Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/326

 doctors gave it as their opinion on the first day of the inquest that it was unlikely the poor woman had killed herself. Eventually, after all these new developments, when they were recalled, they did agree in saying that a vain and self-conscious woman might put an end to her life by placing the revolver in the position indicated by the wound. That, a first shot aimed at the side having been deflected by a steel corset, a would-be suicide might have feared to try the same spot again, and have chosen a spot between the throat and the chest, sparing the face and the throat itself from disfigurement. Still, who was to prove what might or might not have gone on in Millicent Hereward's mind? Some of her women friends, Mrs. Forestier for instance, did volunteer evidence that she had been exceedingly vain, or words to that effect, doing all she could to keep her looks as she grew older; and her maid, Kate Craigie, testified to the same peculiarity. But all that was in the realm of supposition. And my firm opinion is, and will continue to be, that if this Anglican Priest Father Tennant hadn't come forward, with what to my idea was equivalent to violation of the confessional, either Ian Hereward or Ian Barr would have had to suffer for the crime of murder. Even if a jury hadn't dared to convict, there would always have been whispers.

As for me, I am asking myself whether there could