On the fatal evening he
had driven her out of her mind, he said, by his behavior in the garden;
she was not answerable for her actions; and his evidence at the trial
was merely dictated either by the desire to make his own case look less
black or by the fiendish wish to punish Juliet Sparling for her
loathing of him.
"But he confessed something else!--more important still. I must go back
a little. You will remember my version of the dagger incident? I
represented Mrs. Sparling as finding the dagger on the wall as she was
pushed or dragged up against the panelling by her antagonist--as it
were, under her hand. Wing swore at the trial that the dagger was not
there, and had never been there. The house belonged to an old traveller
and sportsman who had brought home arms of different sorts from all
parts of the world. The house was full of them. There were two
collections of them on the wall of the dining-room, one in the hall, and
one or two in the gallery. Wing declared that the dagger used was taken
by Juliet Sparling from the hall trophy, and must have been carried
up-stairs with a deliberate purpose of murder. According to him, their
quarrel in the garden had been a quarrel about money matters, and Mrs.
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