“No one. But the voice was a woman’s voice. I took it to be that of a servant.”
Mr. Patterson fell into a thoughtful silence, his arms resting on the elbows of his chair, and his anxious eyes wandering over the floor.
“But what motive?” broke out Foster, addressing the lawyer as if he were an accuser and an enemy,—“what sufficient motive had I for such a hideous crime?”
“Ah! that is just it. The motive! They will make a great deal of that. Why, you must be able to guess what is alleged. Miss Lauson had made a will in her niece’s favor, but had threatened to disinherit her if she married you. This fact,—as has been made known by an incautious admission of Miss Bessie Barron,—this fact you were aware of. The death came just in time to prevent a change in the will. Don’t you see the obvious inference of the prosecution?”
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Foster, springing up and pacing his cell. “I murder a woman,—murder my wife’s aunt,—for money,—for twenty thousand dollars! Am I held so low as that? Why, it is a sum that any clever man can earn in this country in a few years. We could have done without it. I would not have asked for it, much less murdered for it. Tell me, Mr. Patterson, do you suppose me capable of such degrading as well as such horrible guilt?”
“Mr. Foster,” replied the lawyer, with impressive deliberation, “I shall go into this case with a confidence that you are absolutely innocent.”
“Thank you,” murmured the young man, grasping Patterson’s hand violently, and then turning away to wipe a tear, which had been too quick for him.
“Excuse my weakness,” he said, presently. “But I don’t believe any worthy man is strong enough to bear the insult that the world has put upon me, without showing his suffering.”
Certainly, Foster’s bearing and the sentiments which he expressed had the nobility and pathos of injured innocence. Were it not that innocence can be counterfeited, as also that a fine demeanor and touching utterance are not points in law, no alarming doubt would seem to overshadow the result of the trial. And yet, strange as it must seem to those whom my narrative may have impressed in favor of Foster, the sedate, Puritanic population of Barham and its vicinity inclined more and more toward the presumption of his guilt.
For this there were two reasons. In the first place, who but he had any cause of spite against Mercy Lauson, or could hope to draw any profit from her death? There had been no robbery; there was not a sign that the victim’s clothing had been searched; the murder had clearly not been the work of a burglar or a thief. But Foster, if he indeed assassinated this woman, had thereby removed an obstacle to his marriage, and had secured to his future wife a considerable fortune.