drew the door to behind her. Outside it was growing dusk, the grass in the park was heavy with dew as she crossed to the Home Wood.
It was very strange to her to think that she was treading that familiar path for the last time. She opened the little wicket that led into the private path into the Home Wood, and walked on more quickly now, looking neither to the right nor left. She took no heed of a rustle among the undergrowth as she passed; she did not hear stealthy steps creeping behind her at a distance. She saw only Anthony's face that seemed to smile on her, Paul's baby hands that were beckoning her on. So—only so—could she atone! The Heron's Moat looked a thing of mystery when at last she came to it; the twilight was closing in, the water was dark and turbid, not smiling and limpid as when the sun shone on it.
She left the path and walked round the edge of the pool more slowly. Where should she throw herself in? Then she remembered that from the opposite side, in the daylight through an opening among the trees it was possible to catch a glimpse of Heron's Carew. Perhaps even tonight, if they had lighted up...At any rate she would go to her last long sleep with her feet turned towards the home she loved. She put up one last prayer for her dear ones as she hesitated on the brink. "Help them to forget; oh, help them to forget."
For herself—for pardon for the act, she was about to do, she did not pray, it seemed to her so natural, so inevitable a thing—God, in His heaven would understand! He would know she could do nothing else. A life for a life, that had been His ordinance of old.