'How long before her death did she give you this letter?' I asked.
'I don't know. I can't remember. An hour — maybe two or three. I don't remember.'
'My God!' I breathed. Then it was suicide?'
She nodded slowly.
I ripped open the envelope then. Inside was a single sheet of the same spidery writing. It trembled in my hand as I leaned forward to read it in the dim flicker of the candle. It was headed: 'In my room — 29th October, 1939.' In my room! Not Cripples' Ease, Botallack, Cornwall. Just 'in my room.' As though that were all her world.
Kitty leaned forward and picked up the candle, holding it over the letter for me. It guttered in the draught from the window and the grease spilled across her fingers and dripped on to the bedclothes. I had let go of her wrist and it was only afterwards that I realised that she could have left the room then. Why she didn't, I don't quite know. Curiosity perhaps. The letter had been in her possession all those years. But I'd rather say it was her sympathy — her sense of my need of her company as I read the last thoughts of a woman going out to kill herself on the rocks of Botallack Head, a woman who had once gone through the labour of bringing me into the world.
I have the letter on the desk beside me as I write. That, and the old, faded photograph and a brooch she gave to Kitty they're all I possess of my mother. I'll not attempt to describe my feelings as I read that letter. Here it is — read it and judge for yourself how I felt:
MY DARLING BOB,
Yes, you are still that. All these years the memory of you has been like a light shining in the darkness of my life. Pray God you found happiness. I found none. The thought of you and Jim and all the kindness and the love I left — it has been very bitter. They say I am not responsible for my actions now. But please believe me, Bob — at this moment my mind is very clear. I love you, and I have never loved anyone else.
They have shut me away in this room. The windows are barred. It is more than a year I think since I walked on the headland. I cannot even see my little garden from here. But today — today he has forgotten to lock the door. My mind is made up. I am going up to the headland for the last time. I shall give this letter to Kitty, together with the little brooch you bought me in Penzance that day we went over to the Mount by boat. It is all that I have left of you. Poor child. I grew very fond of her. But she is afraid of me now since her mother died.