"If I could have proof--if I could have proof," said she, and
broke into most horrible tears.
Baxter motioned to me, and I crept away to my room, and lay awake
till morning, thinking more specially of the dumb Thing at
Holmescroft which wished to explain itself. I hated Miss Mary as
perfectly as though I had known her for twenty years, but I felt
that, alive or dead, I should not like her to condemn me.
Yet at mid-day, when I saw Miss Mary in her bathchair, Arthurs
behind and Baxter and Miss Elizabeth on either side, in the
park-like grounds of the Hydro, I found it difficult to arrange
my words.
"Now that you know all about it," said Baxter aside, after the
first strangeness of our meeting was over, "it's only fair to
tell you that my poor cousin did not die in Holmescroft at all.
She was dead when they found her under the window in the morning.
Just dead."
"Under that laburnum outside the window?" I asked, for I suddenly
remembered the crooked evil thing.
"Exactly. She broke the tree in falling.
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