"You little fool," said Frances in a gentle, dangerous voice. "I have been a better friend to you than you think. But that I pitied you as being a poor, weak, silly worm, I would have murdered you long ago."
"You murdered my father," shivered Ida, not daring to meet the cold eyes which rested on her prostrate form.
"What!" Towton could scarcely believe his ears. "You admit the crime?"
Frances yawned ostentatiously. "If I admit that I am The Spider it follows that I must have murdered Dimsdale."
"Well, no," replied Towton, truthfully and justly. "You may have employed Hokar to strangle him."
"That is very good of you," said Frances satirically, "but I don't place my own sins on the shoulders of others. Hokar taught me how to strangle in the Thug fashion certainly, but he did not kill Dimsdale. I did."
"Still, I don't believe that the murder was premeditated," insisted Towton.
"Upon my word," said Miss Hest good-humouredly and as coolly as though she were gossiping over a cup of tea, "one would think you were counsel for the defence. No, you are right. I did not intend to murder Dimsdale. Having got you out of the way----"
"You mean that you got Vernon out of the way?"
"Of course," assented Frances, sitting down and crossing her legs in a gentlemanly fashion; "but you must excuse my bad memory, as I have so much to think of. I got Vernon out of the way, as I overheard, and Maunders there overheard, the arrangement for a trap. We were both on the verandah."
"And I was with you," wailed Ida, shivering again. "So you were," said Miss Hest raising her eyebrows, "but you heard nothing. Maunders caught a word or two through the open window of the library and warned me. While you, my dear Ida, were talking to him I stole round the corner and listened. Knowing all about the trap, I had Vernon decoyed to the Kensington house, and at the appointed time I went into the library, masked and cloaked, as were the other guests at the ball. Dimsdale was waiting for me. I stole up behind him and slipped a handkerchief round his neck."
"Oh!" The Colonel was revolted. "And you say that the crime was not premeditated?"
"I say truly. I simply prepared to strangle him slightly should he have made an outcry. Remember, I was in a dangerous position and could not stand on ceremony. Had Dimsdale given me the money and permitted me to leave by the window I would have spared his life. As it was, he saw me in the mirror, which was directly in front of him."