“The register may have been closed by a passing foot. I have known of stranger coincidences than that.”
“Mr. Van Burnam,” asked the Coroner, as if weary of subterfuges and argument, “have you considered the effect which this highly contradictory evidence of yours is likely to have on your reputation?”
“I have.”
“And are you ready to accept the consequences?”
“If any especial consequences follow, I must accept them, sir.”
“When did you lose the keys which you say you have not now in your possession? This morning you asserted that you did not know; but perhaps this afternoon you may like to modify that statement.”
“I lost them after I left my wife shut up in my father’s house.”
“Soon?”
“Very soon.”
“How soon?”
“Within an hour, I should judge.”
“How do you know it was so soon?”
“I missed them at once.”
“Where were you when you missed them?”
“I don’t know; somewhere. I was walking the streets, as I have said. I don’t remember just where I was when I thrust my hands into my pocket and found the keys gone.”
“You do not?”
“No.”
“But it was within an hour after leaving the house?”
“Yes.”
“Very good; the keys have been found.”
The witness started, started so violently that his teeth came together with a click loud enough to be heard over the whole room.
“Have they?” said he, with an effort at nonchalance which, however, failed to deceive any one who noticed his change of color. “You can tell me, then, where I lost them.”
“They were found,” said the Coroner, “in their usual place above your brother’s desk in Duane Street.”
“Oh!” murmured the witness, utterly taken aback or appearing so. “I cannot account for their being found in the office. I was so sure I dropped them in the street.”
“I did not think you could account for it,” quietly observed the Coroner. And without another word he dismissed the witness, who staggered to a seat as remote as possible from the one where he had previously been sitting between his father and brother.
CHAPTER XV
A Reluctant Witness
A pause of decided duration now followed; an exasperating pause which tried even me, much as I pride myself upon my patience. There seemed to be some hitch in regard to the next witness. The Coroner sent Mr. Gryce into the neighboring room more than once, and finally, when the general uneasiness seemed on the point of expressing itself by a loud murmur, a gentleman stepped forth, whose appearance, instead of allaying the excitement, renewed it in quite an unprecedented and remarkable way.
I did not know the person thus introduced.
He was a handsome man, a very handsome man, if the truth must be told, but it did not seem to be this fact which made half the people there crane their heads to catch a glimpse of him. Something else, something entirely disconnected with his appearance there as a witness, appeared to hold the people enthralled and waken a subdued enthusiasm which showed itself not only in smiles, but in whispers and significant nudges, chiefly among the women, though I noticed that the jurymen stared when somebody obliged them with the name of this new witness. At last it reached my ears, and though it awakened in me also a decided curiosity, I restrained all expression of it, being unwilling to add one jot to this ridiculous display of human weakness.
Randolph Stone, as the intended husband of the rich Miss Althorpe, was a figure of some importance in the city, and while I was very glad of this opportunity of seeing him, I did not propose to lose my head or forget, in the marked interest his person invoked, the very serious cause which had brought him before us. And yet I suppose no one in the room observed his figure more minutely.
He was elegantly made and possessed, as I have said, a face of peculiar beauty. But these were not his only claims to admiration. He was a man of undoubted intelligence and great distinction of manner. The intelligence did not surprise me, knowing, as I did, how he had raised himself to his present enviable position in society in the short space of five years. But the perfection of his manner astonished me, though how I could have expected anything less in a man honored by Miss Althorpe’s regard, I cannot say. He had that clear pallor of complexion which in a smooth-shaven face is so impressive, and his voice when he spoke had that music in it which only comes from great cultivation and a deliberate intent to please.
He was a friend of Howard’s, that I saw by the short look that passed between them when he first entered the room; but that it was not as a friend he stood there was apparent from the state of amazement with which the former recognized him, as well as from the regret to be seen underlying the polished manner of the witness himself. Though perfectly self-possessed and perfectly respectful, he showed by every means possible the pain he felt in adding one feather-weight to the evidence against a man with whom he was on terms of more or less intimacy.
But let me give his testimony. Having acknowledged that he knew the Van Burnam family well, and Howard in particular, he went on to state that on the night of the seventeenth he had been detained at his office by business of a more than usual pressing nature, and finding that he could expect no rest for that night, humored himself by getting off the cars at Twenty-first Street instead of proceeding on to Thirty-third Street, where his apartments were.
The smile which these words caused (Miss Althorpe lives in Twenty-first Street) woke no corresponding light on his face. Indeed, he frowned at it, as if he felt that the gravity of the situation admitted of nothing frivolous or humorsome. And this feeling was shared by Howard, for he started when the witness mentioned Twenty-first Street, and cast him a haggard look of dismay which happily no one saw but myself, for every one else was concerned with the witness. Or should I except Mr. Gryce?
“I had of course no intentions beyond a short stroll through this street previous to returning to my home,” continued the witness, gravely; “and am sorry to be obliged to mention this freak of mine, but find it necessary in order to account for my presence there at so unusual an hour.”
“You need make no apologies,” returned the Coroner. “Will you state on what line of cars you came from your office?”
“I came up Third Avenue.”
“Ah! and walked towards Broadway?”
“Yes.”
“So that you necessarily passed very near the Van Burnam mansion?”
“Yes.”
“At what time was this, can you say?”
“At four, or nearly four. It was half-past three when I left my office.”
“Was it light at that hour? Could you distinguish objects readily?”
“I had no difficulty in seeing.”
“And what did you see? Anything amiss at the Van Burnam mansion?”
“No, sir, nothing amiss. I merely saw Howard Van Burnam coming down the stoop as I went by the corner.”
“You made no mistake. It was the gentleman you name, and no other whom you saw on this stoop at this hour?”
“I am very sure that it was he. I am sorry—”
But the Coroner gave him no opportunity to finish.
“You and Mr. Van Burnam are friends, you say, and it was light enough for you to recognize each other; then you probably spoke?”
“No, we did not. I was thinking—well of other, things,” and here he allowed the ghost of a smile to flit suggestively across his firm-set lips. “And Mr. Van Burnam seemed preoccupied also, for, as far as I know, he did not even look my way.”
“And you did not stop?”
“No, he did not look like a man to be disturbed.”
“And this was at four on the morning of the eighteenth?”
“At four.”
“You are certain of the hour and of the day?”
“I am certain. I should not be standing here if I were not very sure of my memory. I am sorry,” he began again, but he was stopped as peremptorily as before by the Coroner.
“Feeling has no place in an inquiry like this.” And the witness was dismissed.
Mr. Stone, who had manifestly given his evidence under compulsion, looked relieved at its termination. As he passed back to the room from which he had come, many only noticed the extreme elegance of his form and the proud cast of his head, but I saw more than these. I saw the look of regret he cast at his friend Howard.
A painful silence followed his withdrawal, then the Coroner spoke to the jury:
“Gentlemen, I leave you to judge of the importance of this testimony. Mr. Stone is a well-known man of unquestionable integrity, but perhaps Mr. Van Burnam can explain how he came to visit his father’s house at four o’clock in the morning on that memorable night, when according to his latest testimony he left his wife there at twelve. We will give him the opportunity.”
“There is no use,” began the young man from the place where he sat. But gathering courage even while speaking, he came rapidly forward, and facing Coroner and jury once more, said with a false kind of energy that imposed upon no one:
“I can explain this fact, but I doubt if you will accept my explanation. I was at my father’s house at that hour, but not in it. My restlessness drove me back to my wife, but not finding the keys in my pocket, I came down the stoop again and went away.”
“Ah, I see now why you prevaricated this morning in regard to the time when you missed those keys.”
“I know that my testimony is full of contradictions.”
“You feared to have it known that you were on the stoop of your father’s house for the second time that night?”
“Naturally, in face of the suspicion I perceived everywhere about me.”
“And this time you did not go in?”
“No.”
“Nor ring the bell?”
“No.”
“Why not, if you left your wife within, alive and well?”
“I did not wish to disturb her. My purpose was not strong enough to surmount the least difficulty. I was easily deterred from going where I had little wish to be.”
“So that you merely went up the stoop and down again at the time Mr. Stone saw you?”
“Yes, and if he had passed a minute sooner he would have seen this: seen me go up, I mean, as well as seen me come down. I did not linger long in the doorway.”
“But you did linger there a moment?”
“Yes; long enough to hunt for the keys and get over my astonishment at not finding them.”
“Did you notice Mr. Stone going by on Twenty-first Street?”
“No.”
“Was it as light as Mr. Stone has said?”
“Yes, it was light.”
“And you did not notice him?”
“No.”
“Yet you must have followed very closely behind him?”
“Not necessarily. I went by the way of Twentieth Street, sir. Why, I do not know, for my rooms are uptown. I do not know why I did half the things I did that night.”
“I can readily believe it,” remarked the Coroner.
Mr. Van Burnam’s indignation rose.
“You are trying,” said he, “to connect me with the fearful death of my wife in my father’s lonely house. You cannot do it, for I am as innocent of that death as you are, or any other person in this assemblage. Nor did I pull those shelves down upon her as you would have this jury think, in my last thoughtless visit to my father’s door. She died according to God’s will by her own hand or by means of some strange and unaccountable accident known only to Him. And so you will find, if justice has any place in these investigations and a manly intelligence be allowed to take the place of prejudice in the breasts of the twelve men now sitting before me.”
And bowing to the Coroner, he waited for his dismissal, and receiving it, walked back not to his lonely corner, but to his former place between his father and brother, who received him with a wistful air and strange looks of mingled hope and disbelief.
“The jury will render their verdict on Monday morning,” announced the Coroner, and adjourned the inquiry.
BOOK II: THE WINDINGS OF A LABYRINTH
CHAPTER XVI
COGITATIONS
My cook had prepared for me a most excellent dinner, thinking that I needed all the comfort possible after a day of such trying experiences. But I ate little of it; my thoughts were too busy, my mind too much exercised. What would be the verdict of the jury, and could this especial jury be relied upon to give a just verdict?
At seven I had left the table and was shut up in my own room. I could not rest till I had fathomed my own mind in regard to the events of the day.
The question—the great question, of course, now—was how much of Howard’s testimony was to be believed, and whether he was, notwithstanding his asseverations to the contrary, the murderer of his wife. To most persons the answer seemed easy. From the expression of such people as I had jostled in leaving the court-room, I judged that his sentence had already been passed in the minds of most there present. But these hasty judgments did not influence me. I hope I look deeper than the surface, and my mind would not subscribe to his guilt, notwithstanding the bad impression made upon me by his falsehoods and contradictions.
Now why would not my mind subscribe to it? Had sentiment got the better of me, Amelia Butterworth, and was I no longer capable of looking a thing squarely in the face? Had the Van Burnams, of all people in the world, awakened my sympathies at the cost of my good sense, and was I disposed to see virtue in a man in whom every circumstance as it came to light revealed little but folly and weakness? The lies he had told—for there is no other word to describe his contradictions—would have been sufficient under most circumstances to condemn a man in my estimation. Why, then, did I secretly look for excuses to his conduct?
Probing the matter to the bottom, I reasoned in this way: The latter half of his evidence was a complete contradiction of the first, purposely so. In the first, he made himself out a cold-hearted egotist with not enough interest in his wife to make an effort to determine whether she and the murdered woman were identical; in the latter, he showed himself in the light of a man influenced to the point of folly by a woman to whom he had been utterly unyielding a few hours before.
Now, knowing human nature to be full of contradictions, I could not satisfy myself that I should be justified in accepting either half of his testimony as absolutely true. The man who is all firmness one minute may be all weakness the next, and in face of the calm assertions made by this one when driven to bay by the unexpected discoveries of the police, I dared not decide that his final assurances were altogether false, and that he was not the man I had seen enter the adjoining house with his wife.
Why, then, not carry the conclusion farther and admit, as reason and probability suggested, that he was also her murderer; that he had killed her during his first visit and drawn the shelves down upon her in the second? Would not this account for all the phenomena to be observed in connection with this otherwise unexplainable affair? Certainly, all but one—one that was perhaps known to nobody but myself, and that was the testimony given by the clock. It said that the shelves fell at five, whereas, according to Mr. Stone’s evidence, it was four, or thereabouts, when Mr. Van Burnam left his father’s house. But the clock might not have been a reliable witness. It might have been set wrong, or it might not have been running at all at the time of the accident. No, it would not do for me to rely too much upon anything so doubtful, nor did I; yet I could not rid myself of the conviction that Howard spoke the truth when he declared in face of Coroner and jury that they could not connect him with this crime; and wh
ether this conclusion sprang from sentimentality or intuition, I was resolved to stick to it for the present night at least. The morrow might show its futility, but the morrow had not come.
Meanwhile, with this theory accepted, what explanation could be given of the very peculiar facts surrounding this woman’s death? Could the supposition of suicide advanced by Howard before the Coroner be entertained for a moment, or that equally improbable suggestion of accident?
Going to my bureau drawer, I drew out the old grocer-bill which has already figured in these pages, and re-read the notes I had scribbled on its back early in the history of this affair. They related, if you will remember, to this very question, and seemed even now to answer it in a more or less convincing way. Will you pardon me if I transcribe these notes again, as I cannot imagine my first deliberations on this subject to have made a deep enough impression for you to recall them without help from me.
The question raised in these notes was threefold, and the answers, as you will recollect, were transcribed before the cause of death had been determined by the discovery of the broken pin in the dead woman’s brain.
These are the queries:
First: was her death due to accident?
Second: was it effected by her own hand?
Third: was it a murder?
The replies given are in the form of reasons, as witness:
My reasons for not thinking it an accident.
1. If it had been an accident, and she had pulled the cabinet over upon herself,2 she would have been found with her feet pointing towards the wall where the cabinet had stood. But her feet were towards the door and her head under the cabinet.
2. The precise arrangement of the clothing about her feet, which precluded any theory involving accident.
My reason for not thinking it a suicide.
She could not have been found in the position observed without having lain down on the floor while living, and then pulled the shelves down upon herself. (A theory obviously too improbable to be considered.)
My reason for not thinking it murder.
She would need to have been held down on the floor while the cabinet was being pulled over on her, a thing which the quiet aspect of the hands and feet make appear impossible. (Very good, but we know now that she was dead when the shelves fell over, so that my one excuse for not thinking it a murder is rendered null.)
The Complete Amelia Butterworth Mystery Series Page 13
