he was the most surprised man she had ever seen when you arrived from New York. He wouldn't have given Upton the diamonds and then called in the police. He'd have given him money or he would have killed him without giving him anything. Upton didn't come to Leggett with his demands; he came to you. You were the one he knew. His agency had traced Leggett here for you―not only to Mexico City―all the way here, but he and Ruppert had been jailed before they could bleed you. When he got out, he came here and made his play. You got the diamonds for him, and you didn't tell your husband anything about the burglary being a fake. Why? You didn't want him to know that you knew about his South American and Mexican murders. Why? A good additional hold on him, if you needed it? Anyway, you dealt with Upton.
"Maybe Ruppert had got in touch with you, and you had him kill Upton for you―a job he'd be glad to do on his own hook. Probably, because Ruppert did kill Upton, and he did come to see you afterward, and you thought it necessary to put the knife in him down in the kitchen. You didn't know that the girl, concealed in the pantry, saw it. Horrified, having known all along that her father had killed her mother, seeing you now kill a man, she got dressed and ran away from this slaughter-house, taking her jewelry to Minnie to sell, drugging herself into forgetfulness.
"You didn't know she had seen you kill Ruppert, but you did know you had got out of your depth. You did know that your chances of disposing of the body were slim―your house was too much in the spotlight. So you played your only part, you told your husband the whole thing, got him to shoulder it for you, and then handed him his―here at the table.
"He shielded you. He had always shielded you. You," I thundered, my voice in fine form by now, "killed your sister Lily, his first wife, and let him take the fall for you. You went to London with him afterward. Would you have gone with your sister's murderer if you were innocent? You had him traced here, and you came here after him, and you married him. You were the one who decided that he had married the wrong sister―and you killed her."
"She did, she did!" cried Gabrielle Leggett, trying to get up from the chair in which Collinson held her. "She―"
Mrs. Leggett drew herself up straight, and smiled, showing white teeth set edge to edge, and came two steps toward the center of the room. One hand was on her hip, the other hanging at her hand side. The housewife―Fitzstephan's "serene, sane soul"―was gone; this was a wild animal in the form of a blonde woman―except the eyes, which were the animal's own. Even her body seemed now not rounded with the plumpness of well-cared-for early middle age; it was rounded as a tiger's or panther's is, with cushioned, soft-sheathed muscles.
I picked the gun up from the table and put it in my pocket.
"You wish to know who killed my sister?" she asked softly, speaking to me, her teeth clicking together between words, her lips smiling, her eyes burning. "She―the dope fiend―Gabrielle―she killed her mother. She is the one he shielded."
The girl cried out something unintelligible.
"Nonsense," I said. "She was a baby."
"Oh, but it is not nonsense," the woman insisted. "She was nearly five, a child of five playing with a pistol she had taken from a drawer while her mother slept. The pistol went off, and Lily died. An accident, of course, but Maurice, a sensitive soul, could not bear that the child should grow up knowing that her hand had sent her mother out of this world. Besides, it was likely that Maurice would have been convicted in any event. He and I had been intimate, you know. But that was a slight matter to him. His one thought
