"I am not mistaken; I cannot be mistaken. The woman you call Clayton
is your mother's sister, Beatrice Barron. You remember telling me that
she was struck on the head by a spar? I should imagine that that blow
destroyed her memory, and, that being the case, your mother saw the
chance--"
"Of pinching the title, you mean?" asked Margery bitterly. "Yes, she
would do that. It seems dreadful to say that, now she is dead, but she
was like that."
"Beatrice was the elder sister," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "By your
uncle's death she would inherit everything and your mother would get
nothing. Your mother claimed the wounded girl as her _maid_, not as her
_sister_. The girl recovered from the blow and believed of course what
was told her, that she was Alice Clayton, your mother's maid. I should
imagine that, just lately, her memory has begun to return, but that
the blow on the head, given all these years ago, has at last caused
mischief on the brain."
Margery was looking at him with eyes of horror. "She killed Mother and
she wanted to kill me," she breathed.
"It seems so," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "In her brain there was just one
muddled idea--that her inheritance had been stolen and was being kept
from her by you and your mother."
"But--but Clayton is so old."
Mr. Satterthwaite was silent for a minute as a vision rose up before
him--the faded old woman with gray hair and the radiant golden-haired
creature sitting in the sunshine at Cannes. Sisters! Could it really be
so? He remembered the Barron girls and their likeness to each other.
Just because two lives had developed on different tracks--
He shook his head sharply, obsessed by the wonder and pity of life.
He turned to Margery and said gently, "We had better go upstairs and
see her."
They found Clayton sitting in the little workroom where she sewed.
She did not turn her head as they came in, for a reason that Mr.
Satterthwaite soon found out.
"Heart failure," he murmured, as he touched the cold, rigid shoulder.
"Perhaps it is best that way."