“Tears are not shed or public acknowledgment made for the subject of a half-crazy man’s love for scientific investigation. It was no human being whom you saw buried, madam, but a victim of Mr. Knollys’ passion for vivisection.”
“You are playing with me,” was my indignant answer; “outrageously and inexcusably playing with me. Only a human being would be laid away in such secrecy and with such manifestations of feeling as I was witness to. You must think me in my dotage, or else—”
“We will take the rest of the sentence for granted,” he dryly interpolated. “You know that I can have no wish to insult your intelligence, Miss Butterworth, and that if I advance a theory on my own account I must have ample reasons for it. Now can you say the same for yours? Can you adduce irrefutable proof that the body we buried last night was that of a man? If you can, there is no more to be said, or, rather, there is everything to be said, for this would give to the transaction a very dreadful and tragic significance which at present I am not disposed to ascribe to it.”
Taken aback by his persistence, but determined not to acknowledge defeat until forced to it, I stolidly replied: “You have made an assertion, and it is for you to adduce proof. It will be time enough for me to talk when your own theory is proved untenable.”
He was not angry: fellow-feeling for my disappointment made him unusually gentle. His voice was therefore very kind when he said:
“Madam, if you know it to have been a man, say so. I do not wish to waste my time.”
“I do not know it.”
“Very well, then, I will tell you why I think my supposition true. Mr. Knollys, as you probably have already discovered, is a man with a secret passion for vivisection.”
“Yes, I have discovered that.”
“It is known to his family, and it is known to a very few others, but it is not known to the world at large, not even to his fellow-villagers.’
“I can believe it,” said I.
“His sisters, who are gentle girls, regard the matter as the gentle-hearted usually do. They have tried in every way to influence him to abandon it, but unsuccessfully so far, for he is not only entirely unamenable to persuasion, but has a nature of such brutality he could not live without some such excitement to help away his life in this dreary house. All they can do, then, is to conceal these cruelties from the eyes of the people who already execrate him for his many roughnesses and the undoubted shadow under which he lives. Time was when I thought this shadow had a substance worth our investigation, but a further knowledge of his real fault and a completer knowledge of his sisters’ virtues turned my inquiries in a new direction, where I have found, as I have told you, actual reason for arresting Mother Jane. Have you anything to say against these conclusions? Cannot you see that all your suspicions can be explained by the brother’s cruel impulses and the sisters’ horror of having those impulses known?”
I thought a moment; then I cried out boldly: “No, I cannot, Mr. Gryce. The anxiety, the fear, which I have seen depicted on these sisters’ faces for days might be explained perhaps by this theory; but the knot of crêpe on the window-shutter, the open Bible in the room of death—William’s room, Mr. Gryce—proclaim that it was a human being, and nothing less, for whom Lucetta’s sobs went up.”
“I do not follow you,” he said, moved for the first time from his composure. “What do you mean by a knot of crêpe, and when was it you obtained entrance into William’s room?”
“Ah,” I exclaimed in dry retort; “you are beginning to see that I have something as interesting to report as yourself. Did you think me a superficial egotist, without facts to back my assertions?”
“I should not have done you that injustice.”
“I have penetrated, I think, deeper than even yourself, into William’s character. I think him capable—But do satisfy my curiosity on one point first, Mr. Gryce. How came you to know as much as you do about last night’s proceedings? You could not have been in the house. Did Mother Jane talk after she got back?”
The tip of his cane was up, and he frowned at it. Then the handle took its place, and he gave it a good-natured smile.
“Miss Butterworth,” said he, “I have not succeeded in making Mother Jane at any time go beyond her numerical monologue. But you have been more successful.” And with a sudden marvellous change of expression, pose, and manner he threw over his head my shawl, which had fallen to the floor in my astonishment, and, rocking himself to and fro before me, muttered grimly:
“Seventy! Twenty-eight! Ten! No more! I can count no more! Go.”
“Mr. Gryce, it was you—”
“Whom you interviewed in Mother Jane’s cottage with Mr. Knollys,” he finished. “And it was I who helped to bury what you now declare, to my real terror and astonishment, to have been a human being. Miss Butterworth, what about the knot of crêpe? Tell me.”
CHAPTER XXV
TRIFLES, BUT NOT TRIFLING
I was so astounded I hardly took in this final question.
He had been the sixth party in the funeral cortège I had seen pause in the Flower Parlor. Well, what might I not expect from this man next!
But I am methodical even under the greatest excitement and at the most critical instants, as those who have read That Affair Next Door have had ample opportunity to know. Once having taken in the startling fact he mentioned, I found it impossible to proceed to establish my standpoint till I knew a little more about his.
“Wait,” I said; “tell me first if I have ever seen the real Mother Jane; or were you the person I saw stooping in the road, and of whom I bought the pennyroyal?”
“No,” he replied; “that was the old woman herself. My appearance in the cottage dates from yesterday noon. I felt the need of being secretly near you, and I also wished for an opportunity to examine this humble interior unsuspected and unobserved. So I prevailed upon the old woman to exchange places with me; she taking up her abode in the woods for the night and I her old stool on the hearthstone. She was the more willing to do this from the promise I gave her to watch out for Lizzie. That I would don her own Sunday suit and personate her in her own home she evidently did not suspect. Had not wit enough, I suppose. At the present moment she is back in her old place.”
I nodded my thanks for this explanation, but was not deterred from pressing the point I was anxious to have elucidated.
“If,” I went on to urge, “you took advantage of your disguise to act as assistant in the burial which took place last night, you are in a much better situation than myself to decide the question we are at present considering. Was it because of any secret knowledge thus gained you declare so positively that it was not a human being you helped lower in its grave?”
“Partially. Having some skill in these disguises, especially where my own infirmities can have full play, as in the case of this strong but half-bent woman, I had no reason to think my own identity was suspected, much less discovered. Therefore I could trust to what I saw and heard as being just what Mother Jane herself would be allowed to see or hear under the same circumstances. If, therefore, these young people and this old crone had been, as you seem to think they are, in league for murder, Lucetta would hardly have greeted me as she did when she came down to meet me in the kitchen.”
“And how was that? What did she say?”
“She said: ‘Ah, Mother Jane, we have a piece of work for you. You are strong, are you not?’”
“Humph!”
“And then she commiserated me a bit and gave me food which, upon my word, I found hard to eat, though I had saved my appetite for the occasion. Before she left me she bade me sit in the inglenook till she wanted me, adding in Hannah’s ear as she passed her: ‘There is no use trying to explain anything to her. Show her when the time comes what there is to do and trust to her short memory to forget it before she leaves the house. She could not understand my brother’s propensity or our shame in pandering to it. So attempt nothing, Hannah. Only keep the money in her view.’”
“
So, and that gave you no idea?”
“It gave me the idea I have imparted to you, or, rather, added to the idea which had been instilled in me by others.”
“And this idea was not affected by what you saw afterwards?”
“Not in the least—rather strengthened. Of the few words I overheard, one was uttered in reference to yourself by Miss Knollys. She said: ‘I have locked Miss Butterworth again into her room. If she accuses me of having done so, I shall tell her our whole story. Better she should know the family’s disgrace than imagine us guilty of crimes of which we are utterly incapable.’”
“So! so!” I cried, “you heard that?”
“Yes, madam, I heard that, and I do not think she knew she was dropping that word into the ear of a detective, but on this point you are, of course, at liberty to differ with me.”
“I am not yet ready to avail myself of the privilege,” I retorted. “What else did these girls let fall in your hearing?”
“Not much. It was Hannah who led me into the upper hall, and Hannah who by signs and signals rather than words showed me what was expected of me. However, when, after the box was lowered into the cellar, Hannah was drawing me away, Lucetta stepped up and whispered in her ear: ‘Don’t give her the biggest coin. Give her the little one, or she may mistake our reasons for secrecy. I wouldn’t like even a fool to do that even for the moment it would remain lodged in Mother Jane’s mind.’”
“Well, well,” I again cried, certainly puzzled, for these stray expressions of the sisters were in a measure contradictory not only of the suspicions I entertained, but of the facts which had seemingly come to my attention.
Mr. Gryce, who was probably watching my face more closely than he did the cane with whose movements he was apparently engrossed, stopped to give a caressing rub to the knob of that same cane before remarking:
“One such peep behind the scenes is worth any amount of surmise expended on the wrong side of the curtain. I let you share my knowledge because it is your due. Now if you feel willing to explain what you mean by a knot of crêpe on the shutter, I am at your service, madam.”
I felt that it would be cruel to delay my story longer, and so I began it. It was evidently more interesting than he expected, and as I dilated upon the special features which had led me to believe that it was a thinking, suffering mortal like ourselves who had been shut up in William’s room and afterwards buried in the cellar under the Flower Parlor, I saw his face lengthen and doubt take the place of the quiet assurance with which he had received my various intimations up to this time. The cane was laid aside, and from the action of his right forefinger on the palm of his left hand I judged that I was making no small impression on his mind. When I had finished, he sat for a minute silent; then he said:
“Thanks, Miss Butterworth; you have more than fulfilled my hopes. What we buried was undoubtedly human, and the question now is, Who was it, and of what death did he die?” Then, after a meaning pause: “You think it was Silly Rufus.”
I will astonish you with my reply. “No,” said I, “I do not. That is where you make a mistake, Mr. Gryce.”
CHAPTER XXVI
A POINT GAINED
He was surprised, for all his attempts to conceal it.
“No?” said he. “Who, then? You are becoming interesting, Miss Butterworth.”
This I thought I could afford to ignore.
“Yesterday,” I proceeded, “I would have declared it to be Silly Rufus, in the face of God and man, but after what I saw in William’s room during the hurried survey I gave it, I am inclined to doubt if the explanation we have to give to this affair is so simple as that would make it. Mr. Gryce, in one corner of that room, from which the victim had so lately been carried, was a pair of shoes that could never have been worn by any boy-tramp I have ever seen or known of.”
“They were Loreen’s, or possibly Lucetta’s.”
“No, Loreen and Lucetta both have trim feet, but these were the shoes of a child of ten, very dainty at that, and of a cut and make worn by women, or rather, I should say, by girls. Now, what do you make of that?”
He did not seem to know what to make of it. Tap, tap went his finger on his seasoned palm, and as I watched the slowness with which it fell, I said to myself, “I have proposed a problem this time that will tax even Mr. Gryce’s powers of deduction.”
And I had. It was minutes before he ventured an opinion, and then it was with a shade of doubt in his tone that I acknowledge to have felt some pride in producing.
“They were Lucetta’s shoes. The emotions under which you labored—very pardonable emotions, madam, considering the circumstances and the hour—”
“Excuse me,” said I. “We do not want to waste a moment. I was excited, suitably and duly excited, or I would have been a stone. But I never lose my head under excitement, nor do I part with my sense of proportion. The shoes were not Lucetta’s. She never wore any approaching them in smallness since her tenth year.”
“Has Simsbury a daughter? Has there not been a child about the house some time to assist the cook in errands and so on?”
“No, or I should have seen her. Besides, how would the shoes of such a person come into William’s room?”
“Easily. Secrecy was required. You were not to be disturbed; so shoes were taken off that quiet might result.”
“Was Lucetta shoeless or William or even Mother Jane? You have not told me that you were requested to walk in stocking feet up the hall. No, Mr. Gryce, the shoes were the shoes of a girl. I know it because it was matched by a dress I saw hanging up in a sort of wardrobe.”
“Ah! You looked into the wardrobe?”
“I did and felt justified in doing so. It was after I had spied the shoes.”
“Very good. And you saw a dress?”
“A little dress; a dress with a short skirt. It was of silk too; another anomaly—and the color, I think, was blue, but I cannot swear to that point. I was in great haste and took the briefest glance. But my brief glances can be trusted, Mr. Gryce. That, I think, you are beginning to know.”
“Certainly,” said he, “and as proof of it we will now act upon these two premises—that the victim in whose burial I was an innocent partaker was a human being and that this human being was a girl-child who came into the house well dressed. Now where does that lead us? Into a maze, I fear.”
“We are accustomed to mazes,” I observed.
“Yes,” he answered somewhat gloomily, “but they are not exactly desirable in this case. I want to find the Knollys family innocent.”
“And I. But William’s character, I fear, will make that impossible.”
“But this girl? Who is she, and where did she come from? No girl has been reported to us as missing from this neighborhood.”
“I supposed not.”
“A visitor—But no visitor could enter this house without it being known far and wide. Why, I heard of your arrival here before I left the train on which I followed you. Had we allowed ourselves to be influenced by what the people about here say, we would have turned the Knollys house inside out a week ago. But I don’t believe in putting too much confidence in the prejudice of country people. The idea they suggested, and which you suggest without putting it too clearly into words, is much too horrible to be acted upon without the best of reasons. Perhaps we have found those reasons, yet I still feel like asking, Where did this girl come from and how could she have become a prisoner in the Knollys house without the knowledge of—Madam, have you met Mr. Trohm?”
The question was so sudden I had not time to collect myself. But perhaps it was not necessary that I should, for the simple affirmation I used seemed to satisfy Mr. Gryce, who went on to say:
“It is he who first summoned us here, and it is he who has the greatest interest in locating the source of these disappearances, yet he has seen no child come here.”
“Mr. Trohm is not a spy,” said I, but the remark, happily, fell unheeded.
“No one has,” he pursued. “We
must give another turn to our suppositions.”
Suddenly a silence fell upon us both. His finger ceased to lay down the law, and my gaze, which had been searching his face inquiringly, became fixed. At the same moment and in much the same tone of voice we both spoke, he saying, “Humph!” and I, “Ah!” as a prelude to the simultaneous exclamation:
“The phantom coach!”
We were so pleased with this discovery that we allowed a moment to pass in silent contemplation of each other’s satisfaction. Then he quietly added:
“Which on the evening preceding your arrival came from the mountains and passed into Lost Man’s Lane, from which no one ever saw it emerge.”
“It was no phantom,” I put in.
“It was their own old coach bringing to the house a fresh victim.”
This sounded so startling we both sat still for a moment, lost in the horror of it, then I spoke:
“People living in remote and isolated quarters like this are naturally superstitious. The Knollys family know this, and, remembering the old legend, forbore to contradict the conclusions of their neighbors. Loreen’s emotion when the topic was broached to her is explained by this theory.”
“It is not a pleasant one, but we cannot be wrong in contemplating it.”
“Not at all. This apparition, as they call it, was seen by two persons; therefore it was no apparition but a real coach. It came from the mountains, that is, from the Mountain Station, and it glided—ah!”
“Well?”
“Mr. Gryce, it was its noiselessness that gave it its spectral appearance. Now I remember a petty circumstance which I dare you to match, in corroboration of our suspicions.”
“You do?”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 48
