Erica and I were at the police station at 10:00 AM the next morning. We both read very carefully the typewritten deposition, Erica asked for a few errors to be corrected, and the document was duly signed and witnessed.
The following is in Erica's own words, as related to the police stenographer and in more detail to me in the small hours of Friday morning.
Erica:
"I didn't know what time it was, I couldn't see the clock. I had been awake for some time, waiting for him. I knew he would come. The letter and the telegram would force him to. If he were to act at all it must be tonight. I heard his footsteps in my bedroom, then they stopped. I waited a few seconds, then turned on the bedside light."
"Haven't you found them yet, Robert?" I asked softly in the deathly silence that followed the click of the lamp switch and the sudden flooding of the room with light.
"No. I mean, what do you mean?" Robert stammered. "I'm not looking for anything." It was indeed Mr. Robert Miller, standing in front of my desk with his hands on my now open briefcase. He looked pretty shocked.
I continued. "You are in my room, without my invitation. It is very late at night, and I know that you have been here many times before tonight. You are obviously searching for something.
"You expected me to be in a deep, drugged, sleep. I actually was the first time or two, but I caught on to what was happening, and stopped taking sugar from my sugar bowl in my bedtime tea. I felt ever so much better in the morning after that, by the way. But now, once more, what do you want from me?
He seemed to gather himself somewhat. "Perhaps we had better talk. May I sit down?"
"I nodded slightly. He pulled out the chair from behind the desk, turned it so that it faced me and sat down. I propped myself further up on the headboard and arranged my pillow, to have a clearer sight of him, but did not otherwise move. He continued."
"I should probably have told you a few things earlier," he said smoothly, "but I wanted to keep you out of it if I could.
"I am a member of the Bolshevik movement, led by Comrade Lenin in the new Soviet Union. I have been sent here from New York City to find you, find out what you know of our plans for the United States, destroy all evidence of your connections to the traitor Klaus Huber, the socialist, formerly of Berlin, and then deactivate you. This must be done to prevent any warning by you or any of your followers of the forthcoming worker's revolution in America.
"I was told where to find you. My forged credentials easily placed me in this little backwater college as a Senior in Political Science. Finding a room in the very building you lived in was an unforeseen piece of luck, which I have exploited to the fullest."
Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "If I can find the evidence I am looking for, I plan to let you go free afterwards."
"I stared at him. I supposed I was to react with questions about what he was talking about, letting me go, and my freedom. And what on earth did deactivate mean? But as I knew the what he would actually do, and was heartily tired of my actress role, I said nothing."
"The movement I belong to, the movement you have also belonged to, is planning great things in this country, as it has already accomplished in Russia and Germany. I am part of the great plan for the USA. But my comrades are afraid that you know things you should not know, things that you learned from the traitor Huber during your illicit love affair with him in Berlin last year. I was sent to find out what you know, and to remove you if my comrade leaders in New York found it necessary. Happily, I do not think it will be necessary. I have only one problem remaining."
"And what might that be, Robert, your one problem that's keeping you from deactivating me and overthrowing the United States government?" I admit to a certain amount of sarcasm in my voice as I said that.
"You mock our efforts, but you do not know our power. We will not fail in this. Although I have seen everything that was written to you, and by you, I could not decipher it. I can not read the lies the traitor Huber may have written to you. He has written them in a foreign language, to disguise his words from me.
"I was therefore forced to remove documents from your room, photograph them, and mail the photographs to my comrades in New York to have them deciphered and analyzed. My comrades wrote to me that all the letters and documents I sent them were simple nonsense, class notes, and silly letters from your family.
But the last one, the letter you received on Monday, was such nonsense that my comrades are sure it is a secret code, either concealed in the ridiculous recipe for potato soup or the inane quote from the capitalist philosopher Neitzsche. My comrades inform me that there must be a message in secret ink behind the foolish text, and for that they would have to have the original. I must find the letter and mail it to New York.
"But last night you informed the group that you are leaving for the remainder of the term. So now I have no choice. I must immediately remove both you and the letter from here. You must then decipher the code, or expose the secret message to me. Once you have done that, I can allow you to respond to your family emergency and resume your quiet university life with no further interference. Do you agree?"
"Are you really that far removed from reality? The Bolsheviks I met in Germany didn't sound nearly as cute as you do, with your idiotic Communist blather. Why would I want to further confuse you with what Klaus has written to me?. Why would I receive messages in invisible ink under recipes for potato salad. Are you completely mad? Am I supposed to lead the counter-revolution?"
"Then you admit that you can read the secret message on the ridiculous recipe for potato soup! You must read it to me."
In the same slow, dead voice I had been using all along, I replied, "Of course I can read the letters Klaus sent to me, and all the other things you stole from my room. The foreign language, as you prefer to call it, is German. But Why would I want to do that for you?" Incredibly, I found that I had the smallest of smiles just at the corners of my mouth.
"I very much fear, Erica, that you will have to, to save your life. If you have not been informed of the details of our plan, if there are no such details in the love letters the traitor Huber wrote to you, then you will only be held until the revolution begins. Otherwise, then I'm afraid I will have no choice but to remove you permanently from this earth. I will do that very reluctantly, but if I must do it, I will.
"But we are brothers and sisters in the same movement, you said. Does your movement murder it's own people?" I knew the answer to that one too, but I thought I ought to ask anyway, just to hear some more of the official line that Robert was so skilled at. It would be a shame to let all that training go to waste.
"The traitors and the weak must die, so that the strong and truly dedicated can lead. There will always be sacrifices."
"In that case, being essentially a weakling and a traitor, I will read the letter to you, including the invisible part." I took the risk that he really was so wrapped up in his own insanity that he could be fooled, for just a minute or two, and that would be enough.
I played what I hoped would be the final scene of this low farce. I got up from the bed, in my nightgown, making no attempt to put on my dressing gown. He probably wouldn't notice, the jackass, but I would use any possible distraction I could produce. I walked to the chest of drawers, keeping an eye on Robert as I opened the drawer. Sure enough, he was not looking at my hands. I took my newly purloined pistol by the handle from the drawer, held it close to my body, turned around, and pointed it at him.
Robert spent a long moment taking the new scene in. The object in the frail hands of his victim was a Civil War .44 caliber cavalry revolver with a long barrel. At this distance, it must have looked huge to him. It certainly seemed huge to me.
Robert smiled at me knowingly, "You aren't going to shoot me with that antique. You know you aren't. We belong to the same cause, you and I. We could be lovers, you and I. Just read me the letter, and I will let you go free."
I spoke very quietly and very deliberately. I wanted him to understand, if he could, that I was changing the subject. "I loved Klaus. Your kind killed him. Your kind don't understand love. I don't think I have time to explain it to you. Do you want to tell me what you put in the sugar bowl?"
"I didn't want to kill you, I have really tried to get the documents and letters from you without that, but I have to follow orders. We all must follow orders, or we'll never succeed." He stood up as he said this, and was turning very slowly to his right. He seemed to be reaching behind him for something. I was waiting to see what it was. Then I did. Mary Susan was going to get her wish.
"You murdered Klaus, and you were just following orders! All right, you follow your orders and I will follow mine," I said. I slowly raised Mary Susan Begley's grandpappy's revolver in both hands, aimed it directly at the middle of my would be lover's chest, squeezed my eyes tightly shut and pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening. After that I just stood there, waiting for someone to come.
The deposition signed and witnessed, by me, was passed back to the Sheriff. He looked at it. Then he looked out the window for a long time. Then he looked at me and Erica again. Then, finally, he spoke. "This goes to the District Attorney's office. Someone from either that office or my office will want to speak to you again as the investigation procedes. The District Attorney will decide what crime if any has been committed. Until then, please don't leave Brown's Crossing without telling me. Thank you for coming in this morning and for your cooperation."
And that was it. We left for Begley House.