The Filigree Ball - Anna Katharine Green (historical books to read txt) 📗

he asked. “Were you at home when she left her husband’s house?”

“Alas!” she murmured. Then seeing that a more direct answer was expected of her, she added with as little appearance of effort as possible: “I was at home and I heard her go out. But I had no idea that it was for any purpose other than to join some social gathering.”

“Dressed this way?”

The captain pointed to the floor and her eyes followed. Certainly Mrs. Jeffrey was not appareled for an evening company. As Miss Tuttle realized the trap into which she had been betrayed, her words rushed forth and tripped each other up.

“I did not notice. She often wore black - it became her. My sister was eccentric.”

Worse, worse than useless. Some slips can not be explained away. Miss Tuttle seemed to realize that this was one of them, for she paused abruptly, with the words half finished on her tongue. Yet her attitude commanded respect, and I for one was ready to accord it to her.

Certainly, such a woman was not to be seen every day, and if her replies lacked candor, there was a nobility in her presence which gave the lie to any doubt. At least, that was the effect she produced on me. Whether or not her interrogator shared my feeling I could not so readily determine, for his attention as well as mine was suddenly diverted by the cry which now escaped her lips.

“Her watch! Where is her watch? It is gone! I saw it on her breast and it’s gone. It hung just - just where -”

“Wait!” cried one of the men who had been peering about the floor. “Is this it?”

He held aloft a small object blazing with jewels.

“Yes,” she gasped, trying to take it.

But the officer gave it to the captain instead.

“It must have slipped from her as she fell,” remarked the latter, after a cursory examination of the glittering trinket. “The pin by which she attached it to her dress must have been insecurely fastened.” Then quickly and with a sharp look at Miss Tuttle: “Do you know if this was considered an accurate timepiece?”

“Yes. Why do you ask? Is it -”

“Look!” He held it up with the face toward us. The hands stood at thirteen minutes past seven. “The hour and the moment when it struck the floor,” he declared. “And consequently the hour and the moment when Mrs. Jeffrey fell,” finished Durbin.

Miss Tuttle said nothing, only gasped.

“Valuable evidence,” quoth the captain, putting the watch in his pocket. Then, with a kind look at her, called forth by the sight of her misery:

“Does this hour agree with the time of her leaving the house?”

“I can not say. I think so. It was some time before or after seven. I don’t remember the exact minute.”

“It would take fifteen for her to walk here. Did she walk?”

“I do not know. I didn’t see her leave. My room is at the back of the house.”

“You can say if she left alone or in the company of her husband?”

“Mr. Jeffrey was not with her?”

“Was Mr. Jeffrey in the house?”

“He was not.”

This last negative was faintly spoken.

The captain noticed this and ventured upon interrogating her further.

“How long had he been gone?”

Her lips parted; she was deeply agitated; but when she spoke it was coldly and with studied precision.

“Mr. Jeffrey was not at home tonight at all. He has not been in all day.”

“Not at home? Did his wife know that he was going to dine out?”

“She said nothing about it.”

The captain cut short his questions and in another moment I understood why. A gentleman was standing in the doorway, whose face once seen, was enough to stop the words on any man’s lips. Miss Tuttle saw this gentleman almost as quickly as we did and sank with an involuntary moan to her knees.

It was Francis Jeffrey come to look upon his dead bride.

I have been present at many tragic scenes and have beheld men under almost every aspect of grief, terror and remorse; but there was something in the face of this man at this dreadful moment that was quite new to me, and, as I judge, equally new to the other hardy officials about me. To be sure he was a gentleman and a very high-bred one at that; and it is but seldom we have to do with any of his ilk.

Breathlessly we awaited his first words.

Not that he showed frenzy or made any display of the grief or surprise natural to the occasion. On the contrary, he was the quietest person present, and among all the emotions his white face mirrored I saw no signs of what might be called sorrow. Yet his appearance was one to wring the heart and rouse the most contradictory conjectures as to just what chord in his evidently highly strung nature throbbed most acutely to the horror and astonishment of this appalling end of so short a married life.

His eye, which was fixed on the prostrate body of his bride, did not yield up its secret. When he moved and came to where she lay and caught his first sight of the ribbon and the pistol attached to it, the most experienced among us were baffled as to the nature of his feelings and thoughts. One thing alone was patent to all. He had no wish to touch this woman whom he had so lately sworn to cherish. His eyes devoured her, he shuddered and strove several times to speak, and though kneeling by her side, he did not reach forth his hand nor did he let a tear fall on the appealing features so pathetically turned upward as if to meet his look.

Suddenly he leaped to his feet.

“Must she stay here?” he demanded, looking about for the person most in authority.

The captain answered by a question:

“How do you account for her being here at all? What explanation have you, as her husband, to give for this strange suicide of your wife?”

For reply, Mr. Jeffrey, who was an exceptionally handsome man, drew forth a small slip of crumpled paper, which he immediately handed over to the speaker.

“Let her own words explain,” said he. “I found this scrap of writing in our upstairs room when I returned home tonight. She must have written it just before - before -”

A smothered groan filled up the break, but it did not come from his lips, which were fixed and set, but from those of the woman who crouched amongst us. Did he catch this expression of sorrow from one whose presence he as yet had given no token of recognizing? He did not seem to. His eye was on the captain, who was slowly reading, by the light of a lantern held in a detective’s hand, the almost illegible words which Mr. Jeffrey had just said were his wife’s last communication.

Will they seem as pathetic to the eye as they did to the ear in that room of awesome memories and present death?

“I find that I do not love you as I thought I did. I can not live, knowing this to be so. I pray God that you may forgive me.

VERONICA”

 

A gasp from the figure in the corner; then silence. We were glad to hear the captain’s voice again.

“A woman’s heart is a great mystery,” he remarked, with a short glance at Mr. Jeffrey.

It was a sentiment we could all echo; for he, to whom she had alluded in these few lines as one she could not love, was a man whom most women would consider the embodiment of all that was admirable and attractive.

That one woman so regarded him was apparent to all. If ever the heart spoke in a human face, it spoke in that of Miss Tuttle as she watched her sister’s husband struggling for composure above the prostrate form of her who but a few hours previous had been the envy of all the fashionable young women in Washington. I found it hard to fix my attention on the next question, interesting and valuable as every small detail was likely to prove in case my theory of this crime should ever come to be looked on as the true one.

“How came you to search here for the wife who had written you this vague and far from satisfactory farewell? I see no hint in these lines of the place where she intended to take her life.”

“No! no!” Even this strong man shrank from this idea and showed a very natural recoil as his glances flew about the ill-omened room and finally rested on the fireside over which so repellent a mystery hung in impenetrable shadow. “She said nothing of her intentions; nothing! But the man who came for me told me where she was to be found. He was waiting at the door of my house. He had been on a search for me up and down the town. We met on the stoop.”

The captain accepted this explanation without cavil. I was glad he did. But to me the affair showed inconsistencies which I secretly felt it to be my especial duty to unravel.

V MASTER AND DOG

No further opportunity was afforded me that night for studying the three leading characters in the remarkable drama I saw unfolding before me. A task was assigned me by the captain which took me from the house, and I missed the next scene - the arrival of the coroner. But I repaid myself for this loss in a way I thought justified by the importance of my own theory and the evident necessity there was of collecting each and every point of evidence which could give coloring to the charge, in the event of this crime coming to be looked on at headquarters as one of murder.

Observing that a light was still burning in Uncle David’s domicile, I crossed to his door and rang the bell. I was answered by the deep and prolonged howl of a dog, soon cut short by his master’s amiable greeting. This latter was a surprise to me. I had heard so often of Mr. Moore’s churlishness as a host that I had expected some rebuff. But I encountered no such tokens of hostility. His brow was smooth and his smile cheerfully condescending. Indeed, he appeared anxious to have me enter, and cast an indulgent look at Rudge, whose irrepressible joy at this break in the monotony of his existence was tinged with a very evident dread of offending his master. Interested anew, I followed this man of contradictory impulses into the room toward which he led me.

The time has now come for a more careful description of this peculiar man. Mr. Moore was tall and of that refined spareness of shape which suggests the scholar. Yet he had not the scholar’s eye. On the contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze. He wore his iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy, as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street urchins. On account of his whimsicalities, he had acquired the epithet of Uncle David among them, despite his aristocratic connections and his gentlemanlike bearing. His clothes formed no exception to the general air of individuality which marked him. They were of different cut from those of other men, and in this as in many other ways he was a law to himself; notably so in the