The Girl at Central/Chapter 6

by Geraldine Bonner

 

VI

LONGWOOD was stunned. By noon everybody knew it and there was no more business that day. The people stood in groups, talking in whispers as if they were at a funeral. And in the afternoon it was like a funeral, the body coming back by train and being taken from the depot to Mapleshade in one of the Doctor's farm wagons. It lay under a sheet and as the wagon passed through the crowd you couldn't hear a sound, except for a woman crying here and there.

Then it was as if a spring that held the people dumb and still was loosed and the excitement burst up. I never saw anything like it. It seemed like every village up and down the line had emptied itself into Longwood. Farmers and laborers and loafers swarmed along the streets, the rich came in motors, tearing to Mapleshade, and the police were everywhere, as if they'd sprung out of the ground.

By afternoon the reporters came pouring in from town. The Inn was full up with them and they were buzzing round my exchange like flies. Some of them tried to get hold of me and that night had the nerve to come knocking at Mrs. Galway's side door, demanding the telephone girl. But, believe me, I sat tight and said nothing—nothing to them. The police were after me mighty quick, and there was a seance over Corwin's Drug Store when I felt like I was being put to the third degree. I told them all I knew, job or no job, for I guessed right off that that talk I'd overheard on the phone might be an important clew. They kept it close. It wasn't till after the inquest that the press got it.

Before the inquest every sort of rumor was flying about, and the papers were full of crazy stories, not half of them true. I'd read about places and people I knew as well as my own face in the mirror, and they'd sound like a dime novel, so colored up and twisted round the oldest inhabitant wouldn't have recognized them.

To get at the facts was a job, but, knowing who was reliable and who wasn't, I questioned and ferreted and, I guess, before I was done I had them pretty straight.

Sylvia had been killed by a blow on the side of her head—a terrible blow. A sheriff's deputy I know told me that in all his experience he had seen nothing worse. Her hat had evidently shielded the scalp. It was pulled well down over her head, the long pin bent but still thrust through it. Where she had been hit the plush was torn but not the thick interlining, and her hair, all loosened, was hanging down against her neck. There was a wound—not deep, more like a tearing of the skin, on the lower part of her cheek. It was agreed that she had been struck only once by some heavy implement that had a sharp or jagged edge. Though the woods and fields had been thoroughly searched nothing had been discovered that could have dealt the blow. Whatever he had used the murderer had either successfully hidden it or taken it away with him. The deputy told me it looked to him as if it might have been some farming tool like a spade, or even a heavy branch broken from a tree. The way the body was arranged, the coat drawn smoothly together, the branches completely covering her, showed that the murderer had taken time to conceal his crime, though why he had not drawn the body back into the thick growth of bushes was a point that puzzled everybody.

It was impossible to trace any footprints, as the automobile party and Hines had trodden the earth about her into a muddy mass, and the grass along the edge was too thick and springy to hold any impression.

Close behind the place where she lay twigs of the screening trees were snapped and bent as if her assailant had broken through them.

There were people who said Hines would have been arrested on the spot if robbery had been added to murder. But the jewelry was all on her, more than he said he had noticed when she was in the Wayside Arbor. The pearl necklace alone was worth twenty thousand dollars, and just below it, clasping her gown over the chest, was a diamond cross, an old ornament of her mother's, made of the finest Brazilian stones. In the pocket of her coat was a purse with forty-eight dollars in it. So right at the start the theory of robbery was abandoned.

Another inexplicable thing was the disappearance of the French maid, Virginia Dupont. Jack Reddy denied any knowledge of her. He said Sylvia had never mentioned bringing her with them and he didn't think intended to do so. The Mapleshade people thought differently, all declaring that Sylvia depended on her and took her wherever she went. One of the mysteries about the woman that was quickly cleared up was the walk she had taken to the village on Sunday morning. This was to meet Mr. Reddy and take from him the letter for Sylvia which had been found in the desk.

I know from what I heard that the police were keen to find her, but she had dropped out of sight without leaving a trace. No one at Mapleshade knew anything about her or her connections. She was not liked in the house or the village and had made no friends. On her free Sundays she'd go to town and when she returned say very little about where she'd been. A search of her rooms showed nothing, except that she seemed to have left her clothes behind her. She was last seen at Mapleshade by Nora Magee, who, at half-past five on Sunday, met her on the third floor stairs. Nora was off for a walk to the village with Harper and was in a hurry. She asked Virginie if she was going out and Virginie said no, she felt sick and was going up to lie down till she'd be wanted to help Miss Sylvia dress for dinner.

If you ask me was anyone suspected at this stage I'd answer "yes," but people were afraid to say who. There was talk about Hines on the street and in the postoffice, but it was only when you were close shut in your own room or walking quiet up a side street that the person with you would whisper the Doctor's name. Nobody dared say it aloud, but there wasn't a soul in Longwood who didn't know about the quarreling at Mapleshade, whose was the money that ran it, and the will that left everything to Mrs. Fowler if her daughter died.

But no arrests were made. Everything was waiting on the inquest, and we all heard that there were important facts—already known to the police—which would not be made public till then.

Wednesday afternoon they held the inquest at Mapleshade. The authorities had rounded up a bunch of witnesses, I among them. The work in the Exchange had piled up so we'd had to send a hurry call for help to headquarters and I left the office in charge of a new girl, Katie Reilly, Irish, a tall, gawky thing, who was going to work with us hereafter on split hours.

Going down Maple Lane it was like a target club outing or a political picnic, except for the solemn faces. I saw Hines and his party, and the railway men, and a lot of queer guys that I took to be the jury. Halfway there a gang of reporters passed me, talking loud, and swinging along in their big overcoats. Near the black pine the toot of a horn made me stand back and Jack Reddy's roadster scudded by, he driving, with Casey beside him, and the two old Gilseys, pale and peaked in the back seat.

They held the inquest in the dining-room, with the coroner sitting at one end of the long shiny table and the jury grouped round the other. Take it from me, it was a gloomy sight. The day outside was cold and cloudy, and through the French windows that looked out on the lawns, the light came still and gray, making the faces look paler than they already were. It was a grand, beautiful room with a carved stone fireplace where logs were burning. Back against the walls were sideboards with silver dishes on them and hand-painted portraits hung on the walls.

But the thing you couldn't help looking at—and that made all the splendor just nothing—were Sylvia's clothes hanging over the back of a chair, and on a little table near them her hat and veil, the one glove she had had on, and the heap of jewelry. All those fine garments and the precious stones worth a fortune seemed so pitiful and useless now.

We were awful silent at first, a crowd of people sitting along the walls, staring straight ahead or looking on the ground. Now and then someone would move uneasily and make a rustle, but there were moments so still you could hear the fire snapping and the scratching of the reporters' pencils. They were just behind me, bunched up at a table in front of the window. When the Doctor came in everyone was as quiet as death and the eyes on him were like the eyes of images, so fixed and steady. Mrs. Fowler was not present—they sent for her later—but Nora and Anne were there as pale as ghosts.

The Coroner opened up by telling about how and where the deceased had been found, the position, the surroundings, etc., etc., and then called Dr. Graham, who was the county physician and had made the autopsy.

A good deal of what he said I didn't understand—it was to prove that death resulted from a fracture of the skull. He could not state the exact hour of dissolution, but said it was in the earlier part of the night, some time before twelve. He described the condition of the scalp which had been partially protected by the hat, thick as it was with a plush outside and a heavy interlining. This was held up and then given to the jury to examine. I saw it plainly as they passed it from hand to hand—a small dark automobile hat, with a tear in one side and some shreds of black Shetland veil hanging to its edge. She bore no other marks of violence save a few small scratches on her right hand. She had evidently been attacked unexpectedly and had had no time to fight or struggle.

The automobilists who had found the body came next. Only the men were present—two nice-looking gentlemen—the ladies having been excused. They told what I have already written, one of them making the creeps go down your spine, describing how his wife said she saw the hand in the moonlight, and how he walked back, laughing, and pulled off the brushwood.

After that Mrs. Fowler came, all swathed up in black and looking like a haggard old woman. The Coroner spoke very kind to her. When she got to the quarrel between Sylvia and the Doctor her voice began to tremble and she could hardly go on. It was pitiful to see but she had to tell it, and about the other quarrels too. Then she pulled herself together and told about going up to Sylvia's room and finding the letter.

The Coroner stopped her there and taking a folded paper from the table beside him said it was the letter and read it out to us. It was dated Firehill, Nov. 21st.

"Dearest:

"All right. This evening at seven by the pine. We'll go in my racer to Bloomington and be married there by Fiske, the man I told you about. It'll be a long ride but at the end we'll find happiness waiting for us. Don't disappoint me—don't do what you did the other time. Believe in my love and trust yourself to me—Jack."

In the silence that followed you could hear the fire falling together with a little soft rustle. All the eyes turned as if they were on pivots and looked at Jack Reddy—all but mine. I kept them on Mrs. Fowler and never moved them till she was led, bent and sobbing, out of the room.

Nora Magee was the next, and I heard them say afterward made a good witness. The coroner asked her—and Anne when her turn came—very particular about the jewelry, what was gone, how many pieces and such questions. And then it came out that nobody—not even Mrs. Fowler—knew exactly what Sylvia had. She was all the time buying new ornaments or having her old ones reset and the only person who kept track of her possessions was Virginie Dupont. All any of them could be sure of was that the jewel box was empty, and the toilet articles, fitted bag, and gold mesh purse were gone.

Hines was called after that. He was all slicked up in his store clothes and looked very different to what he had that day in the summer. Though anyone could see he was scared blue, the perspiration on his forehead and his big, knotty hands twiddling at his tie and his watch chain; he told his story very clear and straightforward. I think everyone was impressed by it and by Mrs. Hines, who followed him. She was a miserable looking little rat of a woman, with inflamed eyes and a long drooping nose, but she corroborated all he said, and—anyway, to me—it sounded true.

Tecla Rabine, the Bohemian servant, followed, and when she walked over to sit in the chair, keyed up as I was, I came near laughing. She was a large, fat woman with a good-humored red face and little twinkling eyes, and she sure was a sight, bulging out of a black cloth suit that was the fashion when Columbus landed. On her head was a fancy straw hat with one mangy feather sticking straight up at the back, and the last touch was her face, one side still swollen out from her toothache, and looking for all the world as if she had a quid in her cheek.

Though she spoke in a queer, foreign dialect, she gave her testimony very well and she told something that no one—I don't think even the police—had heard before.

While Hines was locking up she went to her room but couldn't sleep because of the pain of her toothache.

"Ach," she said, spreading her hand out near her cheek, "it was out so far—swole out, and, oh, my God—pain!"

"Never mind your toothache," said the Coroner—"keep to the subject."

"How do I hear noises if my toothache doesn't make me to wake?" she asked, giving him a sort of indignant look.

Somebody laughed, a kind of choked giggle, and I heard one of those fresh write-up chaps behind me whisper:

"This is the comic relief."

"Oh, you heard noises—what kind of noises?"

"The scream," she said.

"You heard a scream?"

"Yes—one scream—far away, up toward Cresset's Crossing. I go crazy with the pain and after Mr. Hines is come upstairs I go down to the kitchen to make——" she stopped, looking up in the air—"what you call him?"—she put her hand flat on the side of her face—"for here, to stop the pain."

"Do you mean a poultice?"

She grinned all over and nodded.

"Yes, that's him. I make hot water on the gas, and then, way off, I hear a scream."

"What time was that?"

"The kitchen clock says ten minutes past ten."

"What did you do?"

She looked surprised.

"I make the—you know the name—for my ache."

"Didn't you go out and investigate—even go to the door?"

She shook her head and gave a sort of good-humored laugh as if she was explaining things to a child.

"Go out. For why? If I go out for screams I go out when the dagoes fight, and when the automobiles be pass—up and down all night, often drunken and making noises;" she shrugged her shoulders sort of careless; "I no be bothered with screams."

"Did you go to bed?"

"I do. I make the medicine for my swole up face and go upstairs."

"Did you hear any more screams?"

"No—there are no more. If there are I would have hear them, for I can't sleep ever all night. All I hear is automobiles—many automobiles passing up and down and maybe—two, three, four times—the horns sounding."

The Coroner asked her a few more questions, principally about Hines' movements, and her answers, if you could get over the lingo, were all clear and in line with what Hines had said.

The railway men followed her, Sands and Clark and Jim Donahue. Jim was as nervous as a cat, holding his hat in his hands and twisting it round like a plate he was drying. He told about the woman he put on the seven-thirty train on Sunday night.

"Where did you first see this woman?" he was asked.

"On the platform, just before the train came in. She came down along it, out of the dark."

"Can you swear it was Miss Hesketh?"

Jim didn't think he could swear because he couldn't see her face plain, it being covered with a figured black veil. But he never thought of it being anyone else.

"Why did you think it was she?"

"Because it looked like her. It was her coat and her gold purse and I'd know her hair anywhere. And when I spoke to her and said: 'Good evening, Miss Hesketh, going to leave us?' it was her voice that answered: 'Yes, Jim, I'm going away for a few days.'"

"Did you have any more conversation with her?"

"No, because the train came along then. She got in and I handed her her bag and said 'Good night.'"

When he was asked to describe the bag, he said he hadn't noticed it except that it was a medium sized bag, he thought, dark colored.

Then he was shown the clothes—that was heart-rending. The Coroner held them up, the long fur coat, the little plush hat, and the one glove. He thought they were the same but it was hard to tell, the platform being so dark—anyway, it was them sort of clothes the lady had on, and though he couldn't be sure of the glove he had noticed that her gloves were light colored.

Sands, the Pullman conductor, and Clark, from the Junction, testified that they'd seen the same woman on the train and at the Junction. Sands particularly noticed the gold mesh purse because she took her ticket out of it. He addressed her as Miss Hesketh and she had answered him, but only to say "Good evening."

Then came the Firehill servants. The two old Gilseys were dreadfully upset. Mrs. Gilsey cried and poor old David kept hesitating and looking at Mr. Reddy, but the stamp of truth was on every word they said. Casey followed them, telling what I've already written.

When Mr. Reddy was called a sort of stir went over the people. Everybody was curious to hear his story, as we'd only got bits of it, most of them wild rumors. And there wasn't a soul in Longwood that didn't grieve for him, plunged down at the moment when he thought he was most happy into such an awful tragedy. As he sat down in the chair opposite the Coroner, the room was as still as a tomb, even the reporters behind me not making so much as the scratch of a pen.

He looked gray and pinched, his eyes burnt out like a person's who hasn't slept for nights. You could see he was nervous, for he kept crossing and uncrossing his knees, and he didn't give his evidence nearly so clear and continued as the newspapers had it. He'd stop every now and then as if he didn't remember or as if he was thinking of the best way to express himself.

He began by telling how he and Sylvia had arranged to go in his car to Bloomington, and there be married by his friend Fiske, an Episcopal clergyman. The Coroner asked him if Fiske expected them and he said no, he hadn't had time to let him know as the elopement was decided on hurriedly.

"Why was the decision hurried?" the Coroner asked and he answered low, as if he was reluctant to say it.

"Because Miss Hesketh had a violent quarrel with her stepfather on Saturday morning. It was not till after that that she made up her mind she would go with me."

"Did you know at the time what that quarrel was about?"

His face got a dull red and he said low.

"Yes, she told me of it in a letter she wrote me immediately afterward."

Then he told how on Saturday night he had received a special delivery letter from her, telling of the quarrel and agreeing to the elopement. That letter he had destroyed. He answered it the next morning, she having directed him to bring it in himself and deliver it to Virginie, who would meet him opposite Corwin's drugstore. This he did, the letter being the one already in evidence.

The Coroner asked him to explain the sentence which said "Don't disappoint me—don't do what you did the other time." He looked straight in front of him and answered:

"We had made a plan to elope once before and she had backed out."

"Do you know why?"

"It was too—too unusual—too unconventional. When it came to the scandal of an elopement she hung back."

"Is it your opinion that the quarrel with Dr. Fowler made her agree the second time?"

"I know nothing about that."

Then he told of leaving Firehill, coming into Longwood, and going down Maple Lane.

"I reached there a few minutes before seven and ran down to the pine tree where I was to meet her. I drew up to one side of the road and waited. During the time I waited—half an hour—I neither saw nor heard anybody. At half-past seven I decided she had changed her mind again and left."

"You didn't go to the house?"

"No—I was not welcome at the house. She had told me not to go there."

"You were in the habit of seeing her somewhere else, though?"

His face got red again and you could see he had to make an effort not to get angry.

"After I had heard from Miss Hesketh and seen from Dr. Fowler's manner that I was not wanted at Mapleshade, I saw her at intervals. Once or twice we went for walks in the woods, and a few times, perhaps three or four, I met her on the turnpike and took her for a drive in my car."

He then went on to tell how he drove back to Firehill, reaching there a little after nine. The place was empty and he went up to his room. He didn't know how long he'd been there when the telephone rang. It was the mysterious message from her.

He repeated it slowly, evidently trying to give it word for word. You could have heard a pin drop when he ended.

"Did you attempt to question her on the phone?"

"No, it all went too quick and I was too astonished."

"Did you get the impression that she was in any grave danger?"

"No, I never thought of that. She was very rash and impulsive and I thought she'd done some foolhardy thing and had turned to me as the one person on whom she could rely."

"What do you mean by foolhardy?"

He gave a shrug and threw out his hands.

"The sort of thing a child might do—some silly, thoughtless action. She was full of spirit and daring; you never could be sure of what she mightn't try. I didn't think of any definite thing. I ran to the garage and got out my car and went northward up the Firehill Road. It was terrible traveling, and I should say it took me nearly three-quarters of an hour to make the distance. When I was nearing the pike I sounded my horn to let her know I was coming.

"Just before I got there the clouds had broken and the moon come out. The whole landscape was flooded with light, and I made no doubt I'd see her as soon as I turned into the pike. But she wasn't there. I slowed up and waited, looking up and down, for I'd no idea which way she was coming, but there wasn't a sign of her. As far as I could see, the road was lifeless and deserted. Then I ran up and down—a mile or two either way—but there was no one to be seen."

"Did you hear any sounds in the underbrush—footsteps, breaking of twigs?"

"I heard nothing. The place was as still as the grave. I made longer runs up and down, looking along both sides and now and then waiting and sounding the auto horn."

"Did you stop at any of the farms or cottages and make inquiries?"

"No. I didn't do that because I had no thought of her being in any real danger and because she'd cautioned me against letting anyone know. After I'd searched the main road thoroughly for several miles and gone up several branch roads I began to think she'd played a joke on me."

"Do you mean fooled you?"

"Yes—the whole thing began to look that way. Her not being at the rendezvous in Maple Lane and then phoning me to meet her at a place, which, when I came to think of it, it was nearly impossible for her to reach in that space of time. It seemed the only reasonable explanation—and it was the sort of thing she might do. When I got the idea in my head it grew and," he looked down on the floor, his voice dropping low as if it was hard for him to speak, "I got blazing mad."

For a moment it seemed like he couldn't go on. In that moment I thought of how he must be feeling, remembering his rage against her while all the time she was lying cold and dead by the road.

"I was too angry to go home," he went on, "and not thinking much what I did, I let the car out and went up and down—I don't know how far—I don't remember—miles and miles."

"According to Mr. Casey it was half-past four when you came back to the garage."

"I daresay; I didn't notice the time."

"You were from 9:30 to 4:30 on the road?"

"Yes."

"You spent those seven hours going up and down the turnpike and the intersecting roads?"

"Yes, but at first I waited—for half hours at a time in different places."

He looked straight at the Coroner as he said that, a deep steady look, more quiet and intent than he'd done since he started. I think it would have seemed to most people as if he was telling the absolute truth and wanted to impress it. But when a girl feels about a man as I did about him, she can see below the surface, and there was something about the expression of his face, about the tone of his voice, that made me think for the first time he was holding something back.

Then he went on and told about going home and falling asleep on the sofa, and about the doctor and Mills coming.

"When I saw the Doctor my first thought was that I must keep quiet till I found out what had happened. When he asked me where his daughter was I was startled as I realized she wasn't at home. But, even then, I hadn't any idea of serious trouble and I was determined to hold my tongue till I knew more than I did.

"The ring of the telephone gave me a shock. I had been expecting to get a call from her and instinctively I gave a jump for it. By that time I was sure she'd got into some silly scrape and I wasn't going to have her stepfather finding out and starting another quarrel. They," he nodded his head at the Doctor and Mills, "caught on at once and made a rush for me.

"After that——" he lifted his hands and let them drop on his knees—"it was just as they've said. I was paralyzed. I don't know what I said. I only felt she'd been in danger and called on me and I'd failed her. I think for a few moments I was crazy."

His voice got so husky he could hardly speak and he bent his head down, looking at his hands. I guess every face in the room was turned to him but mine. I couldn't look at him but sat like a dummy, picking at my gloves, and inside, in my heart, I felt like I was crying. In the silence I heard one of the reporters whisper:

"Gee—poor chap! that's tough!"

He was asked some more questions, principally about what Sylvia had told him of the quarrels with her stepfather. You could see he was careful in his answers. According to what he said she'd only alluded to them in a general way as making the life at Mapleshade very uncomfortable.

He was just getting up when I saw one of the jurors pass a slip of paper across the table to the Coroner. He looked at it, then, as Mr. Reddy was moving away, asked him to wait a minute; there was another question—had he stopped anywhere during Sunday night to get gasoline for his car?

Mr. Reddy turned back and said very simply:

"No, I had an extra drum in the car."

"You used that?"

"Yes."

"What did you do with the drum?"

"Threw it into the bushes somewhere along the road."

"Do you know the place?"

He gave a sort of smile and shook his head.

"No, I don't remember. I don't know where I filled the tank. When it was done I pitched the drum back into the trees—somewhere along the turnpike."

Several more of us came after that, I among them. But the real sensation of the day was the Doctor's evidence, which I'll keep for the next chapter.