The Affair Next Door (15 page)

The witness, who did not seem to be affected either by the character of
this examination or by the conjectures to which it gave rise, preserved
his
sang-froid
, and eyed the Coroner as he might any other questioner,
with suitable respect, but with no fear and but little impatience. And
yet he must have known the horrible suspicion darkening the minds of
many people present, and suspected, even if against his will, that this
examination, significant as it was, was but the forerunner of another
and yet more serious one.

"You are very determined," remarked the Coroner in beginning again, "not
to accept the very substantial proofs presented you of the identity
between the object of this inquiry and your missing wife. But we are not
yet ready to give up the struggle, and so I must ask if you heard the
description given by Miss Ferguson of the manner in which your wife was
dressed on leaving Haddam?

"I have."

"Was it a correct account? Did she wear a black and white plaid silk and
a hat trimmed with various colored ribbons and flowers?"

"She did."

"Do you remember the hat? Were you with her when she bought it, or did
you ever have your attention drawn to it in any particular way?"

"I remember the hat."

"Is this it, Mr. Van Burnam?"

I was watching Howard, and the start he gave was so pronounced and the
emotion he displayed was in such violent contrast to the self-possession
he had maintained up to this point, that I was held spell-bound by the
shock I received, and forebore to look at the object which the Coroner
had suddenly held up for inspection. But when I did turn my head towards
it, I recognized at once the multi-colored hat which Mr. Gryce had
brought in from the third room of Mr. Van Burnam's house on the evening
I was there, and realized almost in the same breath that great as this
mystery had hitherto seemed it was likely to prove yet greater before
its proper elucidation was arrived at.

"Was that found in my father's house? Where—where was that hat found?"
stammered the witness, so far forgetting himself as to point towards the
object in question.

"It was found by Mr. Gryce in a closet off your father's dining-room, a
short time after the dead girl was carried out."

"I don't believe it," vociferated the young man, paling with something
more than anger, and shaking from head to foot.

"Shall I put Mr. Gryce on his oath again?" asked the Coroner, mildly.

The young man stared; evidently these words failed to reach his
understanding.

"
Is
it your wife's hat?" persisted the Coroner with very little
mercy. "Do you recognize it for the one in which she left Haddam?"

"Would to God I did not!" burst in vehement distress from the witness,
who at the next moment broke down altogether and looked about for the
support of his brother's arm.

Franklin came forward, and the two brothers stood for a moment in the
face of the whole surging mass of curiosity-mongers before them, arm in
arm, but with very different expressions on their two proud faces.
Howard was the first to speak.

"If that was found in the parlors of my father's house," he cried, "then
the woman who was killed there was my wife." And he started away with a
wild air towards the door.

"Where are you going?" asked the Coroner, quietly, while an officer
stepped softly before him, and his brother compassionately drew him back
by the arm.

"I am going to take her from that horrible place; she is my wife.
Father, you would not wish her to remain in that spot for another
moment, would you, while we have a house we call our own?"

Mr. Van Burnam the senior, who had shrunk as far from sight as possible
through these painful demonstrations, rose up at these words from his
agonized son, and making him an encouraging gesture, walked hastily out
of the room; seeing which, the young man became calmer, and though he
did not cease to shudder, tried to restrain his first grief, which to
those who looked closely at him was evidently very sincere.

"I would not believe it was she," he cried, in total disregard of the
presence he was in, "I
would not
believe it; but now—" A certain
pitiful gesture finished the sentence, and neither Coroner nor jury
seemed to know just how to proceed, the conduct of the young man being
so markedly different from what they had expected. After a short pause,
painful enough to all concerned, the Coroner, perceiving that very
little could be done with the witness under the circumstances, adjourned
the sitting till afternoon.

I went at once to a restaurant. I ate because it was time to eat, and
because any occupation was welcome that would pass away the hours of
waiting. I was troubled; and I did not know what to make of myself. I
was no friend to the Van Burnams; I did not like them, and certainly had
never approved of any of them but Mr. Franklin, and yet I found myself
altogether disturbed over the morning's developments, Howard's emotion
having appealed to me in spite of my prejudices. I could not but think
ill of him, his conduct not being such as I could honestly commend. But
I found myself more ready to listen to the involuntary pleadings of my
own heart in his behalf than I had been prior to his testimony and its
somewhat startling termination.

But they were not through with him yet, and after the longest three
hours I ever passed, we were again convened before the Coroner.

I saw Howard as soon as anybody did. He came in, arm in arm as before,
with his faithful brother, and sat down in a retired corner behind the
Coroner. But he was soon called forward.

His face when the light fell on it was startling to most of us. It was
as much changed as if years, instead of hours, had elapsed since last
we saw it. No longer reckless in its expression, nor easy, nor politely
patient, it showed in its every lineament that he had not only passed
through a hurricane of passion, but that the bitterness, which had been
its worst feature, had not passed with the storm, but had settled into
the core of his nature, disturbing its equilibrium forever. My emotions
were not allayed by the sight; but I kept all expression of them out of
view. I must be sure of his integrity before giving rein to my
sympathies.

The jury moved and sat up quite alert when they saw him. I think that if
these especial twelve men could have a murder case to investigate every
day, they would grow quite wide-awake in time. Mr. Van Burnam made no
demonstration. Evidently there was not likely to be a repetition of the
morning's display of passion. He had been iron in his impassibility at
that time, but he was steel now, and steel which had been through the
fiercest of fires.

The opening question of the Coroner showed by what experience these
fires had been kindled.

"Mr. Van Burnam, I have been told that you have visited the Morgue in
the interim which has elapsed since I last questioned you. Is that
true?"

"It is."

"Did you, in the opportunity thus afforded, examine the remains of the
woman whose death we are investigating, attentively enough to enable you
to say now whether they are those of your missing wife?"

"I have. The body is that of Louise Van Burnam; I crave your pardon and
that of the jury for my former obstinacy in refusing to recognize it. I
thought myself fully justified in the stand I took. I see now that I
was not."

The Coroner made no answer. There was no sympathy between him and this
young man. Yet he did not fail in a decent show of respect; perhaps
because he did feel some sympathy for the witness's unhappy father and
brother.

"You then acknowledge the victim to have been your wife?"

"I do."

"It is a point gained, and I compliment the jury upon it. We can now
proceed to settle, if possible, the identity of the person who
accompanied Mrs. Van Burnam into your father's house."

"Wait," cried Mr. Van Burnam, with a strange air, "
I acknowledge I was
that person
."

It was coolly, almost fiercely said, but it was an admission that
wellnigh created a hubbub. Even the Coroner seemed moved, and cast a
glance at Mr. Gryce which showed his surprise to be greater than his
discretion.

"You acknowledge," he began—but the witness did not let him finish.

"I acknowledge that I was the person who accompanied her into that empty
house; but I do not acknowledge that I killed her. She was alive and
well when I left her, difficult as it is for me to prove it. It was the
realization of this difficulty which made me perjure myself this
morning."

"So," murmured the Coroner, with another glance at Mr. Gryce, "you
acknowledge that you perjured yourself. Will the room be quiet!"

But the lull came slowly. The contrast between the appearance of this
elegant young man and the significant admissions he had just made
(admissions which to three quarters of the persons there meant more,
much more, than he acknowledged), was certainly such as to provoke
interest of the deepest kind. I felt like giving rein to my own
feelings, and was not surprised at the patience shown by the Coroner.
But order was restored at last, and the inquiry proceeded.

"We are then to consider the testimony given by you this morning as null
and void?"

"Yes, so far as it contradicts what I have just stated."

"Ah, then you will no doubt be willing to give us your evidence again?"

"Certainly, if you will be so kind as to question me."

"Very well; where did your wife and yourself first meet after your
arrival in New York?"

"In the street near my office. She was coming to see me, but I prevailed
upon her to go uptown."

"What time was this?"

"After ten and before noon. I cannot give the exact hour."

"And where did you go?"

"To a hotel on Broadway; you have already heard of our visit there."

"You are, then, the Mr. James Pope, whose wife registered in the books
of the Hotel D— on the seventeenth of this month?"

"I have said so."

"And may I ask for what purpose you used this disguise, and allowed your
wife to sign a wrong name?"

"To satisfy a freak. She considered it the best way of covering up a
scheme she had formed; which was to awaken the interest of my father
under the name and appearance of a stranger, and not to inform him who
she was till he had given some evidence of partiality for her."

"Ah, but for such an end was it necessary for her to assume a strange
name before she saw your father, and for you both to conduct yourselves
in the mysterious way you did all that day and evening?"

"I do not know. She thought so, and I humored her. I was tired of
working against her, and was willing she should have her own way for a
time."

"And for this reason you let her fit herself out with clothes down to
her very undergarments?"

"Yes; strange as it may seem, I was just such a fool. I had entered into
her scheme, and the means she took to change her personality only amused
me. She wished to present herself to my father as a girl obliged to work
for her living, and was too shrewd to excite suspicion in the minds of
any of the family by any undue luxury in her apparel. At least that was
the excuse she gave me for the precautions she took, though I think the
delight she experienced in anything romantic and unusual had as much to
do with it as anything else. She enjoyed the game she was playing, and
wished to make as much of it as possible."

"Were her own garments much richer than those she ordered from
Altman's?"

"Undoubtedly. Mrs. Van Burnam wore nothing made by American
seamstresses. Fine clothes were her weakness."

"I see, I see; but why such an attempt on your part to keep yourself in
the background? Why let your wife write your assumed names in the hotel
register, for instance, instead of doing it yourself?"

"It was easier for her; I know no other reason. She did not mind putting
down the name Pope. I did."

It was an ungracious reflection upon his wife, and he seemed to feel it
so; for he almost immediately added: "A man will sometimes lend himself
to a scheme of which the details are obnoxious. It was so in this case;
but she was too interested in her plans to be affected by so small a
matter as this."

This explained more than one mysterious action on the part of this pair
while they were at the Hotel D—. The Coroner evidently considered it
in this light, for he dwelt but little longer on this phase of the case,
passing at once to a fact concerning which curiosity had hitherto been
roused without receiving any satisfaction.

"In leaving the hotel," said he, "you and your wife were seen carrying
certain packages, which were missing from your arms when you alighted at
Mr. Van Burnam's house. What was in those packages, and where did you
dispose of them before you entered the second carriage?"

Howard made no demur in answering.

"My wife's clothes were in them," said he, "and we dropped them
somewhere on Twenty-seventh Street near Third Avenue, just as we saw an
old woman coming along the sidewalk. We knew that she would stop and
pick them up, and she did, for we slid into a dark shadow made by a
projecting stoop and watched her. Is that too simple a method for
disposing of certain encumbering bundles, to be believed, sir?"

"That is for the jury to decide," answered the Coroner, stiffly. "But
why were you so anxious to dispose of these articles? Were they not
worth some money, and would it not have been simpler and much more
natural to have left them at the hotel till you chose to send for them?
That is, if you were simply engaged in playing, as you say, a game upon
your father, and not upon the whole community?"

"Yes," Mr. Van Burnam acknowledged, "that would have been the natural
thing, no doubt; but we were not following natural instincts at the
time, but a woman's
bizarre
caprices. We did as I said; and laughed
long, I assure you, over its unqualified success; for the old woman not
only grabbed the packages with avidity, but turned and fled away with
them, just as if she had expected this opportunity and had prepared
herself to make the most of it."