Calming down, he stood gazing at her with a very strange expression upon his face.
Suddenly he moved and began quietly turning over the clothes that were lying on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”
“I am looking for the bit of paper from which I saw her take what I supposed to be a dose of medicine last night.
Oh, here it is!” he cried, lifting a morsel of paper that, lying on the floor under the edge of the bed, had hitherto escaped his notice.
“Let me see!” I anxiously exclaimed.
He handed me the paper, on the inner surface of which I could dimly discern the traces of an impalpable white powder.
“This is important,” I declared, carefully folding the paper together. “If there is enough of this powder remaining to show that the contents of this paper were poisonous, the manner and means of the girl’s death are accounted for, and a case of deliberate suicide made evident.”
“I am not so sure of that,” he retorted. “If I am any judge of countenances, and I rather flatter myself I am, this girl had no more idea she was taking poison than I had.
She looked not only bright but gay; and when she tipped up the paper, a smile of almost silly triumph crossed her face.
If Mrs. Belden gave her that dose to take, telling her it was medicine—”
“That is something which yet remains to be learned; also whether the dose, as you call it, was poisonous or not. It may be she died of heart disease.”
He simply shrugged his shoulders, and pointed first at the plate of breakfast left on the chair, and secondly at the broken-down door.
“Yes,” I said, answering his look, “Mrs. Belden has been in here this morning, and Mrs. Belden locked the door when she went out; but that proves nothing beyond her belief in the girl’s hearty condition.”
“A belief which that white face on its tumbled pillow did not seem to shake?”
“Perhaps in her haste she may not have looked at the girl, but have set the dishes down without more than a casual glance in her direction?”
“I don’t want to suspect anything wrong, but it is such a coincidence!”
This was touching me on a sore point, and I stepped back.
“Well,” said I, “there is no use in our standing here busying ourselves with conjectures.
There is too much to be done.
Come!” and I moved hurriedly towards the door.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Have you forgotten this is but an episode in the one great mystery we are sent here to unravel?
If this girl has come to her death by some foul play, it is our business to find it out.”
“That must be left for the coroner.
It has now passed out of our hands.”
“I know; but we can at least take full note of the room and everything in it before throwing the affair into the hands of strangers.
Mr. Gryce will expect that much of us, I am sure.”
“I have looked at the room.
The whole is photographed on my mind.
I am only afraid I can never forget it.”
“And the body?
Have you noticed its position? the lay of the bed-clothes around it? the lack there is of all signs of struggle or fear? the repose of the countenance? the easy fall of the hands?”
“Yes, yes; don’t make me look at it any more.”
“Then the clothes hanging on the wall?”—rapidly pointing out each object as he spoke.
“Do you see? a calico dress, a shawl,—not the one in which she was believed to have run away, but an old black one, probably belonging to Mrs. Belden.
Then this chest,”—opening it,—“containing a few underclothes marked,—let us see, ah, with the name of the lady of the house, but smaller than any she ever wore; made for Hannah, you observe, and marked with her own name to prevent suspicion.
And then these other clothes lying on the floor, all new, all marked in the same way.
Then this—Halloo! look here!” he suddenly cried.
Going over to where he stood I stooped down, when a wash-bowl half full of burned paper met my eye.
“I saw her bending over something in this corner, and could not think what it was.
Can it be she is a suicide after all?
She has evidently destroyed something here which she didn’t wish any one to see.”
“I do not know,” I said. “I could almost hope so.”
“Not a scrap, not a morsel left to show what it was; how unfortunate!”
“Mrs. Belden must solve this riddle,” I cried.
“Mrs. Belden must solve the whole riddle,” he replied; “the secret of the Leavenworth murder hangs upon it.” Then, with a lingering look towards the mass of burned paper, “Who knows but what that was a confession?”
The conjecture seemed only too probable.
“Whatever it was,” said I, “it is now ashes, and we have got to accept the fact and make the best of it.”
“Yes,” said he with a deep sigh; “that’s so; but Mr. Gryce will never forgive me for it, never.
He will say I ought to have known it was a suspicious circumstance for her to take a dose of medicine at the very moment detection stood at her back.”