THE SECRET OF WYVERN TOWERS.
To return to Drelincourt. As has been said, he had the unstoppered
vial to his lips, and was about to drain the contents, when the door
was thrown open and Roden Marsh rushed into the room.
With one sweep of his arm he dashed the bottle from Drelincourt's
hand, crying out: "Thank God, I am not too late!"
But Drelincourt gazed at him with reproachful eyes.
"Why have you thwarted me, Rodd?" he said.
"Because you would have made the most frightful mistake of your life;
because there is no need of your sacrificing yourself for Gumley;
because the real murderer has been discovered!"
Rodd got out all this in a breath and then dropped into a chair,
panting from the haste with which he had come and the excitement which
possessed him.
"The real murderer has been discovered!" Drelincourt gasped. "Then
I----"
"Had nothing whatever to do with it, as Mrs. Jenwyn will tell you. She
is here now, waiting impatiently to see you."
"But what has she----"
"That she will tell you herself. I will bring her at once;" And Rodd
started up.
But Drelincourt laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
"Wait," he said. "Give me a few moments. I can scarcely realize yet
that--that I am not in another world."
It was ten minutes later that Mrs. Jenwyn and Drelincourt were left
alone.
They had shaken hands, and, at her host's request, she had seated
herself on a chair opposite his own, on the other side of the hearth.
Drelincourt lost no time in coming to the point.
"Roden Marsh tells me that you are the bearer of some very remarkable
news," he said, "and, in point of fact, that your visit here tonight
was on purpose to make it known to me. Is that so, may I ask?"
"It was that, and nothing else, which brought me to Fairlawn."
"I am given to understand that the information you wish to impart to
me is concerned with the death of my first wife."
"That is so."
"You know already from Roden Marsh that I have all along laid her
death at my own door. I had every reason for believing that I had
killed her while in a somnambulistic state, but Roden tells me you
assert most positively that my belief was utterly baseless."
"I do assert it, Mr. Drelincourt."
"Such an assertion presupposes a knowledge on your part of the guilty
person."
Mrs. Jenwyn bowed.
"Are you prepared to name the person in question?"
"I am."
"Yes?"
Mr. Drelincourt sat up in his chair. A hectic spot burned in either
cheek. His whole frame was a-tingle with excitement.
"The person to whom your first wife owed her death was none other than
your half sister, Anna Drelincourt."
Slowly, clearly, and unhesitatingly fell the words. Mrs. Jenwyn had
come purposely to declare the truth, and the more simply she put it
the better.
"Great Heavens! You don't mean to say that!"
"I have told you the simple truth."
For a little while they sat in silence. Drelincourt seemed utterly
overcome. Anna's name was the last he would have picked out with all
the world to choose from. And yet----
"Go on, please. Tell me all you know of the dreadful affair," he said,
after a time.
"Anna, poor girl, was no more mistress of her actions at the time it
happened than you, Mr. Drelincourt, had reason to believe yourself to
be master of yours. Just then she was laboring under one of her
recurrent attacks of mania. At such times, as you are aware, in all
her actions, thoughts, and habits, she became again as a child of ten.
"But there were occasions when darker symptoms would betray
themselves, when I caught little glimpses below the surface which
caused even me who knew her so well and loved her so dearly to tremble
and ask myself what still darker fate the future might have in store
for her. Of such symptoms, however, I said nothing to any one. Where
would have been the use of my doing so? No one could help her, nothing
more could be done for her than had been already done. The future must
be left to care for itself.
"To come to the fatal morning.
"Anna and I slept in separate rooms, with a door between, which, by
her wish, was always kept open at night. I may add that it was my
practice to sleep with my bunch of keys under my pillow. On the
morning in question I awoke earlier than usual, and while the day was
still very young. There was upon me an uneasy sense of something being
wrong.
"Instinctively I felt for my keys. They were gone. I was out of bed in
an instant, and, crossing to Anna's room, I looked in. It was empty.
Then I noticed that the outer door of my room, which opened into the
anteroom, was slightly ajar. Only giving myself time to thrust my feet
into a pair of slippers and to wrap a shawl round my shoulders, I
started to look for Anna, dreading I knew not what.
"The first thing I saw was my bunch of keys hanging from the lock of
the baize covered door, one of which had been used to open it. From
the anteroom I passed into the corridor, the doors opening into which
were all shut, and so went swiftly forward till I reached the gallery
at the head of the great staircase. Still there was no sign of Anna.
"While hesitating what to do next, I perceived that the door of Mrs.
Drelincourt's dressing room was partly open. It seemed to me a most
unlikely thing that I should find Anna there, yet it was impossible to
answer for her actions while she was as she was. Before descending to
the lower parts of the house I would satisfy myself so far. (I knew
that you, sir, were away at the Cot.) Pushing wider the dressing room
door, I went in and then paused. A slight noise in the bedroom drew me
forward; on the soft carpet my footsteps were inaudible.
"Peeping cautiously through the divided portière, I beheld Anna
standing by Mrs. Drelincourt's bed, still grasping the stiletto with
which she had just accomplished her dreadful purpose. Her face was
towards me, and the expression it wore just then I can never forget;
my dreams were haunted by it for months afterwards. While gazing thus
at her handiwork, a low maniacal laugh broke from her lips. A moment
later she tossed the stiletto away, and made for the portière. I had
barely time to shelter myself behind a screen before she passed me,
going straight out of the room.
"Scarcely had she disappeared before I was in the bed chamber. I
quickly satisfied myself that Mrs. Drelincourt was dead. For her
nothing could be done, and my one thought now was how I could best
screen the culprit. When I got back to my rooms, I found her fast
asleep in bed, a lovely color mantling her cheeks, and her lips parted
with a childlike smile.
"That morning, I remember, she slept a little later than usual, but
when she awoke she was as gay and as full of innocent fun as, at such
times, she nearly always was. She had slain Mrs. Drelincourt (whom, I
have reason to know, she secretly hated) in a temporary access of
homicidal mania, but her memory, on awaking, retained no recollection
of it whatever."
Mrs. Jenwyn ceased speaking, and Drelincourt was slow to break the
silence which ensued.
At length he said: "You have succeeded in astonishing me more, Mrs.
Jenwyn, than I was ever astonished before. But that is a point on
which I will not expatiate at present. May I take it that you never
said anything to my poor sister about what you had witnessed in my
wife's bed room?"
"Not a hint nor a syllable about it ever passed my lips to her."
"So that she lived and died in utter ignorance of that terrible
morning's work?"
Mrs. Jenwyn bowed affirmatively.
"From the bottom of my heart, madam, I thank you for your wise
reticence. While it would have benefited nobody to have revealed what
you knew to Anna, it would have distressed her infinitely, and, in all
probability, would have tended to shorten her life. For her sake I
shall always hold myself your debtor. But tell me this, please. In
case Gumley, after his arrest twenty years ago, had been brought to
trial and found guilty, as he has been now, what action would have
been taken by you? Or should you have taken any at all?"
"I should have done at that time precisely what I have done today: I
should have sought an interview with you, and have revealed to you
everything that was known to me."
It was evident to Drelincourt that Mrs. Jenwyn had been actuated by
precisely the same motives that had prevailed with himself.
To the widow it seemed that the time had now come when she might ask a
question on her own account.
"And now, sir, that I have told you all this," she said, "will you
kindly inform me, in return, what step it will be needful for me to
take."
Mr. Drelincourt considered for a few moments. Then he said: "As it
seems to me, the proper thing to do will be for both of us to put in
an appearance in the morning before the Sunbridge magistrates, when
you can depose on oath to the truth of what you have told me here
tonight. What will happen after that I cannot tell. The joint wisdom
of our friends on the bench will decide that point for us."
After a little further conversation, the housekeeper was summoned, and
Mrs. Jenwyn given into her charge. Breakfast would be on the table at
nine, her host told her, and at ten the brougham would be in readiness
to drive them into Sunbridge.
The arrangement made by Drelincourt overnight was duly carried into
effect next morning. The brougham conveyed Mrs. Jenwyn and him into
Sunbridge, where they presented themselves before the bench of
magistrates.
At Drelincourt's request he was sworn first. To recapitulate his
statement would be superfluous, what he had to tell being known to us
already. Then came Mrs. Jenwyn's turn, the nature of whose evidence is
equally known to us. After that the magistrates retired to their
private room in order to consult together, with the result that the
case was adjourned for a couple of days to allow of their taking legal
opinion in the interim, bail being accepted for the reappearance of
Drelincourt and Mrs. Jenwyn.
At the adjourned inquiry no charge was preferred against the former,
but the widow was committed for trial at the autumn assizes, on the
count of being accessory after the fact to the murder of the first
Mrs. Drelincourt. That such a charge, bearing in mind the peculiar
character of the case, should involve any more severe penalty than a
very limited term of imprisonment was what nobody believed or
expected. Meanwhile, Mrs. Jenwyn was released on bail, the surety for
her appearance at the assize bar being no other than Felix
Drelincourt.
Long before this the latter had told everything to his wife. With what
passed between them on the occasion we have nothing to do. This,
however, may be said; that, woman-like, Mrs. Drelincourt thought far
more of the lack of confidence in her as a wife which her husband's
confession revealed than she did of anything else he had to tell her.
When the Sunbridge autumn assizes came on, Mrs. Jenwyn failed to put
in an appearance, nor was she anywhere to be found. As a consequence,
Mr. Drelincourt's bail was estreated, for which he was by no means
sorry. He would rather have forfeited the amount twice over than have
had the details of poor Anna's unhappy story related in a court of
justice.
Some time before this Gumley had been released under an order from the
Home Office.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Secret of Wyvern Towers, by T. W. Speight