THE LAW AND ITS VICTIM
XI.
DETAILS
The days of my obscurity were over. Henceforth, I was regarded as a
decided factor in this case—a case which from this time on, assumed
another aspect both at headquarters and in the minds of people at
large. The reporters, whom we had hitherto managed to hold in check,
now overflowed both the coroner’s office and police headquarters, and
articles appeared in all the daily papers with just enough suggestion
in them to fire the public mind and make me, for one, anticipate an
immediate word from Mr. Jeffrey calculated to establish the alibi he
had failed to make out on the day we talked with him. But no such word
came. His memory still played him false, and no alternative was left
but to pursue the official inquiry in the line suggested by the
interview just recounted.
No proceeding in which I had ever been engaged interested me as did
this inquest. In the first place, the spectators were of a very
different character from the ordinary. As I wormed myself along to the
seat accorded to such witnesses as myself, I brushed by men of the very
highest station and a few of the lowest; and bent my head more than
once in response to the inquiring gaze of some fashionable lady who
never before, I warrant, had found herself in such a scene. By the time
I reached my place all the others were seated and the coroner rapped
for order.
I was first to take the stand. What I said has already been fully
amplified in the foregoing pages. Of course, my evidence was confined
to facts, but some of these facts were new to most of the persons
there. It was evident that a considerable effect was produced by them,
not only on the spectators, but upon the witnesses themselves. For
instance, it was the first time that the marks on the mantel-shelf had
been heard of outside the major’s office, or the story so told as to
make it evident that Mrs. Jeffrey could not have been alone in the
house at the time of her death.
A photograph had been taken of those marks, and my identification of
this photograph closed my testimony.
As I returned to my seat I stole a look toward a certain corner where,
with face bent down upon his hand, Francis Jeffrey sat between Uncle
David and the heavily-veiled figure of Miss Tuttle. Had there dawned
upon him as my testimony was given any suspicion of the trick by which
he had been proved responsible for those marks? It was impossible to
tell. From the way Miss Tuttle’s head was turned toward him, one might
judge him to be laboring under an emotion of no ordinary character,
though he sat like a statue and hardly seemed to realize how many eyes
were at that moment riveted upon his face.
I was followed by other detectives who had been present at the time and
who corroborated my statement as to the appearance of this unhappy
woman and the way the pistol had been tied to her arm. Then the doctor
who had acted under the coroner was called. After a long and no doubt
learned description of the bullet wound which had ended the life of
this unhappy lady,—a wound which he insisted, with a marked display of
learning, must have made that end instantaneous or at least too
immediate for her to move foot or hand after it,—he was asked if the
body showed any other mark of violence.
To this he replied
“There was a minute wound at the base of one of her fingers, the one
which is popularly called the wedding finger.”
This statement made all the women present start with renewed interest;
nor was it altogether without point for the men, especially when the
doctor went on to say:
“The hands were entirely without rings. As Mrs. Jeffrey had been
married with a ring, I noticed their absence.”
“Was this wound which you characterize as minute a recent one?”
“It had bled a little. It was an abrasion such as would be made if the
ring she usually wore there had been drawn off with a jerk. That was
the impression I received from its appearance. I do not state that it
was so made.”
A little thrill which went over the audience at the picture this evoked
communicated itself to Miss Tuttle, who trembled violently. It even
produced a slight display of emotion in Mr. Jeffrey, whose hand shook
where he pressed it against his forehead. But neither uttered a sound,
nor looked up when the next witness was summoned.
This witness proved to be Loretta, who, on hearing her name called,
evinced great reluctance to come forward. But after two or three words
uttered in her ear by the friendly Jinny, who had been given a seat
next her, she stepped into the place assigned her with a suddenly
assumed air of great boldness, which sat upon her with scant grace. She
had need of all the boldness at her command, for the eyes of all in the
room were fixed on her, with the exception of the two persons most
interested in her testimony. Scrutiny of any kind did not appear to be
acceptable to her, if one could read the trepidation visible in the
short, quick upheavals of the broad collar which covered her uneasy
breast. Was this shrinking on her part due to natural timidity, or had
she failings to avow which, while not vitiating her testimony, would
certainly cause her shame in the presence of so many men and women? I
was not able to decide this question immediately; for after the coroner
had elicited her name and the position she held in Mr. Jeffrey’s
household he asked whether her duties took her into Mrs. Jeffrey’s
room; upon her replying that they did, he further inquired if she knew
Mrs. Jeffrey’s rings, and could say whether they were all to be found
on that lady’s toilet-table after the police came in with news of her
death. The answer was decisive. They were all there, her rings and all
the other ornaments she was in the daily habit of wearing, with the
exception of her watch. That was not there.
“Did you take up those rings?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you see any one else take them up?”
“No, sir; not till the officer did so.”
“Very well, Loretta, sit down again till we hear what Durbin has to say
about these rings.”
And then the man I hated came forward, and though I shrank from
acknowledging it even to myself, I could but observe how strong and
quiet and self-possessed he seemed and how decisive was his testimony.
But it was equally brief. He had taken up the rings and he had looked
at them; and on one, the wedding-ring, he had detected a slight stain
of blood. He had called Mr. Jeffrey’s attention to it, but that
gentleman had made no comment. This remark had the effect of
concentrating general attention upon Mr. Jeffrey. But he seemed quite
oblivious of it; his attitude remained unchanged, and only from the
quick stretching out and withdrawal of Miss Tuttle’s hand could it be
seen that anything had been said calculated to touch or arouse this
man. The coroner cast an uneasy glance in his direction; then he
motioned Durbin aside and recalled Loretta.
And now I began to be sorry for the girl. It is hard to have one’s
weaknesses exposed, especially if one is more foolish than wicked. But
there was no way of letting this girl off without sacrificing certain
necessary points, and the coroner went relentlessly to work.
“How long have you been in this house?”
“Three weeks. Ever since Mrs. Jeffrey’s wedding day, sir.”
“Were you there when she first came as a bride from the Moore house?”
“I was, sir.”
“And saw her then for the first time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How did she look and act that first day?”
“I thought her the gayest bride I had ever seen, then I thought her the
saddest, and then I did not know what to think. She was so merry one
minute and so frightened the next, so full of talk when she came
running up the steps and so struck with silence the minute she got into
the parlor, that I set her down as a queer one till some one whispered
in my ear that she was suffering from a dreadful shock; that ill-luck
had attended her marriage and much more about what had happened from
time to time at the Moore house.”
“And you believed what was told you?”
“Believed?”
“Believed it well enough to keep a watch on your young mistress to see
if she were happy or not?”
“Oh, sir!”
“It was but natural,” the coroner suavely observed. “Every one felt
interested in this marriage. You watched her of course. Now what was
the result? Did you consider her well and happy?”
The girl’s voice sank and she cast a glance at her master which he did
not lift his head to meet.
“I did not think her happy. She laughed and sang and was always in and
out of the rooms like a butterfly, but she did not wear a happy look,
except now and then when she was seated with Mr. Jeffrey alone. Then I
have seen her flush in a way to make the heart ache; it was such a
contrast, sir, to other times when she was by herself or—”
“Or what?”
“Or just with her sister, sir.”
The defiance with which this was said added point to what otherwise
might have been an unimportant admission. Those who had already
scrutinized Miss Tuttle with the curiosity of an ill-defined suspicion
now scrutinized her with a more palpable one, and those who had
hitherto seen nothing in this heavily-veiled woman but the bereaved
sister of an irresponsible suicide allowed their looks to dwell
piercingly on that concealing veil, as if they would be glad to
penetrate its folds and read in those beautiful features the meaning of
an allusion uttered with such a sting in the tone.
“You refer to Miss Tuttle?” observed the coroner.
“Mrs. Jeffrey’s sister? Yes, sir.” The menace was gone from the voice
now, but no one could forget that it had been there.
“Miss Tuttle lived in the house with her sister, did she not?”
“Yes, sir; till that sister died and was buried; then she went away.”
The coroner did not pursue this topic, preferring to return to the
former one.
“So you say that Mrs. Jeffrey showed uneasiness ever since her wedding
day. Can you give me any instance of this; mention, I mean, any
conversations overheard by you which would show us just what you mean?”
“I don’t like to repeat things I hear. But if you say that I must, I
can remember once passing Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey in the hall, just as he
was saying: ‘You take it too much to heart! I expected a happy
honeymoon. Somehow, we have failed—’ That was all I heard, sir. But
what made me remember his words was that she was dressed for some
afternoon reception and looked so charming and so—and so, as if she
ought to be happier.”
“Just so. Now, when was this? How long before her death?”
“Oh, a week or so. It was very soon after the wedding day.”
“And did matters seem to improve after that? Did she appear any better
satisfied or more composed?”
“I think she endeavored to. But there was something on her mind,
something which she tried to laugh off; something that annoyed Mr.
Jeffrey and worried Miss Tuttle; something which caused a cloud in the
house, for all the dances and dinners and goings and comings. I am
sorry to speak of it, but it was so.”
“Something that showed an unsettled mind?”
“Almost. The glitter in her eye was not natural; neither was the way
she looked at her sister and sometimes at her husband.”
“Did she talk much about the catastrophe which attended her wedding?
Did her mind seem to run on that?”
“Incessantly at first; but afterward not so much. I think Mr. Jeffrey
frowned on that subject.”
“Did he ever frown on her?”
“No, sir—not—not when they were alone or with no one by but me. He
seemed to love her then very much.”
“What do you mean by that, Loretta; that he lost patience with her when
other people were present—Miss Tuttle, for instance?”
“Yes, sir. He used to change very much when—when—when Miss Tuttle came
into the room.”
“Change toward his wife?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How?”
“He grew more distant, much more distant; got up quite fretfully from
his seat, if he were sitting beside her, and took up some book or
paper.”
“And Miss Tuttle?”
“She never seemed to notice but—”
“But—?”
“She did not come in very often after this had happened once or twice;
I mean into the room upstairs where they used to sit.”
“Loretta, I regret to put this question, but after your replies I owe
it to the jury, if not to the parties themselves, to make Miss Tuttle’s
position in this household thoroughly understood. Do you think she was
a welcome visitor in this house?”
The girl pursed up her lips, glanced at the lady and gentleman whose
feelings she was supposed to pass comment on, and seemed to lose heart.
Then, as they failed to respond to her look of appeal, she strove to
get the better of her sense of shame and, with a somewhat injured air,
replied:
“I can only repeat what I once heard said about this by Mr. Jeffrey
himself. Miss Tuttle had just left the diningroom and Mrs. Jeffrey was
standing in one of her black moods, with her hand on the top of her
chair, ready to go but forgetting to do so. I was there, but neither of
them noticed me; he was staring at her, and she was looking down.
Neither seemed at ease. Suddenly he spoke and asked, ‘Why must Cora
remain with us?’ She started and her look grew strange and frightened.
‘Because I want her to,’ she cried. ‘I can not live without Cora.”’
These words, so different from what we were expecting, caused a
sensation in the room and consequently a stir. As the noise of shifting
feet and moving heads began to be heard in all directions, Miss
Tuttle’s head drooped a little, but Francis Jeffrey did not betray any
sign of feeling or even of attention. The coroner, embarrassed,
perhaps, by this exhibition of silent misery so near him, hesitated a
little before he put his next question. Loretta, on the contrary, had
gathered courage with every word she spoke and now looked ready for
anything.
“It was Mrs. Jeffrey, then, who clung most determinedly to her sister?”
the coroner finally suggested.
“I have told you what she said.”
“Yet these sisters spent but little time together?”
“Very little; as little as two persons could who lived together in one
house.”
This statement, which seemed such a contradiction to her former one,
increased the interest; and much disappointment was covertly shown when
the coroner veered off from this topic and brusquely inquired “Did you
ever know Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey to have any open rupture?”
The answer was a decided one.
“Yes. On Tuesday morning preceding her death they had a long and angry
talk in their own room, after which Mrs. Jeffrey made no further effort
to conceal her wretchedness. Indeed, one may say she began to die from
that hour.”
Mrs. Jeffrey’s death had occurred on Wednesday evening.
“Let us hear what you have to say about this quarrel and what happened
after it.”
The girl, with a renewed flush, cast a deprecatory look at the mass of
faces before her, and, meeting on all sides but one look of intense and
growing interest, drew up her neat figure with a relieved air and began
a story which I will proceed to transcribe for you in the fewest
possible words.
Tuesday morning’s breakfast had been a silent one. There had been a
ball the night before at some great place on Massachusetts Avenue; but
no one spoke of it. Miss Tuttle made some remark about a friend she had
met there, but as no one listened to her, she soon stopped and in a
little while left the table. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey sat on, but neither
said anything. Finally Mr. Jeffrey rose and, speaking in a voice hardly
recognizable, remarked that he had something to say to her, and led the
way to their room. Mrs. Jeffrey looked frightened as she followed him;
so frightened that it was evident that something very serious had
occurred or was about to occur between them. As nothing of this kind
had ever happened before, Loretta could not help waiting about till Mr.
Jeffrey reappeared; and when he did so and she saw no signs of relief
in his face or manner, she watched, with the silly interest of a girl
who had nothing else to occupy her mind, to see if he would leave the
house in such a mood, and without making peace with his young bride. To
her surprise, he did not go out at the usual time, but went to Miss
Tuttle’s room, where for a full half-hour he remained closeted with his
sister-in-law, talking in excited and unnatural tones. Then he went
back for a few minutes to where he had left his wife, in her own
boudoir. But he could not have had much to say to her this time, for he
presently came out again and ran hastily downstairs and out, almost
without stopping to catch up his hat.
As it was Mary’s business, and not the witness’, to make Mrs. Jeffrey’s
bed in the morning, Loretta could think of no excuse for approaching
her mistress’ room at this moment; but later, when letters came,
followed by various messages and some visitors, she went more than a
dozen times to Mrs. Jeffrey’s door. She was not admitted, nor were her
appeals answered, except by a sharp “Go away!”
Nor was Miss Tuttle received any better, though she tried more than
once to see her sister, especially as night came on and the hour
approached for Mr. Jeffrey’s return. Mrs. Jeffrey was simply determined
to remain alone; and when dinner time arrived, and no Mr. Jeffrey, she
could be induced to open her door only wide enough to take in the cup
of tea which Miss Tuttle insisted upon sending her.
The witness here confessed that she had been very much excited by these
unusual proceedings and by the effect which they seemed to have on the
lady just mentioned; so she was ready to notice that Mrs. Jeffrey’s
hand shook like that of an old and palsied woman when she reached out
for the tray.
Gladly would Loretta have caught one glimpse of her face, but it was
hidden by the door; nor did Mrs. Jeffrey answer a single one of her
questions. She simply closed her door and kept it so till toward
midnight, when Miss Tuttle, coming into the hall, ordered the house to
be closed for the night. Then the long-shut door softly swung open, but
before any one could reach it, it was again pulled to and locked.
The next day brought no relief. Miss Tuttle, who had changed greatly
during this unhappy day and night, succeeded no better than before in
getting access to her sister, nor could Loretta gain the least word
from her mistress till toward the latter part of the afternoon, when
that lady, ringing her bell, gave her first order.
“A substantial dinner,” she cried; and when Loretta, greatly relieved,
brought up the required meal she was astonished to find the door open
and herself bidden to enter. The sight which met her eyes staggered
her. From one end of the room to the other were signs of great nervous
unrest and of terrible suffering. The chairs were pushed into corners
as if the wretched bride had tramped the floor in an agony of
excitement. Curtains were torn and the piano-cover was hanging half on
and half off the open upright, as if she had clutched at it to keep
herself from falling. On the floor beneath lay several pieces of broken
china,—vases of whose value Mrs. Jeffrey had often spoken, but which,
jerked off with the cover, had been left where they fell; while
immediately in front of the fireplace lay one of the rugs tossed into a
heap, as if she had rolled in it on the floor or used it to smother her
cries of pain or anger.
So much for the state in which the witness found the boudoir. The
adjoining bed-room was not in much better case, though it was evident
that the bed itself had not been lain in since it was made up the day
before at breakfast time. By this token Mrs. Jeffrey had not slept the
night before, or if she had laid her head anywhere it had been on the
rug already spoken of.
These signs of extreme mental suffering, so much more extreme than any
Loretta had ever before witnessed, frightened her so that the tray
shook in her hand as she set it down on the table among the countless
objects Mrs. Jeffrey always had about her. The noise seemed to startle
her mistress, who had walked to the window after opening the door, for
she wheeled impetuously about and Loretta saw her face. It was as if a
blight had passed over it. Once gay and animated beyond the power of
any one to describe, it had become in twenty-four hours a ghost’s face,
with the glare of some awful resolve on it. Or so it would appear from
the way Loretta described it. But such girls do not always see
correctly, and perhaps all that can be safely stated is that Mrs.
Jeffrey was unnaturally pale and had lost her butterfly-like way of
incessant movement.
Loretta, who was evidently accustomed to seeing her mistress arrayed in
brilliant colors and much begemmed, laid great stress on the fact that,
though it was on the verge of evening and she was evidently going out,
she was dressed in black cloth and without even a diamond or a flower
to relieve its severe simplicity. Her hair, too, which was always her
pride, was piled in a careless mass upon her head as if she had tried
to arrange it herself and had forgotten what she was doing while her
fingers were but half through their work. There was a cloak lying on a
chair near which she was standing, and she held a hat in her hand; but
Loretta saw no gloves. As the maid’s glance and that of her mistress
crossed, Mrs. Jeffrey spoke, and the effort she made in doing so
naturally frightened the girl still more. “I am going out,” were her
words. “I may not be home till late—What are you looking at?”
Loretta declared that the words took her by surprise and that she did
not know what to say, but managed to cover up her embarrassment by
intimating that if her mistress would let her touch up her hair a bit
she would make her look more natural.
At this suggestion, Mrs. Jeffrey cast a glance in the glass and
impetuously declared, “It doesn’t matter.” But she seemed to think
better of it the next minute; for, throwing herself in a chair, she
bade the girl to bring a comb, and sat quiet enough, though evidently
in a great tremor of haste and impatience, while Loretta combed her
hair and put it up in the old way.
But the old way was not as becoming as usual, and Loretta was wondering
if she ought to call in Miss Tuttle, when Mrs. Jeffrey jumped to her
feet and went over to the table and began to eat with the feverish
haste of one who forces himself to take food in spite of hurry and
distaste.
This was the moment for Loretta to leave the room; but she did not know
how to do so. She felt herself fixed to the spot and stood watching
Mrs. Jeffrey till that lady, suddenly becoming conscious of the girl’s
presence, turned, and in the midst of the moans which broke
unconsciously from her lips, said with a pitiable effort at her old
manner:
“Go away, Loretta; I am ill; have been ill for two days. I don’t like
people to look at me like that!” Then, as the girl shrank back, added
in a breaking voice: “When Mr. Jeffrey comes home—” and said no more
for several minutes, during which she clutched her throat with both
hands and struggled with herself till she got her voice back and found
herself able to repeat: “When Mr. Jeffrey comes,—if he does come,—tell
him that I was right about the way that novel ended. Remember that you
are to say to him the moment you see him that I was right about the
novel, and that he is to look and see if it did not end as I said it
would. And Loretta—” here she rose and approached the speaker with a
sweet, appealing look which brought tears to the impressionable girl’s
eyes, “don’t go gossiping about me downstairs. I sha’n’t be sick long.
I am going to be better soon, very soon. By the time you see me here
again I shall be quite like my old self. Forget how—how”—and Loretta
said she seemed to have difficulty in finding the right word here—“how
childish I have been.”
Of course Loretta promised, but she is not sure that she would have had
the courage to keep all this to herself if she had not heard Mrs.
Jeffrey stop in Miss Tuttle’s room on her way out. That relieved her,
and enabled her to go downstairs to her own supper with more appetite
than she had thought ever to have again. Alas! it was the last good
meal she was able to eat for days. In three hours afterward a man came
from the station house with the news of Mrs. Jeffrey’s suicide in the
horrible old house in which she had been married only two weeks before.
As this had been a continuous narrative and concisely told, the coroner
had not interrupted her. When at this point a little gasp escaped Miss
Tuttle and a groan broke from Francis Jeffrey’s hitherto sealed lips,
the feelings of the whole assemblage seemed to find utterance. A young
wife’s misery culminating in death on the very spot where she had been
so lately married! What could be more thrilling, or appeal more closely
to the general heart of humanity? But the cause of that misery! This
was what every one present was eager to have explained. This is what we
now expected the coroner to bring out. But instead of continuing on the
line he had opened up, he proceeded to ask:
“Where were you when this officer brought the news you mention?”
“In the hall, sir. I opened the door for him.”
“And to whom did he first mention his errand?”
“To Miss Tuttle. She had come in just before him and was standing at
the foot of the stairs.”
“What! Was Miss Tuttle out that evening?”
“Yes; she went out very soon after Mrs. Jeffrey left. When she came in
she said that she had been around the block, but she must have gone
around it more than once, for she was absent two hours.”
“Did you let her in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And she said she had been around the block?”
“Yes, sir”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She asked if Mr. Jeffrey had come in”
“Anything else?”
“Then if Mrs. Jeffrey had returned.”
“To both of which questions you answered—”
“A plain ‘No.’”
“Now tell us about the officer.”
“He rang the bell almost immediately after she did. Thinking she would
want to slip upstairs before I admitted any one, I waited a minute for
her to go, but she did not do so, and when the officer stepped in she—”
“Well!”
“She shrieked.”
“What! before he spoke?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just at sight of him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he wear his badge in plain view?”
“Yes, on his breast.”
“So that you knew him to be a police officer?”
“Yes.”
“And Miss Tuttle shrieked at seeing a police officer?”
“Yes, and sprang forward.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Not then.”
“What did she do?”
“Waited for him to speak.”
“Which he did?”
“At once, and very brutally. He asked if she was Mrs. Jeffrey’s sister,
and when she nodded and gasped ‘Yes,’ he blurted out that Mrs. Jeffrey
was dead; that he had just come from the old house in Waverley Avenue,
where she had just been found.”
“And Miss Tuttle?”
“Didn’t know what to say; just hid her face. She was leaning against
the newel-post, so it was easy for her to do so. I remember that the
man stared at her for taking it so quietly and asking no questions.”
“And did she speak at all?”
“Oh, yes, afterwards. Her face was wrapped in the folds of her cloak,
but I heard her whisper, as if to herself: ‘No! no! That old hearth is
not a lodestone. She can not have fallen there.’ And then she looked up
quite wildly and cried: ‘There is something more! Something which you
have not told me.’ ‘She shot herself, if that’s what you mean.’ Miss
Tuttle’s arms went straight up over her head. It was awful to see her.
‘Shot herself?’ she gasped. ‘Oh, Veronica, Veronica!’ ‘With a pistol,’
he went on—I suppose he was going to say, ‘tied to her wrist,’ but he
never got it out, for Miss Tuttle, at the word ‘pistol’ clapped her
hands to her ears and for a moment looked quite distracted, so that he
thought better of worrying her any more and only demanded to know if
Mr. Jeffrey kept any such weapon. Miss Tuttle’s face grew very strange
at this. ‘Mr. Jeffrey! was he there?’ she asked. The man looked
surprised. ‘They are searching for Mr. Jeffrey,’ he replied. ‘Isn’t he
here?’ ‘No,’ came both from her lips and mine. The man acted very
impertinently. ‘You haven’t told me whether a pistol was kept here or
not,’ said he. Miss Tuttle tried to compose herself, but I saw that I
should have to speak if any one did, so I told him that Mr. Jeffrey did
have a pistol, which he kept in one of his bureau drawers. But when the
officer wanted Miss Tuttle to go up and see if it was there, she shook
her head and made for the front door, saying that she must be taken
directly to her sister.”
“And did no one go up? Was no attempt made to see if the pistol was or
was not in the drawer?”
“Yes; the officer went up with me. I pointed out the place where it was
kept, and he rummaged all through it, but found no pistol. I didn’t
expect him to—” Here the witness paused and bit her lip, adding
confusedly: “Mrs. Jeffrey had taken it, you see.”
The jurors, who sat very much in the shadow, had up to this point
attracted but little attention. But now they began to make their
presence felt, perhaps because the break in the witness’ words had been
accompanied by a sly look at Jinny. Possibly warned by this that
something lay back of this hitherto timid witness’ sudden volubility,
one of them now spoke up.
“In what room did you say this pistol was kept?”
“In Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey’s bed-room, sir; the room opening out of the
sitting-room where Mrs. Jeffrey had kept herself shut up all day.”
“Does this bed-room of which you speak communicate with the hall as
well as with the sitting room?”
“No, sir; it is the defect of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey often
spoke of it as a great annoyance. You had to pass through the little
boudoir in order to reach it.”
The juryman sank back, evidently satisfied with her replies, but we who
marked the visible excitement with which the witness had answered this
seemingly unimportant question, wondered what special interest
surrounded that room and the pistol to warrant the heightened color
with which the girl answered this new interlocutor. We were not
destined to know at this time, for the coroner, when he spoke again,
pursued a different subject.
“How long was this before Mr. Jeffrey came in.”
“Only a few minutes. I was terribly frightened at being left there
alone and was on my way to ask one of the other girls to come up and
stay with me, when I heard his key in the lock and came back. He had
entered the house and was standing near the door talking to an officer,
who had evidently come in with him. It was a different officer from the
one who had gone away with Miss Tuttle. Mr. Jeffrey was saying, ‘What’s
that? My wife hurt!’ ‘Dead, sir!’ blurted out the man. I had expected
to see Mr. Jeffrey terribly shocked, but not in so awful a way. It
really frightened me to see him and I turned to run, but found that I
couldn’t and that I had to stand still and look whether I wanted to or
not. Yet he didn’t say a word or ask a question.”
“What did he do, Loretta?”
“I can not say; he was on his knees and was white—Oh, how white! Yet he
looked up when the man described how and where Mrs. Jeffrey, had been
found and even turned toward me when I said something about his wife
having left a message for him when she went out. This message, which I
almost hesitated to give after the awful news of her death, was about
the ending of some story, as you remember, and it seemed heartless to
speak of it at a moment like this, but as she had told me to, I didn’t
dare to disobey her. So, with the man listening to my every word, and
Mr. Jeffrey looking as if he would fall to the ground before I could
finish, I repeated her words to him and was surprised enough when he
suddenly started upright and went flying upstairs. But I was more
surprised yet when, at the top of the first flight, he stopped and,
looking over the balustrade, asked in a very strange voice where Miss
Tuttle was. For he seemed just then to want her more than anything else
in the world and looked beaten and wild when I told him that she was
already gone to Waverley Avenue. But he recovered himself before the
man could draw near enough to see his face, and rushed into the
sitting-room above and shut the door behind him, leaving the officer
and me standing down by the front door. As I didn’t know what to say to
a man like him, and he didn’t know what to say to me, the time seemed
long, but it couldn’t have been very many minutes before Mr. Jeffrey
came back with a slip of paper in his hand and a very much relieved
look on his face. ‘The deed was premeditated,’ he cried. ‘My
unfortunate wife has misunderstood my affection for her.’ And from
being a very much broken-down man, he stood up straight and tall and
prepared himself very quietly to go to the Moore house. That is all I
can tell about the way the news was received by him.”
Were these details necessary? Many appeared to regard them as futile
and uncalled for. But Coroner Z. was never known to waste time on
trivialities, and if he called for these facts, those who knew him best
felt certain that they were meant as a preparation for Mr. Jeffrey’s
testimony, which was now called for.
XII.
THRUST AND PARRY
When Francis Jeffrey’s hand fell from his forehead and he turned to
face the assembled people, an instinctive compassion arose in every
breast at sight of his face, which, if not open in its expression, was
at least surcharged with the deepest misery. In a flash the scene took
on new meaning. Many remembered that less than a month before his eye
had been joyous and his figure a conspicuous one among the favored sons
of fortune. And now he stood in sight of a crowd, drawn together mainly
by curiosity, to explain as best he might why this great happiness and
hope had come to a sudden termination, and his bride of a fortnight had
sought death rather than continue to live under the same roof with him.
So much for what I saw on the faces about me. What my own face revealed
I can not say. I only know that I strove to preserve an impassive
exterior. If I secretly held this man’s misery to be a mask hiding
untold passions and the darkness of an unimaginable deed, it was not
for me to disclose in this presence either my suspicions or my fears.
To me, as to those about me, he apparently was a man who at some
sacrifice to his pride, would, yet be able to explain whatever seemed
dubious in the mysterious case in which he had become involved.
His wife’s uncle, who to all appearance shared the general curiosity as
to the effect which this woeful tragedy had had upon his niece’s most
interested survivor, eyed with a certain cold interest, eminently in
keeping with his general character, the pallid forehead, sunken eyes
and nervously trembling lip of the once “handsome Jeffrey” till that
gentleman, rousing from his depression, manifested a realization of
what was required of him and turned with a bow toward the coroner.
Miss Tuttle settled into a greater rigidity. I pass over the
preliminary examination of this important witness and proceed at once
to the point when the coroner, holding out the two or three lines of
writing which Mr. Jeffrey had declared to have been left him by his
wife, asked:
“Are these words in your wife’s handwriting?”
Mr. Jeffrey replied hastily, and, with just a glance at the paper
offered him:
“They are.”
The coroner pressed the slip upon him.
“Look at them carefully,” he urged. “The handwriting shows hurry and in
places is scarcely legible. Are you ready to swear that these words
were written by your wife and by no other?”
Mr. Jeffrey, with just a slight contraction of his brow expressive of
annoyance, did as he was bid. He scanned, or appeared to scan, the
small scrap of paper which he now took into his own hand.
“It is my wife’s writing,” he impatiently declared. “Written, as all
can see, under great agitation of mind, but hers without any doubt.”
“Will you read aloud these words for our benefit?” asked the coroner:
It was a cruel request, causing an instinctive protest from the
spectators. But no protest disturbed Coroner Z. He had his reasons, no
doubt, for thus trying this witness, and when Coroner Z. had reason for
anything it took more than the displeasure of the crowd to deter him.
Mr. Jeffrey, who had subdued whatever indignation he may have felt at
this unmistakable proof of the coroner’s intention to have his own way
with him whatever the cost to his sensitiveness or pride, obeyed the
latter’s command in firmer tones than I expected.
The lines he was thus called upon to read may bear repetition:
“I find that I do not love you as I thought. I can not live knowing
this to be so. Pray God you may forgive me!
VERONICA.”
As the last word fell with a little tremble from Mr. Jeffrey’s lips,
the coroner repeated:
“You still think these words were addressed to you by your wife; that
in short they contain an explanation of her death?”
“I do.”
There was sharpness in the tone. Mr. Jeffrey was feeling the prick.
There was agitation in it, too; an agitation he was trying hard to keep
down.
“You have reason, then,” persisted the coroner, “for accepting this
peculiar explanation of your wife’s death; a death which, in the
judgment of most people, was of a nature to call for the strongest
provocation possible.”
“My wife was not herself. My wife was in an over strained and suffering
condition. For one so nervously overwrought many allowances must be
made. She may have been conscious of not responding fully to my
affection. That this feeling was strong enough to induce her to take
her life is a source of unspeakable grief to me, but one for which you
must find explanation, as I have so often said, in the terrors caused
by the dread event at the Moore house, which recalled old tragedies and
emphasized a most unhappy family tradition.”
The coroner paused a moment to let these words sink into the ears of
the jury, then plunged immediately into what might be called the
offensive part of his examination.
“Why, if your wife’s death caused you such intense grief, did you
appear so relieved at receiving this by no means consoling
explanation?”
At an implication so unmistakably suggestive of suspicion Mr. Jeffrey
showed fire for the first time.
“Whose word have you for that? A servant’s, so newly come into my house
that her very features are still strange to me. You must acknowledge
that a person of such marked inexperience can hardly be thought to know
me or to interpret rightly the feelings of my heart by any passing look
she may have surprised upon my face.”
This attitude of defiance so suddenly assumed had an effect he little
realized. Miss Tuttle stirred for the first time behind her veil, and
Uncle David, from looking bored, became suddenly quite attentive. These
two but mirrored the feelings of the general crowd, and mine
especially.
“We do not depend on her judgment alone,” the coroner now remarked.
“The change in you was apparent to many others. This we can prove to
the jury if they require it.”
But no man lifting a voice from that gravely attentive body, the
coroner proceeded to inquire if Mr. Jeffrey felt like volunteering any
explanations on this head. Receiving no answer from him either, he
dropped the suggestive line of inquiry and took up the consideration of
facts. The first question he now put was:
“Where did you find the slip of paper containing these last words from
your wife?”
“In a book I picked out of the book-shelf in our room upstairs. When
Loretta gave me my wife’s message I knew that I should find some word
from her in the novel we had just been reading. As we had been
interested in but one book since our marriage, there was no possibility
of my making any mistake as to which one she referred.”
“Will you give us the name of this novel?”
“COMPENSATION.”
“And you found this book called COMPENSATION in your room upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“On the book-shelf?”
“Yes.”
“Where does this book-shelf stand?”
Mr. Jeffrey looked up as much as to say, “Why so many small questions
about so simple a matter?” but answered frankly enough:
“At the right of the door leading into the bedroom.”
“And at right angles to the door leading into the hall?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. Now may I ask you to describe the cover of this book?”
“The cover? I never noticed the cover. Why do you—. Excuse me, I
suppose you have your reasons for asking even these puerile and
seemingly unnecessary questions. The cover is a queer one I believe;
partly red and partly green; and that is all I know about it.”
“Is this the book?”
Mr. Jeffrey glanced at the volume the coroner held up before him.
“I believe so; it looks like it.”
The book had a flaming cover, quite unmistakable in its character.
“The title shows it to be the same,” remarked the coroner. “Is this the
only book with a cover of this kind in the house?”
“The only one, I should say.”
The coroner laid down the book.
“Enough of this, then, for the present; only let the jury remember that
the cover of this book is peculiar and that it was kept on a shelf at
the right of the opening leading into the adjoining bed-room. And now,
Mr. Jeffrey, we must ask you to look at these rings; or, rather, at
this one. You have seen it before; it is the one you placed on Mrs.
Jeffrey’s hand when you were married to her a little over a fortnight
ago. You recognize it?”
“I do.”
“Do you also recognize this small mark of blood on it as having been
here when it was shown to you by the detective on your return from
seeing her dead body at the Moore house?”
“I do; yes.”
“How do you account for that spot and the slight injury made to her
finger? Should you not say that the ring had been dragged from her
hand?”
“I should.”
“By whom was it dragged? By you?”
“No, sir.”
“By herself, then?”
“It would seem so.”
“Much passion must have been in that act. Do you think that any
ordinary quarrel between husband and wife would account for the display
of such fury? Are we not right in supposing a deeper cause for the
disturbance between you than the slight one you offer in way of
explanation?”
An inaudible answer; then a sudden straightening of Francis Jeffrey’s
fine figure. And that was all.
“Mr. Jeffrey, in the talk you had with your wife on Tuesday morning was
Miss Tuttle’s name introduced?”
“It was mentioned; yes, sir.”
“With recrimination or any display of passion on the part of your
wife?”
“You would not believe me if I said no,” was the unexpected rejoinder.
The coroner, taken aback by this direct attack from one who had
hitherto borne all his innuendoes with apparent patience, lost
countenance for a moment, but, remembering that in his official
capacity he was more than a match for the elegant gentleman, who under
other circumstances would have found it only too easy to put him to the
blush, he observed with dignity:
“Mr. Jeffrey, you are on oath. We certainly have no reason for not
believing you.”
Mr. Jeffrey bowed. He was probably sorry for his momentary loss of
self-control, and gravely, but with eyes bent downward, answered with
the abrupt phrase:
“Well, then, I will say no.”
The coroner shifted his ground.
“Will you make the same reply when I ask if the like forbearance was
shown toward your wife’s name in the conversation you had with Miss
Tuttle immediately afterward?”
A halt in the eagerly looked-for reply; a hesitation, momentary indeed,
but pregnant with nameless suggestions, caused his answer, when it did
come, to lose some of the emphasis he manifestly wished to put into it.
“Miss Tuttle was Mrs. Jeffrey’s half-sister. The bond between them was
strong. Would she—would I—be apt to speak of my young wife with
bitterness?”
“That is not an answer to my question, Mr. Jeffrey. I must request a
more positive reply.”
Miss Tuttle made a move. The strain on all present was so great we
could but notice it. He noticed it too, for his brows came together
with a quick frown, as he emphatically replied:
“There were no recriminations uttered. Mrs. Jeffrey had displeased me
and I said so, but I did not forget that I was speaking of my wife and
_to_ her sister.”
As this was in the highest degree non-committal, the coroner could be
excused for persisting.
“The conversation, then, was about your wife?”
“It was.”
“In criticism of her conduct?”
“Yes.”
“At the ambassador’s ball?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Jeffrey was a poor hand at lying. That last “yes” came with great
effort.
The coroner waited, possibly for the echo of this last “yes” to cease;
then he remarked with a coldness which lifted at once the veil from his
hitherto well disguised antagonism to this witness.
“If you will recount to us anything which your wife said or did on that
evening which, in your mind, was worthy of all this coil, it might help
us to understand the situation.”
But the witness made no attempt to do so, and while many of us were
ready to pardon him this show of delicacy, others felt that under the
circumstances it would have been better had he been more open.
Among the latter was the coroner himself, who, from this moment, threw
aside all hesitation and urged forward his inquiries in a way to press
the witness closer and closer toward the net he was secretly holding
out for him. First, he obliged him to say that his conversation with
Miss Tuttle had not tended to smooth matters; that no reconciliation
with his wife had followed it, and that in the thirty-six hours which
elapsed before he returned home again he had made no attempt to soothe
the feelings of one, who, according to his own story, he considered
hardly responsible for any extravagances in which she might have
indulged. Then when this inconsistency had been given time to sink into
the minds of the jury, Coroner Z. increased the effect produced by
confronting Jeffrey with witnesses who testified to the friendly, if
not lover-like relations which had existed between himself and Miss
Tuttle prior to the appearance of his wife upon the scene; closing with
a question which brought out the denial, by no means new, that an
engagement had ever taken place between him and Miss Tuttle and hence
that a bond had been canceled by his marriage with Miss Moore.
But his manner and careful choice of words in making this denial did
not satisfy those present of his entire candor; especially as Miss
Tuttle, for all her apparent immobility, showed, by the violent locking
of her hands, both her anxiety and the suffering she was undergoing
during this painful examination. Was the suffering merely one of
outraged delicacy? We felt justified in doubting it, and looked
forward, with cruel curiosity I admit, to the moment when this renowned
and universally admired beauty would be called on to throw aside her
veil and reveal the highly praised features which had been so openly
scorned for the sake of one whose chief claims to regard lay in her
great wealth.
But this moment was as yet far distant. The coroner was a man of
method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to most of
us from the first, that the assumption of suicide on the part of Mrs.
Jeffrey was open to doubt. The communication suggesting such an end to
her troubles was the strongest proof Mr. Jeffrey could bring forward
that her death had been the result of her own act. Consequently it was
now the coroner’s business to show that this communication was either a
forgery, or a substitution, and that if she left some word in the book
to which she had in so peculiar a manner directed his attention, it was
not necessarily the one bewailing her absence of love for him and her
consequent intention of seeking relief from her disappointment in
death.
Some hint of what the coroner contemplated had already escaped him in
the persistent and seemingly inconsequent questions to which he had
subjected this witness in reference to these very matters. But the time
had now come for a more direct attack, and the interest rose
correspondingly high, when the coroner, lifting again to sight the
scrap of paper containing the few piteous lines so often quoted, asked
of the now anxious and agitated witness, if he had ever noticed any
similarity between the handwriting of his wife and that of Miss Tuttle.
An indignant “No!” was about to pass his lips, when he suddenly checked
himself and said more mildly: “There may have been a similarity; I
hardly know, I have seen too little of Miss Tuttle’s hand to judge.”
This occasioned a diversion. Specimens of Miss Tuttle’s handwriting
were produced, which, after having been duly proved, were passed down
to the jury along with the communication professedly signed by Mrs.
Jeffrey. The grunts of astonishment which ensued as the knowing heads
drew near over these several papers caused Mr. Jeffrey to flush and
finally to cry out with startling emphasis:
“I know that those words were written by my wife.”
But when the coroner asked him his reasons for this conviction, he
could, or would not state them.
“I have said,” he stolidly repeated; and that was all.
The coroner made no comment, but when, after some further inquiry,
which added little to the general knowledge, he dismissed Mr. Jeffrey
and recalled Loretta, there was that in his tone which warned us that
the really serious portion of the day’s examination was about to begin.
XIII.
CHIEFLY THRUST
The appearance of this witness had undergone a change since she last
stood before us. She was shame-faced still, but her manner showed
resolve and a feverish determination to face the situation which could
but awaken in the breasts of those who had Mr. Jeffrey’s honor and
personal welfare at heart a nameless dread; as if they already foresaw
the dark shadow which minute by minute was slowly sinking over a
household which, up to a week ago, had been the envy and admiration of
all Washington society.
The first answer she made revealed both the cause of her shame and the
reason of her firmness. It was in response to the question whether she,
Loretta, had seen Miss Tuttle before she went out on the walk she was
said to have taken immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey’s final departure
from the house.
Her words were these:
“I did sir. I do not think Miss Tuttle knows it, but I saw her in Mrs.
Jeffrey’s room.”
The emphatic tone, offering such a contrast to her former manner of
speech, might have drawn all eyes to the speaker had not the person she
mentioned offered a still more interesting subject to the general
curiosity. As it was, all glances flew to that silent and seemingly
impassive figure upon which all open suggestions and covert innuendo
had hitherto fallen without creating more than a pressure of her
interlaced fingers. This direct attack, possibly the most threatening
she had received, appeared to produce no more effect upon her than the
others; less, perhaps, for no stir was visible in her now, and to some
eyes she hardly seemed to breathe.
Curiosity, thus baffled, led the gaze on to Mr. Jeffrey, and even to
Uncle David; but the former had dropped his head again upon his hand,
and the other—well, there was little to observe in Mr. Moore at any
time, save the immense satisfaction he seemed to take in himself; so
attention returned to the witness, who, by this time, had entered upon
a consecutive tale.
As near as I can remember, these are the words with which she prefaced
it:
“I am not especially proud of what I did that night, but I was led into
it by degrees, and I am sure I beg the lady’s pardon.” And then she
went on to relate how, after she had seen Mrs. Jeffrey leave the house,
she went into her room with the intention of putting it to rights. As
this was no more than her duty, no fault could be found with her; but
she owned that when she had finished this task and removed all evidence
of Mrs. Jeffrey’s frenzied condition, she had no business to linger at
the table turning over the letters she found lying there.
Here the coroner stopped her and made some inquiries in regard to these
letters, but as they seemed to be ordinary epistles from friends and
quite foreign to the investigation, he allowed her to proceed.
Her cheeks were burning now, for she had found herself obliged to admit
that she had read enough of these letters to be sure that they had no
reference to the quarrel then pending between her mistress and Mr.
Jeffrey. Her eyes fell and she looked seriously distressed as she went
on to say that she was as conscious then as now of having no business
with these papers; so conscious, indeed, that when she heard Miss
Tuttle’s step at the door, her one idea was to hide herself.
That she could stand and face that lady never so much as occurred to
her. Her own guilty consciousness made her cheeks too hot for her to
wish to meet an eye which had never rested on her any too kindly; so
noticing how straight the curtains fell over one of the windows on the
opposite side of the room, she dashed toward it and slipped in out of
sight just as Miss Tuttle came in. This window was one seldom used,
owing to the fact that it overlooked an adjoining wall, so she had no
fear of Miss Tuttle’s approaching it. Consequently, she could stand
there quite at her ease, and, as the curtains in falling behind her had
not come quite together, she really could not help seeing just what
that lady did.
Here the witness paused with every appearance of looking for some token
of disapprobation from the crowd.
But she encountered nothing there but eager anxiety for her to proceed,
so without waiting for the coroner’s question, she added in so many
words:
“She went first to the book-shelves”
We had expected it; but yet a general movement took place, and a few
suppressed exclamations could be heard.
“And what did she do there?”
“Took down a book, after looking carefully up and down the shelves.”
“What color of book?”
“A green one with red figures on it. I could see the cover plainly as
she took it down.”
“Like this one?”
“Exactly like that one.”
“And what did she do with this book?”
“Opened it, but not to read it. She was too quick in closing it for
that.”
“Did she take the book away?”
“No; she put it back on the shelf.”
“After opening and closing it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see whether she put anything into the book?”
“I can not swear that she did; but then her back was to me, and I could
not have seen it if she had.”
The implied suggestion caused some excitement, but the coroner,
frowning on this, pressed the girl to continue, asking if Miss Tuttle
left the room immediately after turning from the book-shelves. Loretta
replied no; that, on the contrary, she stood for some minutes near
them, gazing, in what seemed like a great distress of mind, straight
upon the floor; after which she moved in an agitated way and with more
than one anxious look behind her into the adjoining room where she
paused before a large bureau. As this bureau was devoted entirely to
Mr. Jeffrey’s use, Loretta experienced some surprise at seeing his
wife’s sister approach it in so stealthy a manner. Consequently she was
watching with all her might, when this young lady opened the upper
drawer and, with very evident emotion, thrust her hand into it.
What she took out, or whether she took out anything, this spy upon her
movements could not say, for when Loretta heard the drawer being pushed
back into place she drew the curtains close, perceiving that Miss
Tuttle would have to face this window in coming back. However, she
ventured upon one other peep through them just as that lady was leaving
the room, and remembered as if it were yesterday how clay-white her
face looked, and how she held her left hand pressed close against the
folds of her dress. It was but a few minutes after this that Miss
Tuttle left the house.
As we all knew what was kept in that drawer, the conclusion was
obvious. Whatever excuse Miss Tuttle might give for going into her
sister’s room at this time, but one thought, one fear, or possibly one
hope, could have taken her to Mr. Jeffrey’s private drawer. She wished
to see if his pistol was still there, or if it had been taken away by
her sister,—a revelation of the extreme point to which her thoughts had
flown at this crisis, and one which effectually contradicted her former
statement that she had been conscious of no alarm in behalf of her
sister and had seen her leave the house without dread or suspicion of
evil.
The temerity which had made it possible to associate the name of such a
man as Francis Jeffrey with an outrageous crime having been thus in a
measure explained, the coroner recalled that gentleman and again
thoroughly surprised the gaping public.
Had the witness accompanied his wife to the Moore house?
“No”
Had he met her there by any appointment he had made with her or which
had been made for them both by some third person?
“No”
Had he been at the Moore house on the night of the eleventh at any time
previous to the hour when he was brought there by the officials?
“No.”
Would he glance at this impression of certain finger-tips which had
been left in the dust of the southwest chamber mantel?
He had already noted them.
Now would he place his left hand on the paper and see—
“It is not necessary,” he burst forth, in great heat. “I own to those
marks. That is, I have no doubt they were made by my hand.” Here,
unconsciously, his eyes flew to the member thus referred to, as if
conscious that in some way it had proved a traitor to him; after which
his gaze traveled slowly my way, with an indescribable question in it
which roused my conscience and made the trick by which I had got the
impression of his hand seem less of a triumph than I had heretofore
considered it. The next minute he was answering the coroner under oath,
very much as he had answered him in the unofficial interview at which I
had been present.
“I acknowledge having been in the Moore house and even having been in
its southwest chamber, but not at the time supposed. It was on the
previous night.” He went on to relate how, being in a nervous condition
and having the key to this old dwelling in his pocket, he had amused
himself by going through its dilapidated interior. All of this made a
doubtful impression which was greatly emphasized when, in reply to the
inquiry as to where he got the light to see by, he admitted that he had
come upon a candle in an upstairs room and made use of that; though he
could not remember what he had done with this candle afterward, and
looked dazed and quite at sea, till the coroner suggested that he might
have carried it into the closet of the room where his fingers had left
their impression in the dust of the mantel-shelf. Then he broke down
like a man from whom some prop is suddenly snatched and looked around
for a seat. This was given him, while a silence, the most dreadful I
ever experienced, held every one there in check. But he speedily
rallied and, with the remark that he was a little confused in regard to
the incidents of that night, waited with a wild look in his averted eye
for the coroner’s next question.
Unhappily for him it was in continuation of the same subject. Had he
bought candles or not at the grocer’s around the corner? Yes, he had.
Before visiting the house? Yes. Had he also bought matches? Yes. What
kind? Common safety matches. Had he noticed when he got home that the
box he had just bought was half empty? No. Nevertheless he had used
many matches in going through this old house, had he not? Possibly. To
light his way upstairs, perhaps? It might be. Had he not so used them?
Yes. Why had he done so, if he had candles in his pocket, which were so
much easier to hold and so much more lasting than a lighted match? Ah,
he could not say; he did not know; his mind was confused. He was awake
when he should have been asleep. It was all a dream to him.
The coroner became still more persistent.
“Did you enter the library on your solitary visit to this old house?”
“I believe so.”
“What did you do there?”
“Pottered around. I don’t remember.”
“What light did you use?”
“A candle, I think.”
“You must know.”
“Well, I had a candle; it was in a candelabrum.”
“What candle and what candelabrum?”
“The same I used upstairs, of course”
“And you can not remember where you left this candle and candelabrum
when you finally quitted the house?”
“No. I wasn’t thinking about candles.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“The rupture with my wife and the bad name of the house I was in.”
“Oh! and this was on Tuesday night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How can you prove this to us?”
“I can not.”
“But you swear—”
“I swear that it was Tuesday night, the night immediately preceding the
one when—when my wife’s death robbed me of all earthly happiness.”
It was feelingly uttered, and several faces lightened; but the coroner
repeating: “Is there no way you can prove this to our satisfaction?”
the shadow settled again, and on no head more perceptibly than on that
of the unfortunate witness.
It was now late in the day and the atmosphere of the room had become
stifling; but no one seemed to be conscious of any discomfort, and a
general gasp of excitement passed through the room when the coroner,
taking out a box from under a pile of papers, disclosed to the general
gaze the famous white ribbon with its dainty bow, lying on top of the
fatal pistol.
That this special feature, the most interesting one of all connected
with this tragedy, should have been kept so long in reserve and brought
out just at this time, struck many of Mr. Jeffrey’s closest friends as
unnecessarily dramatic; but when the coroner, lifting out the ribbon,
remarked tentatively, “You know this ribbon?” we were more struck by
the involuntary cry of surprise which rose from some one in the crowd
about the door, than by the look with which Mr. Jeffrey eyed it and
made the necessary reply. That cry had something more than nervous
excitement in it. Identifying the person who had uttered it as a
certain busy little woman well known in town, I sent an officer to
watch her; then recalled my attention to the point the coroner was
attempting to make. He had forced Mr. Jeffrey to recognize the ribbon
as the one which had fastened the pistol to his wife’s arm; now he
asked whether, in his opinion, a woman could tie such a bow to her own
wrist, and when in common justice Mr. Jeffrey was obliged to say no,
waited a third time before he put the general suspicion again into
words:
“Can not you, by some means or some witness, prove to us that it was on
Tuesday night and not on Wednesday you spent the hours you speak of on
this scene of your marriage and your wife’s death?”
The hopelessness which more than once had marked Mr. Jeffrey’s features
since the beginning of this inquiry, reappeared with renewed force as
this suggestive question fell again upon his ears; and he was about to
repeat his plea of forgetfulness when the coroner’s attention was
diverted by a request made in his ear by one of the detectives. In
another moment Mr. Jeffrey had been waved aside and a new witness sworn
in.
You can imagine every one’s surprise, mine most of all, when this
witness proved to be Uncle David.
XIV.
“TALLMAN! LET US HAVE TALLMAN!”
I do not know why the coroner had so long delayed to call this witness.
In the ordinary course of events his testimony should have preceded
mine, but the ordinary course of events had not been followed, and it
was only at the request of Mr. Moore himself that he was now allowed
the privilege of appearing before this coroner and jury.
I speak of it as a privilege because he himself evidently regarded it
as such. Indeed, his whole attitude and bearing as he addressed himself
to the coroner showed that he was there to be looked at and that he
secretly thought he was very well worth this attention. Possibly some
remembrance of the old days, in which he had gone in and out before
these people in a garb suggestive of penury, made the moment when he
could appear before them in a guise more befitting his station one of
incalculable importance to him.
At all events, he confronted us all with an aspect which openly
challenged admiration. When, in answer to the coroner’s inquiries, it
became his duty to speak, he did so with a condescension which would
have called up smiles if the occasion had been one of less seriousness,
and his connection with it as unimportant as he would have it appear.
What he said was in the way of confirming the last witness’ testimony
as to his having been at the Moore house on Tuesday evening. Mr. Moore,
who was very particular as to dates and days, admitted that the light
which he had seen in a certain window of his ancestral home on the
evening when he summoned the police was but the repetition of one he
had detected there the evening before. It was this repetition which
alarmed him and caused him to break through all his usual habits and
leave his home at night to notify the police.
“The old sneak!” thought I. “Why didn’t he tell us this before?” And I
allowed myself a fresh doubt of his candor which had always seemed to
me somewhat open to question. It is possible that the coroner shared my
opinion, or that he felt it incumbent upon him to get what evidence he
could from the sole person living within view of the house in which
such ghastly events had taken place. For, without betraying the least
suspicion, and yet with the quiet persistence for which men in his
responsible position are noted, he subjected this suave old man to such
a rigid examination as to what he had seen, or had not seen, from his
windows, that no possibility seemed to remain of his concealing a
single fact which could help to the elucidation of this or any other
mystery connected with the old mansion.
He asked him if he had seen Mr. Jeffrey go in on the night in question;
if he had ever seen any one go in there since the wedding; or even if
he had seen any one loitering about the steps, or sneaking into the
rear yard. But the answer was always no; these same noes growing more
and more emphatic, and the gentleman more and more impenetrable and
dignified as the examination went on. In fact, he was as unassailable a
witness as I have ever heard testify before any jury. Beyond the fact
already mentioned of his having observed a light in the opposite house
on the two evenings in question, he admitted nothing. His life in the
little cottage was so engrossing—he had his organ—his dog—why should he
look out of the window? Had it not been for his usual habit of letting
his dog run the pavements for a quarter of an hour before finally
locking up for the night, he would not have seen as much as he did.
“Have you any stated hour for doing this?” the coroner now asked.
“Yes; half-past nine”
“And was this the hour when you saw that light?”
“Yes, both times.”
As he had appeared at the station-house at a few minutes before ten he
was probably correct in this statement. But, notwithstanding this, I
did not feel implicit confidence in him. He was too insistent in his
regret at not being able to give greater assistance in the
disentanglement of a mystery so affecting the honor of the family of
which he was now the recognized head. His voice, nicely attuned to the
occasion, was admirable; so was his manner; but I mentally wrote him
down as one I should enjoy outwitting if the opportunity ever came my
way.
He wound up with such a distinct repetition of his former emphatic
assertion as to the presence of light in the old house on Tuesday as
well as Wednesday evening that Mr. Jeffrey’s testimony in this regard
received a decided confirmation. I looked to see some open recognition
of this, when suddenly, and with a persistence understood only by the
police, the coroner recalled Mr. Jeffrey and asked him what proof he
had to offer that his visit of Tuesday had not been repeated the next
night and that he was not in the building when that fatal trigger was
pulled.
At this leading question, a lawyer sitting near me, edged himself
forward as if he hoped for some sign from Mr. Jeffrey which would
warrant him in interfering. But Mr. Jeffrey gave no such sign. I doubt
if he even noticed this man’s proximity, though he knew him well and
had often employed him as his legal adviser in times gone by. He was
evidently exerting himself to recall the name which so persistently
eluded his memory, putting his hand to his head and showing the utmost
confusion.
“I can not give you one,” he finally stammered. “There is a man who
could tell—if only I could remember his name.” Suddenly with a loud cry
which escaped him involuntarily, he gave a gurgling laugh and we heard
the name “_Tallman!_” leap from his lips.
The witness had at last remembered whom he had met at the cemetery gate
at the hour, or near the hour, his wife lay dying in the lower part of
the city.
The effect was electrical. One of the spectators—some country boor, no
doubt—so far forgot himself as to cry out loud enough for all to hear:
“Tallman! Let us have Tallman!”
Of course he met with an instant rebuke, but I did not wait to hear it,
or to see order restored, for a glance from the coroner had already
sent me to the door in search of this new witness.
My destination was the Cosmos Club, for Phil Tallman and his habits and
haunts were as well known in Washington as the figure of Liberty on the
summit of the Capitol dome. When I saw him I did not wonder. Never have
I seen a more amiable looking man, or one with a more absentminded
expression. To my query as to whether he had ever met Mr. Jeffrey at or
near the entrance of Rock Creek Cemetery, he replied with an amazed
look and the quick response:
“Of course I did. It was the very night that his wife— But what’s up?
You look excited for a detective.”
“Come to the morgue and see. This testimony of yours will prove
invaluable to Mr. Jeffrey.”
I shall never forget the murmur of suppressed excitement which greeted
us as I reappeared before coroner and jury accompanied by the gentleman
who had been called for in such peremptory tones a short time before.
Mr. Jeffrey, who had attempted to rise at our entrance, but seemed to
lack the ability, gave a faint smile as Tallman’s good-natured face
appeared; and the coroner, feeling, perhaps, that some cords are liable
to break if stretched too strongly, administered the oath and made the
necessary inquiries with as little delay as was compatible with the
solemnity of the occasion.
The result was an absolute proof that Mr. Jeffrey had been near
Soldiers’ Home as late as seven, which was barely fifteen minutes
previous to the hour Mrs. Jeffrey’s watch was stopped by her fall in
the old house on Waverley Avenue. As the distance between the two
places could not be compassed in that time, Mr. Jeffrey’s alibi could
be regarded as established.
When we were all rising, glad of an adjournment which restored free
movement and an open interchange of speech, a sudden check in the
general rush called our attention back to Mr. Jeffrey. He was standing
facing Miss Tuttle, who was still sitting in a strangely immovable
attitude in her old place. He had just touched her on the arm, and now,
with a look of alarm, he threw up the veil which had kept her face
hidden from all beholders.
A vision of loveliness greeted us, but that was not all. It was an
unconscious loveliness. Miss Tuttle had fainted away, sitting upright
in her chair.
XV.
WHITE BOW AND PINK
Mr. Jeffrey’s examination and its triumphant conclusion created a great
furor in town. Topics which had hitherto absorbed all minds were
forgotten in the discussion of the daring attempt which had been made
by the police to fix crime upon one of Washington’s most esteemed
citizens, and the check which they had rightly suffered for this
outrage. What might be expected next? Something equally bold and
reprehensible, of course, but what? It was a question which at the next
sitting completely filled the inquest room.
To my great surprise, Mr. Jeffrey was recalled to the stand. He had
changed since the night before. He looked older, and while still
handsome, for nothing could rob him of his regularity of feature and
extreme elegance of proportion, showed little of the spirit which, in
spite of the previous day’s depression, had upheld him through its most
trying ordeal and kept his eye bright, if only from excitement. This
was fact number one, and one which I stored away in my already
well-furnished memory.
Miss Tuttle sat in a less conspicuous position than on the previous
day, and Mr. Moore, her uncle, was not there at all.
The testimony called for revived an old point which, seemingly, had not
been settled to the coroner’s satisfaction.