LVI
I thought I had only to go now, and leave her to the Inspector who I felt would deal with her as mercifully as he could. But Mr. Jackson shook his head as I was about to depart, and stepping up to the Inspector said a few earnest words to him after which the former sat down at his desk and wrote a few lines which he put in the official’s hands. Then he drew me apart.
“Wait,” he said; “we may want your signature.”
It was a written confession which the Inspector took upon himself to ask her to sign.
She was sitting back in her chair, very quiet now, her veil down, her figure immovable. The slow heaving of her chest bespoke life and that was all. The Inspector bent down as he reached her and after a minute’s scrutiny of her veiled features said to her not unkindly:
“It will save you much mental suffering if you will sign these words which I first ask you to listen to. Are you ready to hear them?”
She nodded, her hands which were clasped about a little bag she was carrying, twitching convulsively.
“Water, first,” she begged, turning up her eyes till they rested on his face.
He made me a motion, but did not stir from where he stood before her. Instead, he directed his full glance at her hands, and unclasping them gently from the bag she was clutching, opened them out and took away the bag which he laid aside. Then he raised her veil, and handed her the glass which I had brought and watched her while she drank. A few drops seemed to suffice to reinvigorate her, and giving back the glass, she waited for him to read.
The words were mercifully few but they told the full story. As she listened, she sank back into her old pose, only that her hands missing the little bag clutched the arms of the chair in which she sat, and seemed to grow rigid there. But they loosed their grasp readily enough as the Inspector brought a pad and a pen and laying the pad in her lap with the words she had listened to plainly before her, handed her the pen and asked her to sign them.
She roused herself to do this, and when he would draw her veil again she put up her hand in protest, after which she wrote somehow, almost without seeing what she did, the three words which formed her name. Then she sank back again and as he carried away the pad, and, laying the signed confession on the desk for Mr. Jackson and myself to affix our signatures to it as witnesses, she clutched again the arms of her chair and so sat as before, without further word or seeming interest in what was being done.
Should I go now without a word to her, without asking if she had any message to send to Edgar or to Orpha? While I was hesitating, whether or not to address her, I saw the Inspector start and laying his hand on Mr. Jackson’s arm point to her silent figure. A coldness, icy and penetrating struck my heart. I saw them hurriedly advance, I saw the Inspector for the second time slowly lift her veil, give one look and drop it again. And I saw nothing more for a minute, then as my senses cleared, I met the eyes of the two men fixed on me and not on her, and summoning up my strength I said:
“It is better so.”
They did not answer, but in each man’s eye I saw that had they spoken it would have been in repetition of my words:
“It is better so.”