The Filigree Ball, Anna Katharine Green [best biographies to read TXT] 📗

the door leading into the bedroom.”

“And at right angles to the door leading into the hall?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Now may I ask you to describe the cover of this book?”

“The cover? I never noticed the cover. Why do you -. Excuse me, I suppose you have your reasons for asking even these puerile and seemingly unnecessary questions. The cover is a queer one I believe; partly red and partly green; and that is all I know about it.”

“Is this the book?”

Mr. Jeffrey glanced at the volume the coroner held up before him.

“I believe so; it looks like it.”

The book had a flaming cover, quite unmistakable in its character.

“The title shows it to be the same,” remarked the coroner. “Is this the only book with a cover of this kind in the house?”

“The only one, I should say.”

The coroner laid down the book.

“Enough of this, then, for the present; only let the jury remember that the cover of this book is peculiar and that it was kept on a shelf at the right of the opening leading into the adjoining bedroom. And now, Mr. Jeffrey, we must ask you to look at these rings; or, rather, at this one. You have seen it before; it is the one you placed on Mrs. Jeffrey’s hand when you were married to her a little over a fortnight ago. You recognize it?”

“I do.”

“Do you also recognize this small mark of blood on it as having been here when it was shown to you by the detective on your return from seeing her dead body at the Moore house?”

“I do; yes.”

“How do you account for that spot and the slight injury made to her finger? Should you not say that the ring had been dragged from her hand?”

“I should.”

“By whom was it dragged? By you?”

“No, sir.”

“By herself, then?”

“It would seem so.”

“Much passion must have been in that act. Do you think that any ordinary quarrel between husband and wife would account for the display of such fury? Are we not right in supposing a deeper cause for the disturbance between you than the slight one you offer in way of explanation?”

An inaudible answer; then a sudden straightening of Francis Jeffrey’s fine figure. And that was all.

“Mr. Jeffrey, in the talk you had with your wife on Tuesday morning was Miss Tuttle’s name introduced?”

“It was mentioned; yes, sir.”

“With recrimination or any display of passion on the part of your wife?”

“You would not believe me if I said no,” was the unexpected rejoinder.

The coroner, taken aback by this direct attack from one who had hitherto borne all his innuendoes with apparent patience, lost countenance for a moment, but, remembering that in his official capacity he was more than a match for the elegant gentleman, who under other circumstances would have found it only too easy to put him to the blush, he observed with dignity:

“Mr. Jeffrey, you are on oath. We certainly have no reason for not believing you.”

Mr. Jeffrey bowed. He was probably sorry for his momentary loss of self-control, and gravely, but with eyes bent downward, answered with the abrupt phrase:

“Well, then, I will say no.”

The coroner shifted his ground.

“Will you make the same reply when I ask if the like forbearance was shown toward your wife’s name in the conversation you had with Miss Tuttle immediately afterward?”

A halt in the eagerly looked-for reply; a hesitation, momentary indeed, but pregnant with nameless suggestions, caused his answer, when it did come, to lose some of the emphasis he manifestly wished to put into it.

“Miss Tuttle was Mrs. Jeffrey’s half-sister. The bond between them was strong. Would she would I - be apt to speak of my young wife with bitterness?”

“That is not an answer to my question, Mr. Jeffrey. I must request a more positive reply.”

Miss Tuttle made a move. The strain on all present was so great we could but notice it. He noticed it too, for his brows came together with a quick frown, as he emphatically replied:

“There were no recriminations uttered. Mrs. Jeffrey had displeased me and I said so, but I did not forget that I was speaking of my wife and to her sister.”

As this was in the highest degree noncommittal, the coroner could be excused for persisting.

“The conversation, then, was about your wife?”

“It was.”

“In criticism of her conduct?”

“Yes.”

“At the ambassador’s ball?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Jeffrey was a poor hand at lying. That last “yes” came with great effort.

The coroner waited, possibly for the echo of this last “yes” to cease; then he remarked with a coldness which lifted at once the veil from his hitherto well disguised antagonism to this witness.

“If you will recount to us anything which your wife said or did on that evening which, in your mind, was worthy of all this coil, it might help us to understand the situation.”

But the witness made no attempt to do so, and while many of us were ready to pardon him this show of delicacy, others felt that under the circumstances it would have been better had he been more open.

Among the latter was the coroner himself, who, from this moment, threw aside all hesitation and urged forward his inquiries in a way to press the witness closer and closer toward the net he was secretly holding out for him. First, he obliged him to say that his conversation with Miss Tuttle had not tended to smooth matters; that no reconciliation with his wife had followed it, and that in the thirty-six hours which elapsed before he returned home again he had made no attempt to soothe the feelings of one, who, according to his own story, he considered hardly responsible for any extravagances in which she might have indulged. Then when this inconsistency had been given time to sink into the minds of the jury, Coroner Z. increased the effect produced by confronting Jeffrey with witnesses who testified to the friendly, if not lover-like relations which had existed between himself and Miss Tuttle prior to the appearance of his wife upon the scene; closing with a question which brought out the denial, by no means new, that an engagement had ever taken place between him and Miss Tuttle and hence that a bond had been canceled by his marriage with Miss Moore.

But his manner and careful choice of words in making this denial did not satisfy those present of his entire candor; especially as Miss Tuttle, for all her apparent immobility, showed, by the violent locking of her hands, both her anxiety and the suffering she was undergoing during this painful examination. Was the suffering merely one of outraged delicacy? We felt justified in doubting it, and looked forward, with cruel curiosity I admit, to the moment when this renowned and universally admired beauty would be called on to throw aside her veil axed reveal the highly praised features which had been so openly scorned for the sake of one whose chief claims to regard lay in her great wealth.

But this moment was as yet far distant. The coroner was a man of method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to most of us from the first, that the assumption of suicide on the part of Mrs. Jeffrey was open to doubt. The communication suggesting such an end to her troubles was the strongest proof Mr. Jeffrey could bring forward that her death had been the result of her own act. Consequently it was now the coroner’s business to show that this communication was either a forgery, or a substitution, and that if she left some word in the book to which she had in so peculiar a manner directed his attention, it was not necessarily the one bewailing her absence of love for him and her consequent intention of seeking relief from her disappointment in death.

Some hint of what the coroner contemplated had already escaped him in the persistent and seemingly inconsequent questions to which he had subjected this witness in reference to these very matters. But the time had now come for a more direct attack, and the interest rose correspondingly high, when the coroner, lifting again to sight the scrap of paper containing the few piteous lines so often quoted, asked of the now anxious and agitated witness, if he had ever noticed any similarity between the handwriting of his wife and that of Miss Tuttle.

An indignant “No!” was about to pass his lips, when he suddenly checked himself and said more mildly: “There may have been a similarity; I hardly know, I have seen too little of Miss Tuttle’s hand to judge.”

This occasioned a diversion. Specimens of Miss Tuttle’s handwriting were produced, which, after having been duly proved, were passed down to the jury along with the communication professedly signed by Mrs. Jeffrey. The grunts of astonishment which ensued as the knowing heads drew near over these several papers caused Mr. Jeffrey to flush and finally to cry out with startling emphasis:

“I know that those words were written by my wife.”

But when the coroner asked him his reasons for this conviction, he could, or would not state them.

“I have said,” he stolidly repeated; and that was all.

The coroner made no comment, but when, after some further inquiry, which added little to the general knowledge, he dismissed Mr. Jeffrey and recalled Loretta, there was that in his tone which warned us that the really serious portion of the day’s examination was about to begin.

XIII CHIEFLY THRUST

The appearance of this witness had undergone a change since she last stood before us. She was shame-faced still, but her manner showed resolve and a feverish determination to face the situation which could but awaken in the breasts of those who had Mr. Jeffrey’s honor and personal welfare at heart a nameless dread; as if they already foresaw the dark shadow which minute by minute was slowly sinking over a household which, up to a week ago, had been the envy and admiration of all Washington society.

The first answer she made revealed both the cause of her shame and the reason of her firmness. It was in response to the question whether she, Loretta, had seen Miss Tuttle before she went out on the walk she was said to have taken immediately after Mrs. Jeffrey’s final departure from the house.

Her words were these

“I did sir. I do not think Miss Tuttle knows it, but I saw her in Mrs. Jeffrey’s room.”

The emphatic tone, offering such a contrast to her former manner of speech, might have drawn all eyes to the speaker had not the person she mentioned offered a still more interesting subject to the general curiosity. As it was, all glances flew to that silent and seemingly impassive figure upon which all open suggestions and covert innuendo had hitherto fallen without creating more than a pressure of her interlaced fingers. This direct attack, possibly the most threatening she had received, appeared to produce no more effect upon her than the others; less, perhaps, for no stir was visible in her now, and to some eyes she hardly seemed to breathe.

Curiosity, thus baffled, led the gaze on to Mr. Jeffrey, and even to Uncle David; but the former had dropped his head again upon his hand, and the other - well, there was little to observe in Mr. Moore at any time, save the immense satisfaction he seemed to take in himself; so attention returned to the witness, who, by this time, had entered upon a consecutive tale.

As near as I can remember, these are the words with which she prefaced it:

“I am not especially proud of what I