‘What does it mean?’ I gasped out. My brain reeled.
‘You shall know soon,’ he said. He looked at his watch. Then he laid down the ghastly bundle he carried. ‘It has puzzled you to know how the murderer went in and out and yet kept the doors locked, has it not?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I am going out now. Hook that door after me.’
He went out, still carrying my umbrella. I hooked the door. Presently I saw the lid of the cat’s door lifted, and his hand and arm thrust through. He curved his arm up towards the hook, but it came short by half a foot. Then he withdrew his arm, and thrust in my silver-handled umbrella. He reached the door-hook easily enough with that.
Then he hooked it again. That was not so easy. He had to work a long time. Finally he accomplished it, unhooked the door again, and came in.
‘That was how!’ I said.
‘No, it was not,’ he returned. ‘No human being, fresh from such a deed, could have used such patience as that to fasten the door after him. Please hang your arm down by your side.’
I obeyed. He looked at my arm, then at his own.
‘Have you a tape measure?’ he asked.
I brought one out of my work-basket. He measured his arm, then mine, and then the distance from the cat-door to the hook.
‘I have two tasks for you today and tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I shall come here very little. Find all your father’s old letters, and read them. Find a man or woman in this town whose arm is six inches longer than yours. Now I must go home, or my boarding mistress will get curious.’
He went through the house to the front door, looked all ways to be sure no eyes were upon him, made three strides down the yard, and was pacing soberly up the street, with his Cyclopædia under his arm.
I made myself a cup of coffee, then I went about obeying his instructions. I read old letters all the forenoon; I found packages in trunks in the garret; there were quantities in father’s desk. I have selected several to submit to Mr Dix. One of them treats of an old episode in father’s youth, which must have years since ceased to interest him. It was concealed after his favourite fashion – tacked under the bottom of his desk. It was written forty years ago, by Maria Woods, two years before my father’s marriage – and it was a refusal of an offer of his hand. It was written in the stilted fashion of that day; it might have been copied from a ‘Complete Letter-writer’.
My father must have loved Maria Woods as dearly as I love Henry, to keep that letter so carefully all these years. I thought he cared for my mother. He seemed as fond of her as other men of their wives, although I did use to wonder if Henry and I would ever get to be quite so much accustomed to each other.
Maria Woods must have been as beautiful as an angel when she was a girl. Mother was not pretty; she was stout, too, and awkward, and I suppose people would have called her rather slow and dull. But she was a good woman, and tried to do her duty.
Tuesday night. – This evening was my first opportunity to obey the second of Mr Dix’s orders. It seemed to me the best way to compare the average length of arms was to go to the prayer-meeting. I could not go about the town with my tape measure, and demand of people that they should hold out their arms. Nobody knows how I dreaded to go to the meeting, but I went, and I looked not at my neighbours’ cold altered faces, but at their arms.
I discovered what Mr Dix wished me to, but the discovery can avail nothing, and it is one he could have made himself. Phoebe Dole’s arm is fully seven inches longer than mine. I never noticed it before, but she has an almost abnormally long arm. But why should Phoebe Dole have unhooked that door?
She made a prayer – a beautiful prayer. It comforted even me a little. She spoke of the tenderness of God in all the troubles of life, and how it never failed us.
When we were all going out I heard several persons speak of Mr Dix and his Biblical Cyclopædia. They decided that he was a theological student, book-canvassing to defray the expenses of his education.
Maria Woods was not at the meeting. Several asked Phoebe how she was, and she replied, ‘Not very well’.
It is very late. I thought Mr Dix might be over tonight, but he has not been here.
Wednesday. – I can scarcely believe what I am about to write. Our investigations seem to point all to one person, and that person – It is incredible! I will not believe it.
Mr Dix came as before, at dawn. He reported, and I reported. I showed Maria Woods’s letter. He said he had driven to Acton, and found that the jeweller there had engraved the last date in the ring about six weeks ago.
‘I don’t want to seem rough, but your father was going to get married again,’ said Mr Dix.
‘I never knew him to go near any woman since mother died,’ I protested.
‘Nevertheless, he had made arrangements to be married,’ persisted Mr Dix.
‘Who was the woman?’
He pointed at the letter in my hand.
‘Maria Woods!’
He nodded.
I stood looking at him – dazed. Such a possibility had never entered my head.
He produced an envelope from his pocket, and took out a little card with blue and brown threads neatly wound upon it.
‘Let me see those threads you found,’ he said.
I got the box and we compared them. He had a number of pieces of blue sewing-silk and brown woollen ravellings, and they matched mine exactly.
‘Where did
