The Cask, Freeman Wills Crofts [snow like ashes series .txt] 📗

from his pocket and laid it on a table at his hand⁠—“and if you give either of us the slightest cause for anxiety, we shall fire without waiting to make inquiries.”

The manufacturer smiled bitterly.

“I am not surprised at your suspicions. They are reasonable, though absolutely unfounded, and your precautions cannot therefore be offensive to me. As I try to do everything thoroughly, I may admit this cut on my hand was also faked. I simply squeezed a tube of liquid red paint on to the handkerchief. I did it to account for my being alone in the hall when you arrived, which I thought necessary, lest you might refuse to enter.”

La Touche nodded.

“Pray proceed with your statement,” he said again.

For a man of his years, Boirac looked strangely old and worn. His black hair was flecked with white, his face drawn and unhappy and his eyes weary and sombre. Though he had been speaking quietly enough, he seemed deeply moved and at a loss how to proceed. At last, with a gesture of despair, he went on:⁠—

“What I have to say is not easy, but, alas, I deserve that. I may tell you at once without any beating about the bush⁠—I brought you here tonight to make my confession. Yes, gentlemen, you see before you the miserable, guilty man. I killed her, gentlemen. I did it that awful night of the dinner party. And since then I have never known one moment’s ease. What I have suffered no living being could describe. I have been in hell ever since. I have aged more in these last few weeks than in ten years of ordinary life. And now, when to the gnawings of remorse the certainty of the result of your researches is looming before me⁠—I can bear it no longer. The suspense must end. Therefore, after much thought I have decided to make my confession.”

That the man was in earnest and his emotion genuine La Touche could no longer doubt. But his suspicions still remained. He asked a question.

“Why have you brought us here to tell us, M. Boirac? Surely the obvious thing would have been for you to go to the Sûreté and see M. Chauvet.”

“I know. I should have done that. But this was easier. I tell you, gentlemen, it is bad enough to have to say this to you here, sitting quietly in my own house. There⁠—with several and perhaps stupid officials, with typists⁠—I just couldn’t face it. What I want you to do is this: I will tell you everything. Any questions you ask I will answer. Then I don’t want to be bothered with it again. All I now hope for is that the end will come quickly. You do what is necessary and at the trial I will plead guilty. You will agree?”

“We will hear what you have to say.”

“For that, at least, I am grateful.” He pulled himself together with an obvious effort and continued in a low tone, without showing very evident traces of emotion.

“My statement, I fear, will be a long one, as I must tell you all that occurred from the beginning, so that you may understand what led up to this awful consummation. A great part of it you already know⁠—how my wife and Felix fell in love at the art school, and how her father refused his consent to their marriage, then how I, too, fell a victim and asked her hand; how my suit was looked upon with favour and I was misled both by herself and her father about what had taken place at the art school, and how, in short, we were married. And you know, too, I imagine, that our marriage from the first was a failure. I loved Annette intensely, but she never cared for me. We needn’t go into it, but I soon saw that she had only married me in a fit of despair at her engagement being broken off. She did me the gravest wrong, though I admit I don’t think she meant or realised it. We drifted farther and farther apart, till life together became insupportable. And then I met Felix and asked him to the house, not knowing till weeks later that he was the man who had been in love with my wife at the art school. But you must not think I have anything to say against the honour of either of them. My wife spoiled my life it is true, but she did not elope with Felix, nor did he, so far as I know, ask her to. They were good friends, but, to the best of my belief, nothing more. That is the smallest and the only reparation I can make them, and I make it unreservedly.

“But with me, alas, it was different. Balked of any chance of happiness in my home through my wife’s wicked action⁠—I say it advisedly⁠—her wicked action in marrying me while she loved another, I succumbed to the temptation to look elsewhere for happiness. I met, quite by accident, someone with whom I could have been happy. You will never learn who she was or how I managed to meet her without being suspected⁠—it is enough to say that things reached such a pass that this woman and I found we could no longer go on in the way we were, meeting by stealth, seeing each other only with carefully thought-out precautions. The situation was intolerable and I determined to end it. And it was on the evening of the dinner party that I first saw the way.

“But here, before I go on to tell you the events of that terrible night, lest you might try to find this woman and saddle her with a part of the responsibility for what followed, let me tell you that here again I lost. The week after I destroyed my soul with the ghastly crime of which I will tell you, she got a chill. It turned to pneumonia, and in four days she