Beyond These VoicesBraddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Beyond These Voices
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Fiction
The door at the end of the corridor was often used by Mr. Provana,
and one of the keys on the ring before mentioned was the latch-key
belonging to this door. He was in the habit of walking to the City,
and he used this door every morning, passing the stables on his way.
He was very fond of his horses, and he often went into the stables, or
had the horses brought out, to look at them. The stable-yard opened
into Chilton Street. This door, communicating with the well-guarded
stable-yard, was fastened with a latch lock and heavy bolts; but the
bolts were not often used, and Sedgewick said that it was by this door
his master must have entered the house on the night of the murder, as
the doors in Portland Place had been bolted and chained at ten minutes
past three o'clock, after Mrs. Provana came home.
The coroner, with the plan of the rooms before him, pointed to that
occupied by Sedgewick.
"Was it possible for a stranger to have entered the house after or
before your master without your hearing the opening of the door or his
footsteps in the passage?"
Sedgewick concluded that it was possible, since the thing must have
happened. He was ordinarily a particularly light sleeper. Was there
ever a servant who confessed to being anything else? He had been to a
theatre that evening, and may have slept sounder than usual.
"Did none of the other men hear anything?"
John, footman, had heard the dog bark.
John was duly sworn, and stated that he had been awakened by hearing
the dog, an Irish terrier, and he had sat up in bed and listened; but
the dog had given only that one bark, by which he, John, concluded that
the animal, which slept on a mat outside his room, had been dreaming.
Interrogated as to time, he had heard the hall clock strike five not
very long after the dog barked. It might be a quarter of an hour, or it
might be half an hour.
On this followed the interrogation of stable servants, as to the gates
opening into Chilton Street, the result of which showed that the stable
gates had not been locked that morning. It was broad daylight when the
grooms finished their work and turned in for a morning sleep. The last
of the stable servants to retire had heard the clocks strike four as he
went to his bedroom.
Mrs. Provana was there to answer all further questions concerning
herself.
She stood up by the table, facing the coroner. She stood there, an
exquisite figure, slender and erect, her countenance and her attitude
sublime in composure, grace and refinement in every line.
The few of her friends who had found their way into the court, and who
were standing discreetly in the background, Mr. Symeon, Mr. Amphlett
and Lady Susan, Father Cyprian Hammond, Claude Rutherford, Eustace
Lyon, the poet--these admired and wondered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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