“Then,” said Fessenden, “I will undertake to show that it is improbable that this paper was written as has been supposed. The message is, as you see, written in pencil. The pencil here on the table, and which is part of a set of desk-fittings, is a very hard pencil, labeled H. A few marks made by it upon a bit of paper will convince you at once that it is not the pencil which was used to write that message. The letters, as you see, are formed of heavy black marks which were made with a very soft pencil, such as is designated by 2 B or BB. If you please, I will pause for a moment while you satisfy yourself upon this point.”
Greatly interested, Mr. Benson took the pencil from the pen-rack and wrote some words upon a pad of paper. Doctor Leonard and Doctor Hills leaned over the table to note results, but no one else stirred.
“You are quite right,” said Mr. Benson; “this message was not written with this pencil. But what does that prove?”
“It proves nothing,” said Fessenden calmly, “but it is pretty strong evidence that the message was not written at this table last night. For had there been any other pencil on the table, it would doubtless have remained. Assuming, then that Miss Van Norman wrote this message elsewhere, and with another pencil, it loses the special importance commonly attributed to the words of one about to die.”
“It does,” said Mr. Benson, impressed by the fact, but at a loss to know whither the argument was leading.
“Believing, then,” went on the lawyer, “that this paper had not been written in this room last evening, I began to conjecture where it had been written. For one would scarcely expect a message of that nature to be written in one place and carried to another. I was so firmly convinced that something could be learned on this point, that just before we were summoned to this room, I asked permission of Mrs. Markham to examine the appointments of Miss Van Norman’s writing-desk in her own room, and I found in her desk no soft pencils whatever. There were several pencils, of gold and of silver and of ordinary wood, but the lead in each was as hard as this one on the library table. Urged on by what seemed to me important developments, I persuaded Mrs. Markham to let me examine all of the writing-desks in the house. I found but one soft pencil, and that was in the desk of Miss Dupuy, Miss Van Norman’s secretary. It is quite conceivable that Miss Van Norman should write at her secretary’s desk, but I found myself suddenly confronted by another disclosure. And that is that the handwritings of Miss Van Norman and Miss Dupuy are so similar as to be almost identical. In view of the importance of this written message, should it not be more carefully proved that this writing is really Miss Van Norman’s own?”
“It should, indeed,” declared Coroner Benson, who was by this time quite ready to agree to any suggestion Mr. Fessenden might make. “Will somebody please ask Miss Dupuy to come here?”
“I will,” said Miss Morton, and, rising, she quickly rustled from the room.
Of course, every one present immediately remembered that Miss Dupuy had left the room in a fit of hysterical emotion, and wondered in what frame of mind she would return.
Nearly every one, too, resented Miss Morton’s officiousness. Whatever errand was to be done, she volunteered to do it, quite as if she were a prominent member of the household, instead of a lately arrived guest.
“This similarity of penmanship is a very important point,” observed Mr. Benson, “a very important point indeed. I am surprised that it has not been remarked sooner.”
“I’ve often noticed that they wrote alike,” said Kitty French impulsively, “but I never thought about it before in this matter. You see”—she involuntarily addressed herself to the coroner, who listened with interest—“you see, Madeleine instructed Cicely to write as nearly as possible like she did, because Cicely was her social secretary and answered all her notes, and wrote letters for her, and sometimes Cicely signed Madeleine’s name to the notes, and the people who received them thought Maddy wrote them herself. She didn’t mean to deceive, only sometimes people don’t like to have their notes answered by a secretary, and so it saved a lot of trouble. I confess,” Kitty concluded, “that I can’t always tell the difference in their writing myself, though I usually can.”
Miss Morton returned, bringing Cicely with her. Still officious of manner, Miss Morton rearranged some chairs, and then seated herself in the front row with Cicely beside her. She showed what seemed almost an air of proprietorship in the girl, patting her shoulder, and whispering to her, as if by way of encouragement.
But Miss Dupuy’s demeanor had greatly changed. No longer weeping, she had assumed an almost defiant attitude, and her thin lips were tightly closed in a way that did not look promising to those who desired information.
With a conspicuous absence of tact or diplomacy, Mr. Benson asked her abruptly, “Did you write this paper?”
“I did,” said Cicely, and as soon as the words were uttered her lips closed again with a snap.
Her reply fell like a bombshell upon the breathless group of listeners. Tom Willard was the first to speak.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Maddy didn’t write that? You wrote it?”
“Yes,” asserted Cicely, looking Tom squarely in the eyes.
“When did you write it?” asked the coroner.
“A week or more ago.”
“Why did you write it?”
“I refuse to tell.”
“Who is the S. mentioned on this paper?”
“I refuse to tell.”
“You needn’t tell. That is outside the case. It is sufficient for us to know that Miss Van Norman did not write this paper. If you wrote it, it has no bearing on the case. Your penmanship is very like hers.”
“I practised to make it so,” said Cicely. “Miss Van Norman desired me to do so, that I might answer unimportant notes and sign her name to them. They were in no sense forgeries. Ladies frequently have their own names signed by their secretaries. Miss Van Norman often received notes like that.”
“Why did you not tell before that you wrote this paper supposed to have been written by Miss Van Norman?”
“Nobody asked me.” Miss Dupuy’s tone was defiant and even pert. Robert Fessenden began to look at the girl with increasing interest. He felt quite sure that she knew more about the tragedy than he had suspected. His detective instinct became immediately alert, and he glanced significantly at Kitty French.
She was breathlessly watching Cicely, but nothing could be learned from the girl’s inscrutable face, and to an attentive listener her very voice did not ring true.
Doctor Leonard and Doctor Hills looked at each other. Both remembered that the night before, Cicely had stealthily opened the door of the library and put her head in, but seeing them, had quickly gone back again.
This information might or might not be of importance, but after a brief whispered conference, the two men concluded that it was not the time then to refer to it.
Mr. Carleton, though still pale and haggard of face, seemed to have taken on new interest, and listened attentively to the conversation, while big, good-natured Tom Willard leaned forward and took the paper, and then sat studying it, with a perplexed expression.
“But why did you not volunteer the information? You must have known it was of great importance.” The coroner spoke almost petulantly, and indeed Miss Dupuy had suppressed important information.
At his question she became greatly embarrassed. She blushed and looked down, and then, with an effort resuming her air of defiance, she snapped out her answer: “I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid that they would think somebody killed Miss Van Norman, instead of that she killed herself, as she did.”
“How do you know she did?”
“I don’t know it, except that I left her here alone when I went to my room, and the house was all locked up, and soon after that she was found dead. So she must have killed herself.”
“Those conclusions,” said the coroner pompously, “are for us to arrive at, not for you to declare. The case,” he then said, turning toward the doctors and the young detective, “is entirely changed by the hearing of Miss Dupuy’s testimony. The fact that the note was not written by Miss Van Norman, will, I’m sure, remove from the minds of the doctors the possibility of suicide.”
“It certainly will,” said Doctor Leonard. “I quite agree with Doctor Hills that except for the note all evidence is against the theory of suicide.”
“Then,” went on Mr. Benson, “if it is not a suicide, Miss Van Norman must have been the victim of foul play, and it is our duty to investigate the matter, and attempt to discover whose hand it was that wielded the fatal dagger.”
Mr. Benson was fond of high-sounding words and phrases, and, finding himself in charge of what promised to be a mysterious, if not a celebrated, case, he made the most of his authoritative position.
Robert Fessenden paid little attention to the coroner’s speech. His brain was working rapidly, and he was trying to piece together such data as he had already accumulated in the way of evidence. It was but little, to be sure, and in lieu of definite clues he allowed himself to speculate a little on the probabilities
But he realized that he was in the presence of a mysterious murder case, and he was more than willing to do anything he could toward discovering the truth of the matter.
The known facts were so appalling, and any evidence of undiscovered facts was as yet so extremely slight, that Fessenden felt there was a great deal to be done.
He was trying to collect and systematize his own small fund of information when he realized that the audience was being dismissed.
Mr. Benson announced that he would convene a jury and hold an inquest that same afternoon, and then he would expect all those now present to return as witnesses.
Without waiting to learn what the others did, Fessenden turned to Kitty French, and asked her to go with him for a stroll.
“You need fresh air,” he said, as they stepped from the veranda; “but, also, I need you to talk to. I can formulate my ideas better if I express then aloud, and you are such a clear-headed and sympathetic listener that it helps a lot.”
Kitty smiled with pleasure at the compliment, then her pretty face became grave again as she remembered what must be the subject of their conversation.
“Before I talk to the lawyers or detectives who will doubtless soon infest the house, I want to straighten out my own ideas.”
“I don’t see how you can have any,” said Kitty; “I mean, of course, any definite ideas about who committed the murder.”
“I haven’t really definite ones, but I want you to help me get some.”
“Well,” said Kitty, looking provokingly lovely in her serious endeavor to be helpful, “let’s sit down here and talk it over.”
“Here” was a sort of a rustic arbor, which was a delightful place for a tête-à-tête, but not at all conducive to deep thought or profound conversation.
“Go on,” said Kitty, pursing her red lips and puckering her white brow in her determination to supply the help that was required of her.
“But I can’t go on, if you look like that! All logic and deduction fly out of my head, and I can think only of poetry and romance. And it won’t do! At least, not now. Can’t you try to give a more successful imitation of a coroner’s jury?”
Kitty tried to look stupid and wise, both at once, and only succeeded in looking bewitching.
“It’s no use,” said Fessenden; “I can’t sit facing you, as I would the real thing in the way of juries. So I’ll sit beside you, and look at the side of that distant barn, while we talk.”
So he turned partly round, and, fixing his gaze on the stolid red barn, said abruptly:
“Who wrote that paper?”
“I don’t know,” said Kitty, feeling that she couldn’t help much here.
“Somehow, I can’t seem to believe that Dupuy girl wrote it. She sounded to me like a lady reciting a fabrication.”
“I thought that, too,” said Kitty. “I never liked Cicely, because I never trusted her. But Maddy was very fond of her, and she wouldn’t have been, unless she had found Cicely trustworthy.”
“Come to luncheon, you two,” said Tom Willard, as he approached the arbor.
“Oh, Mr. Willard,” said Kitty, “who do you think wrote that paper?”
“Why, Miss Dupuy,” said Tom, in surprise. “She owned up to it.”
“Yes, I know; but I’m not sure she told the truth.”
“I don’t know why she shouldn’t,” said Tom, thoughtfully. And then he added gently, “And, after looking at it closely, I felt sure, myself, it wasn’t Maddy’s writing, after all.”
“Then it must be Cicely’s,” said Kitty. “I admit I can’t tell them apart.”
And then the three went back to the house.
IX
THE WILL
IMMEDIATELY AFTER LUNCHEON LAWYER Peabody came. This gentleman had had charge of the Van Norman legal matters for many years, and it was known by most of those present that he was bringing with him such wills or other documents as might have a bearing on the present crisis.
Mr. Peabody was an old man; moreover, he had for many years been intimately associated with the Van Norman household, and had been a close friend of both Richard Van Norman and Madeleine. Shattered and broken by the sad tragedy in the household, he could scarcely repress his emotion when he undertook to address the little audience.
But the main purport of his business there at that time was to announce the contents of the two wills in his possession.
The first one, the will of Richard Van Norman, was no surprise to any one present, except perhaps those few who did not live in Mapleton. One of these, Robert Fessenden, was extremely interested to learn that because of Madeleine’s death before her marriage, and also before she was twenty-three years of age, the large fortune of Richard Van Norman, which would have been hers on her wedding day, passed at once and unrestrictedly to Tom Willard.
But also by the terms of Richard Van Norman’s will the fine old mansion and grounds and a sum of money, modest in comparison with the whole fortune, but ample to maintain the estate, were Madeleine’s own, and had been from the day of her uncle’s death.
Possessed of this property, therefore, Madeleine had made a will which was dated a few months before her death, and which Mr. Peabody now read.
After appropriate and substantial bequests to several intimate friends, to her housekeeper and secretary, and to all the servants, Madeleine devised that her residuary fortune and the Van Norman house and grounds should become the property of Miss Elizabeth Morton.
This was a complete surprise to all, with the possible exception of Miss Morton herself. It was not easy to judge from her haughty and self-satisfied countenance whether she had known of this before or not.
Fessenden, who was watching her closely, was inclined to think she had known of it, and again his busy imagination ran riot. The first point, he thought to himself, in discovering a potential murderer, is to inquire who will be benefited by the victim’s death. Apparently the only ones to profit by the passing of Madeleine Van Norman were Tom Willard and Miss Morton. But even the ingenious imagination of the young detective balked at the idea of connecting either of these two with the tragedy. He knew Willard had not been in the house at the time of the murder, and Miss Morton, as he had chanced to discover, had occupied a room on the third floor. Moreover, it was absurd on the face of things to fancy a well-bred, middle-aged lady stealing downstairs at dead of night to kill her charming young hostess!
It was with a sense of satisfaction therefore that Fessenden assured himself that he had formed no suspicions whatever, and could listen with a mind entirely unprejudiced to such evidence as the coroner’s inquiry might bring forth.
He
was even glad that he had not discussed the matter further with Kitty French. He still thought she had clear vision and good judgment, but he had begun to realize that in her presence his own clearness of vision was dazzled by her dancing eyes and a certain distracting charm which he had never before observed in any woman.
But he told himself somewhat sternly that feminine charm must not be allowed to interfere with the present business in hand, and he seated himself at a considerable distance from Kitty French, when it was time for the inquest.
A slight delay was occasioned by waiting for Coroner Benson’s own stenographer, but when he arrived the inquiry was at once begun.
At the request of Miss Morton, or, it might rather be said, at her command, the whole assembly had moved to the drawing-room, it being a much larger and more airy apartment, and withal less haunted by the picture of the tragedy itself.
And yet to hold a coroner’s inquiry in a room gay with wedding decorations was almost, if not quite, as ghastly.
But Coroner Benson paid no heed to emotional considerations and conducted himself with the same air of justice and legality as if he had been in a court-room or the town-hall.
As for the jury he had gathered, the half-dozen men, though filled with righteous indignation at the crime committed in their village, wasted no thought on the incongruity of their surroundings.
Coroner Benson put his first question to Mrs. Markham, as he considered her, in a way at least, the present head of the household. To be sure, the house now legally belonged to Miss Morton, and that lady was quickly assuming an added air of importance which was doubtless the result of her recent inheritance; but Mrs. Markham was still housekeeper, and by virtue of her long association with the place, Mr. Benson chose to treat her with exceeding courtesy and deference.
But Mrs. Markham, though now quite composed and willing to answer questions, could give no evidence of any importance. She testified that she had seen Madeleine last at about ten o’clock the night before. This was after the guests who had been at dinner had gone away, and the house guests had gone to their rooms. Miss Van Norman was alone in the library, and as Mrs. Markham left her she asked her to send Cicely Dupuy to the library. Mrs. Markham had then gone directly to her own room, which was on the second floor, above the drawing-room. It was at the front of the house, and the room behind it, also over the long drawing-room, was the one now devoted to the exhibition of Madeleine’s wedding gifts. Mrs. Markham had retired almost immediately and had heard no unusual sounds. She explained, however, that she was somewhat deaf, and had there been any disturbance downstairs it was by no means probable that she would have heard it.
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