“I can’t explain. She killed my father, we all know that now, but why we don’t know. Nor did she really know why she should kill herself. You did not bring her to her death.”
“But if I had not acted as I have she would be alive now.”
With that his arms went out, and he held her close. For a moment they clung like children, moved by some common and half-understood impulse. Surrounded by something, they knew not what, it was good to be like this and touch each other in the shadows of life. It brought Derrick a throb of divine comfort, strange and new. It was his turn to feel not so utterly alone.
“To-morrow, and after that?” she asked.
He told her, and what he had arranged with Burke.
“I’m glad. Just think of Martin all these years, how he must have loved her in spite of everything; what it must have cost him to go away as he did, and under suspicion, just to save her. And all that hidden behind his strange and threatening face. It could not have been anything he did that killed her love for him. Jack, dear, I can only feel pity, all the pity in the world, and you must feel only that, too. That poor woman would not want to live it all over again. And, oh, it does make me want to be understanding and merciful when I can to every one, always!”
CHAPTER XI
A STRANGE CONFESSION
THE WHOLE earth, bathed in bright sun and clear air, looked younger when Derrick walked into Bamberley next morning. It seemed but an hour since he had piloted Jean back through the fog, and when they parted she had clung to him for a wonderful moment that needed no words. His mind was still in a whirl, and with difficulty he pitched it forward to Bamberley jail.
Martin had been brought there in the gray of dawn, and with him the body of his wife, which rested where so lately the stiff figure of the peddler lay till subjugated consciousness mysteriously returned. There had been no chance to talk with Blunt, nor did Martin want to talk. He had sat for hours, quite motionless, turning the thing over and over in his slow brain, and it seemed that from the truth itself there was least to be feared. It was strange for him even to contemplate truth now. He was innocent of murder, but he was a perjurer nevertheless. He would have to risk that. Burke did not speak to him, and the moments dragged inflexibly on. But there was a new look in his swarthy face when Derrick entered the cell in company with the sergeant. He got up and nodded awkwardly.
“Do you want Blunt here when you question this man?” asked Burke. “I’ll answer for it that nothing has been fixed up between them since last night.”