Carter, who was listening still as a man in a dream, saw now why the Chief Inspector had begun as he did. He had thrown the woman off her guard by fear and rage. Unstrung by the growing strain of the investigation into Robert Erskine's murder, by the morphia taken, by the revelation of how near she herself had been to the end of all things at the hands of her accomplices, she could not recover her poise, try for it as she might. Like some tight-rope walker over an abyss, she made a desperate effort to save herself even when she was already all but falling headlong. “Mr. Russell met me scores of times before my husband's death as well as since.”
“He was easy to hoodwink. It was his father who had known the real Mrs. Erskine well, the younger Russell had only seen her a couple of times as a lad. But your aunt by marriage, Mrs. Fraser, of Glasgow, would only too gladly swear to you any time, as will other relations. She seemed to think that your death stopped the pressing home of some claim against you about the illegal sale of a cottage of hers. She sent me your photo. . . .”
The woman in the white wig, and artificially shaped eyebrow, bit her grey lips.
“You are Janet Fraser, of Murry Street, Glasgow. You were engaged as a companion by the late Mrs. Erskine some fifteen years ago, after having been an unsuccessful actress for over six years. You joined her near St. Jean de Luz, and went on with her to Bayonne, where she was taken with a paralytic stroke the same night and was removed to the hospital. She died a few days later without recovering consciousness. The doctor in charge of the hospital mistook you for the mistress, and you kept up the deception. He has identified the photo of Janet Fraser—your photo without that wig on, and without that shaved peak to one eyebrow. The hotel people at Bayonne and the sisters at the hospital have also identified it. Mrs. Erskine lies buried in the churchyard there under your name. We are getting an order for her exhumation under the pretext of having her body taken to Scotland. Her identity can easily be proved by a couple of operations she had had. You assumed her name, forged her handwriting—which was a very easy one to copy. You continued to enjoy her income, until chance gave your secret away to Mrs. Clark, at that time Mabel Baker, your companion.”
The woman seemed to collapse more and more as he spoke. Now she tried to pull herself up once more.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” she whispered, with a voice which was but a ghost of itself.
He stopped. “Now, look here. You can deny everything, of course, but it won't help you any; and meanwhile these others, the Clarks and the major, who, I don't doubt, are as deep in it as yourself, who've battened on you for all these years, may get off scot-free, and in any case won't get much more than a few months. Do you want that?”
Her haggard eyes opened and shut themselves convulsively, her throat worked, but she forced back the words by an effort which was visible.
“Wait—I'll go on. Robert Erskine came to England. You poisoned him to prevent his discovering the fraud. For he would have known his mother. You could not hope to always receive him in twilight as you did Mr. Russell or anyone who had ever met the real Mrs. Erskine. You wrote your letters to him as forbidding as possible in order to prevent his wanting to come to Europe and see you. But you made your big mistake when by your miserliness you only sent him one thousand pounds of the money he asked for. The whole of the five thousand would have kept him in Canada. Carter here is ready to swear that the one thousand which you finally sent him was the only money Robert Erskine ever received from you. Those letters you showed me in Paris were all forgeries. That was why you ‘lost’ them. You got him to supply you with a box of his stationery when you heard that he was sailing for England. The discarded box is in our possession. Unfortunately for himself, he told you that he was coming over, though he did not tell you on what business, as he had never referred to business matters with you. He gave you the name he intended to use, and you sent a letter to meet him on the boat's arrival in which you wrote of your joy at the thought of seeing him, and that he was to telegraph you as soon as he had found a hotel. He kept that letter among his papers in a safe. Otherwise you would have destroyed it as you did all the other papers in his room. But to go back, for I want you to see that there are no gaps. As soon as you knew his hotel, you flew over to England and took a room in the same house, by good luck—as you thought—getting a room very near his. You passed under the name of Mrs. Willett. You painted, padded, darkened your eyes with belladonna, and had a wig arranged to look as like a portrait of Mrs. Clark which you had with you as possible. The firm who supplied you with it, and the eyebrows meeting over the nose, kept a copy of that photo, as they always do, to safeguard themselves in case of dissatisfaction. I found an eyebrow box in the attic which bore the name of the shop.”
“The others planned it. They egged me on. They were all in it!” burst out, as though in spite of herself, from the woman. “They said it was the only way.”