Persons Unknown Part 10

"On the way to the post-box I saw Mrs. Johnson, who lives two doors below and who had told us about the house being for rent. She is the only person whom I know in the neighborhood. On the way back I met no one."

"Then no one saw you re-enter the house?"

"I think not."

"Did the maid let you in?"

"No, I had my key. The maids had gone to bed."

"But it was a very hot night. People sat up late, with all their windows open, and caretakers in particular must have been sitting on the steps, some one must have seen you return."

"Perhaps they did."

"Did you, yourself, notice no one whom we can summon as a witness to your return?"

"No one."

"What did you do when you came in?"

"I went to bed."

"You do not sleep in the same room with your mother?"

"No."

"On the same floor?"

"Yes."

"Do you lock your door?"

"No."

"But she would not be apt to come into your room during the night?"

"Not unless something had happened; no."

"Could you pa.s.s her door without her hearing you?"

"I should suppose so. I never tried."

"So that you really have no witness but your mother, Miss Hope, that you returned to the house, and no witness whatever that you remained in it?"

"No," Christina breathed.

"Well, now I'm extremely sorry to recall a painful experience, but when and how did you first hear of Mr. Ingham's death?"

"In the morning, early, the telephone began to ring and ring. I could hear my mother and the maids hurrying about the house, but I felt so ill I did not try to get up. I knew I had a hard day's work ahead of me, and I wanted to keep quiet. But, at last, just as I was thinking it must be time, my mother came in and told me to lie still; that she would bring up my breakfast herself. I said I must go to rehearsal at any rate; and she said, 'No, you are not to go to rehearsal to-day; something has happened.'"

The navete of Christina's phrases sank to an awed whisper; her eyes were very fixed, like those of a child hypnotized by its own vision.

"I saw then that she was trying not to tremble and that she had been crying. She couldn't deny it, and so she told me that Mr. Ingham was very, very ill, and she let me get up and helped me to dress. But then, when I must see other people--she told me--she told me--"

Christina's throat swelled and her eyes filled suddenly with tears.

The coroner, cursing the sympathy of the situation, forced himself to a commiserating, "Did she say how he died?"

"She told me it was an accident. I said, 'What kind of an accident?' And she said he was shot. 'But,' I said, 'how could he be shot by an accident? He didn't have any pistol? You know he didn't own such a thing.'" A slight sensation traversed the court. "Then it came out--that no one knew--that people were saying it was--murder--"

"Do you believe that, Miss Hope?"

"I don't know what to believe."

"Did Mr. Ingham have any enemies?"

"I knew of none."

"From your intimate knowledge of Mr. Ingham's affairs you know of no one, either with a grudge to satisfy or a profit to be made, by his death?"

"No. No one at all."

"So that you have really no theory as to how this terrible thing happened?"

"No, really, I haven't."

"Well, then, I suppose we may excuse you, Miss Hope."

The girl, with her tranquil but slightly timid dignity, inclined her head, and heaving a deep sigh of relief, turned away.--

--"Oh, by the way, Miss Hope,--" And suddenly, with a violent change of manner, he began to beat her down by the tactics which he had used with Deutch. But with how different a result! Nothing could make that pale, tall girl ridiculous. Scarcely speaking above a breath, she answered question after question and patiently turned aside insult after insult.

He found no opposition, no confusion, no reticence; nothing but that soft yielding, that plaintive ingenuousness. The crudest jokes, the cruelest thrusts still left her anxiously endeavoring to convey desired information. He took her back over her relations with Ingham, their interview upon his return, the events of the last evening, with an instance and a repet.i.tion that wearied even the auditors to distraction; he would let her run on a little in her answers and then bring her up with a round turn; twenty times he took with her that journey to and from the post-box and examined every step, and still her replies ran like sand through his fingers and left no trace behind. But, at last, she put out a hand toward the chair she had rejected, and sank slowly into it. Then indeed it became plain that she was profoundly exhausted.

And because her exhaustion was so natural and so pitiable, the coroner, watching its effect, said, "Well, I can think of nothing more to ask you, Miss Hope. I suppose it would be useless to inquire whether, being familiar with the apartment, you could suggest any way in which, the door being bolted, the murderer could have escaped?"

Christina looked up at him with a very faint smile and with her humble sweetness that had become almost stupidity, she said, "Perhaps the murderer wasn't in the apartment at all!"

The whole roomful of tired people sat up. "Not in the apartment! And where, then, pray?"

"Well," said Christina, softly, "he could have been shot through an open window, I suppose. Of course, I'm only a woman, and I shouldn't like to suggest anything. Because, of course, I'm not clever, as a lawyer is.

But--"

"Well, we're waiting for this suggestion!"

"Oh!--Well, it seems to me that when this lady, whose shadow excited the young gentleman so much, disappeared as if it went forward, perhaps it did go forward, perhaps she ran out of the room. You can see--if you don't mind stopping to think about it--that she must have been standing right opposite the door. If she had been quarreling with Mr. Ingham, he may have bolted the door after her. I don't know if you've looked--but the b.u.t.ton for the lights is right there--in the panel of the wall between the door and the bedroom arch. Mr. Ingham was a very nervous, emotional person. If there had been a scene, he might very well have meant to switch the lights out after her, too. If he had his finger on the b.u.t.ton when the bullet struck him, he might very well, in the shock, have pressed it. And then the lights would have gone out, almost as if the bullet had put them out, just as the young man says. But, of course, if this were what had happened, you would have thought of it for yourself." And she looked up meekly at him, with her sweet smile.

The coroner smiled, too, with compressed lips, and putting his hands in his pockets, threw back his head. "And how do you think, then, that--if he was killed instantly, as the doctors have testified,--the corpse walked into the bedroom, where it was found?"

"Ah!" said Christina, "I can't account for everything! I'm not an observer, like you! But there has never been, has there, a doctor who was ever wrong? Of course, I don't pretend to know."