The Affair Next Door by Anna Katherine Green

managed to repeat what we already knew, how she went with the
policeman into the house, and how they stumbled upon the dead woman in
the parlor.
    Further than this they did not question her, and I, Amelia Butterworth,
had to sit in silence and see her go back to her seat, redder than
before, but with a strangely satisfied air that told me she had escaped
more easily than she had expected. And yet Mr. Gryce had been warned
that she knew more than appeared, and by one in whom he seemed to have
placed some confidence!
    The doctor was called next. His testimony was most important, and
contained a surprise for me and more than one surprise for the others.
After a short preliminary examination, he was requested to state how
long the woman had been dead when he was called in to examine her.
    "More than twelve and less than eighteen hours," was his quiet reply.
    "Had the rigor mortis set in?"
    "No; but it began very soon after."
    "Did you examine the wounds made by the falling shelves and the vases
that tumbled with them?"
    "I did."
    "Will you describe them?"
    He did so.
    "And now"—there was a pause in the Coroner's question which roused us
all to its importance, "which of these many serious wounds was in your
opinion the cause of her death?"
    The witness was accustomed to such scenes, and was perfectly at home in
them. Surveying the Coroner with a respectful air, he turned slowly
towards the jury and answered in a slow and impressive manner:
    "I feel ready to declare, sirs, that none of them did. She was not
killed by the falling of the cabinet upon her."
    "Not killed by the falling shelves! Why not? Were they not sufficiently
heavy, or did they not strike her in a vital place?"
    "They were heavy enough, and they struck her in a way to kill her if she
had not been already dead when they fell upon her. As it was, they
simply bruised a body from which life had already departed."
    As this was putting it very plainly, many of the crowd who had not been
acquainted with these facts previously, showed their interest in a very
unmistakable manner; but the Coroner, ignoring these symptoms of growing
excitement, hastened to say:
    "This is a very serious statement you are making, doctor. If she did not
die from the wounds inflicted by the objects which fell upon her, from
what cause did she die? Can you say that her death was a natural one,
and that the falling of the shelves was merely an unhappy accident
following it?"
    "No, sir; her death was not natural. She was killed, but not by the
falling cabinet."
    "Killed, and not by the cabinet? How then? Was there any other wound
upon her which you regard as mortal?"
    "Yes, sir. Suspecting that she had perished from other means than
appeared, I made a most rigid examination of her body, when I discovered
under the hair in the nape of the neck, a minute spot, which, upon
probing, I found to be the end of a small, thin point of steel. It had
been thrust by a careful hand into the most vulnerable part of the body,
and death must have ensued at once."
    This was too much for certain excitable persons present, and a momentary
disturbance arose, which, however, was nothing to that in my own breast.
    So! so! it was her neck that had been pierced, and not her heart. Mr.
Gryce had allowed us to think it was the latter, but it was not this
fact which stupefied me, but the skill and diabolical coolness of the
man who had inflicted this death-thrust.
    After order had been restored, which I will say was very soon, the
Coroner, with an added gravity of tone, went on with his questions:
    "Did you recognize this bit of steel as belonging to any instrument in
the medical profession?"
    "No; it was of too untempered steel to have been manufactured for any
thrusting or cutting purposes. It was of the commonest kind, and had
broken short off in the wound. It was the end only that I found."
    "Have you this end with you,—the point, I mean, which you found
imbedded at the base of the dead woman's brain?"
    "I have, sir";