The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

"Before I came to the Desert Moon -- " she began, but Hubert Hand stopped her.

"Never mind, Ollie. No need confessing, as you say, any of that. Sam knows all about us. He'd guessed it, or most of it, years ago. I've just now told him the rest. It is all right with him. I mean-he realizes it's all long past. He thinks, as I do, that the best thing we can do is to forget it; and, as he says, keep on living straight and decent."

"Do you know all of our story? " Mrs. Ricker lifted her faded eyes to Sam.

"Enough," Sam sort of sighed it. "I don't care about details. All but-I was kind of wondering what became of the brown-eyed baby, named Vera, who the papers from the orphanage were made out for."

"I found her a home with the mother and father of one of the nurses in the hospital. They thought that she was my own child. They loved her, and were kind to her. Until she died, during the influenza epidemic in San Francisco, in 1918, I sent half of my salary to them, for her, each month."

"I always knew you were a good woman," Sam said. "Now what do you say we forget it, let by-gones be by-gones?"

"No," said Mrs. Ricker. "Martha did not kill Gaby, as you think she did, Sam. I killed her."

Sam dropped his pipe.

There was another one of those dead, awful silences.

"The guilt," Mrs. Ricker went on, "is entirely mine. All of my life I have been cursed with an abnormal jealousy, and with the violent temper that usually accompanies such jealousy. Martha, you all know, possessed both of these traits-a heritage from her mother-without the balancing power of an adult mind. " She turned to Hubert Hand. "Have you told about Nina Ziegelman?"

"No," he spoke sharply. "I wouldn't, Ollie. No need -- "

"But I would," she said, and continued, more rapidly. "About four months before Martha was born a woman named Nina Ziegelman betrayed us-Hubert and me. I had given her a confidence, and she betrayed it. When I found what she had done I went to her hotel room and tried to kill her. I did not succeed. I shot her; but she recovered. For many reasons, of their own, she and her friends proffered no charges against me. I went free. But I had marked Martha for murder. She was powerless against it; as powerless as she would have been against any evil physical inheritance. She can't be blamed. No one could dare blame her for that. It was I, who planted those seeds of violence, jealousy, hatred, and murderous intent, who killed Gabrielle. Martha was only the helpless instrument."

I was sorry that there was eagerness, mixed with the pity in John's voice, as he asked, "Did Martha tell you that she committed the murder?"

"No. Other parental heritages of hers were a lying tongue, and slyness. She persisted in her denials, to me. But it is all so evident.

"Gabrielle joined Martha at the rabbit hutch. You know how one sits down on one's heels to peer in at the rabbits in the low hutch. I think Gaby must have been squatting, so, when Martha jumped at her and overpowered her. Martha was strong, you know. Her hands were very strong. You remember, Mary, how she could open fruit jars that neither you nor I could budge? She had hated Gaby ever since Gaby had come. Martha had said to me, dozens of times, that someday she thought she would kill Gaby.

"The marks on her throat, I thought, and so did the coroner, looked as if she had been caught by someone who had been standing behind her. Seized unawares, it would not take long to strangle a person. Martha must have done it in two or three minutes. She took the bracelet then, rolled the body under the clump of berry bushes, right there, and came straight into the house.

"She showed no feeling of guilt, because she had none. At that moment, we should all have suspected something. We should have known that girl would not, suddenly, have given Martha the bracelet. Later, she told you about it, didn't she, Sam? And you left Chad in the barn, to hoodwink Hubert, and came up and hid the body for her?"

"By God, I did not," Sam said.

"No need to deny it, now, Sam," she said. "It was the deed of a good man. Martha was never responsible-but courts might not have understood. Now we will all shield her-keep her secret. Chad's confession will satisfy the world. Danny must know, I suppose; but no one else need ever know -- "

"But I tell you -- " Sam shouted.