Maurice De Mayenne.
Nobody said anything for a long moment after Fitzstephan had finished his reading. Mrs. Leggett had taken the handkerchief from her face, listening, sobbing now and then. Gabrielle Leggett was looking jerkily around the room light fighting cloudiness in her eyes, her lips writhing together as if she were trying to get words out but couldn't.
I went to the table, bent over the dead man, felt his clothes. The inside coat pocket was stuffed. I reached under his arm, unbuttoned and opened the coat, took a brown wallet out of the pocket. The wallet was thick with paper money―fifteen thousand dollars, when we counted it afterward.
Showing the wallet's contents to the others, I asked:
"He leave any message besides the one that's been read?"
"None that's been found," O'Gar replied. "Why?"
"He didn't commit suicide," I said. "He was murdered."
Gabrielle Leggett screamed piercingly and sprang out of her chair, pointing a sharp 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 butcher-knife from the drainboard with the other, and he went past her she pushed it in his back. I saw her do it. I wasn't dressed, and when I heard them coming, I hid in the pantry."
Mrs. Leggett got to her feet, her face washed empty by amazement and grief. She staggered and would have fallen if Fitzstephan hadn't gone over to steady her.
The gray-faced, dandified man by the table―a Doctor Riese, 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 the girl down in her chair again, trying to calm her.
I disagreed with the doctor's last statement, and said so, while my brains were busy with another matter:
"Murder. His letter is the letter of a man who is still fighting. There's plenty of determination in it, but no despair. When he wrote it he meant to go away. If he had intended to kill himself he would have left some word for his wife and daughter. 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, taking the blame for your crimes. You killed Ruppert down in the kitchen. That's what the girl was talking about. Your husband's statement sounded enough like a suicide letter to pass for one, you thought, so you murdered him—murdered him believing that his death and confession would close up the whole business, stop us from poking into it any more."
Her face didn't tell me anything. It was distorted, but in a way that might mean almost anything. I filled my lungs and went on, not exactly bellowing, but making plenty of noise:
"There are a half-dozen lies in your husband's statement——a half-dozen that I know of now. He didn't send for you and his daughter. Mrs. Begg said
