Gabrielle Leggett screamed shrilly and sprang out of her chair, pointing a sharp-nailed white finger at Mrs. Leggett.
“She killed him,” the girl shrieked. “She said, ‘Come back here,’ and held the kitchen door open with one hand, and picked up the knife from the drain-board with the other, and when he went past her she pushed it in his back. I saw her do it. She killed him. I wasn’t dressed, and when I heard them coming I hid in the pantry, and I saw her do it.”
Mrs. Leggett got to her feet. She staggered, and would have fallen if Fitzstephan hadn’t gone over to steady her. Amazement washed her swollen face empty of grief.
The gray-faced dandified man by the table–Doctor Riese, I learned later–said, in a cold, crisp voice:
“There is no stab wound. He was shot through the temple by a bullet from this pistol, held close, slanting up. Clearly suicide, I should say.”
Collinson forced Gabrielle down to her chair again, trying to calm her. She was working her hands together and moaning.
I disagreed with the doctor’s last statement, and said so while turning something else over in my mind:
“Murder. He had this money in his pocket. He was going away. He wrote that letter to the police to clear his wife and daughter, so they wouldn’t be punished for complicity in his crimes. Did it,” I asked O’Gar, “sound to you like the dying statement of a man who was leaving a wife and daughter he loved? No message, no word, to them–all to the police.”
“Maybe you’re right,” the bullet-headed man said; “but supposing he was going away, he still didn’t leave them any–”
“He would have told them–either on paper or talking–something before he went, if he had lived long enough. He was winding up his affairs, preparing to go away, and– Maybe he was going to commit suicide, though the money and the tone of the letter make me doubt it; but even in that case my guess is that he didn’t, that he was killed before he had finished his preparations–maybe because he was taking too long a time. How was he found?”
“I heard,” Mrs. Leggett sobbed; “I heard the shot, and ran up here, and he–he was like that. And I went down to the telephone, and the bell–the doorbell–rang, and it was Mr. Fitzstephan, and I told him. It couldn’t–there was nobody else in the house to–to kill him.”
“You killed him,” I said to her. “He was going away. He wrote this statement, shouldering your crimes. You killed Ruppert down in the kitchen. That’s what the girl was talking about. Your husband’s letter sounded enough like a suicide letter to pass for one, you thought; so you murdered him–murdered him because you thought his confession and death would hush up the whole business, keep us from poking into it any further.”
Her face didn’t tell me anything. It was distorted, but in a way that might have meant almost anything. I filled my lungs and went on, not exactly bellowing, but getting plenty of noise out:
“There are half a dozen lies in your husband’s statement–half a dozen that I can peg now. He didn’t send for you and his daughter. You traced him here. Mrs. Begg said he was the most surprised man she had ever seen when you arrived from New York. He didn’t give Upton the diamonds. His account of why he gave them to Upton and of what he intended doing afterwards is ridiculous: it’s simply the best story he could think of on short notice to cover you up. Leggett would have given him money or he would have given him nothing: he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to give him somebody else’s diamonds and have all this stink raised.
“Upton traced you here and he came to you with his demand–not to your husband. You had hired Upton to find Leggett; you were the one he knew; he and Ruppert had traced Leggett for you, not only to Mexico City, but all the way here. They’d have squeezed you before this if they hadn’t been sent to Sing Sing for another trick. When they got out, Upton came here and made his play. You framed the burglary; you gave Upton the diamonds; and you didn’t tell your husband anything about it. Your husband thought the burglary was on the level. Otherwise, would he–a man with his record–have risked reporting it to the police?