I got up to leave the room, and this completely destroyed the remnant of her self-control. Her lips pouring out a stream of foul abuse, she came for me, struck me with all her force in the mouth, spat in my face, and then rushed over to my writing table, opened the drawer which contained all the notes I had been working on for the last six months, and flung them by handfuls in the fire. Something snapped in my brain. When she had finished she ran from the room, and I followed her stealthily. She went through the door into the garden to get air, I suppose. Just as she reached the top step I seized her by the shoulders and hurled her down. Her head struck the bottom step, and she writhed over on to her back and lay still. Trembling with horror and yet elation, I crept back to my study, and the butler found her an hour later. Well, number two, there is my story. I suppose rather a commonplace sex-crime narrative. I’ll read it again in ten years’ time. I wonder if I shall believe it ever happened! PART TWO _Which consists of a letter written by Sir Arthur Paradown to his friend, Mr. Weldon, the Coroner._ My dear Weldon, Seven months ago you held an inquest on my first wife. It will now be your dubious pleasure to perform that office on me, and I am sending you with this letter an account of the events leading up to that first inquest; this will reveal the incidents leading up to the second. And I am doing so because I have a favour to ask of you. Can you forget for a few hours the fact that I was a murderer, and remember that I was a fairly conscientious landowner and did my best for the County and helped a few people to be a little happier? If you can, do you think you can be a little unprofessional and tell the Jury that I have written you a private letter which explains my suicide, and that it has persuaded you that I was not insane, and then treat these documents as secret? What harm can it do! And it can do good, for my present wife is expecting to have a child in six months’ time, and I do not want the stigma of my insanity to rest on Margaret’s baby. Will you do this for me? Read what follows, and then decide---- Murderer’s sob-stuff is a peculiarly repellent brand, so I will merely state that when, six months later, I married Margaret, I knew for the first time utter cloudless happiness--for just six weeks, and then one evening after dinner, when we were sitting in my study, the telephone bell rang. Margaret took off the receiver and listened for a moment. “It’s making such a weird noise,” she said. “Give it to me,” I replied, and put it to my ear. “You thought you were rid of me, didn’t you, you murderer! But as you killed me, I shall kill you!” I knew the voice. I made a casual remark, lest Margaret should suspect something was wrong, and went out into the garden to recover from what had been a terrific shock, and to regain my balance.