‘What about Mrs Withers?’
‘She was too shocked to see more than half a page.’
Agnes weighed him up with a shrewd glance, wondering how much she could trust him. She was thankful that he’d come alone and not brought the sergeant with him. Discussing the matter with one man was a trial. To have had the two of them there would have been insufferable. Colbeck had spoken gently and without comment. She felt that he understood her position.
‘Could I please ask you to destroy those letters?’ she asked.
‘I’ll burn them as soon as I leave here.’
‘Thank you, Inspector.’
‘You might like to know that I haven’t shown them to Sergeant Leeming nor confided anything of their contents.’ He looked towards the library. ‘The question now arises as to what you tell your husband when I go.’
‘Leave that to me,’ she said, complacently. ‘I’m used to making up stories for Bertram. He believes everything I tell him.’
‘That’s not true!’ yelled Reader, flinging open the double doors and standing there with a pistol in his hand. ‘I stopped believing you months ago, Agnes.’
‘Bertram!’ she cried, jumping up. ‘Have you been listening?’
‘I heard every word.’
‘Put that pistol down, sir,’ said Colbeck, rising slowly to his feet. ‘We don’t want to have an unfortunate accident.’
‘It won’t be an accident, Inspector. It’s something I should have done long ago.’ A pleading note dominated. ‘I tried so hard, Agnes. I hoped that when Miriam died, we could start afresh and put all this behind us, but that’s never going to happen, is it? Alive or dead, she’ll always be there between us.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, watching the pistol with alarm. ‘You weren’t supposed to know. I wanted to spare you that pain.’
‘You gave me more than enough pain as it was,’ he said, waving the weapon at her. ‘Is it too much to ask of a woman I marry that we live as husband and wife? Is it too much to ask of someone for whom I’ve done everything that she’s mine and nobody else’s?’
‘Please, sir,’ said Colbeck, going towards him with an extended hand, ‘let me have the pistol.’
‘Stand back or I’ll shoot,’ warned Reader, turning the weapon on him. Colbeck came to a halt. ‘I had a feeling that you’d catch me in the end. You’re like a dog with a bone. You never stop. Well, now you know the hideous truth.’
‘It isn’t hideous,’ cried Agnes. ‘I was proud of what I did.’
‘How do you think that makes me feel? When I paid a private detective to follow you to Edinburgh, I couldn’t believe what it said in his report. There had to be a mistake. Surely, no wife of mine would ever betray me in that unspeakable fashion.’
Agnes was indignant. ‘You spied on me?’ she said, vehemently. ‘How dare you do something so awful!’ She rocked back on her heels as she finally realised the truth. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You weren’t in Darlington that day, after all. That was just an excuse. You killed Miriam! You killed the only person I ever truly loved.’
‘Yes,’ he confessed. ‘I did and I enjoyed doing it. I thought that, if I could remove the woman who’d poisoned our marriage, you’d come back to me. But you haven’t and you never will. I made an error,’ he went on, levelling the pistol at her. ‘I shot the wrong woman. Instead of killing Miriam, I should have killed you.’
Colbeck flung himself in front of Agnes and held out his arms to screen her. He could hear her sobbing and feel her shivering against his body. Reader took a step closer so that he was only six feet away.
‘You’ll have to shoot me first, Mr Reader,’ he said.
‘Get out of the way, Inspector!’
‘It won’t be so easy this time, sir. I’m not a docile woman who’ll turn her back on you unsuspectingly so that you can put that sacking over her head. I’m looking you in the eye,’ he continued, ‘and I can see the doubts swirling about in your mind. Even from that distance, you’re not sure of killing me, are you? You’re not a marksman like the colonel or Mr Everett. You’re a banker with no real interest in firearms. Look, your hand is shaking. You could miss altogether, couldn’t you? Have you considered that?’ He offered his hand. ‘Now give the pistol to me, please. It’s all over, Mr Reader. An intelligent man like you must know that. It’s all over.’
Reader’s hand was trembling so much that he was in danger of dropping the pistol. Colbeck watched him carefully, waiting for a moment when he could dive forward and wrest the weapon from him. Agnes, meanwhile, was cowering behind the inspector’s back, praying that he wouldn’t be shot dead by her husband. Seeing the hesitation in the banker’s eyes, Colbeck tried to reason with him.
‘What will be achieved by killing someone else, sir?’ he asked. ‘You already have two deaths on your conscience.’
‘ One death,’ said Reader, ‘and it’s not on my conscience.’
‘The murder of Mrs Tarleton may not trouble you but, when you killed her, you also killed her husband. He loved his wife so much that he couldn’t live without her. Doesn’t that fact prey on your mind?’ he went on. ‘Do you feel no guilt at having sent a close friend on that fatal walk along a railway track?’
‘I wasn’t to know that that would happen.’
‘But it did, sir, and you were responsible.’
‘Be quiet!’
‘Can’t you bear to hear the truth?’
‘I simply wanted that woman out of our lives.’
‘Murder is never simple,’ said Colbeck, one eye on the pistol. ‘There are always unseen consequences. Because of the way you killed Mrs Tarleton, you subjected her husband to the most unendurable torment. Those vicious letters he received were only a component of the misery that drove him to take his own life. That’s what you did to the colonel, sir. You put him through agony.’
‘And what about my agony?’ wailed Reader.
Colbeck’s reply came in the form of a sudden leap. Diving forward, he grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the pistol and twisted it away. As he grappled with the banker, Agnes took cover behind the sofa and put her hands over her ears to block out the expletives that her husband began to hurl at her. Reader was soon silenced. In the course of the struggle, the pistol went off and the bullet shattered a glass cabinet, sending shards flying everywhere. Dropping the pistol to the floor, Reader used both hands in a vain attempt to push the detective away. Colbeck was too fast for him, sticking out a foot to trip him up and shoving him hard in the chest.
As the banker tumbled to the carpet, Colbeck snatched up the pistol and used the butt to knock him unconscious with one strike. By the time that Reader eventually came to, he found that his wrists had been handcuffed behind his back.
The inquest into the death of Miriam Tarleton was able to record a verdict that named her killer. Sitting through it with his detectives, Edward Tallis had the satisfaction of seeing the murder solved and the reputation of his old army comrade restored. Colbeck had spoken to the coroner beforehand with regard to Wilf Moxey’s evidence. The farm labourer was relieved that he was not pressed to account for his presence in the wood during the night. After its interruption, his romance with Lorna Begg could now continue. Eve Doel, her husband and her brother sat through the proceedings in a daze, stunned by the revelation that a trusted family friend had been the killer. Agnes Reader did not appear at the inquest, having already fled to stay with friends in Norfolk. Mrs Withers was also missing. Still trying to cope with the enormity of what she’d discovered, she was now looking forward to quitting a house that had held such a dark secret. Lottie Pearl was blissfully unaware of the true facts of the case.
Tallis remained in Yorkshire to attend the funerals, allowing Colbeck and Leeming to return to London. On the train journey back, they were fortunate enough to have a carriage to themselves. It enabled the sergeant to express his full horror.
‘How can any woman do such things?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘It’s against nature.’