“I still failed to realize what had happened. He had smiled so kindly, I could hardly believe it was anything but a minor accident. But gradually it came to me. I stood horrified and watched mother approach the body on the floor and place the candle at his head and the crucifix on his body. Then she turned and saw me. I thought of one thing only. That I must save her. I knew he would wish it that way. I remembered how he had looked when he stood before me with the dagger killing him.
“She walked to me and collapsed in my arms. I dragged her to the bedroom and removed the costume. She lay in a heavy sleep for a few minutes. I washed the rouge from my face. My mind, as you can imagine, was not entirely clear. I didn’t know what to do with things. I was obsessed only by the desire to protect her, to save her. And I must have thrust the ball gown out of the window on the fire escape. But I didn’t remember doing it when you came. She lay sleeping and I knew she would sleep for at least ten minutes. I went into the library and then I must have lost my head. I had an idea fixed in my mind of misleading the police with false evidence. All I could think of was to make it look as if a terrible fight had taken place. I pulled a lot of books down, cut a few pictures, and turned over some chairs. I remember blowing out the candle and seeing the beard in father’s hand. I was going to remove it but thought it would be better to leave it there because it would increase the mystery and baffle the police. I thought, too, that the police would figure out he’d been attacked by a man and had torn the false beard from his assailant’s face. I didn’t think of the gum mucilage that might show on his own chin.
“You see now, Julien, why I couldn’t tell you anything, why I had to keep still and lie and muddle things up. It was for his sake. I kept feeling how he would feel if anything happened to her—if exposure overtook her. I was desperate and the thought that it was you who seemed intent upon unmasking the thing that we had kept so hidden for so long drove me wild.”
“I understand,” De Medici nodded.
“After I’d fixed up the library,” Florence continued, “mother awoke. I told her that she’d fainted and she said yes, she knew she was subject to dizzy spells. She got dressed and went out to the kitchen to go on with her work and I went into the library and screamed. She came running to me and I told her father had been murdered. She remembered nothing, of course, of what had happened. I impressed upon her that I had just come in and found her fainting, but that she should not tell that to the police because it would look bad for her; that she should just tell them I had come in and screamed. You recall the first story she told. And the time Lieutenant Norton asked her whether she had seen anybody else in the apartment and she said yes, she had seen a man with a black beard, I was standing just outside the door. For a moment I thought it was all over and that the lieutenant had hypnotized poor mother or something and was going to learn the secret from her. But she evidently recovered herself and the Floria that almost spoke in the library that time remained hidden.
“After the inquest I began to see what was worrying you, poor Julien. I couldn’t understand at first, but from the way you spoke and acted I saw that you didn’t believe it was I who had done it and that somehow you accused yourself. Oh, it was terrible! I didn’t know what you might do, and yet I figured blindly that if I kept still, your self-suspicions would lead you off the track. Then I took mother to Rollo. We had been there once before during a summer. There’s a sanitarium on the outskirts of the village. They knew her there and the thing she was suffering from. And I entrusted her to their keeping and hurried back to New York. I remembered that during several of her seizures she had written letters to father and signed them ‘Floria.’ They were letters threatening to kill him and addressing him sometimes by name and sometimes as Baron Scarpia. Some of them had the picture of a dagger underneath the name Floria. I meant to destroy them and I recalled that it was one thing I had forgotten to do. So I came back and they caught me.
“I had tried right along to make out I was convinced father had committed suicide, and I was hoping the police would believe it. And from the way they acted at the inquest I felt almost desperately certain that they did. I knew you had learned about the telephone call, but I was positive you would say nothing. Oh, you were so good, Julien! But when they arrested me and began their questioning I saw that they hadn’t been fooled. I didn’t know what course to take, so I decided to say nothing. I didn’t care what happened to me. I think I must have gone a little mad myself. And that night they brought you and that terrible doctor to the station I was completely insane. Crazed ideas kept coming into my head. I couldn’t figure out how much you knew, and when Dr. Lytton started hypnotizing me I pretended to be in a hypnotic sleep. I was going to confess to being a double personality. I saw at once that was what you and he suspected. But somehow I couldn’t. I played with the idea until I became frantic and then fainted. That wasn’t acting—the faint,” she smiled; “that was real. But it came in handy.
“And then this awful farce started. Lieutenant Norton decided to release me and did. And I made for the train at once. I had a feeling that things were wrong with her. I must have taken the same train as Dr. Lytton did. It was quite dark when I got off at Rollo and we didn’t see each other. I made directly for the sanitarium. They admitted me and the doctor was glad I had come. He told me that mother had left two days ago and he didn’t know what had become of her. She had eluded the attendants and vanished.
“I was beside myself and didn’t know what to do. It seemed that all I’d been through was now for nothing. Poor mother was alone, crazed and wandering. God knew where. And I started walking distractedly in the street not knowing what to do first or where to go, when Dr. Lytton stopped me. When I saw him I felt that it was all over, that he knew everything. But when he began to talk to me I noticed at once it was I he suspected. He thought I was the insane one, the double ego and all that. And I listened to what he said. It was easy to take him in.”
Here she smiled and De Medici found it suddenly difficult to suppress a laugh. The vision of the didactic scientist and his arbitrary conclusions, his subsequent discomfiture and good sportsmanship in admitting his innumerable errors, lightened the mood between them.