The Affair Next Door (9 page)

They left at three o'clock, still without news of Mrs. Van Burnam; and
being positive by this time that the shadows were thickening about this
family, I saw them depart with some regret and a positive feeling of
commiseration. Had they been reared to a proper reverence for their
elders, how much more easy it would have been to see earnestness in
Caroline and affectionate impulses in Isabella.

The evening papers added but little to my knowledge. Great disclosures
were promised, but no hint given of their nature. The body at the Morgue
had not been identified by any of the hundreds who had viewed it, and
Howard still refused to acknowledge it as that of his wife. The morrow
was awaited with anxiety.

So much for the public press!

At twelve o'clock at night, I was again seated in my window. The house
next door had been lighted since ten, and I was in momentary expectation
of its nocturnal visitor. He came promptly at the hour set, alighted
from the carriage with a bound, shut the carriage-door with a slam, and
crossed the pavement with cheerful celerity. His figure was not so
positively like, nor yet so positively unlike, that of the supposed
murderer that I could definitely say, "This is he," or, "This is not
he," and I went to bed puzzled, and not a little burdened by a sense of
the responsibility imposed upon me in this matter.

And so passed the day between the murder and the inquest.

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?"

"I did."

"Will you describe them?"

He did so.

"And now"—there was a pause in the Coroner's question which roused us
all to its importance, "which of these many serious wounds was in your
opinion the cause of her death?"

The witness was accustomed to such scenes, and was perfectly at home in
them. Surveying the Coroner with a respectful air, he turned slowly
towards the jury and answered in a slow and impressive manner:

"I feel ready to declare, sirs, that none of them did. She was not
killed by the falling of the cabinet upon her."

"Not killed by the falling shelves! Why not? Were they not sufficiently
heavy, or did they not strike her in a vital place?"

"They were heavy enough, and they struck her in a way to kill her if she
had not been already dead when they fell upon her. As it was, they
simply bruised a body from which life had already departed."

As this was putting it very plainly, many of the crowd who had not been
acquainted with these facts previously, showed their interest in a very
unmistakable manner; but the Coroner, ignoring these symptoms of growing
excitement, hastened to say:

"This is a very serious statement you are making, doctor. If she did not
die from the wounds inflicted by the objects which fell upon her, from
what cause did she die? Can you say that her death was a natural one,
and that the falling of the shelves was merely an unhappy accident
following it?"

"No, sir; her death was not natural. She was killed, but not by the
falling cabinet."

"Killed, and not by the cabinet? How then? Was there any other wound
upon her which you regard as mortal?"

"Yes, sir. Suspecting that she had perished from other means than
appeared, I made a most rigid examination of her body, when I discovered
under the hair in the nape of the neck, a minute spot, which, upon
probing, I found to be the end of a small, thin point of steel. It had
been thrust by a careful hand into the most vulnerable part of the body,
and death must have ensued at once."

This was too much for certain excitable persons present, and a momentary
disturbance arose, which, however, was nothing to that in my own breast.

So! so! it was her neck that had been pierced, and not her heart. Mr.
Gryce had allowed us to think it was the latter, but it was not this
fact which stupefied me, but the skill and diabolical coolness of the
man who had inflicted this death-thrust.

After order had been restored, which I will say was very soon, the
Coroner, with an added gravity of tone, went on with his questions:

"Did you recognize this bit of steel as belonging to any instrument in
the medical profession?"

"No; it was of too untempered steel to have been manufactured for any
thrusting or cutting purposes. It was of the commonest kind, and had
broken short off in the wound. It was the end only that I found."

"Have you this end with you,—the point, I mean, which you found
imbedded at the base of the dead woman's brain?"

"I have, sir"; and he handed it over to the jury. As they passed it
along, the Coroner remarked:

"Later we will show you the remaining portion of this instrument of
death," which did not tend to allay the general excitement. Seeing this,
the Coroner humored the growing interest by pushing on his inquiries.

"Doctor," he asked, "are you prepared to say how long a time elapsed
between the infliction of this fatal wound and those which disfigured
her?"

"No, sir, not exactly; but some little time."

Some little time, when the murderer was in the house only ten minutes!
All looked their surprise, and, as if the Coroner had divined this
feeling of general curiosity, he leaned forward and emphatically
repeated:

"More than ten minutes?"

The doctor, who had every appearance of realizing the importance of his
reply, did not hesitate. Evidently his mind was quite made up.

"
Yes; more than ten minutes
."

This was the shock
I
received from his testimony.

I remembered what the clock had revealed to me, but I did not move a
muscle of my face. I was learning self-control under these repeated
surprises.

"This is an unexpected statement," remarked the Coroner. "What reasons
have you to urge in explanation of it?"

"Very simple and very well known ones; at least, among the profession.
There was too little blood seen, for the wounds to have been inflicted
before death or within a few minutes after it. Had the woman been living
when they were made, or even had she been but a short time dead, the
floor would have been deluged with the blood gushing from so many and
such serious injuries. But the effusion was slight, so slight that I
noticed it at once, and came to the conclusions mentioned before I found
the mark of the stab that occasioned death."

"I see, I see! And was that the reason you called in two neighboring
physicians to view the body before it was removed from the house?"

"Yes, sir; in so important a matter, I wished to have my judgment
confirmed."

"And these physicians were—"

"Dr. Campbell, of 110 East — Street, and Dr. Jacobs, of —
Lexington Avenue."

"Are these gentlemen here?" inquired the Coroner of an officer who stood
near.

"They are, sir."

"Very good; we will now proceed to ask one or two more questions of this
witness. You told us that even had the woman been but a few minutes dead
when she received these contusions, the floor would have been more or
less deluged by her blood. What reason have you for this statement?"

"This; that in a few minutes, let us say ten, since that number has been
used, the body has not had time to cool, nor have the blood-vessels had
sufficient opportunity to stiffen so as to prevent the free effusion of
blood."

"Is a body still warm at ten minutes after death?"

"It is."

"So that your conclusions are logical deductions from well-known facts?"

"Certainly, sir."

A pause of some duration followed.

When the Coroner again proceeded, it was to remark:

"The case is complicated by these discoveries; but we must not allow
ourselves to be daunted by them. Let me ask you, if you found any marks
upon this body which might aid in its identification?"