The Turnpike House

by Fergus Hume

"I will say nothing to him," continued Mrs. Marshall, taking no notice of this interruption. "I do not wish to visit the sins of the parents upon the children; but with one parent murdered and the other parent a murderess, I don't see how the young man can turn out well. And I sincerely hope that he will not marry that unfortunate Jenny Brawn."

"If he asks her to marry him, she will not accept him blindly," said Mr. Cass, "for I intended to tell her the whole story--suppressing the fact that Mrs. Jenner was guilty."

"That is well," put in Geoffrey. "But I should like to hear the story of Mrs. Jenner's crime."

"I can tell it to you in a few words," said Mr. Cass. "The clerk's tale has brought the story up to the time when Jenner flung himself on the child. Well, Mrs. Jenner heard his cry, and rushed down into the room. Jenner was mad with rage at the uncanny hatred shewn to him by his own son, and had him by the hair of the head, shaking him as a terrier does a rat. Mrs. Jenner rushed at him--she thought he would kill the child--they struggled, and he struck her. While this was going on she found herself near the table, and seeing the knife, blindly snatched it up, throwing her husband to one side. Then, clutching the child to her breast and holding out the knife to keep off the infuriated man, she tried to make her escape from the house. But Jenner was blind with fury, both against the child and against his wife who had instilled such hatred into the mind of the boy. He rushed at her; she cried out that she was holding the knife, but he took no notice of her, and ran up against the blade, which buried itself in his heart. He fell, and his wife fainted with the insensible child in her arms. It was when she came to herself some time afterwards that she recalled what she had done. But it was by accident that she had killed him--and this she swore most solemnly; she denied that she had ever intended murder. Then she fled from the house into the darkness until she fell insensible under a hedge. The rest you know."

Mrs. Marshall laughed again at this account. "I believe she killed him on purpose," she said.

"She had every reason to do it," Mr. Cass said, coldly, "but all the same, I believe she has spoken the truth. Jenner died by accident."

"If this is so," said Geoffrey, slowly, "and I see no reason to disbelieve it, why did Mrs. Jenner tell Neil that she had killed his father?"

"I asked her that, and her answer was that she was afraid, if Neil reopened the case, some evidence might be brought forward to prove that she had really committed the murder. She had told her son that she was innocent, and she did not wish him to learn the truth. It was only on my giving a promise not to tell him that she consented to make the confession. She wants him to think of her only as a mother who loved him--not as a murderess."

"Humph!" remarked Geoffrey, doubtfully. "A queer way of shewing her love, to put it into the head of an imaginative neurotic creature like Neil that he himself was guilty!"

"It will not do him any harm," said Mr. Cass. "I don't pretend to say that I approve of her clearing her own name at the expense of Neil's peace of mind: but it is not for us to judge, and before she died she repented of having made that statement."