I saw her eyeing the stains on the doors, and I said I had not washed them off, for I thought they might yet serve a purpose in detecting the murderer. She looked closely at those on the entry-door – the brightest ones – and said she did not see how they could help, for there were no plain fingermarks there, and she should think they would make me nervous.
‘I’m beyond being nervous,’ I replied.
Saturday. – Today I have found something which I cannot understand. I have been at work in the room where my father came to his dreadful end. Of course some of the most startling evidences have been removed. The bed is clean, and the carpet washed, but the worst horror of it all clings to that room. The spirit of murder seemed to haunt it. It seemed to me at first that I could not enter that room, but in it I made a strange discovery.
My father, while he carried little money about his person, was in the habit of keeping considerable sums in the house; there is no bank within ten miles. However, he was wary; he had a hiding-place which he had revealed to no one but myself. He had a small stand in his room near the end of his bed. Under this stand, or rather under the top of it, he had tacked a large leather wallet. In this he kept all his spare money. I remember how his eyes twinkled when he showed it to me.
‘The average mind thinks things have either got to be in or on,’ said my father. ‘They don’t consider there’s ways of getting around gravitation and calculation.’
In searching my father’s room I called to mind that saying of his, and his peculiar system of concealment, and then I made my discovery. I have argued that in a search of this kind I ought not only to search for hidden traces of the criminal, but for everything which had been for any reason concealed. Something which my father himself had hidden, something from his past history, may furnish a motive for someone else.
The money in the wallet under the table, some five hundred dollars, had been removed and deposited in the bank. Nothing more was to be found there. I examined the bottom of the bureau, and the undersides of the chair seats. There are two chairs in the room, besides the cushioned rocker – green-painted wooden chairs, with flag seats. I found nothing under the seats.
Then I turned each of the green chairs completely over, and examined the bottoms of the legs. My heart leaped when I found a bit of leather tacked over one. I got the tack-hammer and drew the tacks. The chair leg had been hollowed out, and for an inch the hole was packed tight with cotton. I began picking out the cotton, and soon I felt something hard. It proved to be an old-fashioned gold band, quite wide and heavy, like a wedding ring.
I took it over to the window and found this inscription on the inside: ‘Let love abide for ever’. There were two dates – one in August, forty years ago, and the other in August of the present year.
I think the ring had never been worn; while the first part of the inscription is perfectly clear, it looks old, and the last is evidently freshly cut.
This could not have been my mother’s ring. She had only her wedding ring, and that was buried with her. I think my father must have treasured up this ring for years; but why? What does it mean? This can hardly be a clue; this can hardly lead to the discovery of a motive, but I will put it in the box with the rest.
Sunday night. – Today, of course, I did not pursue my search. I did not go to church. I could not face old friends that could not face me. Sometimes I think that everybody in my native village believes in my guilt. What must I have been in my general appearance and demeanour all my life? I have studied myself in the glass, and tried to discover the possibilities of evil that they must see in my face.
This afternoon about three o’clock, the hour when people here have just finished their Sunday dinner, there was a knock on the north door. I answered it, and a strange young man stood there with a large book under his arm. He was thin and cleanly shaved, with a clerical air.
‘I have a work here to which I would like to call your attention,’ he began; and I stared at him in astonishment, for why should a book agent be peddling his wares upon the Sabbath?
His mouth twitched a little.
‘It’s a Biblical Cyclopædia,’ said he.
‘I don’t think I care to take it,’ said I.
‘You are Miss Sarah Fairbanks, I believe?’
‘That is my name,’ I replied stiffly.
‘Mr Henry Ellis, of Digby, sent me here,’ he said next. ‘My name is Dix – Francis Dix.’
Then I knew it was Henry’s first cousin from Boston – the detective who had come to help me. I felt the tears coming to my eyes.
‘You are very kind to come,’ I managed to say.
‘I am selfish, not kind,’ he returned, ‘but you had better let me come in, or any chance of success in my book agency is lost, if the neighbours see me trying to sell it on a Sunday. And, Miss Fairbanks, this is a bona fide agency. I shall canvass the town.’
He came in. I showed him all that I have written, and he read it carefully. When he had finished he sat still for a long time, with his face screwed up in a peculiar meditative fashion.
‘We’ll ferret this out
