The Affair Next Door (13 page)

The Coroner asked him but one question:

"Had the lady no parcel when you saw her last?"

"I saw none."

"Could she not have carried one under her cape?"

"Perhaps, if it was small enough."

"As small as a lady's hat, say?"

"Well, it would have to be smaller than some of them are now, sir."

And so terminated this portion of the inquiry.

A short delay followed the withdrawal of this witness. The Coroner, who
was a somewhat portly man, and who had felt the heat of the day very
much, leaned back and looked anxious, while the jury, always restless,
moved in their seats like a set of school-boys, and seemed to long for
the hour of adjournment, notwithstanding the interest which everybody
but themselves seemed to take in this exciting investigation.

Finally an officer, who had been sent into the adjoining room, came back
with a gentleman, who was no sooner recognized as Mr. Franklin Van
Burnam than a great change took place in the countenances of all
present. The Coroner sat forward and dropped the large palm-leaf fan he
had been industriously using for the last few minutes, the jury settled
down, and the whispering of the many curious ones about me grew less
audible and finally ceased altogether. A gentleman of the family was
about to be interrogated, and such a gentleman!

I have purposely refrained from describing this best known and best
reputed member of the Van Burnam family, foreseeing this hour when he
would attract the attention of a hundred eyes and when his appearance
would require our special notice. I will therefore endeavor to picture
him to you as he looked on this memorable morning, with just the simple
warning that you must not expect me to see with the eyes of a young girl
or even with those of a fashionable society woman. I know a man when I
see him, and I had always regarded Mr. Franklin as an exceptionally
fine-looking and prepossessing gentleman, but I shall not go into
raptures, as I heard a girl behind me doing, nor do I feel like
acknowledging him as a paragon of all the virtues—as Mrs. Cunningham
did that evening in my parlor.

He is a medium-sized man, with a shape not unlike his brother's. His
hair is dark and so are his eyes, but his moustache is brown and his
complexion quite fair. He carries himself with distinction, and though
his countenance in repose has a precise air that is not perfectly
agreeable, it has, when he speaks or smiles, an expression at once keen
and amiable.

On this occasion he failed to smile, and though his elegance was
sufficiently apparent, his worth was not so much so. Yet the impression
generally made was favorable, as one could perceive from the air of
respect with which his testimony was received.

He was asked many questions. Some were germane to the matter in hand and
some seemed to strike wide of all mark. He answered them all
courteously, showing a manly composure in doing so, that served to calm
the fever-heat into which many had been thrown by the stories of the two
hackmen. But as his evidence up to this point related merely to minor
concerns, this was neither strange nor conclusive. The real test began
when the Coroner, with a certain bluster, which may have been meant to
attract the attention of the jury, now visibly waning, or, as was more
likely, may have been the unconscious expression of a secret if hitherto
well concealed embarrassment, asked the witness whether the keys to his
father's front door had any duplicates.

The answer came in a decidedly changed tone. "No. The key used by our
agent opens the basement door only."

The Coroner showed his satisfaction. "No duplicates," he repeated; "then
you will have no difficulty in telling us where the keys to your
father's front door were kept during the family's absence."

Did the young man hesitate, or was it but imagination on my part—"They
were usually in my possession."

"Usually!" There was irony in the tone; evidently the Coroner was
getting the better of his embarrassment, if he had felt any. "And where
were they on the seventeenth of this month? Were they in your possession
then?"

"No, sir." The young man tried to look calm and at his ease, but the
difficulty he felt in doing so was apparent. "On the morning of that
day," he continued, "I passed them over to my brother."

Ah! here was something tangible as well as important. I began to fear
the police understood themselves only too well; and so did the whole
crowd of persons there assembled. A groan in one direction was answered
by a sigh in another, and it needed all the Coroner's authority to
prevent an outbreak.

Meanwhile Mr. Van Burnam stood erect and unwavering, though his eye
showed the suffering which these demonstrations awakened. He did not
turn in the direction of the room where we felt sure his family was
gathered, but it was evident that his thoughts did, and that most
painfully. The Coroner, on the contrary, showed little or no feeling; he
had brought the investigation up to this critical point and felt fully
competent to carry it farther.

"May I ask," said he, "where the transference of these keys took place?"

"I gave them to him in our office last Tuesday morning. He said he might
want to go into the house before his father came home."

"Did he say why he wanted to go into the house?"

"No."

"Was he in the habit of going into it alone and during the family's
absence?"

"No."

"Had he any clothes there? or any articles belonging to himself or his
wife which he would be likely to wish to carry away?"

"No."

"Yet he wanted to go in?"

"He said so."

"And you gave him the keys without question?"

"Certainly, sir."

"Was that not opposed to your usual principles—to your way of doing
things, I should say?"

"Perhaps; but principles, by which I suppose you mean my usual business
methods, do not govern me in my relations with my brother. He asked me a
favor, and I granted it. It would have to have been a much larger one
for me to have asked an explanation from him before doing so."

"Yet you are not on good terms with your brother; at least you have not
had the name of being, for some time?"

"We have had no quarrel."

"Did he return the keys you lent him?"

"No."

"Have you seen them since?"

"No."

"Would you know them if they were shown you?"

"I would know them if they unlocked our front door."

"But you would not know them on sight?"

"I don't think so."

"Mr. Van Burnam, it is disagreeable for me to go into family matters,
but if you have had no quarrel with your brother, how comes it that you
and he have had so little intercourse of late?"

"He has been in Connecticut and I at Long Branch. Is not that a good
answer, sir?"

"Good, but not good enough. You have a common office in New York, have
you not?"

"Certainly, the firm's office."

"And you sometimes meet there, even while residing in different
localities?"

"Yes, our business calls us in at times and then we meet, of course."

"Do you talk when you meet?"

"Talk?"

"Of other matters besides business, I mean. Are your relations friendly?
Do you show the same spirit towards each other as you did three years
ago, say?"

"We are older; perhaps we are not quite so voluble."

"But do you feel the same?"

"No. I see you will have it, and so I will no longer hold back the
truth. We are not as brotherly in our intercourse as we used to be; but
there is no animosity between us. I have a decided regard for my
brother."

This was said quite nobly, and I liked him for it, but I began to feel
that perhaps it had been for the best after all that I had never been
intimate with the family. But I must not forestall either events or my
opinions.

"Is there any reason"—it is the Coroner, of course, who is
speaking—"why there should be any falling off in your mutual
confidence? Has your brother done anything to displease you?"

"We did not like his marriage."

"Was it an unhappy one?"

"It was not a suitable one."

"Did you know Mrs. Van Burnam well, that you say this?"

"Yes, I knew her, but the rest of the family did not."

"Yet they shared in your disapprobation?"

"They felt the marriage more than I did. The lady—excuse me, I never
like to speak ill of the sex—was not lacking in good sense or virtue,
but she was not the person we had a right to expect Howard to marry."

"And you let him see that you thought so?"

"How could we do otherwise?"

"Even after she had been his wife for some months?"

"We could not like her."

"Did your brother—I am sorry to press this matter—ever show that he
felt your change of conduct towards him?"

"I find it equally hard to answer," was the quick reply. "My brother is
of an affectionate nature, and he has some, if not all, of the family's
pride. I think he did feel it, though he never said so. He is not
without loyalty to his wife."

"Mr. Van Burnam, of whom does the firm doing business under the name of
Van Burnam & Sons consist?"

"Of the three persons mentioned."

"No others?"

"No."

"Has there ever been in your hearing any threat made by the senior
partner of dissolving this firm as it stands?"

"I have heard"—I felt sorry for this strong but far from heartless man,
but I would not have stopped the inquiry at this point if I could; I
was far too curious—"I have heard my father say that he would withdraw
if Howard did not. Whether he would have done so, I consider open to
doubt. My father is a just man and never fails to do the right thing,
though he sometimes speaks with unnecessary harshness."

"He made the threat, however?"

"Yes."

"And Howard heard it?"

"Or of it; I cannot say which."

"Mr. Van Burnam, have you noticed any change in your brother since this
threat was uttered?"

"How, sir; what change?"

"In his treatment of his wife, or in his attitude towards yourself?"

"I have not seen him in the company of his wife since they went to
Haddam. As for his conduct towards myself, I can say no more than I have
already. We have never forgotten that we are children of one mother."

"Mr. Van Burnam, how many times have you seen Mrs. Howard Van Burnam?"

"Several. More frequently before they were married than since."

"You were in your brother's confidence, then, at that time; knew he was
contemplating marriage?"

"It was in my endeavors to prevent the match that I saw so much of Miss
Louise Stapleton."

"Ah! I am glad of the explanation! I was just going to inquire why you,
of all members of the family, were the only one to know your brother's
wife by sight."

The witness, considering this question answered, made no reply. But the
next suggestion could not be passed over.

"If you saw Mrs. Van Burnam so often, you are acquainted with her
personal appearance?"

"Sufficiently so; as well as I know that of my ordinary
calling-acquaintance."

"Was she light or dark?"

"She had brown hair."

"Similar to this?"

The lock held up was the one which had been cut from the head of the
dead girl.

"Yes, somewhat similar to that." The tone was cold; but he could not
hide his distress.

"Mr. Van Burnam, have you looked well at the woman who was found
murdered in your father's house?"

"I have, sir."

"Is there anything in her general outline or in such features as have
escaped disfigurement to remind you of Mrs. Howard Van Burnam?"

"I may have thought so—at first glance," he replied, with decided
effort.

"And did you change your mind at the second?"

He looked troubled, but answered firmly: "No, I cannot say that I did.
But you must not regard my opinion as conclusive," he hastily added. "My
knowledge of the lady was comparatively slight."

"The jury will take that into account. All we want to know now is
whether you can assert from any knowledge you have or from anything to
be noted in the body itself, that it is not Mrs. Howard Van Burnam?"

"I cannot."

And with this solemn assertion his examination closed.

The remainder of the day was taken up in trying to prove a similarity
between Mrs. Van Burnam's handwriting and that of Mrs. James Pope as
seen in the register of the Hotel D— and on the order sent to
Altman's. But the only conclusion reached was that the latter might be
the former disguised, and even on this point the experts differed.

The gentleman who stepped from the carriage and entered Mr. Van Burnam's
house at twelve o'clock that night produced so little impression upon me
that I went to bed satisfied that no result would follow these efforts
at identification.

And so I told Mr. Gryce when he arrived next morning. But he seemed by
no means disconcerted, and merely requested that I would submit to one
more trial. To which I gave my consent, and he departed.

I could have asked him a string of questions, but his manner did not
invite them, and for some reason I was too wary to show an interest in
this tragedy superior to that felt by every right-thinking person
connected with it.

At ten o'clock I was in my old seat in the court-room. The same crowd
with different faces confronted me, amid which the twelve stolid
countenances of the jury looked like old friends. Howard Van Burnam was
the witness called, and as he came forward and stood in full view of us
all, the interest of the occasion reached its climax.

His countenance wore a reckless look that did not serve to prepossess
him with the people at whose mercy he stood. But he did not seem to
care, and waited for the Coroner's questions with an air of ease which
was in direct contrast to the drawn and troubled faces of his father and
brother just visible in the background.