"He wasn't quite dead. I helped him up. We struggled back nearly to the house. He fell once—"
"Why," asked Parker, "did you not leave him and run into the house to fetch help?"
Lady Mary hesitated.
"It didn't occur to me. It was a nightmare. I could only think of getting him along. I think—I think I wanted him to die."
There was a dreadful pause.
"He did die. He died at the door. I went into the conservatory and sat down. I sat for hours and tried to think. I hated him for being a cheat and a scoundrel. I'd been taken in, you see—made a fool of by a common sharper. I was glad he was dead. I must have sat there for hours without a coherent thought. It wasn't till my brother came along that I realized what I'd done, and that I might be suspected of murdering him. I was simply terrified. I made up my mind all in a moment that I'd pretend I knew nothing—that I'd heard a shot and come down. You know what I did."
"Why, Lady Mary," said Parker, in a perfectly toneless voice, "why did you say to your brother 'Good God, Gerald, you've killed him'?"
Another hesitant pause.
"I never said that. I said, 'Good God, Gerald, he's killed, then.' I never meant to suggest anything but suicide."
"You admitted to those words at the inquest?"