But why? The woman had stood by and watched
the lad murdered. How could he bear even to look on her again?
Unless there had been that something that had not come out--
something he had learnt later--that excused even that monstrous
callousness of hers.
Yet what could there be? It had all been so planned, so
cold-blooded. That shaving in the dining-room! It was that seemed
most to stick in his throat. She must have brought him down a
looking-glass; there was not one in the room. Why couldn't he have
gone upstairs into the bathroom, where Hepworth always shaved
himself, where he would have found everything to his hand?
He had been moving about the room, talking disjointedly as he paced,
and suddenly he stopped and looked at me.
"Why in the dining-room?" he demanded of me.
He was jingling some keys in his pocket. It was a habit of his when
cross-examining, and I felt as if somehow I knew; and, without
thinking--so it seemed to me--I answered him.
"Perhaps," I said, "it was easier to bring a razor down than to
carry a dead man up."
He leant with his arms across the table, his eyes glittering with
excitement.
"Can't you see it?" he said. "That little back parlour with its
fussy ornaments. The three of them standing round the table,
Hepworth's hands nervously clutching a chair.
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