Alice Jenner’s Murder
by Amy Randolph
“By all odds the prettiest girl in the village, and the sweetest, too. I declare to you, Mr. Romer, if the earth had opened and swallowed her up, her fate could scarcely have been more mysterious or more unexplained!”
“Murder will out, they say,” said the slender, handsome-looking young man who sat on the railing of the inn piazza, carelessly swinging his leg, and eying the blue wreaths of cigar smoke that circled round his head.
“I don’t believe in that axiom,” said Paul Dyott, shortly. “Murder does not always ‘out,’ and this is one of the cases where an inexplicable mystery surrounds the whole thing.”
Mr. Romer yawned—apparently he was not particularly interested in the affair. At all events, he asked no questions. Paul Dyott hesitated a moment, and then talked on, too full of his subject to maintain silence.
“Here’s the way it stands. Alice Jenner was murdered the evening of the 24th of April—”
“You told me this before.”
“I know I did. At five o’clock she left her uncle’s house to go up to Squire Dellon’s, at eight o’clock I went down through the little patch of woods below the saw mill, and came across her dead body, half hidden by a fallen tree, among the bushes and dry leaves.”
“Drowned?” asked Romer, indifferently.
“No—with an ugly wound in her throat. The jugular artery was completely severed. That was three months ago, and from that moment to this we have never been able to obtain the least clue to her murderer.”
“Why don’t they send for a few sharp-eyed New York police?”
“They did. Mr. Jenner had vowed he will never rest until he has obtained vengeance on his niece’s murderer. Every assistance has been obtained.”
“Don’t they suspect any body?”
“No—not fairly to suspect. There was a strange young woman hanging round for a few days, and they… Read More