The Leavenworth Case (Penguin Classics)

by Anna Katharine Green

  When, I thought. Ah, it is that when which is likely to ruin all! But intent only upon fulfilling her will, I sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. Clavering, in which I stated what she had said and begged him to have patience, adding that I would surely let him know if any change took place in Mary or her circumstances. And having dispatched it to his address in London, awaited the development of events.

  They were not slow in transpiring. In two weeks from that time I heard of the sudden death of Mr. Stebbins, the minister who had married them; and while yet laboring under the agitation produced by this shock, was further startled by seeing in a New York paper the name of Mr. Clavering among the list of arrivals at the Hoffman House; showing that my letter to him had failed in its intended effect, and that the patience Mary had calculated upon so blindly was verging to its end. I was consequently far from being surprised when, in a couple of weeks or so afterward, a letter came from him to my address, which, owing to the careless omission of the private mark upon the envelope, I opened, and read enough to learn that, driven to desperation by the constant failures which he had experienced in all his endeavors to gain access to her in public or private, a failure which he was not backward in ascribing to her indisposition to see him, he had made up his mind to risk everything, even her displeasure; and by making an appeal to her uncle, end the suspense under which he was laboring, definitely and at once. “I want you, Amy,” he wrote, “dowered or dowerless, it makes little difference to me. If you will not come of yourself, then I must follow the example of the brave knights, my ancestors; storm the castle that holds you, and carry you off by force of arms.”

  Neither can I say that I was much surprised, knowing Mary as I did, when in a few days from this she forwarded to me, for copying, this reply: “If Mr. Robbins ever expects to be happy with Amy Belden, let him reconsider the determination of which he speaks. Not only would he by such an action succeed in destroying the happiness of her he professes to love, but run the greater risk of effectually annulling the affection which makes the tie between them endurable.”

  To this there was neither date nor signature. It was the cry of warning which a spirited, self-contained creature gives when brought to bay. It made even me recoil, though I had known from the first that her pretty willfulness was but the tossing foam floating above the soundless depths of cold resolve and most deliberate purpose.

  What its real effect was upon him and her fate I can only conjecture. All I know is that in two weeks thereafter Mr. Leavenworth was found murdered in his room, and Hannah Chester, coming direct to my door from the scene of violence, begged me to take her in and secrete her from public inquiry, as I loved and desired to serve Mary Leavenworth.

  CHAPTER 7

  Unexpected Testimony

  Pol. What do you read, my lord?

  Ham. Words, words, words.

  —HAMLET.

  Mrs. Belden paused, lost in the somber shadow which these words were calculated to evoke, and a short silence fell upon the room. It was broken by my asking for some account of the occurrence she had just mentioned, it being considered a mystery how Hannah could have found entrance into her house without the knowledge of the neighbors.

  “Well,” said she, “it was a chilly night and I had gone to bed early—I was sleeping then in the room off this—when, at about a quarter to one—the last train goes through R——at 12.50—there came a low knock on the window-pane at the head of my bed. Thinking that some of the neighbors were sick, I hurriedly rose on my elbow and asked who was there. The answer come in low, muffled tones: ‘Hannah, Miss Leavenworth’s girl! Please let me in at the kitchen door.’ Startled at hearing the well-known voice, and fearing I knew not what, I caught up a lamp and hurried round to the door. ‘Is anyone with you?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Then come in.’ But no sooner had she done so than all my strength failed me and I had to sit down, for I saw she looked very pale and strange, was without baggage and altogether had the appearance of some wandering spirit. ‘Hannah!’ I gasped, ‘what is it? what has happened? what brings you here in this condition and at this time of night?’ ‘Miss Leavenworth has sent me,’ replied she in the low monotonous tone of one repeating a lesson by rote. ‘She told me to come here; said you would keep me. I am not to go out of the house and no one is to know I am here.’ ‘But why?’ I asked, trembling with a thousand undefined fears, ‘what has occurred?’ ‘I dare not say,’ she whispered, ‘I am forbidden; I am just to stay here and keep quiet.’ ‘But——’ I began, helping her take off her shawl, the dingy blanket advertised for in the papers—‘You must tell me. She surely did not forbid you to tell me?’ ‘Yes, she did, everyone,’ the girl replied, growing white in her persistence, ‘and I never break my word, fire couldn’t draw it out of me.’ She looked so determined, so utterly unlike herself as I remembered her in the meek, unobtrusive days of our old acquaintance, that I could do nothing but stare at her. ‘You will keep me,’ she said, ‘you will not turn me away?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I will not turn you away.’ ‘And tell no one?’ she went on. ‘And tell no one,’ I repeated.

  “This seemed to relieve her. Thanking me, she quietly followed me upstairs. I put her into the room in which you found her, because it was the most secret one in the house, and there she has remained ever since, satisfied and contented as far as I could see till this very same horrible day.”

  “And is that all?” I asked. “Did you have no explanation with her afterward? Did she never give you any information in regard to the transaction which led to her flight?”

  “No, sir. She kept a most persistent silence. Neither then nor when, upon the next day, I confronted her with the papers in my hand and the awful question upon my lips as to whether her flight had been occasioned by the murder which had taken place in Mr. Leavenworth’s household, did she do more than acknowledge she had run away on its account. Someone or something had sealed her lips, and as she said, ‘Fire and torture should never make her speak.’”

  Another short pause followed this, then with my mind still hovering about the one point of intensest interest to me, I said:

  “This story, then, this account which you have just given me of Mary Leavenworth’s secret marriage and the great strait it put her into—a strait from which nothing but her uncle’s death could seem to relieve her—together with this acknowledgment of Hannah’s that she had left home and taken refuge here on the insistence of Mary Leavenworth, is the groundwork you have for the suspicions you have mentioned?”

  “Yes, sir, that and the proof of her interest in the matter which is given by the letter I received from her yesterday, and which you say you have now in your possession.”

  Oh, that letter!

  “I know,” Mrs. Belden went on in a broken voice, “that it is wrong in a serious case like this to draw hasty conclusions: but oh, sir, how can I help it, knowing what I do?”

  I did not answer, I was revolving in my mind the old question: was it possible, in face of all these later developments, still to believe Mary Leavenworth’s own hand guiltless of her uncle’s blood?

  “It is dreadful to come to such conclusions,” proceeded Mrs. Belden, “and nothing but her own words written in her own hand would ever have driven me to them, but——”

  “Mrs. Belden,” I interrupted, “pardon me, but you said in the beginning of this interview that you did not believe Mary herself had any direct hand in her uncle’s murder. Are you ready to repeat that assertion?”

  “Yes, yes, indeed. Whatever I may think of her influence in inducing it, I never could imagine her having anything to do with its actual performance. Oh no, oh no, whatever was done on that dreadful night, Mary Leavenworth never put hand to pistol or ball, or even stood by while they were used, that you may be sure of. Only the man who loved her, longed for her, and felt the impossibility of obtaining her by any other means, could have found nerve for an act so horrible.”

  “Then you think——”

  “Mr. Clavering is the man? I do
, and oh, sir, when you consider that he is her husband, is it not dreadful enough?”

  “It is indeed,” said I, rising to conceal how much I was affected by this conclusion of hers.

  Something in my tone or appearance seemed to startle her. “I hope and trust I have not been indiscreet,” she cried, eyeing me with something like an incipient distrust. “With this dead girl lying in my house, I ought to be very careful, I know, but——”

  “You have said nothing,” I cried, edging toward the door in my anxiety to escape if but for a moment from an atmosphere that was stifling me. “No one can blame you for anything you have either said or done today. But”—and here I paused and walked hurriedly back—“I wish to ask one thing more. Have you any reason beyond that of natural repugnance to believing a young and beautiful woman guilty of a great crime for saying what you have of Henry Clavering, a gentleman who has hitherto been mentioned by you with respect?”

  “No,” she whispered, with a touch of her old agitation, “none but that.”

  I felt the reason insufficient, and turned away with something of the same sense of suffocation with which I heard that the key sought for had been found in Eleanore Leavenworth’s possession. “You must excuse me,” I said; “I want to be a moment by myself in order to ponder over the facts which I have just heard; I will soon return”; and without further ceremony, hurried from the room.

  By some indefinable impulse I went immediately upstairs, and took my stand at the western window of the large room directly over Mrs. Belden. The blinds were closed; the room was shrouded in funereal gloom, but its somberness and horror were for the moment unfelt: I was engaged in a fearful debate with myself. Was Mary Leavenworth the principal or merely the accessory in this crime? Did the determined prejudice of Mr. Gryce, the convictions of Eleanore, the circumstantial evidence even of such facts as had come to our knowledge, preclude the possibility that Mrs. Belden’s conclusions were correct? That all the detectives interested in the affair would regard the question as settled I did not doubt, but need it be? Was it utterly impossible to find evidence yet that Henry Clavering was, after all, the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth?

  Filled with the thought, I looked across the room to the closet where lay the body of the girl who, according to all probability, had known the truth of this matter, and a great longing seized me. Oh, why could not the dead be made to speak? Why should she lie there so silent, so pulseless, so inert, when a word from her was enough to decide the awful question? Was there no power to compel those pallid lips to move?

  Carried away by the fervor of the moment, I made my way to her side. Ah, God, how still! With what a mockery the closed lips and lids confronted my demanding gaze! A stone could not have been more unresponsive.

  With a feeling that was almost like anger I stood there, when—oh, what was it I saw protruding from beneath her shoulders where they crushed against the bed? an envelope, a letter? Yes.

  Dizzy with the sudden surprise, overcome with the wild hopes this discovery awakened, I stooped in great agitation and drew the letter out. It was sealed but not directed. Breaking it hastily open, I took a glance at its contents. Good Heavens! It was the work of the girl herself!—its very appearance was enough to make that evident! Feeling as if a miracle had happened, I hastened with it into the other room and set myself to decipher the awkward scrawl.

  This is what I saw rudely printed in lead pencil on the inside of a sheet of common writing-paper:

  I am a wicked girl. I have known things all the time which I had ought to have told but I didn’t dare to he said he would kill me if I did I mene the tall splendud looking gentulman with the black mustash who I met coming out of Mister Leavenworth’s room with a key in his hand the night Mr. Leavenworth was murdered. He was so scared he gave me money and made me go away and come here and keep everything secret but I can’t do so no longer. I seem to see Miss Elenor all the time crying and asking me if I want her sent to prisun. God knows I’d rathur die. And this is the truth and my last words and I pray everybody’s forgiveness and hope nobody will blame me and that they won’t bother Miss Elenor any more but go and look after the handsome gentulman with the black mustash.

  BOOK IV

  THE PROBLEM SOLVED

  CHAPTER 1

  Mr. Gryce Resumes Control

  It out-herods Herod.

  —HAMLET.

  A thing devised by the enemy.

  —RICH. III.

  A half-hour had passed. The train upon which I had every reason to expect Mr. Gryce had arrived, and I stood in the doorway awaiting with indescribable agitation the slow and labored approach of the motley group of men and women which I had observed leave the station at the departure of the cars. Would he be among them? Was the telegram of a nature peremptory enough to make his presence here, sick as he was, an absolute certainty? The written confession of Hannah throbbing against my heart, a heart all elation now, as but a short half-hour before it had been all doubt and struggle, seemed to rustle distrust, and the prospect of a long afternoon spent in impatience was rising before me, when a portion of the advancing crowd turned off into a side-street, and I saw the form of Mr. Gryce hobbling not on two sticks, but very painfully on one, coming slowly down the street.

  His face, as he approached, was a study.

  “Well, well, well,” exclaimed he, as we met at the gate; “this is a pretty how-d’ye-do, I must say. Hannah dead, eh? and everything turned topsy-turvy! Humph, and what do you think of Mary Leavenworth now?”

  It would therefore seem natural, in the conversation which followed his introduction into the house and installation in Mrs. Belden’s parlor, I should begin my narration by showing him Hannah’s confession; but it was not so. Whether it was I felt anxious to have him go through the same alternations of hope and fear it had been my lot to experience since I came to R——; or, whether in the depravity of human nature there lingered within me sufficient resentment for the persistent disregard he had always paid to my suspicions of Henry Clavering, to make it a matter of moment to me, to spring this knowledge upon him just at the instant his own convictions seemed to have reached the point of absolute certainty, I cannot say. Enough that it was not till I had given him a full account of every other matter connected with my stay in this house; not till I saw his eye beaming and his lip quivering with the excitement incident upon the perusal of the letter from Mary, found in Mrs. Belden’s pocket; not, indeed, until I became assured from such expressions as “Tremendous! The deepest game of the season! Nothing like it since the Lafarge affair !” that in another moment he would be uttering some theory or belief that, once heard, would forever stand like a barrier between us, did I allow myself to hand him the letter I had taken from under the dead body of Hannah.

  I shall never forget his expression, as he received it. “Good Heavens!” cried he, “what’s this?”

  “A dying confession,” replied I, “of the girl Hannah. I found it lying in her bed, when I went up a half-hour ago to take a second look at her.”

  Opening it, he glanced over it with an incredulous air, that speedily, however, turned to one of the utmost astonishment, as he hastily read it, and then stood turning it over and over in his hand, examining it.

  “A remarkable piece of evidence,” exclaimed I, not without a certain feeling of triumph; “quite changes the aspect of affairs!”

  “Think so?” answered he sharply; then whilst I stood staring at him in amazement, his manner was so different from what I expected, he looked up and said: “You tell me that you found this in her bed. Whereabouts in her bed?”

  “Under the body of the girl herself,” returned I. “I saw one corner of it protruding from beneath her shoulders, and drew it out.”

  He came and stood before me. “Was it folded or open when you first looked at it?”

  “Folded; fastened up in this envelope,” showing it to him.

  He took it, looked at it for a moment, and went on with his questions.

  “Thi
s envelope has a very crumpled appearance, as well as the letter itself. Were they so when you found them?”

  “Yes, not only so, but doubled up as you see.”

  “Doubled up? You are sure of that? Folded, sealed and then doubled up as if her body had rolled across it while alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “No trickery about it? No look as if the thing had been insinuated there since her death?”

  “Not at all; I should rather say that to every appearance she held it in her hand when she lay down, but turning over, dropped it and had lain upon it.”

  Mr. Gryce’s eyes, which had been very bright, ominously clouded; evidently he had been disappointed in my answers. Laying the letter down, he stood musing, but suddenly lifted it again, scrutinized the edges of the paper on which it was written, and, darting me a quick look, vanished with it into the shade of the window-curtain. His manner was so peculiar, I involuntarily rose to follow, but he waved me back, saying: “Amuse yourself with that box on the table, which you had such an ado over; see if everything is there according to Mrs. Belden’s telling; I want to be by myself for a moment.”

  Subduing my astonishment, I proceeded to comply with his request, but scarcely had I lifted the lid of the box before me, when he came hurrying back, flung the letter down on the table with an air of the greatest excitement, and cried:

  “Did I say there had never been anything like it since the Lafarge affair? I tell you there has never been anything like it in any affair. It is the rummest case on record! Mr. Raymond”—and his eyes, in his excitement, actually met mine for the first time in my experience of him; “prepare yourself for a disappointment. This pretended confession of Hannah’s is a fraud!”