The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green (best books to read all time TXT) 📕

agree with the one related by the girl herself. Now the fact of a forged confession throwing the guilt upon an innocent party having been found in the keeping of this ignorant girl, killed by a dose of poison, taken with the fact here stated, that on the morning of the day on which she killed herself the girl received from some one manifestly acquainted with the customs of the Leavenworth family a letter large enough and thick enough to contain the confession folded, as it was when found, makes it almost certain to my mind that the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth sent this powder and this so-called confession to the girl, meaning her to use them precisely as she did: for the purpose of throwing off suspicion from the right track and of destroying herself at the same time; for, as you know, dead men tell no tales.”

He paused and looked at the dingy skylight above us. Why did the air seem to grow heavier and heavier? Why did I shudder in vague apprehension? I knew all this before; why did it strike me, then, as something new?

“But who was this? you ask. Ah, that is the secret; that is the bit of knowledge which is to bring me fame and fortune. But, secret or not, I don’t mind telling you”; lowering his voice and rapidly raising it again. “The fact is, I can’t keep it to myself; it burns like a new dollar in my pocket. Smith, my boy, the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth—but stay, who does the world say it is? Whom do the papers point at and shake their heads over? A woman! a young, beautiful, bewitching woman! Ha, ha, ha! The papers are right; it is a woman; young, beautiful, and bewitching too. But what one? Ah, that’s the question. There is more than one woman in this affair. Since Hannah’s death I have heard it openly advanced that she was the guilty party in the crime: bah! Others cry it is the niece who was so unequally dealt with by her uncle in his will: bah! again. But folks are not without some justification for this latter assertion. Eleanore Leavenworth did know more of this matter than appeared. Worse than that, Eleanore Leavenworth stands in a position of positive peril to-day. If you don’t think so, let me show you what the detectives have against her.

“First, there is the fact that a handkerchief, with her name on it, was found stained with pistol grease upon the scene of murder; a place which she explicitly denies having entered for twenty-four hours previous to the discovery of the dead body.

“Secondly, the fact that she not only evinced terror when confronted with this bit of circumstantial evidence, but manifested a decided disposition, both at this time and others, to mislead inquiry, shirking a direct answer to some questions and refusing all answer to others.

“Thirdly, that an attempt was made by her to destroy a certain letter evidently relating to this crime.

“Fourthly, that the key to the library door was seen in her possession.

“All this, taken with the fact that the fragments of the letter which this same lady attempted to destroy within an hour after the inquest were afterwards put together, and were found to contain a bitter denunciation of one of Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces, by a gentleman we will call X in other words, an unknown quantity—makes out a dark case against you, especially as after investigations revealed the fact that a secret underlay the history of the Leavenworth family. That, unknown to the world at large, and Mr. Leavenworth in particular, a marriage ceremony had been performed a year before in a little town called F—— between a Miss Leavenworth and this same X. That, in other words, the unknown gentleman who, in the letter partly destroyed by Miss Eleanore Leavenworth, complained to Mr. Leavenworth of the treatment received by him from one of his nieces, was in fact the secret husband of that niece. And that, moreover, this same gentleman, under an assumed name, called on the night of the murder at the house of Mr. Leavenworth and asked for Miss Eleanore.

“Now you see, with all this against her, Eleanore Leavenworth is lost if it cannot be proved, first that the articles testifying against her, viz.: the handkerchief, letter, and key, passed after the murder through other hands, before reaching hers; and secondly, that some one else had even a stronger reason than she for desiring Mr. Leavenworth’s death at this time.

“Smith, my boy, both of these hypotheses have been established by me. By dint of moleing into old secrets, and following unpromising clues, I have finally come to the conclusion that not Eleanore Leavenworth, dark as are the appearances against her, but another woman, beautiful as she, and fully as interesting, is the true criminal. In short, that her cousin, the exquisite Mary, is the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth, and by inference of Hannah Chester also.”

He brought this out with such force, and with such a look of triumph and appearance of having led up to it, that I was for the moment dumbfounded, and started as if I had not known what he was going to say. The stir I made seemed to awake an echo. Something like a suppressed cry was in the air about me. All the room appeared to breathe horror and dismay. Yet when, in the excitement of this fancy, I half turned round to look, I found nothing but the blank eyes of those dull ventilators staring upon me.

“You are taken aback!” Mr. Gryce went on. “I don’t wonder. Every one else is engaged in watching the movements of Eleanore Leavenworth; I only know where to put my hand upon the real culprit. You shake your head!” (Another fiction.) “You don’t believe me! Think I am deceived. Ha, ha! Ebenezer Gryce deceived after a month of hard work! You are as bad as Miss Leavenworth herself, who has so little faith in my sagacity that she offered me, of all men, an enormous reward if I would find for her the assassin of her uncle! But that is neither here nor there; you have your doubts, and you are waiting for me to solve them. Well, nothing is easier. Know first that on the morning of the inquest I made one or two discoveries not to be found in the records, viz.: that the handkerchief picked up, as I have said, in Mr. Leavenworth’s library, had notwithstanding its stains of pistol grease, a decided perfume lingering about it. Going to the dressing-table of the two ladies, I sought for that perfume, and found it in Mary’s room, not Eleanore’s. This led me to examine the pockets of the dresses respectively worn by them the evening before. In that of Eleanore I found a handkerchief, presumably the one she had carried at that time. But in Mary’s there was none, nor did I see any lying about her room as if tossed down on her retiring. The conclusion I drew from this was, that she, and not Eleanore, had carried the handkerchief into her uncle’s room, a conclusion emphasized by the fact privately communicated to me by one of the servants, that Mary was in Eleanore’s room when the basket of clean clothes was brought up with this handkerchief lying on top.

“But knowing the liability we are to mistake in such matters as these, I made another search in the library, and came across a very curious thing. Lying on the table was a penknife, and scattered on the floor beneath, in close proximity to the chair, were two or three minute portions of wood freshly chipped off from the leg of the table; all of which looked as if some one of a nervous disposition had been sitting there, whose hand in a moment of self-forgetfulness had caught up the knife and unconsciously whittled the table. A little thing, you say; but