“Yes, but as she has not been out since Wednesday, I have not been able to make as thorough a search as I should like. She is a shy bird, and I don’t want to frighten her till I have a few more facts to go on. If she thinks herself watched she may become wary, while now, I hope she will make use of her fancied security to do something which may give us a lead.”
“Well, Mr. Merritt, I conclude from all this that, although you are unable to trace the possession of the key to Mrs. Atkins, nevertheless, your suspicions point towards her?”
“Certainly not. There is nothing to connect her with the tragedy, except the fact that one negro boy identified the corpse as that of one of her visitors. On the contrary, the more I look into this case, the less do I see how the lady could be involved in it. Let us suppose that she did kill the man. Where could she have secreted him during the twenty-four hours that must have elapsed before the body was finally disposed of? The only place of concealment on the lower floor of her apartment is a coat closet under the stairs, and I doubt very much whether a small, unmuscular woman like Mrs. Atkins is capable of dragging so large a man even for a short distance.”
“But,” I suggested, “the murder may have been committed in the hall, just a step from this hiding-place.”
“Yes, that is, of course, possible. But there is still another objection. The closet is so small that I do not believe a man could be got into it without doubling him up, and of that the body shows no signs. Besides, if Mrs. Atkins is guilty, we must believe her husband to be her accomplice, for who else could have helped her hide her victim? Now, you must know that the Atkins men, both father and son, bear most excellent reputations, especially the young man, of whom every one speaks in the highest terms, and I do not think that a person unaccustomed to deceit could have behaved with such perfect composure in the presence of a corpse of which he had criminal knowledge.”
“But he did show some emotion,” I urged.
“Oh, yes; I know what you mean,—when he learned that the man was murdered on Tuesday night he seemed startled.”
“Well, how do you account for that?”
“I don’t account for it. Why, Doctor, in a case like this there are a hundred things I can’t account for. For instance, what was the cause of Mrs. Atkins’s scream? You have no idea; neither have I. Why did she show such emotion at the sight of the corpse? I am not prepared to say. Why did she appear so relieved when she heard that the murder occurred on Tuesday? I can formulate no plausible explanation for it. And these are only a few of the rocks that I am running up against all the time.”