Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

"For this relief much thanks." 
                                              Hamlet. 

cing upon the arm of the detective, whose suddenly assumed air of per-
suasion in the presence of the jury was anything but reassuring, she stood
for an instant gazing calmly upon the scene before her. Then bowing
to the coroner with a grace and condescension which seemed at once to 
place him on the footing of a politely endured intruder in this home of 
elegance, she took the seat which her own servants hastened to procure 
for her, with an ease and dignity that rather recalled the triumphs of 
the drawing-room than the self-consciousness of a scene such as that in 
which we found ourselves. Palpable acting, though this was, it was not 
without its effect. Instantly the murmurs ceased, the obtrusive glances 
fell, and something like a forced respect made itself visible upon the 
countenances of all present. Even I, impressed as I had been by her 
very different demeanor in the room above, experienced a sensation of 
relief; and was more than startled when, upon turning to the lady at my 
side, I beheld her eyes riveted upon her cousin with an inquiry in 
their depths that was anything but encouraging. Fearful of the effect 
this look might have upon those about us, I hastily seized her hand 
which, clenched and unconscious, hung over the edge of her chair, and 
was about to beseech her to have care, when her name, called in a slow, 
impressive way by the coroner, roused her from her abstraction. 
Hurriedly withdrawing her gaze from her cousin, she lifted her face to 
the jury, and I saw a gleam pass over it which brought back my early 
fancy of the pythoness. But it passed, and it was with an expression of 
great modesty she settled herself to respond to the demand of the 
coroner and answer the first few opening inquiries. 
     But what can express the anxiety of that moment to me? Gentle as 

she now appeared, she was capable of great wrath, as I knew. Was she 
going to reiterate her suspicions here? Did she hate as well as 
mistrust her cousin? Would she dare assert in this presence, and 
before the world, what she found it so easy to utter in the privacy of her
own room and the hearing of the one person concerned? Did she wish 
to? Her own countenance gave me no clue to her intentions, and, in my 
anxiety, I turned once more to look at Eleanore. But she, in a dread 
and apprehension I could easily understand, had recoiled at the first 
intimation that her cousin was to speak, and now sat with her face 
covered from sight, by hands blanched to an almost deathly whiteness. 
     The testimony of Mary Leavenworth was short. After some few 
questions, mostly referring to her position in the house and her 
connection with its deceased master, she was asked to relate what she 
knew of the murder itself, and of its discovery by her cousin and the 
servants. 
     Lifting up a brow that seemed never to have known till now the 
shadow of care or trouble, and a voice that, whilst low and womanly, 
rang like a bell through the room, she replied: 
     "You ask me, gentlemen, a question which I cannot answer of my
own personal knowledge. I know nothing of this murder, nor of its 
discovery, save what has come to me through the lips of others." 
     My heart gave a bound of relief, and I saw Eleanore Leavenworth's 
hands drop from her brow like stone, while a flickering gleam as of 
hope fled over her face, and then died away like sunlight leaving 
marble. 
     "For, strange as it may seem to you," Mary earnestly continued, the 
shadow of a past horror revisiting her countenance, "I did not enter 

the room where my uncle lay. I did not even think of doing so; my only 
impulse was to fly from what was so horrible and heartrending. But 
Eleanore went in, and she can tell you—" 
     "We will question Miss Eleanore Leavenworth later," interrupted the 
coroner, but very gently for him. Evidently the grace and elegance of 
this beautiful woman were making their impression. "What we want to 
know is what you saw. You say you cannot tell us of anything 
that passed in the room at the time of the discovery?" 
     "No, sir." 
     "Only what occurred in the hall?" 
     "Nothing occurred in the hall," she innocently remarked. 
     "Did not the servants pass in from the hall, and your cousin come 
out there after her revival from her fainting fit?" 
     Mary Leavenworth's violet eyes opened wonderingly. 
     "Yes, sir; but that was nothing." 
     "You remember, however, her coming into the hall?" 
     "Yes, sir." 
     "With a paper in her hand?" 
     "Paper?" and she wheeled suddenly and looked at her cousin. "Did 
you have a paper, Eleanore?" 
     The moment was intense. Eleanore Leavenworth, who at the first
mention of the word paper had started perceptibly, rose to her feet at 
this naive appeal, and opening her lips, seemed about to speak, when 
the coroner, with a strict sense of what was regular, lifted his hand 
with decision, and said: 
     "You need not ask your cousin, Miss; but let us hear what you have 
to say yourself." 

     Immediately, Eleanore Leavenworth sank back, a pink spot breaking 
out on either cheek; while a slight murmur testified to the 
disappointment of those in the room, who were more anxious to have 
their curiosity gratified than the forms of law adhered to. 
     Satisfied with having done his duty, and disposed to be easy with so 
charming a witness, the coroner repeated his question. "Tell us, if 
you please, if you saw any such thing in her hand?" 
     "I? Oh, no, no; I saw nothing." 
     Being now questioned in relation to the events of the previous 
night, she had no new light to throw upon the subject. She acknowledged 
her uncle to have been a little reserved at dinner, but no more so than 
at previous times when annoyed by some business anxiety. 
     Asked if she had seen her uncle again that evening, she said no, 
that she had been detained in her room. That the sight of him, sitting 
in his seat at the head of the table, was the very last remembrance she 
had of him. 
     There was something so touching, so forlorn, and yet so unobtrusive, 
in this simple recollection of hers, that a look of sympathy passed 
slowly around the room. 
     I even detected Mr. Gryce softening towards the inkstand. But 
Eleanore Leavenworth sat unmoved. 
     "Was your uncle on ill terms with any one?" was now asked. "Had 
he valuable papers or secret sums of money in his possession?" 
     To all these inquiries she returned an equal negative. 
     "Has your uncle met any stranger lately, or received any important 
letter during the last few weeks, which might seem in any way to throw 
light upon this mystery?" 
     There was the slightest perceptible hesitation in her voice, as she 

replied: "No, not to my knowledge; I don't know of any such." But 
here, stealing a side glance 
at Eleanore, she evidently saw something that reassured her, for she 
hastened to add: 
     "I believe I may go further than that, and meet your question with 
a positive no. My uncle was in the habit of confiding in me, and I 
should have known if anything of importance to him had occurred." 
     Questioned in regard to Hannah, she gave that person the best of 
characters; knew of nothing which could have led either to her strange 
disappearance, or to her connection with crime. Could not say whether 
she kept any company, or had any visitors; only knew that no one with 
any such pretensions came to the house. Finally, when asked when she 
had last seen the pistol which Mr. Leavenworth always kept in his stand 
drawer, she returned, not since the day he bought it; Eleanore, and not 
herself, having the charge of her uncle's apartments. 
     It was the only thing she had said which, even to a mind freighted 
like mine, would seem to point to any private doubt or secret 
suspicion; and this, uttered in the careless manner in which it was, 
would have passed without comment if Eleanore herself had not directed 
at that moment a very much aroused and inquiring look upon the speaker. 
     But it was time for the inquisitive juror to make himself heard 
again. Edging to the brink of the chair, he drew in his breath, with a 
vague awe of Mary's beauty, almost ludicrous to see, and asked if she 
had properly considered what she had just said. 
     "I hope, sir, I consider all I am called upon to say at such a time 
as this," was her earnest reply. 
     The little juror drew back, and I looked to see her examination 

terminate, when suddenly his ponderous colleague of the watch-chain, 
catching the young lady's eye, inquired: 
     "Miss Leavenworth, did your uncle ever make a will?" 
     Instantly every man in the room was in arms, and even she could not 
prevent the slow blush of injured pride from springing to her cheek. 
But her answer was given firmly, and without any show of resentment. 
     "Yes, sir," she returned simply. 
     "More than one?"
     "I never heard of but one." 
     "Are you acquainted with the contents of that will?" 
     "I am. He made no secret of his intentions to any one." 
     The juryman lifted his eye-glass and looked at her. Her grace was 
little to him, or her beauty or her elegance. "Perhaps, then, you can 
tell me who is the one most likely to be benefited by his death?" 
     The brutality of this question was too marked to pass unchallenged. 
Not a man in that room, myself included, but frowned with sudden 
disapprobation. But Mary Leavenworth, drawing herself up, looked her 
interlocutor calmly in the face, and restrained herself to say: 
     "I know who would be the greatest losers by it. The children he 
took to his bosom in their helplessness and sorrow; the young girls he 
enshrined with the halo of his love and protection, when love and 
protection were what their immaturity most demanded; the women who 
looked to him for guidance when childhood and youth were passed
—these, sir, these are the ones to whom his death is a loss, in 

comparison to which all others which may hereafter befall them must 
ever seem trivial and unimportant." 
     It was a noble reply to the basest of insinuations, and the juryman 
drew back rebuked; but here another of them, one who had not spoken 
before, but whose appearance was not only superior to the rest, but 
also almost imposing in its gravity, leaned from his seat and in a 
solemn voice said: 
     "Miss Leavenworth, the human mind cannot help forming impress-
ions. Now have you, with or without reason, felt at any time conscious
of a suspicion pointing towards any one person as the murderer of
your uncle?"
     It was a frightful moment. To me and to one other, I am sure it was 
not only frightful, but agonizing. Would her courage fail? would her 
determination to shield her cousin remain firm in the face of duty and 
at the call of probity? I dared not hope it. 
     But Mary Leavenworth, rising to her feet, looked judge and jury 
calmly in the face, and, without raising her voice, giving it an
indescribably clear and sharp intonation, replied: 
     "No; I have neither suspicion nor reason for any. The assassin of 
my uncle is not only entirely unknown to, but completely unsuspected 
by, me." 
     It was like the removal of a stifling pressure. Amid a universal 
outgoing of the breath, Mary Leavenworth stood aside and Eleanore
was called in her place.