“Joe,” she said. “It’s Joe that’s dead.”
“Yes. Do they know?”
“They know nothing. They think it was you. It’s all over, Stokes has told. But, oh, what is it? I can’t understand—it’s like a fearful dream.”
The words died away and a sudden violent trembling shook her. With the joints of her knees like water she sank on the side of the bed, gripping the other with her shaking hands, pulling her down beside her.
“Tell me, tell me,” she implored. “Why is he dead? Why did he pretend he was you? What was he doing?”
They sat, clinging together, two small huddled figures in the gray light. Though the house below was as silent as the tomb they spoke in subdued voices, question, answer, surmise. Each knew a different aspect of the story, brought her own knowledge of Joe’s motives and actions. In that whispered exchange they pieced together the separate facts, combined them in coherent sequence and came to a final enlightenment.
Joe had met his death in his last effort as a police spy, his last effort to get the Parkinson reward. Leaving his room to come down and make ready for his departure, he had heard the voices of Stokes and Sybil in the living-room. Sybil remembered Stokes’ upward look and question about some one moving in the gallery—Joe creeping to concealment behind the arch. The nature of their conversation would have held him listening: here was his last opportunity to get the information he sought. He had heard the rendezvous in the summer-house. Its open situation offered no hiding-place outside, but knowing that it would be almost dark inside, he had conceived the idea of putting on his Sebastian costume and impersonating Sybil. He probably thought he risked no more than Stokes’ rage, and he also probably thought that he might escape before Stokes had discovered his identity.
His room was next to Sybil’s. He had heard her come up-stairs and from his window could command the Point. When Shine left it he had gone down, passed the balcony where Stokes was waiting, and hearing his following footsteps, moved with that close imitation of Sybil’s gait to the summer-house. There the dim light and the drooping curls of his wig enabled him to carry through the deception. Stokes’ wild speech, followed by the drawing of the pistol, had terrified him. Confronted by a man armed and half-mad, panic had seized him and he had made a rush from the place.
So Joe had died, a body clad in gala dress swirling out on currents that would never bring him back. Anne said nothing. She did not feel any special grief, or feeling of any kind. Too much had happened, she was benumbed. She had a vague sense that in some future time, when she had recovered from her dulled and battered state, she might be sorry, cry perhaps. Her eyes fell on her hand with Sybil’s clasped around it and the sight of the linked fingers roused her. They were like a symbol of the intertwined closeness of their lives, so much closer than hers and Joe’s had ever been. That brought her back to Sybil and Sybil’s inexplicable actions. She lifted her head and looked at the face beside her:
“But—but—why did you do all this? Hide, not say anything, let them think you were dead?”