He said no more then, and rarely spoke of the man afterwards. Davenport was not a communicative man, and there was nothing noteworthy in his silence.
After her husband's death she went through his papers, and found evidence of a much closer intimacy between Fahey and him than she had till then suspected. There was no clear evidence in these documents. They were partly in her husband's handwriting, partly in Fahey's. There was an air of mystery in them, and she was certain many passages of them were figurative. But one dreadful secret she learned from them beyond all doubt: Louis Davenport had not come by his money fairly, and Fahey was an accomplice in his schemes. When leaving London for the Continent, she had carried those papers with her unread. There she opened them, with a view to destroying them, and burned them in terrified haste. She had never suspected her husband of dishonest actions. Now she felt perfectly sure he had come by his money foully. How, she did not know. The man had been her husband, and she would shield his memory from shame; but she would touch none of his money, let who would have it, when she got back to London.
She was convinced Fahey had not thrown himself into the Puffing Hole for love of her, or because he was insane, but solely and simply because he and her husband were mixed up in crimes of some kind, and Fahey preferred death to discovery on his own part, and on her part too; for she would suffer from the exposure of her husband, and Fahey had nothing to expect from her. There was still a want of clearness and precision about the whole affair. But on her way back from France, she had no doubt her theory was right in the main.
Before the inquest she had been in horror of revealing in court the history of the treatment she had received at the hands of Blake, and the bare notion that she, being then a married woman, had driven this man Fahey in a frenzy of self-sacrifice or devotion to drown himself, filled her mind with thoughts of shame and anguish, the contemplation of which nearly took away her own reason. She had contemplated making away with herself rather than face the ordeal of the court. She had been a recluse for years, and haughty in her consciousness of unblameableness all her life.
On her return to London she heard the rumour of this apparition at the Puffing Hole. Phelan had told of the apparition to several people in Kilbarry. The news of it had got into the local papers, and London papers copied the account. No name was given but Fahey's, and attached to his name was a brief history of Fahey's disappearance years ago.
Upon these two discoveries she resolved to go to Ireland and renounce all claim to the fortune her husband had left her. There could no longer be in her mind any doubt that her husband's fortune, or a portion of it, had been obtained by fraud. At Paulton's she met O'Brien, who, on the way to Ireland, told her he himself had seen Fahey.
She was now quite sure Fahey was still alive. The horrible suspicion had taken hold of her mind that Fahey had, after keeping in hiding for years, poisoned her husband for her sake! In the light of her belief that Fahey still lived, the theory that her husband had poisoned himself while of unsound mind was absurd to her.
Before setting out this day for the Black Rock she opened a drawer of her late husband's, took out a revolver she knew to be loaded, and dropped it into her pocket.
When she left the edge of the Black Rock she walked carefully to the cliff and ascended by the path.
When she reached the level of the downs she gazed round.