The Filigree Ball: Being a full and true account of the solution of the mystery concerning the Jeffrey-Moore affairGreen, Anna Katharine
General
The Filigree Ball: Being a full and true account of the solution of the mystery concerning the Jeffrey-Moore affair
Green, Anna Katharine
Detective and mystery stories
Mr. Jeffrey’s examination and its triumphant conclusion created a great
furor in town. Topics which had hitherto absorbed all minds were
forgotten in the discussion of the daring attempt which had been made
by the police to fix crime upon one of Washington’s most esteemed
citizens, and the check which they had rightly suffered for this
outrage. What might be expected next? Something equally bold and
reprehensible, of course, but what? It was a question which at the next
sitting completely filled the inquest room.
To my great surprise, Mr. Jeffrey was recalled to the stand. He had
changed since the night before. He looked older, and while still
handsome, for nothing could rob him of his regularity of feature and
extreme elegance of proportion, showed little of the spirit which, in
spite of the previous day’s depression, had upheld him through its most
trying ordeal and kept his eye bright, if only from excitement. This
was fact number one, and one which I stored away in my already
well-furnished memory.
Miss Tuttle sat in a less conspicuous position than on the previous
day, and Mr. Moore, her uncle, was not there at all.
The testimony called for revived an old point which, seemingly, had not
been settled to the coroner’s satisfaction.
Had Mr. Jeffrey placed the small stand holding the candelabrum on the
spot where it had been found? No. Had he carried into the house, at the
time of his acknowledged visit, the candles which had been afterward
discovered there? No. He had had time to think since his hesitating and
unsatisfactory replies of the day before, and he was now in a position
to say that while he distinctly remembered buying candles on his way to
the Moore house, he had not found them in his pocket on getting there
and had been obliged to make use of the matches he always carried on
his person in order to find his way to the upstairs room where he felt
positive he would find a candle.
This gave the coroner an opportunity to ask:
“And why did you expect to find a candle there?”
The answer astonished me and, I have no doubt, many others.
“It was the room in which my wife had dressed for the ceremony. It had
not been disturbed since that time. My wife had little ways of her own;
one was to complete her toilet by using a curling iron on a little lock
she wore over her temple. When at home she heated this curling iron in
the gas jet, but there being no gas in the Moore house, I naturally
concluded that she had made use of a candle, as the curl had been
noticeable under her veil.”
Oh, the weariness in his tone! I could scarcely interpret it. Was he
talking by rote, or was he utterly done with life and all its
interests? No one besides myself seemed to note this strange passivity.
To the masses he was no longer a suffering man, but an individual from
whom information was to be got. The next question was a vital one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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