The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин
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in direct contrast to the drawn and troubled faces of his father and brother just visible in the background.
Coroner Dahl surveyed him a few minutes before speaking, then he quietly asked if he had seen the dead body of the woman who had been found lying under a fallen piece of furniture in his father’s house.
He replied that he had.
“Before she was removed from the house or after it?”
“After.”
“Did you recognize it? Was it the body of any one you know?”
“I do not think so.”
“Has your wife, who was missing yesterday, been heard from yet, Mr. Van Burnam?”
“Not to my knowledge, sir.”
“Had she not—that is, your wife—a complexion similar to that of the dead woman just alluded to?”
“She had a fair skin and brown hair, if that is what you mean. But these attributes are common to too many women for me to give them any weight in an attempted identification of this importance.”
“Had they no other similar points of a less general character? Was not your wife of a slight and graceful build, such as is attributed to the subject of this inquiry?”
“My wife was slight and she was graceful, common attributes also.”
“And your wife had a scar?”
“Yes.”
“On the left ankle?”
“Yes.”
“Which the deceased also has?”
“That I do not know. They say so, but I had no interest in looking.”
“Why, may I ask? Did you not think it a remarkable coincidence?”
The young man frowned. It was the first token of feeling he had given.
“I was not on the look-out for coincidences,” was his cold reply. “I had no reason to think this unhappy victim of an unknown man’s brutality my wife, and so did not allow myself to be moved by even such a fact as this.”
“You had no reason,” repeated the Coroner, “to think this woman your wife. Had you any reason to think she was not?”
“Yes.”
“Will you give us that reason?”
“I had more than one. First, my wife would never wear the clothes I saw on the girl whose dead body was shown to me. Secondly, she would never go to any house alone with a man at the hour testified to by one of your witnesses.”1
“Not with any man?”
“I did not mean to include her husband in my remark, of course. But as I did not take her to Gramercy Park, the fact that the deceased woman entered an empty house accompanied by a man, is proof enough to me that she was not Louise Van Burnam.”
“When did you part with your wife?”
“On Monday morning at the depot in Haddam.”
“Did you know where she was going?”
“I knew where she said she was going.”
“And where was that, may I ask?”
“To New York, to interview my father.”
“But your father was not in New York?”
“He was daily expected here. The steamer on which he had sailed from Southampton was due on Tuesday.”
“Had she an interest in seeing your father? Was there any special reason why she should leave you for doing so?”
“She thought so; she thought he would become reconciled to her entrance into our family if he should see her suddenly and without prejudiced persons standing by.”
“And did you fear to mar the effect of this meeting if you accompanied her?”
“No, for I doubted if the meeting would ever take place. I had no sympathy with her schemes, and did not wish to give her the sanction of my presence.”
“Was that the reason you let her go to New York alone?”
“Yes.”
“Had you no other?”
“No.”
“Why did you follow her, then, in less than five hours?”
“Because I was uneasy; because I also wanted to see my father; because I am a man accustomed to carry out every impulse; and impulse led me that day in the direction of my somewhat headstrong wife.”
“Did you know where your wife intended to spend the night?”
“I did not. She has many friends, or at least I have, in the city, and I concluded she would go to one of them—as she did.”
“When did you arrive in the city? before ten o’clock?”
“Yes, a few minutes before.”
“Did you try to find your wife?”
“No. I went directly to the club.”
“Did you try to find her the next morning?”
“No; I had heard that the steamer had not yet been sighted off Fire Island, so considered the effort unnecessary.”
“Why? What connection is there between this fact and an endeavor on your part to find your wife?”
“A very close one. She had come to New York to throw herself at my father’s feet. Now she could only do this at the steamer or in——”
“Why do you not proceed, Mr. Van Burnam?”
“I will. I do not know why I stopped,—or in his own house.”
“In his own house? In the house in Gramercy Park, do you mean?”
“Yes, he has no other.”
“The house in which this dead girl was found?”
“Yes,”—impatiently.
“Did you think she might throw herself at his feet there?”
“She said she might; and as she is romantic, foolishly romantic, I thought her fully capable of doing so.”
“And so you did not seek her in the morning?”
“No, sir.”
“How about the afternoon?”
This was a close question; we saw that he was affected by it though he tried to carry it off bravely.
“I did not see her in the afternoon. I was in a restless frame of mind, and did not remain in the city.”
“Ah! indeed! and where did you go?”
“Unless necessary, I prefer not to say.”
“It is necessary.”
“I went to Coney Island.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see anybody there you know?”
“No.”
“And when did you return?”
“At midnight.”
“When did you reach your rooms?”
“Later.”
“How much later?”
“Two