Anna Katharine Green - The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green

They were already as far as the threshold of that room and needed no further encouragement to enter. The heavier man went first and the other followed, and you may be sure I was not far behind. The sight meeting our eyes was ghastly enough, as you know; but these men were evidently accustomed to ghastly sights, for they showed but little emotion.

“I thought this house was empty,” observed the second gentleman, who was evidently a doctor.

“So it was till last night,” I put in; and was about to tell my story, when I felt my skirts jerked.

Turning, I found that this warning had come from the cleaner who stood close beside me.

“What do you want?” I asked, not understanding her and having nothing to conceal.

“I?” she faltered, with a frightened air. “Nothing, ma’am, nothing.”

“Then don’t interrupt me,” I harshly admonished her, annoyed at an interference that tended to throw suspicion upon my candor. “This woman came here to scrub and clean,” I now explained; “it was by means of the key she carried that we were enabled to get into the house. I never spoke to her till a half hour ago.”

At which, with a display of subtlety I was far from expecting in one of her appearance, she let her emotions take a fresh direction, and pointing towards the dead woman, she impetuously cried:

“But the poor child there! Aint you going to take those things off of her? It’s wicked to leave her under all that stuff. Suppose there was life in her!”

“Oh! there’s no hope of that,” muttered the doctor, lifting one of the hands, and letting it fall again.

“Still—” he cast a side look at his companion, who gave him a meaning nod—“it might be well enough to lift this cabinet sufficiently for me to lay my hand on her heart.”

They accordingly did this; and the doctor, leaning down, placed his hand over the poor bruised breast.

“No life,” he murmured. “She has been dead some hours. Do you think we had better release the head?” he went on, glancing up at the portly man at his side.

But the latter, who was rapidly growing serious, made a slight protest with his finger, and turning to me, inquired, with sudden authority:

“What did you mean when you said that the house had been empty till last night?”

“Just what I said, sir. It was empty till about midnight, when two persons——” Again I felt my dress twitched, this time very cautiously. What did the woman want? Not daring to give her a look, for these men were only too ready to detect harm in everything I did, I gently drew my skirt away and took a step aside, going on as if no interruption had occurred. “Did I say persons? I should have said a man and a woman drove up to the house and entered. I saw them from my window.”

“You did?” murmured my interlocutor, whom I had by this time decided to be a detective. “And this is the woman, I suppose?” he proceeded, pointing to the poor creature lying before us.

“Why, yes, of course. Who else can she be? I did not see the lady’s face last night, but she was young and light on her feet, and ran up the stoop gaily.”

“And the man? Where is the man? I don’t see him here.”

“I am not surprised at that. He went very soon after he came, not ten minutes after, I should say. That is what alarmed me and caused me to have the house investigated. It did not seem natural or like any of the Van Burnams to leave a woman to spend the night in so large a house alone.”

“You know the Van Burnams?”

“Not well. But that don’t signify. I know what report says of them; they are gentlemen.”

“But Mr. Van Burnam is in Europe.”

“He has two sons.”

“Living here?”

“No; the unmarried one spends his nights at Long Branch, and the other is with his wife somewhere in Connecticut.”

“How did the young couple you saw get in last night? Was there any one here to admit them?”

“No; the gentleman had a key.”

“Ah, he had a key.”

The tone in which this was said recurred to me afterwards, but at the moment I was much more impressed by a peculiar sound I heard behind me, something between a gasp and a click in the throat, which came I knew from the scrub-woman, and which, odd and contradictory as it may appear, struck me as an expression of satisfaction, though what there was in my admission to give satisfaction to this poor creature I could not conjecture. Moving so as to get a glimpse of her face, I went on with the grim self-possession natural to my character:

“And when he came out he walked briskly away. The carriage had not waited for him.”

“Ah!” again muttered the gentleman, picking up one of the broken pieces of china which lay haphazard about the floor, while I studied the cleaner’s face, which, to my amazement, gave evidences of a confusion of emotions most unaccountable to me.

Mr. Gryce may have noticed this too, for he immediately addressed her, though he continued to look at the broken piece of china in his hand.

“And how come you to be cleaning the house?” he asked. “Is the family coming home?”

“They are, sir,” she answered, hiding her emotion with great skill the moment she perceived attention directed to herself, and speaking with a sudden volubility that made us all stare. “They are expected any day. I didn’t know it till yesterday—was it yesterday? No, the day before—when young Mr. Franklin—he is the oldest son, sir, and a very nice man, a very nice man—sent me word by letter that I was to get the house ready. It isn’t the first time I have done it for them, sir, and as soon as I could get the basement key from the agent, I came here, and worked all day yesterday, washing up the floors and dusting. I should have been at them again this morning if my husband hadn’t been sick. But I had to go to the infirmary for medicine, and it was noon when I got here, and then I found this lady standing outside with a policeman, a very nice lady, a very nice lady indeed, sir, I pay my respects to her”—and she actually dropped me a curtsey like a peasant woman in a play—“and they took my key from me, and the policeman opens the door, and he and me go upstairs and into all the rooms, and when we come to this one——”

She was getting so excited as to be hardly intelligible. Stopping herself with a jerk, she fumbled nervously with her apron, while I asked myself how she could have been at work in this house the day before without my knowing it. Suddenly I remembered that I was ill in the morning and busy in the afternoon at the Orphan Asylum, and somewhat relieved at finding so excellent an excuse for my ignorance, I looked up to see if the detective had noticed anything odd in this woman’s behavior. Presumably he had, but having more experience than myself with the susceptibility of ignorant persons in the presence of danger and distress, he attached less importance to it than I did, for which I was secretly glad, without exactly knowing my reasons for being so.

“You will be wanted as a witness by the Coroner’s jury,” he now remarked to her, looking as if he were addressing the piece of china he was turning over in his hand. “Now, no nonsense!” he protested, as she commenced to tremble and plead. “You were the first one to see this dead woman, and you must be on hand to say so. As I cannot tell you when the inquest will be held, you had better stay around till the Coroner comes. He’ll be here soon. You, and this other woman too.”

By other woman he meant me , Miss Butterworth, of Colonial ancestry and no inconsiderable importance in the social world. But though I did not relish this careless association of myself with this poor scrub-woman, I was careful to show no displeasure, for I reasoned that as witnesses we were equal before the law, and that it was solely in this light he regarded us.