Dashing open the covers of the boxes on the table, he took out the loose sheets lying inside, and scattered them out before me. One glance showed they were all of an utterly different quality from that used in the confession. “This is all the paper in the house,” said he.
“Are you sure of that?” I asked, looking at Mrs. Belden, who stood in a sort of maze before us. “Wasn’t there one stray sheet lying around somewhere, foolscap or something like that, which she might have got hold of and used without your knowing it?”
“No, sir; I don’t think so. I had only these kinds; besides, Hannah had a whole pile of paper like this in her room, and wouldn’t have been apt to go hunting round after any stray sheets.”
“But you don’t know what a girl like that might do. Look at this one,” said I, showing her the blank side of the confession. “Couldn’t a sheet like this have come from somewhere about the house? Examine it well; the matter is important.”
“I have, and I say, no, I never had a sheet of paper like that in my house.”
Mr. Gryce advanced and took the confession from my hand. As he did so, he whispered: “What do you think now? Many chances that Hannah got up this precious document?”
I shook my head, convinced at last; but in another moment turned to him and whispered back: “But, if Hannah didn’t write it, who did? And how came it to be found where it was?”
“That,” said he, “is just what is left for us to learn.” And, beginning again, he put question after question concerning the girl’s life in the house, receiving answers which only tended to show that she could not have brought the confession with her, much less received it from a secret messenger. Unless we doubted Mrs. Belden’s word, the mystery seemed impenetrable, and I was beginning to despair of success, when Mr. Gryce, with an askance look at me, leaned towards Mrs. Belden and said:
“You received a letter from Miss Mary Leavenworth yesterday, I hear.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This letter?” he continued, showing it to her.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now I want to ask you a question. Was the letter, as you see it, the only contents of the envelope in which it came? Wasn’t there one for Hannah enclosed with it?”
“No, sir. There was nothing in my letter for her; but she had a letter herself yesterday. It came in the same mail with mine.”
“Hannah had a letter!” we both exclaimed; “and in the mail?”
“Yes; but it was not directed to her. It was”—casting me a look full of despair, “directed to me. It was only by a certain mark in the corner of the envelope that I knew—”
“Good heaven!” I interrupted; “where is this letter? Why didn’t you speak of it before? What do you mean by allowing us to flounder about here in the dark, when a glimpse at this letter might have set us right at once?”
“I didn’t think anything about it till this minute. I didn’t know it was of importance. I—”
But I couldn’t restrain myself. “Mrs. Belden, where is this letter?” I demanded. “Have you got it?”
“No,” said she; “I gave it to the girl yesterday; I haven’t seen it since.”
“It must be upstairs, then. Let us take another look.” and I hastened towards the door.
“You won’t find it,” said Mr. Gryce at my elbow. “I have looked. There is nothing but a pile of burned paper in the corner. By the way, what could that have been?” he asked of Mrs. Belden.
“I don’t know, sir. She hadn’t anything to 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, an
d 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 someone 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 me for his next move.
“The clue to this murder is supplied by the paper on which the confession is written. Find from whose desk or portfolio this especial sheet was taken, and you find the double murderer,” he had said.
Consequently, I was not surprised when, upon visiting his house, early the next morning, I beheld him seated before a table on which lay a lady’s writing-desk and a pile of paper, till told the desk was Eleanore’s. Then I did show astonishment. “What,” said I, “are you not satisfied yet of her innocence?”
“O yes; but one must be thorough. No conclusion is valuable which is not preceded by a full and complete investigation. Why,” he cried, casting his eyes complacently towards the fire-tongs, “I have even been rummaging through Mr. Clavering’s effects, though the confession bears the proof upon its face that it could not have been written by him. It is not enough to look for evidence where you expect to find it. You must sometimes search for it where you don’t. Now,” said he, drawing the desk before him, “I don’t anticipate finding anything here of a criminating character; but it is among the possibilities that I may; and that is enough for a detective.”
“Did you see Miss Leavenworth this morning?” I asked, as he proceeded to fulfil his intention by emptying the contents of the desk upon the table.
“Yes; I was unable to procure what I desired without it. And she behaved very handsomely, gave me the desk with her own hands, and never raised an objection. To be sure, she had little idea what I was looking for; thought, perhaps, I wanted to make sure it did not contain the letter about which so much has been said. But it would have made but little difference if she had known the truth. This desk contains nothing we want.”
“Was she well; and had she heard of Hannah’s sudden death?” I asked, in my irrepressible anxiety.
“Yes, and feels it, as you might expect her to. But let us see what we have here,” said he, pushing aside the desk, and drawing towards him the stack of paper I have already referred to. “I found this pile, just as you see it, in a drawer of the library table at Miss Mary Leavenworth’s house in Fifth Avenue. If I am not mistaken, it will supply us with the clue we want.”
“But—”
“But this paper is square, while that of the confession is of the size and shape of commercial note? I know; but you remember the sheet used in the confession was trimmed down. Let us compare the quality.”
Taking the confession from his pocket and the sheet from the pile before him, he carefully compared them, then held them out for my inspection. A glance showed them to be alike in color.
“Hold them up to the light,” said he.
I did so; the appearance presented by both was precisely alike.
“Now let us compare the ruling.” And, laying them both down on the table, he placed the edges of the two sheets together. The lines on the one accommodated themselves to the lines on the other; and that question was decided.
His triumph was assured. “I was convinced of it,” said he. “From the moment I pulled open that drawer and saw this mass of paper, I knew the end was come.”
“But,” I objected, in my old spirit of combativeness, “isn’t there any room for doubt? This paper is of the commonest kind. Every family on the block might easily have specimens of it in their library.”
“That isn’t so,” he said. “It is letter size, and that has gone out. Mr. Leavenworth used it for his manuscript, or I doubt if it would have been found in his library. But, if you are still incredulous, let us see what can be done,” and jumping up, he carried the confession to the window, looked at it this way and that, and, finally discovering what he wanted, came back and, laying it before me, pointed out one of the lines of ruling which was markedly heavier than the rest, and another which was so faint as to be almost undistinguishable. “Defects like these often run through a number of consecutive sheets,” said he. “If we could find the identical half-quire from which this was taken, I might show you proof that would dispel every doubt,” and taking up the one that lay on top, he rapidly counted the sheets. There were but eight. “It might have been taken from this one,” said he; but, upon looking closely at the ruling, he found it to be uniformly distinct. “Humph! that won’t do!” came from his lips.
The remainder of the paper, some dozen or so half-quires, looked undisturbed. Mr. Gryce tapped his fingers on the table and a frown crossed his face. “Such a pretty thing, if it could have been done!” he longingly exclaimed. Suddenly he took up the next half-quire. “Count the sheets,” said he, thrusting it towards me, and himself lifting another.
I did as I was bid. “Twelve.”
He counted his and laid it down. “Go on with the rest,” he cried.
I counted the sheets in the next; twelve. He counted those in the one following, and paused. “Eleven!”
“Count again,” I suggested.
He counted again, and quietly put them aside. “I made a mistake,” said he.
But he was not to be discouraged. Taking another half-quire, he went through with the same operation—in vain. With a sigh of impatience he flung it down on the table and looked up. “Halloo!” he cried, “what is the matter?”
“There are but eleven sheets in this package,” I said, placing it in his hand.
The excitement he immediately evinced was contagious. Oppressed as I was, I could not resist his eagerness. “Oh, beautiful!” he exclaimed. “Oh, beautiful! See! the light on the inside, the heavy one on the outside, and both in positions precisely corresponding to those on this sheet of Hannah’s. What do you think now? Is any further proof necessary?”
“The veriest doubter must succumb before this,” returned I.
With something like a considerate regard for my emotion, he turned away. “I am obliged to congratulate myself, notwithstanding the gravity of the discovery that has been made,” said he. “It is so neat, so very neat, and so conclusive. I declare I am myself astonished at the perfection of the thing. But what a woman that is!” he suddenly cried, in a tone of the greatest admiration. “What an intellect she has! what shrewdness! what skill! I declare it is almost a pity to entrap a woman who has done as well as this—taken a sheet from the very bottom of the pile, trimmed it into another shape, and then, remembering the girl couldn’t write, put what she had to say into coarse, awkward printing, Hannah-like. Splendid! or would have been, if any other man than myself had had this thing in charge.” And, all animated and glowing with his enthusiasm, he eyed the chandelier above him as if it were the embodiment of his own sagacity.
Sunk in despair, I let him go on.
“Could she have done any better?” he now asked. “Watched, circumscribed as she was, could she have done any better? I hardly think so; the fact of Hannah’s having learned to write after she left here was fatal. No, she could not have provided against that contingency.”
“Mr. Gryce,” I here interposed, unable to endure this any longer; “did you have an interview with Miss Mary Leavenworth this morning?”
“No,” said he; “it was not in the line of my present purpose to do so. I doubt, indeed, if she knew I was in her house. A servant maid who has a grievance is a very valuable assistant to a detective. With Molly at my side, I didn’t need to pay my respects to the mistress.”
“Mr. Gryce,” I asked, after another moment of silent self-congratulation on his part, and of desperate self-control on mine, “what do you propose to do now? You have followed your clue to the end and are satisfied. Such knowledge as this is the precursor of action.”
“Humph! we will see,” he returned, going to his private desk and bringing out the box of papers which we had no opportunity of looking at while in R——. “First let us examine these documents, and see if they do not contain some hint which may be of service to us.” And taking out the dozen or so loose sheets which had been torn from Eleanore’s Diary, he began turning them over.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 270
