The Leavenworth Case

‘Oh, they followed us up and came into the room and Miss Eleanore fainted away.’

‘And the other one—Miss Mary, I believe they call her?’

‘I don’t remember anything about her; I was so busy fetching water to restore Miss Eleanore, I didn’t notice.’

‘Well, how long was it before Mr Leavenworth was carried into the next room?’

‘Almost immediate, as soon as Miss Eleanore recovered, and that was as soon as ever the water touched her lips.’

‘Who proposed that the body should be carried from the spot?’

‘She, sir. As soon as ever she stood up she went over to it and looked at it and shuddered, and then calling Mr Harwell and me, bade us carry him in and lay him on the bed and go for the doctor, which we did.’

‘Wait a moment; did she go with you when you went into the other room?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She stayed by the library table.’

‘What doing?’

‘I couldn’t see; her back was to me.’

‘How long did she stay there?’

‘She was gone when we came back.’

‘Gone from the table?’

‘Gone from the room.’

‘Humph! When did you see her again?’

‘In a minute. She came in at the library door as we went out.’

‘Anything in her hand?’

‘Not as I see.’

‘Did you miss anything from the table?’

‘I never thought to look, sir. The table was nothing to me. I was only thinking of going for the doctor, though I knew it was of no use.’

‘Whom did you leave in the room when you went out?’

‘The cook, sir, and Molly, sir, and Miss Eleanore.’

‘Not Miss Mary?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very well. Have the jury any questions to put to this man?’

A movement at once took place in that profound body.

‘I should like to ask a few,’ exclaimed a weazen-faced, excitable little man whom I had before noticed shifting in his seat in a restless manner strongly suggestive of an intense but hitherto repressed desire to interrupt the proceedings.

‘Very well, sir,’ returned Thomas.

But the juryman stopping to draw a deep breath, a large and decidedly pompous man who sat at his right hand seized the opportunity to inquire in a round, listen-to-me sort of voice:

‘You say you have been in the family for two years. Was it what you might call a united family?’

‘United?’

‘Affectionate, you know—on good terms with each other.’ And the juryman lifted the very long and heavy watch-chain that hung across his vest as if that as well as himself had a right to a suitable and well-considered reply.

The butler, impressed perhaps by his manner, glanced uneasily around. ‘Yes, sir, so far as I know.’

‘The young ladies were attached to their uncle?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘And to each other?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so; it’s not for me to say.’

‘You suppose so. Have you any reason to think otherwise?’ And he doubled the watch-chain about his fingers as if he would double its attention as well as his own.

Thomas hesitated a moment. But just as his interlocutor was about to repeat his question, he drew himself up into a rather stiff and formal attitude and replied:

‘Well, sir, no.’

The juryman, for all his self-assertion, seemed to respect the reticence of a servant who declined to give his opinion in regard to such a matter, and drawing complacently back, signified with a wave of his hand that he had no more to say.

Immediately the excitable little man, before mentioned, slipped forward to the edge of his chair and asked, this time without hesitation: ‘At what time did you unfasten the house this morning?’

‘About six, sir.’

‘Now, could anyone leave the house after that time without your knowledge?’

Thomas glanced a trifle uneasily at his fellow servants, but answered up promptly and as if without reserve:

‘I don’t think it would be possible for anybody to leave this house after six in the morning without either myself or the cook’s knowing of it. Folks don’t jump from second-storey windows in broad daylight, and as to leaving by the doors, the front door closes with such a slam all the house can hear it from top to bottom, and as for the back door, no one that goes out of that can get clear of the yard without going by the kitchen window, and no one can go by our kitchen window without the cook’s a-seeing of them, that I can just swear to.’ And he cast a half-quizzing, half-malicious look at the round, red-faced individual in question, strongly suggestive of late and unforgotten bickerings over the kitchen coffee-urn and castor.

This reply, which was of a nature calculated to deepen the forebodings which had already settled upon the minds of those present, produced a visible effect. The house found locked, and no one seen to leave it! Evidently, then, we had not far to look for the assassin.