Murder of a Lady (26 page)
Authors: Anthony Wynne
The End
The silence in the room was broken by the first clear notes of a blackbird. A moment later the chorus of the birds, that immemorial song of the dawn, broke on their ears. A look of great gentleness appeared on Dr. Hailey's face.
“Christina in that moment,” he said, “heard the call of her gods to action. She seized the block of ice and dropped it out of the window. It struck the spike and was shattered into several jagged daggers. One of these struck Miss Gregor and was wedged firmly into the wound it had inflicted. In this hot weather it soon melted; she was dead before that occurred.
“The effect on Christina was exactly what might have been foreseen. Those who feel themselves called by Heaven to take action against the powers of evil, and who are greatly successful, develop immediately a spiritual pride that is nearly, if not quite, insanity. Christina constituted herself the protector of the Gregor family. When she heard that Dundas suspected you, Captain Gregor, she marked him down for destruction. The room above his, as you know, is empty. All she had to do was to wait there till he leaned out of his window and he did that no doubt at very frequent intervals on account of the heat. She knew that McDonald and I were coming upstairs; she heard Dundas wish us good night. He appeared below her. The block of ice was not shattered in this instance, for there is no spike above Dundas's room. It rolled down the bank and went splashing into the burn. The current carried it out into the loch. The procedure was the same in Barley's case except that a bait was necessary to induce him to walk under the window. It was supplied by the dropping of a preliminary block of ice, the resulting thud and splash, heard at the moment when he was about to arrest you, Mrs. Gregor, naturally excited his liveliest interest.”
He stopped and bowed his head.
“I planned, to-night,” he said in tones of deep regret, “to excite Christina's fears and direct her hostility against myself. That was the object of my visit to the nursery and of the directions I gave. I succeeded too well. I had arranged my hat in such a way that, when I pulled on a thread, it would swing out from the french-window. If Christina was guilty I felt sure she would strike again. Then, as I coughed to give the signal, Duchlan appeared. As you know, I shouted, but it was too late.”
He drew a long deep breath.
“The knowledge that she had killed her master was sentence of death to the woman at the window,” he added. “Her fall did not kill her; as soon as she knew herself alive she rushed headlong down the bank to the water.”
The chorus of the birds filled all the spaces of morning. McDonald rose stiffly, dragging his leg.
“I believe,” he said, “that the ice comes from the Ardmore fish-monger. There are herring scales on every square inch of his walls and doors.”
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