Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction
“I think the inspector would like to know exactly what you did before
you left the hotel,” Sir Clinton intervened.
“Mr. Fleetwood went round to the garage to get out the car. Meanwhile
I went down to the ladies' dressing-room, where I keep my golfing
things. I changed my slippers for my golfing-shoes—I was in an evening
frock—and I slipped on my golfing-blazer. Then I went out through the
side-entrance and joined Mr. Fleetwood in the car. He drove me down to
the point on the road nearest Neptune's Seat. I left him there, got
out of the car, and went across the sands to the rock.
“The man was there, waiting for me; and at the first glance I could
see he'd been drinking. He wasn't drunk, you understand, but he wasn't
normal. When I saw that, I was terrified. I can't explain these
things, but he—— Oh, I used to shiver at times even at the very
thought of what he'd been like in that state; and when I met him down
there, face to face, I was really in terror of him. I pulled the
pistol out of my pocket and held it in my hand, without letting him
see it.
“Then I spoke to him and tried to persuade him to come to some
arrangement with me. It was no use—none whatever. You've no idea of
the kind of man he was. He wanted money to keep his mouth shut. He
wouldn't hear of any divorce, because that would loosen his hold on me
if it went through, he said, and he meant to keep me in his grip. And
then he said—oh, I'm not going to repeat what he said about Mr.
Fleetwood and myself—horrible things, meant to hurt me and degrade me
in my own eyes. And the worse he got in that way, the angrier he grew.
You know what a drunken man's like? I know it only too well.”
She made an involuntary gesture which betrayed even more than her
words.
“At last he went beyond all bounds. I was trembling all over, partly
from fear and partly from pure rage at the things he said. It was
quite clear that I could do nothing with him in that state; so I
turned to go. Then he muttered something—I'm not going to repeat it;
you can imagine it for yourselves—and he pounced forward and gripped
me when I wasn't expecting it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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