“Well, what did she say?”
The woman was silent a moment then replied:
“She banged the suit case down on the floor and said, ‘I am going away. You can tell Mr. Warren I won't do any more work for him.’ ” Again she hesitated, as if holding something back. Once more the coroner had to request her to finish her statement. She raised her head, sweeping the court room with a glance, and then her eyes came back to the coroner. Again he barked out:
“What did she say?”
“She said,” was the slow reply, “Mr. Warren ought to be killed. He ought to be killed.”
A murmur of astonishment went around the room, and I saw from the coroner's face that the answer was unexpected. There had been nothing of value until the present testimony, and now, all at once, there had come into the crowded room the ringing of a threat. I saw Carter shift in his chair and he bent forward and whispered something in the Englishman's ear. But what it was I did not know. And then after a moment of surprise the coroner tried to gain more information from his witness.
But she had told him all she knew. She said the secretary had been very angry, and that her voice had risen when she made her remark “that Warren ought to be killed.” But why she had said this she could not tell. The girl, a moment later, had picked up her suit case and left the house. She had watched her from a front window and saw her go out to the road. Where she had gone, or the reason for her action, she did not know. And though the coroner asked her many questions yet he gained nothing in return; for the woman knew of no reason why the secretary should have left the house or above all why she had made the remark that she did.
When she left the stand there was a different atmosphere about the inquest. We had spent the morning in getting nowhere. Now all at once there had come a mystery—the mystery of why the secretary should have rushed into the house for her bag, why she had left, and, above all, the reason for her statement against her employer.
In rapid succession two policemen followed one another on the stand. They testified that they had spent the morning trying to find the secretary, but to no avail. Before she had gone to Warren's home to work she had roomed in a house kept by an aunt. But the aunt had not seen her for several days and they had found no trace of her anywhere. She simply had walked out of Warren's yard and vanished. They told of asking the drivers of several of the bus lines if they had had the girl as a passenger. But though she was very well known in the village no one had seen her.
When they left the stand, the inquest broke down, simply for the fact there were no more witnesses to call. Warren had been killed, and it was the only fact the police could prove. But why he had been killed, or any evidence which might have thrown any light upon his death, they did not have. It had proven about as barren an inquest as I had ever attended. The only thing of interest had been the unexpected testimony regarding the secretary, and her foolish statement that Warren ought to be killed. But even that by itself was not evidence of much value.