Читать книгу The Millbank Case: A Maine Mystery of To-day онлайн

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“Was it his custom to spend the evening in your sitting room or the library?” the coroner asked.

“Two or three evenings a week he spent in my sitting room. The other evenings in the library, when he was at home.”

“Was he away much, evenings?”

“Only when he was at court in Augusta or Portland. When he had cases at Norridgewock he always drove home at night.”

“At what time did you have supper?”

“At six.”

“On the night of the murder?”

The witness nodded, too much affected to speak her answer.

“Who was present at supper?”

“Theodore and myself.”

“Mary Mullin and Oldbeg did not eat with you?”

This was a sore spot in Millbank’s estimate of the widow Parlin. The town still held it a Christian duty for “help” to eat at the same table with their employers. Every departure from this primitive rule was occasion for heart-burnings and recriminations.

“They ate by themselves in the kitchen.”

There was a slight raising of the head, a shadow, as it were, of the old self-assertive pride, which in other days would have made itself manifest in answering this question. So deep was Millbank in the tragedy that the audience almost lost the weight of the heinous fact confessed in this answer.