Agatha Webb, Anna Katharine Green [readnow TXT] 📗

men was weak enough to let you pass, against my express instructions?” asked the constable, who was of an irritable and suspicious nature.

She let the hood drop from her head, and, turning, surveyed him with a slow smile. There was witchery in that smile sufficient to affect a much more cultivated and callous nature than his, and though he had been proof against it once he could not quite resist the effect of its repetition.

“I insisted upon entering,” said she. “Do not blame the men; they did not want to use force against a woman.” She had not a good voice and she knew it; but she covered up this defect by a choice of intonations that carried her lightest speech to the heart. Hard-visaged Amos Fenton gave a grunt, which was as near an expression of approval as he ever gave to anyone.

“Well! well!” he growled, but not ill-naturedly, “it’s a morbid curiosity that brings you here. Better drop it, girl; it won’t do you any good in the eyes of sensible people.”

“Thank you,” was her demure reply, her lips dimpling at the corners in a way to shock the sensitive Mr. Sutherland.

Glancing from her to the still outlines of the noble figure on the couch, he remarked with an air of mild reproof:

“I do not understand you, Miss Page. If this solemn sight has no power to stop your coquetries, nothing can. As for your curiosity, it is both ill-timed and unwomanly. Let me see you leave this house at once, Miss Page; and if in the few hours which must elapse before breakfast you can find time to pack your trunks, you will still farther oblige me.”

“Oh, don’t send me away, I entreat you.”

It was a cry from her inner heart, which she probably regretted, for she instantly sought to cover up her inadvertent self-betrayal by a submissive bend of the head and a step backward. Neither Mr. Fenton nor Mr. Sutherland seemed to hear the one or see the other, their attention having returned to the more serious matter in hand.

“The dress which our poor friend wears shows her to have been struck before retiring,” commented Mr. Sutherland, after another short survey of Mrs. Webb’s figure. “If Philemon—”

“Excuse me, sir,” interrupted the voice of the young man who had been left in the hall, “the lady is listening to what you say. She is still at the head of the stairs.”

“She is, is she!” cried Fenton, sharply, his admiration for the fascinating stranger having oozed out at his companion’s rebuff. “I will soon show her—” But the words melted into thin air as he reached the door. The young girl had disappeared, and only a faint perfume remained in the place where she had stood.

“A most extraordinary person,” grumbled the constable, turning back, but stopping again as a faint murmur came up from below.

“The gentleman is waking,” called up a voice whose lack of music was quite perceptible at a distance.

With a bound Mr. Fenton descended the stairs, followed by Mr. Sutherland.

Miss Page stood before the door of the room in which sat Philemon Webb. As they reached her side, she made a little bow that was half mocking, half deprecatory, and slipped from the house. An almost unbearable sensation of incongruity vanished with her, and Mr. Sutherland, for one, breathed like a man relieved.

“I wish the doctor would come,” Fenton said, as they watched the slow lifting of Philemon Webb’s head. “Our fastest rider has gone for him, but he’s out Portchester way, and it may be an hour yet before he can get here.”

“Philemon!”

Mr. Sutherland had advanced and was standing by his old friend’s side.

“Philemon, what has become of your guests? You’ve waited for them here until morning.”

The old man with a dazed look surveyed the two plates set on either side of him and shook his head.

“James and John are getting proud,” said he, “or they forget, they forget.”

James and John. He must mean the Zabels, yet there were many others answering to these names in town. Mr. Sutherland made another effort.

“Philemon, where is your wife? I do not see any place set here for her!”

“Agatha’s sick, Agatha’s cross; she don’t care for a poor old man like me.”

“Agatha’s dead and you know it,” thundered back the constable, with ill-judged severity. “Who killed her? tell me that. Who killed her?”

A sudden quenching of the last spark of intelligence in the old man’s eye was the dreadful effect of these words. Laughing with that strange gurgle which proclaims an utterly irresponsible mind, he cried:

“The pussy cat! It was the pussy cat. Who’s killed? I’m not killed. Let’s go to Jericho.”

Mr. Sutherland took him by the arm and led him upstairs. Perhaps the sight of his dead wife would restore him. But he looked at her with the same indifference he showed to everything else.

“I don’t like her calico dresses,” said he. “She might have worn silk, but she wouldn’t. Agatha, will you wear silk to my funeral?”

The experiment was too painful, and they drew him away. But the constable’s curiosity had been roused, and after they had found some one to take care of him, he drew Mr. Sutherland aside and said:

“What did the old man mean by saying she might have worn silk? Are they better off than they seem?” Mr. Sutherland closed the door before replying.

“They are rich,” he declared, to the utter amazement of the other. “That is, they were; but they may have been robbed; if so, Philemon was not the wretch who killed her. I have been told that she kept her money in an old-fashioned cupboard. Do you suppose they alluded to that one?”

He pointed to a door set in the wall over the fireplace, and Mr. Fenton, perceiving a key sticking in the lock, stepped quickly across the floor and opened it. A row of books met his eyes, but on taking them down a couple of drawers were seen at the back.

“Are they locked?” asked Mr. Sutherland.

“One is and one is not.”

“Open the one that is unlocked.”

Mr. Fenton did so.

“It is empty,” said he.

Mr. Sutherland cast a look toward the dead woman, and again the perfect serenity of her countenance struck him.

“I do not know whether to regard her as the victim of her husband’s imbecility or of some vile robber’s cupidity. Can you find the key to the other drawer?”

“I will try.”

“Suppose you begin, then, by looking on her person. It should be in her pocket, if no marauder has been here.”

“It is not in her pocket.”

“Hanging to her neck, then, by a string?”

“No; there is a locket here, but no key. A very handsome locket, Mr. Sutherland, with a child’s lock of golden hair—”

“Never mind, we will see that later; it is the key we want just now.”

“Good heavens!”

“What is it?”

“It is in her hand; the one that lies underneath.”

“Ah! A point, Fenton.”

“A great point.”

“Stand by her, Fenton. Don’t let anyone rob her of that key till the coroner comes, and we are at liberty to take it.”

“I will not leave her for an instant.”

“Meanwhile, I will put back these books.”

He had scarcely done so when a fresh arrival occurred. This time it was one of the village clergymen.

IV THE FULL DRAWER

This gentleman had some information to give. It seems that at an early hour of this same night he had gone by this house on his way home from the bedside of a sick parishioner. As he was passing the gate he was run into by a man who came rushing out of the yard, in a state of violent agitation. In this man’s hand was something that glittered, and though the encounter nearly upset them both, he had not stopped to utter an apology, but stumbled away out of sight with a hasty but infirm step, which showed he was neither young nor active. The minister had failed to see his face, but noticed the ends of a long beard blowing over his shoulder as he hurried away.

Philemon was a clean-shaven man.

Asked if he could give the time of this encounter, he replied that it was not far from midnight, as he was in his own house by half-past twelve.

“Did you glance up at these windows in passing?” asked Mr. Fenton.

“I must have; for I now remember they were both lighted.”

“Were the shades up?”

“I think not. I would have noticed it if they had been.”

“How were the shades when you broke into the house this morning?” inquired Mr. Sutherland of the constable.

“Just as they are now; we have moved nothing. The shades were both down—one of them over an open window.”

“Well, we may find this encounter of yours with this unknown man a matter of vital importance, Mr. Crane.”

“I wish I had seen his face.”

“What do you think the object was you saw glittering in his hand?”

“I should not like to say; I saw it but an instant.”

“Could it have been a knife or an old-fashioned dagger?”

“It might have been.”

“Alas! poor Agatha! That she, who so despised money, should fall a victim to man’s cupidity! Unhappy life, unhappy death! Fenton, I shall always mourn for Agatha Webb.”

“Yet she seems to have found peace at last,” observed the minister. “I have never seen her look so contented.” And leading Mr. Sutherland aside, he whispered: “What is this you say about money? Had she, in spite of appearances, any considerable amount? I ask, because in spite of her humble home and simple manner of living, she always put more on the plate than any of her neighbours. Besides which, I have from time to time during my pastorate received anonymously certain contributions, which, as they were always for sick or suffering children—”

“Yes, yes; they came from her, I have no doubt of it. She was by no means poor, though I myself never knew the extent of her means till lately. Philemon was a good business man once; but they evidently preferred to live simply, having no children living—”

“They have lost six, I have been told.”

“So the Portchester folks say. They probably had no heart for display or for even the simplest luxuries. At all events, they did not indulge in them.”

“Philemon has long been past indulging in anything.”

“Oh, he likes his comfort, and he has had it too. Agatha never stinted him.”

“But why do you think her death was due to her having money?”

“She had a large sum in the house, and there are those in town who knew this.”

“And is it gone?”

“That we shall know later.”

As the coroner arrived at this moment, the minister’s curiosity had to wait. Fortunately for his equanimity, no one had the presumption to ask him to leave the room.

The coroner was a man of but few words, and but little given to emotion. Yet they were surprised at his first question:

“Who is the young woman standing outside there, the only one in the yard?”

Mr. Sutherland, moving rapidly to the window, drew aside the shade.

“It is Miss Page, my housekeeper’s niece,” he explained. “I do not understand her interest in this affair. She followed me here from the house and could hardly be got to leave this room, into which she intruded herself against my express command.”

“But look at her attitude!” It was Mr. Fenton who spoke. “She’s crazier than Philemon, it seems to me.”

There was some reason for this remark. Guarded by the high fence from the gaze of the pushing crowd without, she stood upright and