The Affair Next Door (21 page)

"The young lady wore a watch, of course?"

But the suggestion passed unheeded. Mrs. Boppert was as much absorbed in
her own thoughts as I was.

"Did young Mrs. Van Burnam wear a watch?" I persisted.

Mrs. Boppert's face remained a blank.

Provoked at her impassibility, I shook her with an angry hand,
imperatively demanding:

"What are you thinking of? Why don't you answer my questions?"

She was herself again in an instant.

"O ma'am, I beg your pardon. I was wondering if you meant the parlor
clock."

I calmed myself, looked severe to hide my more than eager interest, and
sharply cried:

"Of course I mean the parlor clock. Did you wind it?"

"O no, no, no, I would as soon think of touching gold or silver. But the
young lady did, I'm sure, ma'am, for I heard it strike when she was
setting of it."

Ah! If my nature had not been an undemonstrative one, and if I had not
been bred to a strong sense of social distinctions, I might have
betrayed my satisfaction at this announcement in a way that would have
made this homely German woman start. As it was I sat stock-still, and
even made her think I had not heard her. Venturing to rouse
me
a bit,
she spoke again after a minute's silence.

"She might have been lonely, you know, ma'am; and the ticking of a clock
is such company."

"Yes," I answered with more than my accustomed vivacity, for she jumped
as if I had struck her. "You have hit the nail on the head, Mrs.
Boppert, and are a much smarter woman than I thought. But when did she
wind the clock?"

"At five o'clock, ma'am; just before I left the house."

"O, and did she know you were going?"

"I think so, ma'am, for I called up, just before I put on my bonnet,
that it was five o'clock and that I was going."

"O, you did. And did she answer back?"

"Yes, ma'am. I heard her step in the hall and then her voice. She asked
if I was sure it was five, and I told her yes, because I had set the
kitchen clock at twelve. She didn't say any more, but just after that I
heard the parlor clock begin to strike."

O, thought I, what cannot be got out of the most stupid and unwilling
witness by patience and a judicious use of questions. To know that this
clock was started after five o'clock, that is, after the hour at which
the hands pointed when it fell, and that it was set correctly in
starting, and so would give indisputable testimony of the hour when the
shelves fell, were points of the greatest importance. I was so pleased I
gave the woman another smile.

Instantly she cried:

"But you won't say anything about it, will you, ma'am? They might make
me pay for all the things that were broke."

My smile this time was not one of encouragement simply. But it might
have been anything for all effect it had on her. The intricacies of the
affair had disturbed her poor brain again, and all her powers of mind
were given up to lament.

"O," she bemoaned, "I wish I had never seen her! My head wouldn't ache
so with the muddle of it. Why, ma'am, her husband said he came to the
house at midnight with his wife! How could he when she was inside of it
all the time. But then perhaps he said that, just as you did, to save me
blame. But why should a gentleman like him do that?"

"It isn't worth while for you to bother your head about it," I
expostulated. "It is enough that
my
head aches over it."

I don't suppose she understood me or tried to. Her wits had been sorely
tried and my rather severe questioning had not tended to clear them. At
all events she went on in another moment as if I had not spoken:

"But what became of her pretty dress? I was never so astonished in my
life as when I saw that dark skirt on her."

"She might have left her fine gown upstairs," I ventured, not wishing to
go into the niceties of evidence with this woman.

"So she might, so she might, and that may have been her petticoat we
saw." But in another moment she saw the impossibility of this, for she
added: "But I saw her petticoat, and it was a brown silk one. She showed
it when she lifted her skirt to get at her purse. I don't understand it,
ma'am."

As her face by this time was almost purple, I thought it a mercy to
close the interview; so I uttered some few words of a soothing and
encouraging nature, and then seeing that something more tangible was
necessary to restore her to any proper condition of spirits, I took out
my pocket-book and bestowed on her some of my loose silver.

This was something she
could
understand. She brightened immediately,
and before she was well through her expressions of delight, I had
quitted the room and in a few minutes later the shop.

I hope the two women had their cup of tea after that.

I was so excited when I entered my carriage that I rode all the way home
with my bonnet askew and never knew it. When I reached my room and saw
myself in the glass, I was shocked, and stole a glance at Lena, who was
setting out my little tea-table, to see if she noticed what a ridiculous
figure I cut. But she is discretion itself, and for a girl with two
undeniable dimples in her cheeks, smiles seldom—at least when I am
looking at her. She was not smiling now, and though, for the reason
given above, this was not as comforting as it may appear, I chose not to
worry myself any longer about such a trifle when I had matters of so
much importance on my mind.

Taking off my bonnet, whose rakish appearance had given me such a shock,
I sat down, and for half an hour neither moved nor spoke. I was
thinking. A theory which had faintly suggested itself to me at the
inquest was taking on body with these later developments. Two hats had
been found on the scene of the tragedy, and two pairs of gloves, and now
I had learned that there had been two women there, the one whom Mrs.
Boppert had locked into the house on leaving it, and the one whom I had
seen enter at midnight with Mr. Van Burnam. Which of the two had
perished? We had been led to think, and Mr. Van Burnam had himself
acknowledged, that it was his wife; but his wife had been dressed quite
differently from the murdered woman, and was, as I soon began to see,
much more likely to have been the assassin than the victim. Would you
like to know my reasons for this extraordinary statement? If so, they
are these:

I had always seen a woman's hand in this work, but having no reason to
believe in the presence of any other woman on the scene of crime than
the victim, I had put this suspicion aside as untenable. But now that I
had found the second woman, I returned to it.

But how connect her with the murder? It seemed easy enough to do so if
this other woman was her rival. We have heard of no rival, but she may
have known of one, and this knowledge may have been at the bottom of her
disagreement with her husband and the half-crazy determination she
evinced to win his family over to her side. Let us say, then, that the
second woman was Mrs. Van Burnam's rival. That he brought her there not
knowing that his wife had effected an entrance into the house; brought
her there after an afternoon spent at the Hotel D—, during which he
had furnished her with a new outfit of less pronounced type, perhaps,
than that she had previously worn. The use of the two carriages and the
care they took to throw suspicion off their track, may have been part of
a scheme of future elopement, for I had no idea they meant to remain in
Mr. Van Burnam's house. For what purpose, then, did they go there? To
meet Mrs. Van Burnam and kill her, that their way might be clearer for
flight? No; I had rather think that they went to the house without a
thought of whom they would encounter, and that only after they had
entered the parlors did he realize that the two women he least wished to
see together had been brought by his folly face to face.

The presence in the third room of Mrs. Van Burnam's hat, gloves, and
novel seemed to argue that she had spent the evening in reading by the
dining-room table, but whether this was so or not, the stopping of a
carriage in front and the opening of the door by an accustomed hand
undoubtedly assured her that either the old gentleman or some other
member of the family had unexpectedly arrived. She was, therefore, in or
near the parlor-door when they entered, and the shock of meeting her
hated rival in company with her husband, under the very roof where she
had hoped to lay the foundations of her future happiness, must have been
great, if not maddening. Accusations, recriminations even, did not
satisfy her. She wanted to kill; but she had no weapon. Suddenly her
eyes fell on the hat-pin which her more self-possessed rival had drawn
from her hat, possibly before their encounter, and she conceived a plan
which seemed to promise her the very revenge she sought. How she carried
it out; by what means she was enabled to approach her victim and inflict
with such certainty the fatal stab which laid her enemy at her feet, can
be left to the imagination. But that she, a woman, and not Howard, a
man, drove this woman's weapon into the stranger's spine, I will yet
prove, or lose all faith in my own intuitions.

But if this theory is true, how about the shelves that fell at daybreak,
and how about her escape from the house without detection? A little
thought will explain all that. The man, horrified, no doubt, at the
result of his imprudence, and execrating the crime to which it had led,
left the house almost immediately. But the woman remained there,
possibly because she had fainted, possibly because he would have nothing
to do with her; and coming to herself, saw her victim's face staring up
at her with an accusing beauty she found it impossible to meet. What
should she do to escape it? Where should she go? She hated it so she
could have trampled on it, but she restrained her passions till
daybreak, when in one wild burst of fury and hatred she drew down the
cabinet upon it, and then fled the scene of horror she had herself
caused. This was at five, or, to be exact, three minutes before that
hour, as shown by the clock she had carelessly set in her lighter
moments.

She escaped by the front door, which her husband had mercifully forborne
to lock; and she had not been discovered by the police, because her
appearance did not tally with the description which had been given them.
How did I know this? Remember the discoveries I had made in Miss Van
Burnam's room, and allow them to assist you in understanding my
conclusions.

Some one had gone into that room; some one who wanted pins; and keeping
this fact before my eyes, I saw through the motive and actions of the
escaping woman. She had on a dress separated at the waist, and finding,
perhaps, a spot of blood on the skirt, she conceived the plan of
covering it with her petticoat, which was also of silk and undoubtedly
as well made as many women's dresses. But the skirt of the gown was
longer than the petticoat and she was obliged to pin it up. Having no
pins herself, and finding none on the parlor floor, she went up-stairs
to get some. The door at the head of the stairs was locked, but the
front room was open, so she entered there. Groping her way to the
bureau, for the place was very dark, she found a pin-cushion hanging
from a bracket. Feeling it to be full of pins, and knowing that she
could see nothing where she was, she tore it away and carried it towards
the door. Here there was some light from the skylight over the stairs,
so setting the cushion down on the bed, she pinned up the skirt of her
gown.

When this was done she started away, brushing the cushion off the bed in
her excitement, and fearing to be traced by her many-colored hat, or
having no courage remaining for facing again the horror in the parlor,
she slid out without one and went, God knows whither, in her terror and
remorse.

So much for my theory; now for the facts standing in the way of its
complete acceptance. They were two: the scar on the ankle of the dead
girl, which was a peculiarity of Louise Van Burnam, and the mark of the
rings on her fingers. But who had identified the scar? Her husband. No
one else. And if the other woman had, by some strange freak of chance, a
scar also on her left foot, then the otherwise unaccountable apathy he
had shown at being told of this distinctive mark, as well as his
temerity in afterwards taking it as a basis for his false
identification, becomes equally consistent and natural; and as for the
marks of the rings, it would be strange if such a woman did not wear
rings and plenty of them.

Howard's conduct under examination and the contradiction between his
first assertions and those that followed, all become clear in the light
of this new theory. He had seen his wife kill a defenceless woman
before his eyes, and whether influenced by his old affection for her or
by his pride in her good name, he could not but be anxious to conceal
her guilt even at the cost of his own truthfulness. As long then as
circumstances permitted, he preserved his indifferent attitude, and
denied that the dead woman was his wife. But when driven to the wall by
the indisputable proof which was brought forth of his wife having been
in the place of murder, he saw, or thought he did, that a continued
denial on his part of Louise Van Burnam being the victim might lead
sooner or later to the suspicion of her being the murderer, and
influenced by this fear, took the sudden resolution of profiting by all
the points which the two women had in common by acknowledging, what
everybody had expected him to acknowledge from the first, that the woman
at the Morgue was his wife. This would exonerate her, rid him of any
apprehension he may have entertained of her ever returning to be a
disgrace to him, and would (and perhaps this thought influenced him
most, for who can understand such men or the passions that sway them)
insure the object of his late devotion a decent burial in a Christian
cemetery. To be sure, the risk he ran was great, but the emergency was
great, and he may not have stopped to count the cost. At all events, the
fact is certain that he perjured himself when he said that it was his
wife he brought to the house from the Hotel D—, and if he perjured
himself in this regard, he probably perjured himself in others, and his
testimony is not at all to be relied upon.