The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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СКАЧАТЬ said he, “that is just what we are going to find out.”

      Mrs. Belden was in a flutter of impatience when I entered the sitting-room. When did I think the coroner would come? and what did I imagine this detective would do for us? It was dreadful waiting there alone for something, she knew not what.

      I calmed her as well as I could, telling her the detective had not yet informed me what he could do, having some questions to ask her first. Would she come in to see him? She rose with alacrity. Anything was better than suspense.

      Mr. Gryce, who in the short interim of my absence had altered his mood from the severe to the beneficent, received Mrs. Belden with just that show of respectful courtesy likely to impress a woman as dependent as she upon the good opinion of others.

      “Ah! and this is the lady in whose house this very disagreeable event has occurred,” he exclaimed, partly rising in his enthusiasm to greet her. “May I request you to sit,” he asked; “if a stranger may be allowed to take the liberty of inviting a lady to sit in her own house.”

      “It does not seem like my own house any longer,” said she, but in a sad, rather than an aggressive tone; so much had his genial way imposed upon her. “Little better than a prisoner here, go and come, keep silence or speak, just as I am bidden; and all because an unhappy creature, whom I took in for the most unselfish of motives, has chanced to die in my house!”

      “Just so!” exclaimed Mr. Gryce; “it is very unjust. But perhaps we can right matters. I have every reason to believe we can. This sudden death ought to be easily explained. You say you had no poison in the house?”

      “No, sir.”

      “And that the girl never went out?”

      “Never, sir.”

      “And that no one has ever been here to see her?”

      “No one, sir.”

      “So that she could not have procured any such thing if she had wished?”

      “No, sir.”

      “Unless,” he added suavely, “she had it with her when she came here?”

      “That couldn’t have been, sir. She brought no baggage; and as for her pocket, I know everything there was in it, for I looked.”

      “And what did you find there?”

      “Some money in bills, more than you would have expected such a girl to have, some loose pennies, and a common handkerchief.”

      “Well, then, it is proved the girl didn’t die of poison, there being none in the house.”

      He said this in so convinced a tone she was deceived.

      “That is just what I have been telling Mr. Raymond,” giving me a triumphant look.

      “Must have been heart disease,” he went on, “You say she was well yesterday?”

      “Yes, sir; or seemed so.”

      “Though not cheerful?”

      “I did not say that; she was, sir, very.”

      “What, ma’am, this girl?” giving me a look. “I don’t understand that. I should think her anxiety about those she had left behind her in the city would have been enough to keep her from being very cheerful.”

      “So you would,” returned Mrs. Belden; “but it wasn’t so. On the contrary, she never seemed to worry about them at all.”

      “What! not about Miss Eleanore, who, according to the papers, stands in so cruel a position before the world? But perhaps she didn’t know anything about that—Miss Leavenworth’s position, I mean?”

      “Yes, she did, for I told her. I was so astonished I could not keep it to myself. You see, I had always considered Eleanore as one above reproach, and it so shocked me to see her name mentioned in the newspaper in such a connection, that I went to Hannah and read the article aloud, and watched her face to see how she took it.”

      “And how did she?”

      “I can’t say. She looked as if she didn’t understand; asked me why I read such things to her, and told me she didn’t want to hear any more; that I had promised not to trouble her about this murder, and that if I continued to do so she wouldn’t listen.”

      “Humph! and what else?”

      “Nothing else. She put her hand over her ears and frowned in such a sullen way I left the room.”

      “That was when?”

      “About three weeks ago.”

      “She has, however, mentioned the subject since?”

      “No, sir; not once.”

      “What! not asked what they were going to do with her mistress?”

      “No, sir.”

      “She has shown, however, that something was preying on her mind—fear, remorse, or anxiety?”

      “No, sir; on the contrary, she has oftener appeared like one secretly elated.”

      “But,” exclaimed Mr. Gryce, with another sidelong look at me, “that was very strange and unnatural. I cannot account for it.”

      “Nor I, sir. I used to try to explain it by thinking her sensibilities had been blunted, or that she was too ignorant to comprehend the seriousness of what had happened; but as I learned to know her better, I gradually changed my mind. There was too much method in her gayety for that. I could not help seeing she had some future before her for which she was preparing herself. As, for instance, she asked me one day if I thought she could learn to play on the piano. And I finally came to the conclusion she had been promised money if she kept the secret intrusted to her, and was so pleased with the prospect that she forgot the dreadful past, and all connected with it. At all events, that was the only explanation I could find for her general industry and desire to improve herself, or for the complacent smiles I detected now and then stealing over her face when she didn’t know I was looking.”

      Not such a smile as crept over the countenance of Mr. Gryce at that moment, I warrant.

      “It was all this,” continued Mrs. Belden, “which made her death such a shock to me. I couldn’t believe that so cheerful and healthy a creature could die like that, all in one night, without anybody knowing anything about it. But——”

      “Wait one moment,” Mr. Gryce here broke in. “You speak of her endeavors to improve herself. What do you mean by that?”

      “Her desire to learn things she didn’t know; as, for instance, to write and read writing. She could only clumsily print when she came here.”

      I thought Mr. Gryce would take a piece out of my arm, he griped it so.

      “When she came here! Do you mean to say that since she СКАЧАТЬ