“We desire to inform you,” said Leslie slowly, and with just a shade more of hardness in his tone as the detective began to work in him, “that we have under arrest the confessed murderer of your husband.”
She leaned involuntarily forward in her chair and grasped the arms so hard that her knuckles showed white through the fair skin of her hands.
“And we desire to inform you,” added Lanagan quickly, “that the name of your husband’s murderer is Charles Thorne; and we desire to ask you what the motive was for the murder of your husband by Charles Thorne; and why, when you suspected that Charles Thorne was the murderer, you did not immediately notify the police?”
Her hands slowly relaxed their grip on the chair arms as she sank back into its depths. Curiously, in the way the light struck down at her hair and her face, it seemed that the beautiful halo of white that had invested her, and the delicate, well-preserved whiteness of her skin, turned suddenly to dirty grey. If ever the blight of age settled visibly in fact or in fiction, it settled upon her then.
“You—have—Charles—Thorne—under—arrest?” she said, and her very tone was grey. She did not deny the truth of the charge; she did not express satisfaction that the murderer was found; she merely asked whether they had Charles Thorne under arrest.
“Yes.”
Her eyes closed and her head dropped suddenly back against the chair. We stepped swiftly forward, but before we could take any measures to revive her, her eyes had opened again. The lips moved. She was speaking, but so gaspingly that we bent to hear.
“It is the end of the long night,” she said with many halts; “the end of the long night. A life’s nightmare is done. God have mercy on me—”
She stopped completely. Then:
“God pity all mothers who bear as I bore—”