“Shall I tell you what I think about the murder, Mr. Ramsay?” asked Mrs. Porter, looking up at him suddenly, and fixing him with those steady grey eyes.
“Pray do.”
“I think that no one upon God’s earth will ever know who fired that shot. Only at the Day of Judgment will the murderer stand revealed, and then the secret of the crime and the motive will stand forth written in fire upon the scroll that records men’s wrongs and sorrows and sins. You and I, and all of us, may read the story there, perhaps, in that day when we shall stand as shadows before the great white throne.”
“I believe you are right, Mrs. Porter” answered Cuthbert, quietly, holding out his hand to take leave. “A secret that has been kept for more than a year is likely to be kept till we are all in our graves. The murderer himself will be the one to tell it, perhaps. There are men who are proud of a bloody revenge, as if it were a noble deed. Good day to you, Mrs. Porter, and many thanks for your friendly reception.”
He held the thin, cold hand in his own as he said this, looking earnestly at the imperturbable face, and then he and Theodore left the cottage.
“Well, Cuthbert, what do you think of that woman?” asked Theodore, after they had passed through the gate, and into the quiet of the long glade where the fallow deer were browsing in the fading day.
“I think a good deal about her, but I haven’t thought out my opinion yet. Has she ever been off her head?”
“Not to my knowledge. She has lived in that house for twenty years. I never heard that there was anything wrong with her mentally.”
“I believe there is something, or has been something very wrong. There is madness in that women’s eye. It may be the indication of past trouble, or it may be a warning of an approaching disturbance. She is a woman who has suffered intensely, and who has acquired an abnormal power of self-restraint. I should like to know her history.”
“My God, Cuthbert,” cried Theodore, grasping him by the arm, and coming suddenly to a standstill, “do you know what your words suggest—to what your conclusion points? The murder of my cousin’s husband was an act of vengeance, or of lunacy. We have made up our minds about that, have we not? The detective, Juanita, you and I, everybody. We are looking for some wretch capable of a blindly malignant revenge, or for homicidal madness, with its unreasoning thirst for blood; and here, here at these gates is a woman whom you suspect of madness, a woman who could have had access to the gardens at any hour, who knew the habits and hours of the servants, who would know how to elude observation.”