“And I swore to myself that as long as he had me he should have everything. I would be beauty to him, and peace and gentleness and graciousness and gaiety and strength. I wasn’t beautiful or peaceful or gentle or gracious or gay or strong, but I made myself all those things for him. That isn’t vanity—that’s the truth. I swore that he should never see me shed one tear, that he should never hear me lift my voice in anger, that he should never see me tremble before anything that fate should hold in store for either of us. He never did—no, truly, he never did. That was all that I could give him, but I did give him that.
“It took me seventeen years to save up enough railway fare to get out of that town. Then I came to Rosemont. A nice woman that I did some sewing for in the town had a sister in Rosemont. She told me that it was a lovely place and that she thought that there was a good opening there for some work, and that her sister was looking for boarders. So I took the few dollars that I’d saved and went, and you know the rest.
“Of course there are some things that you don’t know—you don’t know how brave and gay and gentle Pat has always been to me; you don’t know how happy we all were in the flat in New York, after he married Sue and the babies came. Sue helped me with the housekeeping, and Sue did some secretarial work at the university, and Pat did anything that turned up, and did it splendidly. We always had plenty to eat, and it was really clean and sunny, and we were all perfectly healthy and happy. Only, Sue never did talk about it much, because she is a very reserved child, in any case, and in this case she was afraid that it might seem a reflection on the Thornes that she had to live in a little walk-up flat in the Bronx, with no servants and pretty plain living.
“And Mr. Lambert was nervous about bringing out anything about it in direct examination for fear that in cross-examination Mr. Farr would twist things around to make it look as though Sue had undergone the tortures of the damned. Of course, we didn’t have much, but we had enough to make it seem a luxurious and carefree existence in comparison to the one that Pat and I had lived for over fifteen years.
“Those things you don’t know—and one other. You don’t know Polly and Pete, do you, Judge Carver?
“They are very wonderful children. I suppose that every grandmother thinks that her grandchildren are rather wonderful; but I don’t just think it about them; they are. Anyone would tell you that—anyone who had ever seen them. They’re the bravest, happiest, strongest little things. You could be with them for weeks and never once hear them cry. Of course, once in a very long while—if you have to scold them, for instance—because Pete is quite sensitive; but then you almost never have to scold them, and when Pete broke his leg last winter and Dr. Chilton set it he said that he had never seen such courage in a child. And when Polly was only two years old, she walked straight out into the ocean up to her chin, and she’d have gone farther still if her father hadn’t caught her up. She rides a pony better than any seven-year-old child in Rosemont, too, and she isn’t five yet—not until January—and the only time that she ever fell off the pony she never even whimpered—not once.
“They are very beautiful children too. Pete is quite fair and Polly is very dark, but they both have blue eyes and very dark eyelashes. They are so brown, too, and tall. It doesn’t seem possible that either of them could ever be sick or unhappy; but still, you have to be careful. Polly has been threatened twice with mastoiditis, and Pete has to have his leg massaged three times a week, because he still limps a little.
“That’s why I killed Madeleine Bellamy.
“The first time I realized that there was anything between her and Pat was almost a month before the murder, some time early in , I think. Sue had been having quite a dinner party, and I’d slipped out to the garden as usual as soon as I could get away. I decided to gather some lilacs, and I came back to the house to get the scissors from the flower room. As I passed the study I saw Pat and Mimi silhouetted against the study window; she was bending over, pretending to look at the ship he was making, but she wasn’t looking at it—she was looking at Pat.
“I’d always thought that she was a scatterbrained little goose, and I had never liked her particularly; even in the old days in the village I used to worry about her sometimes. She used too much perfume and too much pink powder, and she had an empty little voice and a horrid, excited little laugh. But I thought that she was good-natured and harmless enough, when I thought about her at all, and I was about to pass on, when she said
