After Henry’s discharge, I was arrested. There was no one else left to accuse. There must be a motive for the murder; I was the only person left with a motive. Unlike the others, who were discharged after preliminary examination, I was held to the grand jury and taken to Dedham, where I spent four weeks in jail, awaiting the meeting of the grand jury.
Neither at the preliminary examination, nor before the grand jury, was I allowed to make the full and frank statement that I am making here. I was told simply to answer the questions that were put to me, and to volunteer nothing, and I obeyed.
I know nothing about law. I wished to do the best I could – to act in the wisest manner, for Henry’s sake and my own. I said nothing about the green silk dress. They searched the house for all manner of things, at the time of my arrest, but the dress was not there – it was in Phoebe Dole’s dye-kettle. She had come over after it one day when I was picking beans in the garden, and had taken it out of the closet. She brought it back herself, and told me this, after I had returned from Dedham.
‘I thought I’d get it and surprise you,’ said she. ‘It’s taken a beautiful black.’
She gave me a strange look – half as if she would see into my very soul, in spite of me, half as if she were in terror of what she would see there, as she spoke. I do not know just what Phoebe Dole’s look meant. There may have been a stain left on that dress after all, and she may have seen it.
I suppose if it had not been for that flour-paste which I had learned to make, I should have hung for the murder of my father. As it was, the grand jury found no bill against me because there was absolutely no evidence to convict me; and I came home a free woman. And if people were condemned for their motives, would there be enough hangmen in the world?
They found no weapon with which I could have done the deed. They found no bloodstains on my clothes. The one thing which told against me, aside from my ever-present motive, was the fact that on the morning after the murder the doors and windows were fastened. My volunteering this information had of course weakened its force as against myself.
Then, too, some held that I might have been mistaken in my terror and excitement, and there was a theory, advanced by a few, that the murderer had meditated making me also a victim, and had locked the doors that he might not be frustrated in his designs, but had lost heart at the last, and had allowed me to escape, and then fled himself. Some held that he had intended to force me to reveal the whereabouts of father’s money, but his courage had failed him.
Father had quite a sum in a hiding-place which only he and I knew. But no search for money had been made, as far as anyone could see – not a bureau drawer had been disturbed, and father’s gold watch was ticking peacefully under his pillow; even his wallet in his vest pocket had not been opened. There was a small roll of banknotes in it, and some change; father never carried much money. I suppose if father’s wallet and watch had been taken, I should not have been suspected at all.
I was discharged, as I have said, from lack of evidence, and have returned to my home – free, indeed, but with this awful burden of suspicion on my shoulders. That brings me up to the present day. I returned yesterday evening. This evening Henry Ellis has been over to see me; he will not come again, for I have forbidden him to do so. This is what I said to him:
‘I know you are innocent, you know I am innocent. To all the world beside we are under suspicion – I more than you, but we are both under suspicion. If we are known to be together that suspicion is increased for both of us. I do not care for myself, but I do care for you. Separated from me the stigma attached to you will soon fade away, especially if you should marry elsewhere.’
Then Henry interrupted me.
‘I will never marry elsewhere,’ said he.
I could not help being glad that he said it, but I was firm.
‘If you should see some good woman whom you could love, it will be better for you to marry elsewhere,’ said I.
‘I never will!’ he said again. He put his arms around me, but I had strength to push him away.
‘You never need, if I succeed in what I undertake before you meet the other,’ said I. I began to think he had not cared for that pretty girl who boarded in the same house after all.
‘What is that?’ he said. ‘What are you going to undertake?’
‘To find my father’s murderer,’ said I.
Henry gave me a strange look; then, before I could stop him, he took me fast in his arms and kissed my forehead.
‘As God is my witness, Sarah, I believe in your innocence,’ he said; and from that minute I have felt sustained and fully confident of my power to do what I had undertaken.
My father’s murderer I will find. Tomorrow I begin my search. I shall first make an exhaustive examination of the house, such as no officer in the case has yet made, in the hope of finding a clue. Every room I propose to divide into square yards, by line and measure, and every one of these square yards I will study as if it were a problem in algebra.
I have a theory that it
