Custody of children -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
When questioned, she stated that her husband had been with her through
the afternoon, that he had left her home about four o'clock, and that
she had come down to the office an hour or so later. She had gone
directly to the door of the main office, and just before reaching it had
heard the pistol shot. She ran through the front office into Mr. De
Jarnette's private room, feeling sure that the sound had come from
there. She had found him on the floor, and near him a revolver which she
recognized as one that he had had in his possession for several years.
Here, suddenly recalling Mr. De Jarnette's peremptory command to her to
put the pistol down, she hesitated, and looked at him. His face was
averted.
She went on, saying nothing about having had the pistol in her hand, nor
about its being one of a pair that her husband owned, though this fact
came to her suddenly. She had not had time to question him, she said,
nor even to go to him before Mr. De Jarnette came in.
Had she heard any sound at the other door?
No, she had heard nothing, or rather she had been so horror-stricken to
come upon her husband in this condition that she had not noticed
anything.
Richard De Jarnette stated that he had heard the shot while he was in
his own room across the hall and had hurried at once to the outside door
of his brother's room. Finding it locked he had run around through the
main office and found things just as Mrs. De Jarnette had testified. The
door was locked, but it was a night latch, he got up to show. One might
have gone out that way.
"Without encountering you?" the coroner asked. And Mr. De Jarnette,
hesitating, and weighing his words, thought it hardly probable, though
possible.
Margaret interrupted timidly here to say that since he spoke of the door
she recollected hearing something just as she came in that sounded like
the closing of a door. Mr. De Jarnette turned toward her, and with his
hard eyes upon her, Margaret faltered that perhaps it was the outer door
of the lavatory. Investigation proved that that door was bolted on the
inside.
"I cannot see the pertinence of this line of inquiry," said Mr. De
Jarnette, at length, almost roughly, "in the face of his dying statement
that it was accidental." And his eyes as if by chance turned upon his
sister-in-law.
The elevator boy was questioned as to whether any suspicious person had
gone down about that time. He could not remember. It seemed to him, upon
further thought, that a fat old lady had got on going down at the time
of the pistol shot, but so many people went up and down all the time he
couldn't be sure that it was not on the floor below.
Dr. Semple was examined as to the wound.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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