Sally went upstairs to her sister's bedroom. She entered to find that Helen, having recovered consciousness, was indulging in a comfortable fit of weeping on her husband's shoulder, gasping at intervals: "You didn't do it! You didn't do it!"
,No, darling, of course I didn't do it. If you'd only told me!"
Sally paused for a moment in the doorway, and then came in and shut it behind her. "Delicately nurtured female suffering from a fit of strong hysterics?" she inquired. "Come on, Helen. Snap out of it! You're wanted downstairs." She walked into the adjoining bathroom, discovered a bottle of sal volatile in the medicine-chest, mixed a ruthless dose of it, and returned to the bedroom, and put the glass into North's hand. "Push that down her throat," she said.
"Come, Helen! Drink this!" North commanded.
Helen gulped some of the mixture and choked. "Oh! Filthy stuff! I'm all right; really I am! Oh, John, tell me it's true, and I'm not dreaming? It wasn't you I saw that awful night?"
"Of course it wasn't. Is that what you have been thinking all this time?"
"I've been so much afraid! Then that ghastly Superintendent told me you weren't in your flat that evening, and it seemed to make it quite certain. I hoped you'd get away while I talked to the police. That's why I sent Baker up to tell you. I hoped you'd understand it was a warning."
"Was that why you told the Superintendent you had committed the murder?" he asked.
"Yes, of course. I couldn't think of anything else to do. I was too unhappy to mind what happened to me. It didn't matter."
He took her hands, and held them. "You cared as much as that, Helen?"