My wife was dead. She had died before sunset, as the Tempter had intended.
The discovery held me immovable. Hers was a face such as I had never seen before. She was a woman before whom, had I met her in life, I should have fallen down and worshipped. Indeed, strange as it may seem, I confess that, as I stood there, I fell in love with her—even though she was a corpse.
Yet, as my eyes fixed themselves lovingly upon her features, as sweet, tender, and innocent in expression as a child’s, I could not imagine the cause of death. There was no sign of disease or unhealthiness there.
Why had she uttered those screams? Why, indeed, had the door of the death-chamber been afterwards locked? Had she, after all, fallen a victim to foul play?
I drew down the bed-clothes and exposed her neck in order to make an examination. She wore, suspended by a thin gold chain, a small amulet shaped like a note of interrogation and encrusted with diamonds. My observations told me that she had not worn it very long, for the edges of the stones were sharp, yet the delicate skin remained unscratched. A desire possessed me to have some souvenir of her, and without further ado, I unclasped the chain from her neck, and placed it and the little charm in my pocket.
Then, in continuation of my examination, I placed my hand upon her heart, but could detect no cause of death.
Upon her breast, however, I found a curious tattoo-mark—a strange device representing three hearts entwined. Now in my medical experience, I have found that very few women are tattooed. A woman usually shrinks from the operation—which is not unaccompanied by pain—and, on careful examination of this mark, I came to the conclusion that it had been pricked some years ago by a practised hand; further, that it had some distinct and mysterious signification.
It was in the exact centre of the breast, and just sufficiently low to remain concealed when she had worn a décolleté dress. The light was dim and unsatisfactory, but all my efforts to trace the hand of an assassin were futile.
Suddenly, however, as I examined her eyes, the left one, nearest the pillow, bore an expression which struck me as unusual. Both organs of sight seemed to have lost their clearness in the moments I had been standing there, and were glazing as rigor mortis set in, but the left eye was becoming more blurred than its fellow—an unusual circumstance which attracted me. The bright blue which I had seen in its unfathomable depths had contracted in a manner altogether unaccountable until it was now only the size of a pin’s head. I bent again closely and peered into it. Next instant the awful truth was revealed.
She had been foully murdered.