The coroner was a man of
method, and his plan was now to prove, as had been apparent to most
of us from the first, that the assumption of suicide on the part of
Mrs. Jeffrey was open to doubt. The communication suggesting such
an end to her troubles was the strongest proof Mr. Jeffrey could
bring forward that her death had been the result of her own act.
Consequently it was now the coroner's business to show that this
communication was either a forgery, or a substitution, and that if
she left some word in the book to which she had in so peculiar a
manner directed his attention, it was not necessarily the one
bewailing her absence of love for him and her consequent intention
of seeking relief from her disappointment in death.
Some hint of what the coroner contemplated had already escaped him
in the persistent and seemingly inconsequent questions to which he
had subjected this witness in reference to these very matters. But
the time had now come for a more direct attack, and the interest
rose correspondingly high, when the coroner, lifting again to sight
the scrap of paper containing the few piteous lines so often quoted,
asked of the now anxious and agitated witness, if he had ever
noticed any similarity between the handwriting of his wife and that
of Miss Tuttle.
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