The Case of the Velvet Claws   ::   Гарднер Эрл Стенли

“All right. What happened?”

“Just what you said, only I didn’t know Mrs. Veitch knew about it. I didn’t know any one heard George call me or heard the shot.”

“How close to him were you when you shot him?”

“I was way across the room,” she answered tonelessly. “Honestly, I didn’t intend to do it. I just shot him on impulse. I had the gun to use for defense in the event he should attack me. I was afraid he’d try to kill me. He had a violent temper, and I knew that if he ever found out about Harrison Burke, he’d do something awful. As soon as I knew he’d found out, I slipped the gun into my hand. When he started for me, I screamed and shot. I guess I dropped the gun right there on the floor. I wasn’t certain about it at the time. Honestly, the idea of getting Burke into it never occurred to me then. I was too rattled to think of anything. I simply ran out into the night.

“I’m not a fool, and I knew how black things would look for me, particularly in view of the mess that I was in with Harrison Burke on account of the Beechwood Inn murder.

“I just ran blindly out into the rain and didn’t have very much of an idea what I was doing. I remember grabbing a coat as I went past the hall stand. But it shows how rattled I was that I didn’t even take my own coat. It was there, but I grabbed an old overcoat that Carl Griffin sometimes wore. I threw it around me and kept running. After a while I got my wits about me and decided that I’d better call you. I didn’t know then whether or not he was dead. But I knew that if I was going to have to face him, I wanted to have you with me.

“He didn’t run after me, so I was afraid that I’d killed him. It really wasn’t premeditated. It was just on impulse. He’d found my purse and gone through it. That was a habit he had, looking for letters. I wasn’t foolish enough to have any letters in there, but I did have those receipts, and he put two and two together.

“He was taking a bath when I came in. He heard me, I guess. He climbed out of the bathtub, and threw the bathrobe around him, and started bellowing for me. I went up there and he had the receipts. He accused me of being the woman who was with Harrison Burke, and then he accused me of a lot of things, and said that he was going to throw me out without a penny. I became hysterical, and grabbed the gun and shot him. After I got down to the drug store, and was ready to telephone you, I realized that I was going to need somebody to stand back of me. I didn’t have any money of my own. I told you that.