John Curran - The Leavenworth Case

Do what he would, and being a reserved man he appeared anxious to control his emotion, the horror of his first shock seemed to overwhelm him here. Pulling his handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his forehead. ‘Gentlemen, that is the last action of Mr Leavenworth I ever saw. As he set the glass down on the table, I said good-night to him and left the room.’

The coroner, with a characteristic imperviousness to all expressions of emotion, leaned back and surveyed the young man with a scrutinising glance. ‘And where did you go then?’ he asked.

‘To my own room.’

‘Did you meet anybody on the way?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Hear anything or see anything unusual?’

The secretary’s voice fell a trifle. ‘No, sir.’

‘Mr Harwell, think again. Are you ready to swear that you neither met anybody, heard anybody, nor saw anything which lingers yet in your memory as unusual?’

His face grew quite distressed. Twice he opened his lips to speak, and as often closed them without doing so. At last, with an effort, he replied:

‘I saw one thing, a little thing, too slight to mention, but it was unusual, and I could not help thinking of it when you spoke.’

‘What was it?’

‘Only a door half open.’

‘Whose door?’

‘Miss Eleanore Leavenworth’s.’ His voice was almost a whisper now.

‘Where were you when you observed this fact?’

‘I cannot say exactly. Probably at my own door, as I did not stop on the way. If this frightful occurrence had not taken place I should never have thought of it again.’

‘When you went into your room did you close your door?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘How soon did you retire?’

‘Immediately.’

‘Did you hear nothing before you fell asleep?’

Again that indefinable hesitation.

‘Barely nothing.’

‘Not a footstep in the hall?’

‘I might have heard a footstep.’

‘Did you?’

‘I cannot swear I did.’

‘Do you think you did?’

‘Yes, I think I did. To tell the whole: I remember hearing, just as I was falling into a doze, a rustle and a footstep in the hall; but it made no impression upon me, and I dropped asleep.’

‘Well?’

‘Some time later I woke, woke suddenly, as if something had startled me, but what, a noise or move, I cannot say. I remember rising up in my bed and looking around, but hearing nothing further, soon yielded to the drowsiness which possessed me and fell into a deep sleep. I did not wake again till morning.’

Here requested to relate how and when he became acquainted with the fact of the murder, he substantiated, in all particulars, the account of the matter already given by the butler; which subject being exhausted, the coroner went on to ask if he had noted the condition of the library table after the body had been removed.

‘Somewhat; yes, sir.’

‘What was on it?’

‘The usual properties, sir, books, paper, a pen with the ink dried on it, besides the decanter and the wineglass from which he drank the night before.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘I remember nothing more.’

‘In regard to that decanter and glass,’ broke in the juryman of the watch and chain, ‘did you not say that the latter was found in the same condition in which you saw it at the time you left Mr Leavenworth sitting in his library?’

‘Yes, sir, very much.’

‘Yet he was in the habit of drinking a full glass?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘An interruption must then have ensued very close upon your departure, Mr Harwell.’

A cold bluish pallor suddenly broke out upon the young man’s face. He started, and for a moment looked as if struck by some horrible thought. ‘That does not follow, sir,’ he articulated with some difficulty. ‘Mr Leavenworth might—’ but suddenly stopped, as if too much distressed to proceed.

‘Go on, Mr Harwell, let us hear what you have to say.’

‘There is nothing,’ he returned faintly, as if battling with some strong emotion.

As he had not been answering a question, only volunteering an explanation, the coroner let it pass; but I saw more than one pair of eyes roll suspiciously from side to side, as if many there felt that some sort of clue had been offered them in this man’s emotion. The coroner, ignoring in his easy way both the emotion and the universal excitement it had produced, now proceeded to ask: ‘Do you know whether the key to the library was in its place when you left the room last night?’

‘No, sir; I did not notice.’

‘The presumption is, it was?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘At all events, the door was locked in the morning, and the key gone?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then whoever committed this murder locked the door on passing out, and took away the key?’

‘It would seem so.’

The coroner turning, faced the jury with an earnest look. ‘Gentlemen,’ said he, ‘there seems to be a mystery in regard to this key which must be looked into.’

Immediately a universal murmur swept through the room, testifying to the acquiescence of all present. The little juryman hastily rising proposed that an instant search should be made for it; but the coroner, turning upon him with what I should denominate as a quelling look, decided that the inquest should proceed in the usual manner, till the verbal testimony was all in.

‘Then allow me to ask a question,’ again volunteered the irrepressible. ‘Mr Harwell, we are told that upon the breaking in of the library door this morning, Mr Leavenworth’s two nieces followed you into the room.’

‘One of them, sir, Miss Eleanore.’

‘Is Miss Eleanore the one who is said to be Mr Leavenworth’s sole heiress?’ the coroner here interposed.

‘No, sir, that is Miss Mary.’

‘That she gave orders,’ pursued the juryman, ‘for the removal of the body into the further room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And that you obeyed her by helping to carry it in?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now, in thus passing through the rooms, did you observe anything to lead you to form a suspicion of the murderer?’

The secretary shook his head. ‘I have no suspicion,’ he emphatically said.

Somehow, I did not believe him. Whether it was the tone of his voice, the clutch of his hand on his sleeve—and the hand will often reveal more than the countenance—I felt that this man was not to be relied upon in making this assertion.

‘I should like to ask Mr Harwell a question,’ said a juryman who had not yet spoken. ‘We have had a detailed account of what looks like the discovery of a murdered man. Now, murder is never committed without some motive. Does the secretary know whether Mr Leavenworth had any secret enemy?’