That Affair Next Door quotes

I am not an inquisitive woman, but when, in the middle of a certain warm night in September, I heard a carriage draw up at the adjoining house and stop, I could not resist the temptation of leaving my bed and taking a peep through the curtains of my window.

First: because the house was empty, or supposed to be so, the family still being, as I had every reason to believe, in Europe; and secondly:

“Of course I will stay here; why not?

Is there anything in the dead to be afraid of?

Save me from the living, and I undertake to save myself from the dead.”

“Of course I will stay here; why not? Is there anything in the dead to be afraid of?

Save me from the living, and I undertake to save myself from the dead.

”

But I did not allow myself to feel dashed by this publicity. On the contrary, I held my head as erect as nature intended, and my back kept the line my good health warrants.

The path of duty has its thorny passages, but it is for strong minds like mine to ignore them.

Promptly at ten o’clock I entered the room reserved for the inquest, and was ushered to the seat appointed me.

“My name is Susan Ferguson, and I live in Haddam, Connecticut,” was her reply, uttered in such soft and beautiful tones that everyone was astonished.

It was like a stream of limpid water flowing from a most unsightly-looking rock. Excuse the metaphor; I do not often indulge.

“I do; a few, sir; such as my house will accommodate.”

Their nervousness increased, but no one ventured to follow the Coroner’s suggestion.

A poor lot, I call them, a very poor lot! I would have found plenty of questions to put to him.

I expected to see the man Clapp called next, but I was disappointed in this. The name uttered was Henshaw, and the person who rose in answer to it was a tall, burly man with a shock of curly black hair.

but when I saw the hat, and recognized it as an indisputable proof of her presence in the Van Burnam house that night, my confidence in the attempt I was making broke down all at once.

I could deny her shape, her hands, and even the scar, which she might have had in common with other women, but I could not deny her hat.

Too many persons had seen her wear it.”

“

Women are inconsistent, sir.

She liked the hat and hated to part with it. She thought she could hide it somewhere in the great house, at least that was what she said to me when she tucked it under her cape.”

Then seeing him about to repeat his bow, I added sharply: “You need not trouble yourself to show me too much politeness. If I meddle in this matter at all it will not be as your coadjutor, but as your rival.”

“Yes, your rival; and rivals are never good friends until one of them is hopelessly defeated.”

“Miss Butterworth, I see myself already at your feet.”

“Yes, your rival; and rivals are never good friends until one of them is hopelessly defeated.”

“Miss Butterworth, I see myself already at your feet.”

And with this sally and a short chuckle which did more than anything he had said towards settling me in my half-formed determination to do as I had threatened, he opened the door and quietly disappeared.

I turned the pages over. The latter ones were so fresh I could almost put my finger on the spot where the reader had left off.

Feeling like a bloodhound who has just run upon a trail, I returned the book to Caroline

, with the injunction to put it away; adding, as I saw her air of hesitation: “If your brother Franklin misses it, it will show that he brought it here, and then I shall have no further interest in it.”

But I stopped her enthusiasm with a look.

I may be wonderful, but I am not old, and it is time they knew it.

“Mr. Gryce is old,” said I; and lifting the cushion, I placed it on a perfectly smooth portion of the bed. “Now take it up,” said I, when, lo! a second dent similar to the first.

“Thank you, ma’am. But how did you know she had come to the house before I left. Did you see her?”

I hate a lie as I do poison, but I had to exercise all my Christian principles not to tell one then.

“No,” said I, “I didn’t see her, but I don’t always have to use my eyes to know what is going on in my neighbor’s houses.” Which is true enough, if it is somewhat humiliating to confess it.

Lena’s round-eyed wonder was amusing; but she is very discreet, as I have said before, and she ventured nothing save a meek, “It’s very late, Miss Butterworth,” which was an unnecessary remark, as she soon saw.

I do not like to obtrude my aristocratic tendencies too much into this narrative

, but when I found myself in the streets alone with Lena, I could not help feeling some secret qualms lest my conduct savored of impropriety.

“We are interested in people and things, and get half our delight from the perfect congeniality of our natures. Mr. Stone has given up his club and all his bachelor pursuits since he knew me, and—”

O love, if at any time in my life I have despised thee, I did not despise thee then!

The look with which she finished this sentence would have moved a cynic.

But if apologies will suffice to express our sense of presumption, then I pray you to accept them, Miss Butterworth, both on my own part and on that of the Superintendent of Police.”

I did not understand in the least what he was talking about, but I recognized the sarcasm of his final expression

, and had spirit enough to reply:

“O perfectly!” I assented, with just the shade of irony necessary to rob the assertion of its mendacity. “But go on, go on. You have not begun to satisfy me yet. You did not stop with finding a motive for the crime I am sure.”

“Madam, you are a female Shylock; you will have the whole of the bond or none.”

“We are not here to draw comparisons,” I retorted. “Keep to the subject, Mr. Gryce; keep to the subject.”

… and by waiting allowed the blood-vessels to stiffen and all that phenomena to become apparent by means of which the eyes of the physicians were opened to the fact that they must search deeper for the cause of death than the bruises she had received.

Thus it is that Justice opens loopholes in the finest web a criminal can weave.

”

The difficulties into which this plunged him were partly foreseen and partly prepared for, and he showed some skill in surmounting them.

But falsehoods never fit like truths, and we all felt the strain on our credulity

as he met and attempted to parry the Coroner’s questions.

Both men spoke: the Inspector, as if he thought me demented; Mr. Gryce, as if he would like to have considered me a fool but dared not.

“Yes, a woman,” I repeated, dropping a quiet curtsey.

It was a proper expression of respect when I was young, and I see no reason why it should not be a proper expression of respect now, except that we have lost our manners in gaining our independence, something which is to be regretted perhaps.

“Then why should it not have been he who accompanied you to the Chinaman’s, and afterwards took you in a second hack to the house in Gramercy Park?”

“Known, known, all known!” was her moan.

“Sin and crime cannot long remain hidden in this world, Miss Oliver. The police are acquainted with all your movements from the moment you left the Hotel D⸺. That is why I have compassion on you.

But she would not listen to this.

“No one understands me. I do not understand myself. I only know that I shall make a confidant of no one; that I shall never speak.”

And turning from him, she buried her head in the bedclothes.

I did so, and this is what I heard:

“I do not want to live; doctor, I do not want to live; why do you try to make me better?”

“That is what she is saying all the time. Sad, isn’t it?”

Was it the sight of Franklin, then, which really affected her? and was her apparent indifference at meeting him only an evidence of her self-control? It seems an impossible conclusion to draw, and indeed there are nothing but hitches and improbable features in this case.

Nothing fits; nothing jibes. I get just so far in it and then I run up against a wall.

Either there is a superhuman power of duplicity in the persons who contrived this murder or we are on the wrong tack altogether.”

“Very well, then. Extreme cases must be met by extreme measures. We will let her have her swing, and see what comes of it.

Revenge is a great weapon in the hands of a determined woman, and from her look I think she will make the most of it.

”

“No,” said I; “you have a good face and a beautiful figure. You ought to look well. Are you going to a ball, my dear?”

“I am going to a ball,” she answered; but her tone was so strange the people passing us turned to look at her.

“Let us have everything sent to the carriage,” said she, and went with me from counter to counter with her ready purse in her hand, but not once lifting her veil to look at what was offered us, saying over and over as I sought …