The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин
burn unless it was the letter.”
“We will see about that,” I muttered, hurrying upstairs and bringing down the wash-bowl with its contents. “If the letter was the one I saw in your hand at the post-office, it was in a yellow envelope.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yellow envelopes burn differently from white paper. I ought to be able to tell the tinder made by a yellow envelope when I see it. Ah, the letter has been destroyed; here is a piece of the envelope,” and I drew out of the heap of charred scraps a small bit less burnt than the rest, and held it up.
“Then there is no use looking here for what the letter contained,” said Mr. Gryce, putting the wash-bowl aside. “We will have to ask you, Mrs. Belden.”
“But I don’t know. It was directed to me, to be sure; but Hannah told me, when she first requested me to teach her how to write, that she expected such a letter, so I didn’t open it when it came, but gave it to her just as it was.”
“You, however, stayed by to see her read it?”
“No, sir; I was in too much of a flurry. Mr. Raymond had just come and I had no time to think of her. My own letter, too, was troubling me.”
“But you surely asked her some questions about it before the day was out?”
“Yes, sir, when I went up with her tea things; but she had nothing to say. Hannah could be as reticent as any one I ever knew, when she pleased. She didn’t even admit it was from her mistress.”
“Ah! then you thought it was from Miss Leavenworth?”
“Why, yes, sir; what else was I to think, seeing that mark in the corner? Though, to be sure, it might have been put there by Mr. Clavering,” she thoughtfully added.
“You say she was cheerful yesterday; was she so after receiving this letter?”
“Yes, sir; as far as I could see. I wasn’t with her long; the necessity I felt of doing something with the box in my charge—but perhaps Mr. Raymond has told you?”
Mr. Gryce nodded.
“It was an exhausting evening, and quite put Hannah out of my head, but——”
“Wait!” cried Mr. Gryce, and beckoning me into a corner, he whispered, “Now comes in that experience of Q’s. While you are gone from the house, and before Mrs. Belden sees Hannah again, he has a glimpse of the girl bending over something in the corner of her room which may very fairly be the wash-bowl we found there. After which, he sees her swallow, in the most lively way, a dose of something from a bit of paper. Was there anything more?”
“No,” said I.
“Very well, then,” he cried, going back to Mrs. Belden. “But——”
“But when I went upstairs to bed, I thought of the girl, and going to her door opened it. The light was extinguished, and she seemed asleep, so I closed it again and came out.”
“Without speaking?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you notice how she was lying?”
“Not particularly. I think on her back.”
“In something of the same position in which she was found this morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that is all you can tell us, either of her letter or her mysterious death?”
“All, sir.”
Mr. Gryce straightened himself up.
“Mrs. Belden,” said he, “you know Mr. Clavering’s handwriting when you see it?”
“I do.”
“And Miss Leavenworth’s?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, which of the two was upon the envelope of the letter you gave Hannah?”
“I couldn’t say. It was a disguised handwriting and might have been that of either; but I think——”
“Well?”
“That it was more like hers than his, though it wasn’t like hers either.”
With a smile, Mr. Gryce enclosed the confession in his hand in the envelope in which it had been found. “You remember how large the letter was which you gave her?”
“Oh, it was large, very large; one of the largest sort.”
“And thick?”
“O yes; thick enough for two letters.”
“Large enough and thick enough to contain this?” laying the confession, folded and enveloped as it was, before her.
“Yes, sir,” giving it a look of startled amazement, “large enough and thick enough to contain that.”
Mr. Gryce’s eyes, bright as diamonds, flashed around the room, and finally settled upon a fly traversing my coat-sleeve. “Do you need to ask now,” he whispered, in a low voice, “where, and from whom, this so-called confession comes?”
He allowed himself one moment of silent triumph, then rising, began folding the papers on the table and putting them in his pocket.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, hurriedly approaching.
He took me by the arm and led me across the hall into toe sitting-room. “I am going back to New York, I am going to pursue this matter. I am going to find out from whom came the poison which killed this girl, and by whose hand this vile forgery of a confession was written.”
“But,” said I, rather thrown off my balance by all this, “Q and the coroner will be here presently, won’t you wait to see them?”
“No; clues such as are given here must be followed while the trail is hot; I can’t afford to wait.”
“If I am not mistaken, they have already come,” I remarked, as a tramping of feet without announced that some one stood at the door.
“That is so,” he assented, hastening to let them in.
Judging from common experience, we had every reason to fear that an immediate stop would be put to all proceedings on our part, as soon as the coroner was introduced upon the scene. But happily for us and the interest at stake, Dr. Fink, of R ——, proved to be a very sensible man. He had only to hear a true story of the affair to recognize at once its importance and the necessity of the most cautious action in the matter. Further, by a sort of sympathy with Mr. Gryce, all the more remarkable that he had never seen him before, he expressed himself as willing to enter into our plans, offering not only to allow us the temporary use of such papers as we desired, but even undertaking to conduct the necessary formalities of calling a jury and instituting an inquest in such a way as to give us time for the investigations we proposed to make.
The delay was therefore short. Mr. Gryce was enabled to take the 6:30 train for New York, and I to follow on the 10 p.m.,—the calling of a jury, ordering of an autopsy, and final adjournment of the inquiry till the following Tuesday, having all taken place in the interim.
Chapter XXXV.
Fine Work
“No hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on!”
“But yet the pity of it, Iago!
Oh, Iago, the pity of it, Iago.”
—Othello.
One sentence dropped by Mr. Gryce before leaving R—— prepared