"He was looked upon as one of the greatest authorities on finance in the country," said the inspector.
"He could have been a Member of Parliament before he was thirty if he had cared for politics. He refused a title. To be a Privy Councillor was the only honor he accepted. And he—one of England's great men—came to my little house at Streatham to gratify his madness to destroy."
She looked round at them defiantly, anger displacing the sorrow on her face.
"But he was not guilty," she declared. "His hands may have killed those three women—but he was not guilty. Nor was that poor innocent woman, his mother, who died in the madhouse. They were both clean of sin. It was on his wicked father that the guilt lay. It was Oscar Winslowe who was responsible for the lives that have fallen to his sins. Oscar Winslowe, and no one else."
"I bear witness to that," agreed Doctor Lessing. "Mary Winslowe was the gentlest, the sweetest, and the most patient woman that ever walked this earth, as you will see when I tell you my story. And he was the biggest blackguard that ever blasphemed the likeness of his Maker."
"It is true," said the woman.
She drew back in her chair, and pressed a hand to her forehead.
"That is all I have to tell you," she concluded.
"Last night," said Monsieur Dupont, "I called at your house, and was told by the lady who lives next door that you had left in a hurry two hours before."
"Yes," she said.