“A little while later a shot was heard, and the next morning Leopold Winkler was found with a bullet in his back. The crime was generally taken to be a murder for the sake of robbery. But you and I, and Mr. Herbert Thorne, know very well that it was not.
“You know this since Wednesday noon. Then it was that the idea suddenly came to you, falling like a heavy weight on your soul, the idea that Winkler might not have been killed for the sake of robbery, but because of the hatred that some one bore him. Then it was that you lost your appetite suddenly, that you drove into the city with the excuse of errands to do, in order to read the papers without being seen by any one who knew you. When you came home you searched everywhere in your master’s room: you made an excuse for this search, but what you wanted to find out was whether he had left anything that could betray him. Your fright had already confused your mind. You were searching probably for the weapon from which he had fired the bullet. You did not realise that he would naturally have taken it with him and thrown it somewhere into a ravine or river beside the railway track between here and Venice. How could you think for a moment that he would leave it behind him, here in his room, or dropped in the garden? But this was doubtless due to the confusion owing to your sudden alarm and anxiety—a confusion which prevented you from realising the danger of the two peculiarly hung mirrors in Mr. Thorne’s room. These should have been taken away at once. This morning my sudden appearance at the garden gate prevented you from making an examination of the place of the murder. Your swoon, after I had spoken to you in the butler’s room, showed me that you were carrying a burden too heavy for your strength. Finally, this afternoon, you drove to the main telegraph office in the city, as you thought that it would be safer to telegraph Mr. Thorne from there. Your telegram was very cleverly written. But you might have spared the last sentence, the request that Mr. Thorne should get the Viennese papers of these last days. Believe me, he has already read these papers. Who could be more interested in what they have to tell than he?”
The housekeeper had sat as if frozen to stone during Muller’s long speech. Her face was ashen and her eyes wild with horror. When the detective ceased speaking, there was dead silence in the room for some time. Finally Muller asked: “Is this what happened?” His voice was cutting and the glance of his eyes keen and sharp.
Mrs. Bernauer trembled. Her head sank on her breast. Muller waited a moment more and then he said quietly: “Then it is true.”
“Yes, it is true,” came the answer in a low hoarse tone.
Again there was silence for an appreciable interval.
“If you had been faithful to your mistress as well, if you had not spied upon her and betrayed her to her husband, all this might not have happened,” continued the detective pitilessly, adding with a bitter smile: “And it was not even a case of sinful love. Your mistress had no such relations with this Winkler as you—I say this to excuse you—seemed to believe.”
Adele Bernauer sprang up. “I do not need this excuse,” she cried, trembling in excitement. “I do not need any excuse. What I have done I did after due consideration and in the realisation that it was absolutely necessary to do it. Never for one moment did I believe that my mistress was untrue to her husband. Never for one moment could I believe such an evil thing of her, for I knew her to be an angel of goodness. A woman who is deceiving her husband is not as unhappy as this poor lady has been for months. A woman does not write to a successful lover with so much sorrow, with so many tears. I had long suspected these meetings before I discovered them, but I knew that these meetings had nothing whatever to do with love. Because I knew this, and only because I knew it, did I tell my master about them. I wanted him to protect his wife, to free her from the wretch who had obtained some power over her, I knew not how.”
“Ah! then that was it?” exclaimed Muller, and his eyes softened as he looked at the sobbing woman who had sunk back into her chair. He laid his hand on her cold fingers and continued gently: “Then you have really done right, you have done only what was your duty. I pity you deeply that you—”
“That I have brought suspicion upon my master by my own foolishness?” she finished the sentence with a pitifully sad smile. “If I could have controlled myself, could have kept calm, nobody would have had a thought or a suspicion that he—my pet, my darling—that it was he who was forced, through some terrible circumstance of which I do not know, to free his wife, in this manner, from the wretch who persecuted her.”