“Yes, sir.”
“Then whoever committed this murder locked the door on passing out, and took away the key?”
“It would seem so.”
The coroner turning, faced the jury with an earnest look. “Gentlemen,” said he, “there seems to be a mystery in regard to this key which must be looked into.”
Immediately a universal murmur swept through the room, testifying to the acquiescence of all present. The little juryman hastily rising proposed that an instant search should be made for it; but the coroner, turning upon him with what I should denominate as a quelling look, decided that the inquest should proceed in the usual manner, till the verbal testimony was all in.
“Then allow me to ask a question,” again volunteered the irrepressible. “Mr. Harwell, we are told that upon the breaking in of the library door this morning, Mr. Leavenworth’s two nieces followed you into the room.”
“One of them, sir, Miss Eleanore.”
“Is Miss Eleanore the one who is said to be Mr. Leavenworth’s sole heiress?” the coroner here interposed.
“No, sir, that is Miss Mary.”
“That she gave orders,” pursued the juryman, “for the removal of the body into the further room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that you obeyed her by helping to carry it in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, in thus passing through the rooms, did you observe anything to lead you to form a suspicion of the murderer?”
The secretary shook his head. “I have no suspicion,” he emphatically said.
Somehow, I did not believe him. Whether it was the tone of his voice, the clutch of his hand on his sleeve—and the hand will often reveal more than the countenance—I felt that this man was not to be relied upon in making this assertion.
“I should like to ask Mr. Harwell a question,” said a juryman who had not yet spoken. “We have had a detailed account of what looks like the discovery of a murdered man. Now, murder is never committed without some motive. Does the secretary know whether Mr. Leavenworth had any secret enemy?”
“I do not.”
“Everyone in the house seemed to be on good terms with him?”
“Yes, sir,” with a little quaver of dissent in the assertion, however.
“Not a shadow lay between him and any other member of his household, so far as you know?”
“I am not ready to say that,” he returned, quite distressed. “A shadow is a very slight thing. There might have been a shadow—”
“Between him and whom?”
A long hesitation. “One of his nieces, sir.”
“Which one?”
Again that defiant lift of the head. “Miss Eleanore.”
“How long has this shadow been observable?”
“I cannot say.”
“You do not know the cause?”
“I do not.”
“Nor the extent of the feeling?”
“No, sir.”
“You open Mr. Leavenworth’s letters?”
“I do.”
“Has there been anything in his correspondence of late calculated to throw any light upon this deed?”
It actually seemed as if he never would answer. Was he simply pondering over his reply, or was the man turned to stone?
“Mr. Harwell, did you hear the juryman?” inquired the coroner.
“Yes, sir; I was thinking.”
“Very well, now answer.”
“Sir,” he replied, turning and looking the juryman full in the face, and in that way revealing his unguarded left hand to my gaze, “I have opened Mr. Leavenworth’s letters as usual for the last two weeks, and I can think of nothing in them bearing in the least upon this tragedy.”
The man lied; I knew it instantly. The clenched hand pausing irresolute, then making up its mind to go through with the lie firmly, was enough for me.
“Mr. Harwell, this is undoubtedly true according to your judgment,” said the coroner; “but Mr. Leavenworth’s correspondence will have to be searched for all that.”
“Of course,” he replied carelessly; “that is only right.”
This remark ended Mr. Harwell’s examination for the time. As he sat down I made note of four things.
That Mr. Harwell himself, for some reason not given, was conscious of a suspicion which he was anxious to suppress even from his own mind.
That a woman was in some way connected with it, a rustle as well as a footstep having been heard by him on the stairs.
That a letter had arrived at the house, which if found would be likely to throw some light upon this subject.
That Eleanore Leavenworth’s name came with difficulty from his lips; this evidently unimpressible man, manifesting more or less emotion whenever he was called upon to utter it.
IV
A Clue
“Something is rotten in the State of Denmark.”
Hamlet
The cook of the establishment being now called, that portly, ruddy-faced individual stepped forward with alacrity, displaying upon her good-humored countenance such an expression of mingled eagerness and anxiety that more than one person present found it difficult to restrain a smile at her appearance. Observing this and taking it as a compliment, being a woman as well as a cook, she immediately dropped a curtsey, and opening her lips was about to speak, when the coroner, rising impatiently in his seat, took the word from her mouth by saying sternly:
“Your name?”
“Katherine Malone, sir.”
“Well, Katherine, how long have you been in Mr. Leavenworth’s service?”
“Shure, it is a good twelvemonth now, sir, since I came, on Mrs. Wilson’s ricommindation, to that very front door, and—”
“Never mind the front door, but tell us why you left this Mrs. Wilson?”
“Shure, and it was she as left me, being as she went sailing to the ould country the same day when on her recommendation I came to this very front door—”
“Well, well; no matter about that. You have been in Mr. Leavenworth’s family a year?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And liked it? found him a good master?”
“Och, sir, niver have I found a better, worse luck to the villain as killed him. He was that free and ginerous, sir, that many’s the time I killed him. He was that free and ginerous, sir, that many’s the time I have said to Hannah—” She stopped, with a sudden comical gasp of terror, looking at her fellow-servants like one who had incautiously made a slip. The coroner, observing this, inquired hastily:
“Hannah? Who is Hannah?”
The cook, drawing her roly-poly figure up into some sort
