XXXI
As my story, sometimes elicited by questions and sometimes allowed to take the form of an uninterrupted narrative, differed in no essential from the one already given in these pages, I see no reason for recapitulating it here any more than I did the one I told days before to the Inspector. Fixed in my determination to be honest in all I said but not to say any more than was required, I was able to hear unmoved the low murmurs which now and then rose from the center of the room as I made some unexpected reply or revealed, as I could not help doing, the strength of the tie which united me to my deceased uncle. No one believed in that and consequently attributed any assertion of the kind to hypocrisy; and with this I had to contend from the beginning to the end, softened perhaps a little towards the last, but still active enough to make my position a very trying one.
The result of my examination must be given, however, even if I have to indulge in some repetition.
My testimony, if accepted as truth, established certain facts.
They were these:
That Mr. Bartholomew had changed his mind more than once as to which of us two nephews he would leave the bulk of his fortune:
That he had shown positive decision only on the night preceding his death, declaring to me that I was his final choice:
That, notwithstanding this, he had not then and there destroyed the will antagonistic to this decision, as would seem natural if his mind had been really settled in its resolve; but had kept them both in hand up to the time of my departure from the room:
That late in the night after a long séance with myself in the library on the lower floor, I had come upstairs, and in my anxiety to know whether my uncle were awake or resting quietly after so disturbing an evening, had stopped to listen first at one of his doors and then at the other; but had refrained from going in, or even seeing my uncle again until summoned with the rest of the family to hear his dying wishes:
That when he handed one of the wills to his daughter and bade her burn it in the large bowl he had ordered placed at his bedside, I believed it to be the one I had expected to see him burn the night before, and that I just as confidently believed that the one which had been taken from the other envelope and put away in some spot not yet discovered was the one designating me as his chief heir according to his promise, and should so believe until it was found and I was shown to the contrary. (This in justification of my confidence in him and also to refute the idea in so far as I was able, that I had been so fearful of his changing his mind again that I was willing to cut his life short rather than run the risk of losing my inheritance.)
For I was sensible enough to see that to minds so prejudiced, the fact that the will favoring myself having been the last one drawn, afforded them sufficient excuse for a supposition which seemed the only explanation possible for the mystery they were facing.
A few were undoubtedly influenced either by my earnestness or the dignity which innocence gives to the suspected man, but the many, not; and when at the conclusion of my testimony I was forced to repass Orpha on my way back to my seat, I found that I no longer had the courage to meet her eye, lest I should see pity there or, what was worse, an attempt to accept what I had to say against reason and possibly against her own judgment.
But when her name was called and with a quick unveiling of her face she took her place upon the stand, I could not keep my glances back, for I was thinking now, not of myself but of her and the suffering which she must undergo if her examination was to be of any help in disentangling the threads of this involved inquiry.
That I was justified in my fears was at once apparent, for the first question which attracted attention and drew every head forward in breathless interest and undisguised curiosity was this:
“Miss Bartholomew, I regret that I must trespass upon matters which in my respect for yourself and family I should be glad to leave untouched. But conditions force me to ask if the rumor is correct that you are engaged to marry your cousin, Edgar, with whom you have been brought up.”
“No,” she answered at once, with that clear ring to her voice which carried it without effort to the remotest corners of the room. “I am engaged to no one. But am under an obligation, gladly entered into because it was my father’s wish, to marry the man—if the gentleman so pleases—to whom my father has willed the greater portion of his money.”
The Coroner raised his gavel, but laid it down again, for the excitement called forth by the calm dignity of this answer, was of that deep and absorbing kind which shrinks from noisy demonstration.
“Miss Bartholomew, do you know or have you any suspicion as to where your father concealed the will which will settle this question?”
“None whatever.”
And now, the sweet voice wavered.
“You know your father’s room well?”
“Every inch of it.”
“And can imagine no place in it where he might have thrust this document on taking it out of the envelope?”
“None.”
“Miss Bartholomew, you have heard the last witness state that your father distinctly told him on the night before his death that he had decided to make him his chief inheritor. Did your father ever make the same declaration to you?”
“He has said that he found my foreign cousin admirable.”
“That hardly answers my question, Miss Bartholomew.”
The pink came out on her cheeks. Ah; how lovely she was! But in what trouble also.
“He once asked me if I could rely on his judgment in the choice of my future husband?” came reluctantly from her lips. “Up till then I had not been aware that there was to be any choice.”
“You mean—”
“That I had never been given reason to think that there was any man living whom he could prefer for a real son to the nephew who lived like a son in the family.”
“Can you remember just when this occurred? Was it before or after the ball held in your house?”
“It was after; some weeks after.”
“After he had been ill for some little time, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Coroner glanced at the jury; and the jurymen at each other. She must have observed this, for a subtle change passed over her face which revealed the steadfast woman without taking from the winsomeness of her girlishness so well known to all.
She was yet in the glow of whatever sentiment had been aroused within her, when she was called upon to reply to a series of questions concerning this ball, leading up, as I knew they must, to one which had been in my own mind ever since that event. What had passed between her and her father when, on hearing he was ill, she went up to see him in his own room.
“I found him ailing but indisposed to say much about it. What he wanted was to tell me that on account of not feeling quite himself, he had decided not to have any public announcement made of his plans for Edgar and myself. That would keep. But lest our friends who had expected something of the kind might feel aggrieved, he proposed that as a substitute for it, another announcement should be made which would give them almost equal pleasure,—that of the engagement of his ward, Miss Colfax, to Dr. Hunter. And this was done.”
“And was this all which passed between you at this time? No hint of a quarrel between himself and the nephew for whom he had contemplated such honor?”
“He said nothing that would either alarm or sadden me. He was very cheerful, almost gay, all the time I was in the room. Alas! how little we knew!”
It was the spontaneous outburst of a bereaved child and the Coroner let it pass. Would he could have spared her the next question. But his fixed idea of my guilt would not allow this and I had to sit there and hear him say:
“In the days which followed, during which you doubtless had many opportunities of seeing both of your cousins, did the attentions of the one you call Quenton savor at all of those of courtship?”
“No, sir. We were all too absorbed in caring for my sick father to think of anything of that kind.”
It was firmly but sweetly said, and such was the impression she made on the crowd before her, that I saw a man who was lounging against the rear wall, unconsciously bow his head in token of his respect for her womanliness.
The Coroner, a little impressed himself perhaps, sat in momentary silence and when he was ready to proceed, chose a less embarrassing subject. What it was I do not remember now, nor is it of importance that I should enlarge any further on an examination which left things very much as they were and had been from the beginning. By the masses convened there I was considered guilty, but by a few, not; and as the few had more than one representative in the jury, the verdict which was finally given was the usual one where certainty is not attained.
Murder by poison administered by a person unknown.