Sunk in despair, I let him go on.
“Could she have done any better?” he now asked. “Watched, circumscribed as she was, could she have done any better? I hardly think so; the fact of Hannah’s having learned to write after she left here was fatal. No, she could not have provided against that contingency.”
“Mr. Gryce,” I here interposed, unable to endure this any longer; “did you have an interview with Miss Mary Leavenworth this morning?”
“No,” said he; “it was not in the line of my present purpose to do so. I doubt, indeed, if she knew I was in her house. A servant maid who has a grievance is a very valuable assistant to a detective. With Molly at my side, I didn’t need to pay my respects to the mistress.”
“Mr. Gryce,” I asked, after another moment of silent self-congratulation on his part, and of desperate self-control on mine, “what do you propose to do now? You have followed your clue to the end and are satisfied. Such knowledge as this is the precursor of action.”
“Humph! we will see,” he returned, going to his private desk and bringing out the box of papers which we had no opportunity of looking at while in R——. “First let us examine these documents, and see if they do not contain some hint which may be of service to us.” And taking out the dozen or so loose sheets which had been torn from Eleanore’s Diary, he began turning them over.
While he was doing this, I took occasion to examine the contents of the box. I found them to be precisely what Mrs. Belden had led me to expect,—a certificate of marriage between Mary and Mr. Clavering and a half-dozen or more letters. While glancing over the former, a short exclamation from Mr. Gryce startled me into looking up.
“What is it?” I cried.
He thrust into my hand the leaves of Eleanore’s Diary. “Read,” said he. “Most of it is a repetition of what you have already heard from Mrs. Belden, though given from a different standpoint; but there is one passage in it which, if I am not mistaken, opens up the way to an explanation of this murder such as we have not had yet. Begin at the beginning; you won’t find it dull.”
Dull! Eleanore’s feelings and thoughts during that anxious time, dull!