“None,” said he, “that will strike you as sensible and judicious. But we were not sensible that night, neither were we judicious, or I would not be standing here trying to explain what is not explainable by any of the ordinary rules of conduct. She was set upon being the first to greet my father on his entrance into his own home, and her first plan had been to do so in her own proper character as my wife, but afterwards the freak took her, as I have said, to personify the housekeeper whom my father had cabled us to have in waiting at his house—a cablegram which had reached us too late for any practical use, and which we had therefore ignored—and fearing he might come early in the morning, before she could be on hand to make the favorable impression she intended, she wished to be left in the house that night; and I humored her. I did not foresee the suffering that my departure might cause her, or the fears that were likely to spring from her lonely position in so large and empty a dwelling. Or rather, I should say, she did not foresee them; for she begged me not to stay with her, when I hinted at the darkness and dreariness of the place, saying that she was too jolly to feel fear or think of anything but the surprise my father and sisters would experience in discovering that their very agreeable young housekeeper was the woman they had so long despised.”
“And why,” persisted the Coroner, edging forward in his interest and so allowing me to catch a glimpse of Mr. Gryce’s face as he too leaned forward in his anxiety to hear every word that fell from this remarkable witness—“why do you speak of her fear? What reason have you to think she suffered apprehension after your departure?”
“Why?” echoed the witness, as if astounded by the other’s lack of perspicacity. “Did she not kill herself in a moment of terror and discouragement? Leaving her, as I did, in a condition of health and good spirits, can you expect me to attribute her death to any other cause than a sudden attack of frenzy caused by terror?”
“Ah!” exclaimed the Coroner in a suspicious tone, which no doubt voiced the feelings of most people present; “then you think your wife committed suicide?”
“Most certainly,” replied the witness, avoiding but two pairs of eyes in the whole crowd, those of his father and brother.
“With a hatpin,” continued the Coroner, letting his hitherto scarcely suppressed irony become fully visible in voice and manner, “thrust into the back of her neck at a spot young ladies surely would have but little reason to know is peculiarly fatal! Suicide! when she was found crushed under a pile of bric-a-brac, which was thrown down or fell upon her hours after she received the fatal thrust!”
“I do not know how else she could have died,” persisted the witness, calmly, “unless she opened the door to some burglar. And what burglar would kill a woman in that way, when he could pound her with his fists? No; she was frenzied and stabbed herself in desperation; or the thing was done by accident, God knows how! And as for the testimony of the experts—we all know how easily the wisest of them can be mistaken even in matters of as serious import as these. If all the experts in the world”—here his voice rose and his nostrils dilated till his aspect was actually commanding and impressed us all like a sudden transformation—“If all the experts in the world were to swear that those shelves were thrown upon her after she had lain therefor four hours dead, I would not believe them. Appearances or no appearances, blood or no blood, I here declare that she pulled that cabinet over in her death-struggle; and upon the truth of this fact I am ready to rest my honor as a man and my integrity as her husband.”
An uproar immediately followed, amid which could be heard cries of “He lies!” “He’s a fool!” The attitude taken by the witness was so unexpected that the most callous person present could not fail to be affected by it. But curiosity is as potent a passion as surprise, and in a few minutes all was still again and everybody intent to hear how the Coroner would answer these asseverations.
“I have heard of a blind man denying the existence of light,” said that gentleman, “but never before of a sensible being like yourself urging the most untenable theories in face of such evidence as has been brought before us during this inquiry. If your wife committed suicide, or if the entrance of the point of a hatpin into her spine was effected by accident, how comes the head of the pin to have been found so many feet away from her and in such a place as the parlor register?”
“It may have flown there when it broke, or, what is much more probable, been kicked there by some of the many people who passed in and out of the room between the time of her death and that of its discovery.”
“But the register was found closed,” urged the Coroner. “Was it not, Mr. Gryce?”
That person thus appealed to, rose for an instant.
“It was,” said he, and deliberately sat down again.
The face of the witness, which had been singularly free from expression since his last vehement outbreak, clouded over for an instant and his eye fell as if he felt himself engaged in an unequal struggle. But he recovered his courage speedily, and quietly observed:
“The register may have been closed by a passing foot. I have known of stranger coincidences than that.”
“Mr. Van Burnam,” asked the Coroner, as if weary of subterfuges and argument, “have you considered the effect which this highly contradictory evidence of yours is likely to have on
