The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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      Chapter IX.

       Developments

       Table of Contents

      Mr. Gryce called about nine o’clock next morning.

      “Well,” said he, “what about the visitor who came to see me last night?”

      “Like and unlike,” I answered. “Nothing could induce me to say he is the man we want, and yet I would not dare to swear he was not.”

      “You are in doubt, then, concerning him?”

      “I am.”

      Mr. Gryce bowed, reminded me of the inquest, and left. Nothing was said about the hat.

      At ten o’clock I prepared to go to the place designated by him. I had never attended an inquest in my life, and felt a little flurried in consequence, but by the time I had tied the strings of my bonnet (the despised bonnet, which, by the way, I did not return to More’s), I had conquered this weakness, and acquired a demeanor more in keeping with my very important position as chief witness in a serious police investigation.

      I had sent for a carriage to take me, and I rode away from my house amid the shouts of some half dozen boys collected on the curb-stone. But I did not allow myself to feel dashed by this publicity. On the contrary, I held my head as erect as nature intended, and my back kept the line my good health warrants. The path of duty has its thorny passages, but it is for strong minds like mine to ignore them.

      Promptly at ten o’clock I entered the room reserved for the inquest, and was ushered to the seat appointed me. Though never a self-conscious woman, I could not but be aware of the many eyes that followed me, and endeavored so to demean myself that there should be no question as to my respectable standing in the community. This I considered due to the memory of my father, who was very much in my thoughts that day.

      The Coroner was already in his seat when I entered, and though I did not perceive the good face of Mr. Gryce anywhere in his vicinity, I had no doubt he was within ear-shot. Of the other people I took small note, save of the honest scrub-woman, of whose red face and anxious eyes under a preposterous bonnet (which did not come from La Mole’s), I caught vague glimpses as the crowd between us surged to and fro.

      None of the Van Burnams were visible, but this did not necessarily mean that they were absent. Indeed, I was very sure, from certain indications, that more than one member of the family could be seen in the small room connecting with the large one in which we witnesses sat with the jury.

      The policeman, Carroll, was the first man to talk. He told of my stopping him on his beat and of his entrance into Mr. Van Burnam’s house with the scrub-woman. He gave the details of his discovery of the dead woman’s body on the parlor floor, and insisted that no one—here he looked very hard at me—had been allowed to touch the body till relief had come to him from Headquarters.

      Mrs. Boppert, the scrub-woman, followed him; and if she was watched by no one else in that room, she was watched by me. Her manner before the Coroner was no more satisfactory, according to my notion, than it had been in Mr. Van Burnam’s parlor. She gave a very perceptible start when they spoke her name, and looked quite scared when the Bible was held out towards her. But she took the oath notwithstanding, and with her testimony the inquiry began in earnest.

      “What is your name?” asked the Coroner.

      As this was something she could not help knowing, she uttered the necessary words glibly, though in a way that showed she resented his impertinence in asking her what he already knew.

      “Where do you live? And what do you do for a living?” rapidly followed.

      She replied that she was a scrub-woman and cleaned people’s houses, and having said this, she assumed a very dogged air, which I thought strange enough to raise a question in the minds of those who watched her. But no one else seemed to regard it as anything but the embarrassment of ignorance.

      “How long have you known the Van Burnam family?” the Coroner went on.

      “Two years, sir, come next Christmas.”

      “Have you often done work for them?”

      “I clean the house twice a year, fall and spring.”

      “Why were you at this house two days ago?”

      “To scrub the kitchen floors, sir, and put the pantries in order.”

      “Had you received notice to do so?”

      “Yes, sir, through Mr. Franklin Van Burnam.”

      “And was that the first day of your work there?”

      “No, sir; I had been there all the day before.”

      “You don’t speak loud enough,” objected the Coroner; “remember that every one in this room wants to hear you.”

      She looked up, and with a frightened air surveyed the crowd about her. Publicity evidently made her most uncomfortable, and her voice sank rather than rose.

      “Where did you get the key of the house, and by what door did you enter?”

      “I went in at the basement, sir, and I got the key at Mr. Van Burnam’s agent in Dey Street. I had to go for it; sometimes they send it to me; but not this time.”

      “And now relate your meeting with the policeman on Wednesday morning, in front of Mr. Van Burnam’s house.”

      She tried to tell her story, but she made awkward work of it, and they had to ply her with questions to get at the smallest fact. But finally she managed to repeat what we already knew, how she went with the policeman into the house, and how they stumbled upon the dead woman in the parlor.

      Further than this they did not question her, and I, Amelia Butterworth, had to sit in silence and see her go back to her seat, redder than before, but with a strangely satisfied air that told me she had escaped more easily than she had expected. And yet Mr. Gryce had been warned that she knew more than appeared, and by one in whom he seemed to have placed some confidence!

      The doctor was called next. His testimony was most important, and contained a surprise for me and more than one surprise for the others. After a short preliminary examination, he was requested to state how long the woman had been dead when he was called in to examine her.

      “More than twelve and less than eighteen hours,” was his quiet reply.

      “Had the rigor mortis set in?”

      “No; but it began very soon after.”

      “Did you examine the wounds made by the falling shelves and the vases that tumbled with them?”