Then the desire for revenge, the mad, insatiable craving for blood that had remained dormant, was again aroused; and, under the weird circumstances already described, she disguised herself as a man, and, entering our tent, murdered Alexandrovitch.
On further investigation, I discovered that the unknown English traveller was none other than George Travers, for in one of the sketchbooks he had carried during his tour in the East, I found a well-executed pencil portrait of the Cossack maiden.
Dàrya’s motive in coming to England was, without doubt, one of revenge, prompted by the terrible aberration from which she was suffering.
Mabel, who had refrained from saying anything regarding the murder of her brother, fearing lest her story should appear absurd, now made an explanation. On the night of the tragedy, she was on her way to the house at Chiswick, and, when near the gates, a well-dressed young man had accosted her, explaining that he was an old friend of George’s recently returned from abroad, and wished to speak with him privately without his wife’s knowledge. He concluded by asking her whether, as a favour, she would show him the way to enter her brother’s room without going in at the front door. The story told by the young man seemed quite plausible, and she led him up to the French windows of the study.
Then she left the stranger, and crossed the lawn to go round to the front door, but at that moment the clock of Chiswick church chimed, and, finding the hour so late, she suddenly resolved to return home.
Later, when she heard of the tragedy, she was horrified to discover that she had actually aided the assassin, but resolved to preserve silence lest suspicion might attach itself to her.
She now identified the distorted features of the madwoman as those of the young man, and when I questioned her with regard to the bloodstained handkerchief, she explained how, in groping about the shrubbery in the dark, she had torn her hand severely on some thorns.
The cloud of suspicion that had rested so long upon Mabel is now removed, and we are again happy.
The carefully-devised plots and the devilish cunning that characterised all the murderess’s movements appeared most extraordinary; nevertheless, in cases such as hers, they are not unheard of. Dàrya is now in Brookwood Asylum, hopelessly insane, for she is still suffering from that most terrible form of madness,—acute homicidal mania,—and is known to the attendants as “The Woman with a Blemish.”