Mrs. Ansell looked at him with growing perturbation. “Saved—Bessy’s life? But how? By whom?”
“She might have been allowed to live, I mean—to recover. She was killed, Maria; that woman killed her!”
Mrs. Ansell, with another cry of bewilderment, let herself drop helplessly into the nearest chair. “In heaven’s name, Henry—what woman?”
He seated himself opposite to her, clutching at his stick, and leaning his weight heavily on it—a white dishevelled old man. “I wonder why you ask—just to spare me?”
Their eyes met in a piercing exchange of question and answer, and Mrs. Ansell tried to bring out reasonably: “I ask in order to understand what you are saying.”
“Well, then, if you insist on keeping up appearances—my daughter-in-law killed my daughter. There you have it.” He laughed silently, with a tear on his reddened eye-lids.
Mrs. Ansell groaned. “Henry, you are raving—I understand less and less.”
“I don’t see how I can speak more plainly. She told me so herself, in this room, not an hour ago.”
“She told you? Who told you?”
“John Amherst’s wife. Told me she’d killed my child. It’s as easy as breathing—if you know how to use a morphia-needle.”
Light seemed at last to break on his hearer. “Oh, my poor Henry—you mean—she gave too much? There was some dreadful accident?”
“There was no accident. She killed my child—killed her deliberately. Don’t look at me as if I were a madman. She sat in that chair you’re in when she told me.”
“Justine? Has she been here today?” Mrs. Ansell paused in a painful effort to readjust her thoughts. “But why did she tell you?”
“That’s simple enough. To prevent Wyant’s doing it.”
“Oh–-” broke from his hearer, in a long sigh of fear and intelligence. Mr. Langhope looked at her with a smile of miserable exultation.
“You knew—you suspected all along?—But now you must speak out!” he exclaimed with a sudden note of command.
She sat motionless, as if trying to collect herself. “I know nothing—I only meant—why was this never known before?”
He was upon her at once. “You think—because they understood each other? And now there’s been a break between them? He wanted too big a share of the spoils? Oh, it’s all so abysmally vile!”
He covered his face with a shaking hand, and Mrs. Ansell remained silent, plunged in a speechless misery of conjecture. At length she regained some measure of her habitual composure, and leaning forward, with her eyes on his face, said in a quiet tone: “If I am to help you, you must try to tell me just what has happened.”
He made an impatient gesture. “Haven’t I told you? She found that her accomplice meant to speak, and rushed to town to forestall him.”
Mrs. Ansell reflected. “But why—with his place at Saint Christopher’s secured—did Dr. Wyant choose this time to threaten her—if, as you imagine, he’s an accomplice?”
“Because he’s a drug-taker, and she didn’t wish him to have the place.”
“She didn’t wish it? But that does not look as if she were afraid. She had only to hold her tongue!”
Mr. Langhope laughed sardonically. “It’s not quite so simple. Amherst was coming to town to tell me.”
“Ah—_he_ knows?”
“Yes—and she preferred that I should have her version first.”
“And what is her version?”
