The Yellow Holly. Fergus Hume
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not? You and I are innocent."
"That goes without the saying," answered George, sharply; "but the less we have to do with this unpleasant matter the better. I suppose we in common with every one else here, will be called to give evidence at the inquest. Once that is done and Mrs. Jersey is safely buried I wash my hands of the whole affair."
Train shuddered. "So do I," said he; "I am the last man in the world to wish to pursue the subject. But who can be guilty? It must be some one in the house!"
"I suppose so," replied Brendon, "unless Mrs. Jersey had a visitor last night."
"She might have had," said Leonard. "When I locked the sitting-room door, and that was about half-past eleven I think, I heard the closing of the front door."
"The deuce you did."
"Yes, I put my head out and listened to see if all was quiet. I distinctly heard the front door close."
"She must have had a visitor," said Brendon, thoughtfully; "yet as she alone could have let that visitor out, and as she must have been alive to do so, the visitor cannot be the assassin."
"The visitor might have killed her and then have closed the door himself."
"Himself? How do you know the visitor was a man? It might have been a woman. Besides, Miss Bull told me that the door was locked as usual, and that she took the key this morning to open it from Mrs. Jersey's pocket. No, Train, the person who killed Mrs. Jersey is in the house. But were I you I should say as little as possible to the inspector about this."
Leonard took this advice, and, when questioned, simply stated that he had retired to bed at eleven and had heard nothing. Brendon made a similar statement, and Quex saw no reason to doubt their evidence.
He questioned all the boarders and all the servants, but could learn nothing likely to throw any light on the darkness which concealed the crime. No one had heard a noise in the night, no one had heard a scream, and it was conclusively proved that every one in the house was in bed by eleven o'clock; the majority, indeed, before that hour. Jarvey had been the last to retire, at half-past ten o'clock, and then he had left Madame in her sitting-room with a book and a glass of negus. She sent him off in a hurry and with, as he expressed it, "a flea in his ear"--being somewhat out of temper. It was thus apparent that Margery, who saw Madame at the striking of the hour, was the last person to see her alive. Mrs. Jersey went to her own sitting-room and there had been struck down.
"It was about twelve o'clock that she was stabbed," said the doctor, after he had made his examination; "but I can go only by the condition of the body. I should say a little before or after twelve. She was stabbed in the neck with a sharp instrument."
"With a knife?" said the inspector.
"No," rejoined the doctor, decisively, "it was with a dagger--by a kind of stiletto. It was not by an ordinary knife that the wound was inflicted," and then the doctor who loved to hear himself talk, went into technical details about the death. He proved beyond doubt that Mrs. Jersey must have died almost immediately with hardly a groan. For some reason Quex took one and all into the chamber of death and showed them the corpse. Perhaps he expected that the sight would shake the nerves of the murderer, supposing the murderer was among those who saw the body. But no one flinched in the way he expected. Mrs. Jersey was as dead as a door-nail, but no one knew and no one could prove who had struck the blow.
CHAPTER IV
A NINE-DAYS' WONDER
On account of its mystery the murder of Mrs. Jersey made a great sensation. The season was dull, and there was nothing of interest in the newspapers, therefore the mysterious crime was a godsend to the reporters. They flocked in shoals to Amelia Square and haunted the Jersey mansion like unquiet ghosts. Whenever any boarder went out for a walk he or she would be questioned by eager gentlemen of the press. Idle sightseers of a morbid turn of mind came to look at the place where the crime had been committed, and pictures of the house appeared in several papers. From being a peaceful neighborhood, Amelia Square became quite lively.
The boarders found all this most unpleasant. This rude awakening from their sleepy life was too much for them, and the majority made preparations to leave as soon as the inquest was over. Until then they were under police surveillance and could not leave the neighborhood, a restriction which in itself was sufficiently unpleasant. Brendon found it particularly so, as he was anxious to get back to his own rooms at Kensington and to his work. But even when he told Inspector Quex that he was merely a visitor and knew nothing about the matter, that zealous officer objected to his going. Perhaps, had Brendon insisted, he might have gained his point, but he did not think it was worth while to make the fact of his stay in the Jersey mansion too public, and therefore held his peace. He stopped with Leonard as usual, but the two men were not such friends as they had been.
Why Train had changed toward him Brendon could not understand. But ever since Leonard had been submitted to the ordeal of seeing the corpse he had been an altered man. From being gay he was now dull; instead of talking volubly, as he usually did, he was silent for hours at a stretch, and he appeared to shun Brendon's company. George knew that Train was impressionable and sensitive, and thought that the sight of the dead and the ordeal of the examination had been too much for his weak nerves. This might have been the case, but Leonard never gave him the satisfaction of knowing if his diagnosis was correct. After a time George ceased to ply him with questions, and contented himself with the usual courtesies of life. But in his heart he felt the change deeply. Fool as Train was, Brendon liked him sufficiently to resent his altered demeanor.
At the inquest nothing was discovered likely to elucidate the mystery. The boarders all gave the same evidence they had already given to Quex. Certainly it came out that Miss Bull had prophesied that Madame would die a violent death, but when questioned on this point she merely said that she had done so because the death card had been turned up. Taken in conjunction with another card, according to the reading employed by fortune-tellers, a violent death was assuredly prophesied. But, as Miss Bull said, no one was more astonished than herself at the speedy fulfillment of the prediction. "I told the fortunes on that night for amusement only," she said, "as I do not believe there is any sense in such things. It was mere chance, nothing more. I am not a believer in cards as prophets."
But the coincidence was so extraordinary that several of the newspapers hinted that the old maid knew more than she chose to tell. Miss Bull was up in arms at once, and, after consulting her solicitor, threatened actions for libel until such statements were withdrawn. And certainly, on the face of it, the accusation was absurd. The majority of people who did believe in fortune-telling by the cards insisted that Miss Bull was quite an adept. Several urged her to set up in business, promising her their patronage, but the little old maid drew herself up, and, mentioning that her father had been a general, refused to entertain the idea.
Beyond this episode there was little interest to be found in the details of the inquest. It appeared that every one was in bed by eleven, that every one had slept soundly more or less, and that all were astonished and shocked when the tragedy came to light next morning. Train could have created a sensation by stating that he had heard the front door open after eleven; but, true to his promise to George, he said nothing about this. Miss Bull, on the other hand, declared that the front door was locked as usual, and that she had taken the key from the dead woman's pocket to open it when the police entered. It would appear that Mrs. Jersey had been murdered by some one in the house. Yet not one scrap of evidence could be found to show that any one in the house could possibly be guilty. The boarders were all old, the servants all ordinary human beings, and no motive could be assigned to any one person for the committal of so cruel a crime. Moreover, the fact that the instrument used was a stiletto (and the doctor held to that) showed that the crime must have been committed by a foreigner. The only foreign person in the house on the night in question was Fritz, the Swiss waiter. But he would not have killed a fly, and, moreover,