“Did you see him or his shadow pass down the hall at any time that night?”
“No.”
“Why these stories then? Why these lies?”
She was silent.
“Was it not Edgar Bartholomew you heard or saw at that door; and did you not know it was he?”
Again silence; but now a horrified one.
“Are you sure that he did not come in at that door you heard shut? That the only mistake made that night was that the dose was not strong enough—that your patient did not die in time for the will in this gentleman’s favor to be abstracted and destroyed, leaving the other one as the final expression of Mr. Bartholomew’s wishes and testamentary intentions? You need not answer. It is a law of this country that no one can be compelled to incriminate himself. But that is how it looks to us, Mrs. Starr. That is how it looks.”
With this he lifted his finger; and the breath held back in all our throats broke from us in a simultaneous gasp. She only did not move, but sat gazing as before, cheek and brow and even lips growing whiter and whiter till we all shrank back appalled. As the silence grew longer and heavier and more threatening I covered my face with my hands. I could not look and listen too. A vision of Edgar in his most buoyant mood, with laughter in his eye and winsome bonhomie in every feature flashed before me and passed. I could hardly bear it. Then I heard her voice, thin, toneless, and ringing like a wire which has been struck:
“Edgar is innocent. He never entered the room. No one entered it. That was another lie. I alone mixed the dose. I thought he would die at once and let me do what you said. It came to me as I sat there waiting for the morning—the morning I did not feel myself strong enough to face.”