Read Ebook: A tragedy of love and hate by Clay Bertha M

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Ebook has 1543 lines and 81027 words, and 31 pages

"You must bear it bravely, Sir Ronald," said the doctor, pityingly. "Lady Alden has met with a terrible accident."

He bent over her with trembling hands and wild, desperate horror in his face.

"She is dead?" he cried.

"Yes," said the doctor, quietly; "she is dead. Poor lady; she has been dead for two hours."

Sir Ronald sank back in a chair. He repeated the words with a gasping sob, more terrible than tears.

"Dead!" he said, "my wife--Clarice--dead!"

They went away, doctors and servants, thinking it would be better to leave him alone with his dead, to give him time for the first sharp pain to vent itself in tears and words.

But to their surprise, in a few minutes he followed them, with the ghastly pallor on his face.

"How did it happen?" he cried; "you have not told me that."

"We do not know," replied Dr. Mayne. "It has all been so strange, so awfully sudden. Half an hour ago one of your grooms galloped over to my house and told me Lady Alden had been found drowned in the river. I came at once, and found she had been dead two hours and more. You will hear more details from the servants."

"You are sure she is dead?" he repeated. "There have been wonderful cases of resuscitation after apparent drowning. Has all been done that is possible?"

"Only God could restore her to life," said the doctor, reverently. While the words were yet on his lips, the door of the library opened and the housekeeper came in, looking so ill and alarmed that Dr. Mayne went near to her.

"Oh, sir!" she cried, "will you come upstairs?--will you come up to my lady's room?"

"Certainly." And the doctor, wondering much what had happened, rose to go.

"Stay!" said Sir Ronald. "What is it, Mrs. Glynn?"

"I cannot tell you, Sir Ronald, it is too horrible. My lady was not drowned."

"Not drowned!" they repeated.

"No," said the woman, with a shudder; "it is worse than that."

Dr. Mayne waited to hear no more; he went to the poor lady's room at once; Sir Ronald followed him. There they found the maid wringing her hands and crying aloud that it was a wicked and a cruel deed.

"Tell me what it is," said the doctor, firmly.

Then Mrs. Glynn turned down the blue satin quilt.

"Look, sir," she said; "when we began to undress the poor lady we found this."

Dr. Mayne bent down and saw through the silken robe and fine white linen a cut made by some sharp instrument, evidently very small and pointed. He tore away the dress, and there on the white skin was a deep wound just over the heart. Only a few drops of blood had fallen from it; it was not large enough for a knife to have done it, it must have been caused by some sharp instrument long enough to have pierced the heart.

"How awful!" cried the doctor, hoarsely; "why, Lady Alden has been murdered--murdered, I say, Sir Ronald, and flung into the water--look!"

Sir Ronald bent down and saw the mark.

"She has been stabbed through the heart. She must have died in an instant, and then have been thrown into the water. This is no accident, but foul, black, treacherous murder! I cannot even imagine what weapon has been used. It was evidently not much larger than a common bodkin, but long and sharp. Who can have done such a deed, Sir Ronald?"

"I cannot tell; she had not an enemy in the world. I cannot guess."

"You had better come away from this room," said the doctor, compassionately; "we can do no good; it only makes you wretched."

"I will go to my room," said Sir Ronald, hoarsely; "I--I cannot bear it, doctor--you must see to everything for me."

And Sir Ronald, with tottering steps, went from the death chamber, where the horror seemed to be deepening every hour, and Dr. Mayne was left to do the best he could.

"It is too horrible," he said to Mrs. Glynn. "I do not think such an event ever happened before in the memory of man. Will you see that one of the grooms goes at once to Leeholme and brings back the inspector of police?--there is no time to lose."

If the little bird which had sung upon the branches could have spoken and have told what had happened that summer morning in the Holme Woods!

AN OPEN VERDICT.

Three days had passed since the tragedy that cast such gloom over the whole neighborhood had occurred; three long, dreary days. Outside the world was in full beauty, fair, smiling summer flung her treasures with a reckless hand; the sun was bright and the flowers sweet; inside the stately mansion all was darkness, horror and gloom.

Murder is always terrible. It is so seldom known among the higher classes that when a young and lovely woman like Lady Alden is its victim the sensation caused is something terrible.

A reckless, brutal, drunken collier murders his wife, and though his neighbors shake their heads and say it is a terrible thing, the idea of a murder is unhappily too familiar to them to excite the disgust, the repugnance and horror felt among a more cultivated and refined class.

"Spare no money, no time, no labor," he said, "but let the criminal be found. Sir Ronald is too ill, too overwhelmed, to give any orders at present; but you know what should be done. Do it promptly."

And Captain Johnstone had at once taken every necessary step. There was something ghastly in the pretty town of Leeholme, for there on the walls was the placard, worded:

"MURDER!

"Two hundred pounds will be given to any one bringing certain information as to a murder committed on Tuesday morning, June 19th, in the Holme Woods. Apply to Captain Johnstone, Police Station, Leeholme."

Gaping rustics read it, and while they felt heartily sorry for the unhappy lady they longed to know something about it for the sake of the reward.

But no one called on Captain Johnstone--no one had a word either of certainty or surmise. The police officers, headed by intelligent men, made diligent search in the neighborhood of the pool; but nothing was found. There was no mark of any struggle; the soft, thick grass gave no sign of heavy footsteps. No weapon could be found, no trace of blood-stained fingers. It was all a mystery dark as night, without one gleam of light.

The pool had always been a favorite place with the hapless lady; and, knowing that, Sir Ronald had ordered a pretty, quaint golden chair to be placed there for her; and on the very morning when the event happened Lady Clarice Alden had taken her book and had gone to the fatal spot to enjoy the beauty of the morning, the brightness of the sun and the odor of the flowers. The book she had been reading lay on the ground, where it had evidently fallen from her hands. But there was no sign of anything wrong; the bluebells had not even been trampled under foot.

After twenty-four hours' search the police relinquished the matter. Captain Johnstone instituted vigorous inquiries as to all the beggars and tramps who had been in the neighborhood--nothing suspicious came to light. One man, a traveling hawker, a gaunt, fierce-looking man, with a forbidding face, had been passing through Holme Woods, and the police tracked him; but when he was examined he was so evidently unconscious and ignorant of the whole matter it would have been folly to detain him.

In the stately mansion of Aldenmere a coroner's inquest had been held. Mrs. Glynn declared that it was enough to make the family portraits turn on the wall--enough to bring the dead to life. Such a desecration as that had never occurred before. But the coroner was very grave. Such a murder, he said, was a terrible thing; the youth, beauty and position of the lady made it doubly horrible. He showed the jury how intentional the murder must have been--it was no deed done in hot haste. Whoever had crept with stealthy steps to the lady's side, whoever had placed his hand underneath the white lace mantle which she wore, and with desperate, steady aim stabbed her to the heart, had done it purposely and had meditated over it. The jury saw that the white lace mantle must either have been raised or a hand stealthily crept beneath it, for the cut that pierced the bodice of the dress was not in the mantle.

He saw the red puncture on the white skin. One of the jury was a man who had traveled far and wide.

"It was with no English weapon this was done," he said. "I remember a case very similar when I was staying in Sicily; a man there was killed, and there was no other wound on his body save a small red circle like this; afterward I saw the very weapon that he had been slain with."

"What was it like?" asked the coroner eagerly.

"A long, thin, very sharp instrument, a species of Sicilian dagger. I heard that years ago ladies used to wear them suspended from the waist as a kind of ornament. I should not like to be too certain, but it seems to me this wound has been caused by the same kind of weapon."

The verdict returned was one the public had anticipated: "Willful murder against some person or persons unknown."

Then the inquest was over, and nothing remained but to bury Lady Clarice Alden. Dr. Mayne, however, had not come to the end of his resources yet.

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