Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

“And she laughed! ‘Love him? Pat? I don’t care two snaps of my fingers for him! But I’m going to get every cent of his that I can put my hands on, and the quicker both of you get that straight, the better it will be for all of us.’

“I said, ‘I believe that is the truth, but I never believed that you would dare to say so. You can’t—you can’t realize what you are doing. You can’t purchase your pleasure with the comfort and security and health and joy of two little babies who have never harmed you once in all their lives. You can’t!’

“She laughed that wicked, excited little laugh of hers again, and said through her teeth, ‘Oh, can’t I, though? Now get this straight too: I don’t care whether your precious little babies die in a gutter. Now, will you get out?’

“I couldn’t breathe. I felt exactly as though I were suffocating, but I said, ‘No. I am an old woman, Madeleine, but I will go on my knees to you to beg you not to ruin the lives of those two babies.’

“She said, ‘Oh, I’m sick to death of you and your babies and your melodramatics. For the last time, are you going to get out of this house or am I going to have to put you out?’

“She came so close to me that I could smell the horrid perfume she wore—gardenia, I think it was—something close and sweet and hateful. I took a step back and said, ‘You wouldn’t dare to touch me—you wouldn’t dare!’

“And then she did—she gave that dreadful, excited little laugh of hers and put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me, quite hard—so hard that I stumbled and went forward on my knees. I tried to catch myself, and dropped the bag and all the things in it fell out on the carpet. I knelt there staring down at them, with the blood roaring in my head and singing in my ears.

“Judge Carver, what is it in our blood and bones and flesh that rises shrieking its outrage in the weakest and meekest of us at the touch of hands laid violently on our rebellious flesh? I could hear it—I could hear it crying in my ears—and there on the flowered carpet just in reach of my hand something was shining. It was the little knife that I’d been using to cut the dead wood out so that the live roses would grow better. I knelt there staring at it. That story of how all their lives flash by drowning eyes—I always thought that was an old wives’ tale—no, that’s true, I think. I could see the rose garden with all the green leaves glossy on the big Silver Moon. . . . I could see Pat and Sue laughing on the terrace, with his arm across her shoulders and the sun in their eyes and the wind in their hair. . . . I could see the children’s blue smocks through the branches of the copper beech. . . . I stood up with the knife in my hand. . . .

“She screamed only once—not a very loud scream, either, but she caught at the table as she fell, and it made a dreadful crash. I heard someone laugh outside, quite loudly, and I leaned forward and blew out the lamp on the piano. There was someone coming up the front steps; I stood very still. A bell rang far back in the house, and then someone tried the door.

“I thought: ‘This is the end—they have known what has happened. If no one answers, they will batter down the door. But not till they batter down the door will I move one hairbreadth from where I stand—and not then.’

“After a moment I heard the feet going down the steps, then again on the gravel of the main drive, getting fainter and fainter. I waited for a moment longer, because I thought that I heard something moving in the bushes outside the window, but after a minute everything was perfectly still, and I went over to the window and shut it and pulled down the shade.

“I knew that I was in great danger, and that I must think very quickly—and act quickly too. I found the little flashlight almost immediately, and lit it, and pushed down the catch and put it beside me on the floor. I wanted to have both hands free, and I didn’t dare to take the time to light the lamp. I was afraid that the person who tried the door would come back. I had realized at once, of course, that if I took the jewels the murder would look like robbery—and I had to make sure that she was dead.

“That took only a minute; the rings came off quite easily, but the catch of the necklace caught, and I had to break the string. I knotted the things all into my handkerchief and put them into the bag, and the trowel and a ball of string that had fallen out, too, and the note, and a little silver box of candy that I kept for the children. There was the key to the front door too. I remembered that I must leave it in the lock as I went out. I used the flashlight to make sure that I wasn’t leaving anything, and I was—the knife was still lying there beside her.

“It’s curious—of all the things that happened that night, that’s the only one that I can’t account for. I don’t remember how it got there at all—whether I placed it there or whether I dropped it or whether it fell—that’s curious, don’t you think? Anyhow, I picked it up and wiped it off very carefully on one of her white lace frills and put it back in the bag. And then I tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I knelt there, leaning forward against the cold steel of the little Franklin stove, feeling so mortally, so desperately sick that for a moment I thought I should never move again. It wasn’t the blood; it was that perfume, like dead flowers—horribly sweet and strong. . . . After a minute I got up and went out of the room and out of the house and back across the meadow to the garden gate.

“I stopped only once. I followed the hedge a little way before I came to the path, and I stooped down and dug out two or three trowelfuls of earth close in to the roots and shook the pearls and the rings out of my handkerchief into the hole and covered it up and went on. At first I thought of putting the knife there, too, and then I decided that someone might have noticed it in the drawer and that it would be safer to be put back where it had come from.

“How are they ever able to trace people by the weapons they have used? It seems to me that it should be so simple to hide a little thing no longer than your hand, with all the earth and the waters under the earth to hide it in.

“It was the knife that I was washing in the flower room; it still had one or two little stains near the handle, but there wasn’t any blood on my hands at all. I’d been very careful.

“After I’d put everything away I took the note and went upstairs. At first I thought that I’d tear it up, but then I decided that someone might find the scraps, and that the safest thing to do would be to keep it until the next day and burn it. And before the next day I knew that Sue and Stephen had no actual alibi for that night, and so I never burned the note.

“That’s all. While I lay there in the dark that night—and every night since—I’ve tried saying it over and over to myself: ‘Murderess—murderess.’ A black and bloody and dreadful word; does it sound as alien to the ears of all the others whose title it is as it does to mine? Murderess! We should feel differently from the rest of the world once we have earned that dreadful title, should we not? Something sinister, something monstrous and dark should invest us, surely. It seems strange that still we who bear that name should rise to the old familiar sunlight and sleep by the old familiar starlight; that bread should still be good to us, and flowers sweet; that we should say good-morning and good-night in voices that no man shudders to hear. The strangest thing of all is to feel so little strange.

“Judge Carver, I have written to you because I do not know whether any taint of suspicion still clings to any of those who have taken part in this trial. If in your mind there does, I will promptly give myself up to the proper authorities and tell them the essential facts that I have told you.

“But if, in your opinion, suspicion rests on no man or woman, living or dead, I would say only this: I am not afraid to die—indeed, indeed, I am rather anxious to die. Life is no longer very dear to me. Two physicians have told me this last year that I will not live to see another. I can obtain from them a certificate to that effect, if you desire. And I have already sent to my lawyers a sealed envelope containing a full confession, marked, ‘To be sent to the authorities in case anyone should be accused of the death of Mrs. Stephen Bellamy, either before or after my death.’ I would not have any human being live through such days as these have been—no, not to save my life, or what is dearer to me than my life.

“But, Judge Carver, will the ends of justice be better served if that boy who believes that my only creed is gentleness and kindness and mercy, and who has learned therefore to be merciful and gentle and kind—if that boy learns that now he must call me murderess? If those happy, happy little children who bring every bumped head and cut finger to me to kiss it and make it whole must live to learn to call me murderess?

“I don’t want Polly and Pete to know—I don’t want them to know—I don’t want them to know.

“If you could reach me without touching them I would not ask you to show me mercy. But if no one else need suffer for my silence, I beg of you—I beg you—forget that you are only Justice, and remember to be merciful.

“Margaret Ives.”

For a long time the judge sat silent and motionless, staring down at that small mountain of white pages. In his tired face his dark eyes burned, piercing and tireless. Finally they moved, with a curious deliberation, to that other pile of white pages that he had been studying when the messenger boy had come knocking at the door. Yes, there it was:

“An accessory after the fact is one who while not actually participating in the crime, yet in any way helps the murderer to escape trial or conviction, either by concealing him or by assisting him to escape or by destroying material evidence or by any other means whatever. It is a serious crime in itself, but does not make him a principal——”

He sat motionless, his unwavering eyes fixed on the words before him as though he would get them by heart. . . . After a long moment, he stirred, lifted his head, and drew the little pile of papers that held the life of Patrick Ives’s mother toward him.

The blue paper first; the torn scraps settled down on the shining surface as lightly and inconsequently as butterflies. Then the white ones—a little mound of snow-flakes that grew under the quick, sure fingers to a little mountain—higher—higher—blue and white, they were swept into that great brass bowl that had been so conveniently designed for ashes. A match spurted, and little flames leaped gaily, and a small spiral of smoke twisted up toward the white-robed lady above the door. Across the room, between the windows beyond which shone the stars, John Marshall was smiling above the dancing flames—and she smiled back at him, gravely and wisely, as though they shared some secret understanding.

The End