The Session Ends
It seemed to me that, when Sam’s pipe hit the floor, it made a noise
like doom cracking. We all sat still as stones. I suppose it could not
have been more than a minute, but it seemed a long time before John
left Danny’s side and went and picked up the pipe and handed it to
Sam.
“It’s all right, dad,” he said.
“Not by a damn sight, it’s not all right,” Sam came back to his senses
vigorously. “But it is interesting—this thing. It is getting
interesting, anyway. Let me see—— If I had got Chad to help me—and I
could have, by telling him it was some joke or other I had on hand—I
could have sneaked out of the barn, met her and killed her, during
that hour. When could I have got the body upstairs, though? That’s the
first missing link. My reason for killing her would be another, but——”
“Say! See here, dad,” John cut in.
“You shut up, son. We are waiting to hear the rest of what Danny has
to say. Come, Danny, can you supply either of those missing links?”
“No,” she said, and sighed. It was easy to see that she was plumb
tuckered out. “No, of course I can’t.”
“If,” Sam went on, seemingly talking entirely to himself, “if I’d
hurried like blazes, I might have done the deed, and carried her into
the house during the time I was absent from the barn. I’d have had to
pass Mary in the kitchen—I’d have been bound to sneak in the back
way—but, if I asked her not to, more than likely Mary wouldn’t tell on
me. Or, I might have had a hireling (that’s what they call them, isn’t
it? There’s another word, something like—marmot—no, never mind.) on
the outside, who would have toted the body in for me, while we were at
supper.”
Written out, that sounds as if Sam had been trying to be comical. He
was not at all. He was sitting there, speaking his thoughts for all to
hear, making out a case against himself, cool as Christmas. For my
part, I had heard enough of it.
“Sam, you look here——” I began.
“You shut up, too, Mary,” Sam said.
Mrs. Ricker spoke. She had her say out. Nobody, not even Sam, would
any more think of telling Mrs. Ricker to shut up, than they would
think of telling any other dumb object, that suddenly started to talk,
to shut up. Leading a life of silence, I thought, certainly did have
its advantages, at times.
“I think,” Mrs. Ricker said, “that the girl herself probably killed
her sister. If Sam’s pipe ashes were on the bag, she put them there,
afterwards, to make trouble for him.”
Sam said, “Shucks!”
I thought John would be the first to speak. I was mistaken.
It was Danny herself who said, “Make her talk, now, Uncle Sam. Don’t
wait for her turn. I—can’t bear it. Make her talk now, and give her
reasons for saying such a cruel, wicked, lying thing.”
“Mrs. Ricker,” Sam put the question very solemnly, “have you any
reasons for making this accusation?”
“My only reason is, that I believe it.”
“Don’t beat around the bush. Why do you believe it?”
“I have a feeling that she is guilty.”
“This,” Sam said, sternly, “is no time for feeling, nor for quibbling.
You made a serious accusation—straight out. I want your reason, or
reasons, for making it, and I want them just as straight.”
“I have no reasons,” Mrs. Ricker said. “That is why I suspect her.”
“Ah-ah-ah! Women!” Sam said; and the way he said it, it was the
blackest oath he had used that day.
I looked at Danny. I had not been feeling any too kindly toward her,
for the past few minutes; but, just the same, seeing her there, white
and pitiful, with her hands caught up to her throat, and with the echo
of Sam’s last blasphemy still in my ears, I had a woman feeling toward
her. I knew then, as I know now, that Danielle Canneziano could no
more have killed Gaby than she could have created her.
“I think,” I said, talking fast to keep Sam from shutting me up before
I could get anything said, “that if, in suspicioning an innocent girl
like Danny, Mrs. Ricker is simply drawing on her woman’s instinct,
she’d better pass it up, for the present, and listen to some plain
sexless sense.
“Gaby came downstairs at four. Danny called after her, right then; so
Danny was in the house right then. Gaby went to the rabbit hutch and
stopped long enough to give Martha the bracelet. Almost as soon as
Martha was in the house with the bracelet, Danny was downstairs with
us, cool, collected, and undisturbed. Now suppose, as an idiot
suggested this morning, that Gaby had come straight back into the
house. I guess everyone would agree that it would take her five
minutes to get back upstairs. That would leave Danny not more than ten
minutes to kill her, and to come downstairs, as I’ve said, collected
and undisturbed. Come to think of it, Gaby could not have talked to
Martha and got to the attic stairway in any five minutes. At the
widest figuring, that leaves Danny about five minutes——”
As I had been fearing he would, Sam stopped me. “That’s all right,
too, Mary. But there is no need to draw so long a bow. No need to
count minutes on Danny. The note in Gaby’s bag fixes her innocence
better than all the minutes on the clock could.”
“No, it does not,” Mrs. Ricker said. “Gaby knew that she had reason to
fear an enemy. She probably found that out from the code letter. She
may never have suspected that the enemy was her own sister.”
“I wish I knew,” Sam said, giving Mrs. Ricker a long look, “what you
are getting at, Mrs. Ricker. I’d give that,” Sam dangled out his right
hand, “to know what any one of you was getting at. You, for instance,
know that Danny did not kill her sister. I think that Hand knows that
John didn’t do it—maybe not. I’m beginning to suspect him of honesty
in this; but a damn mistaken honesty, at that. I think that John knows
that Chad is as innocent as—as—a new born babe, as Mary says. I think
Danny would have to be pretty hard put to it, before she’d invent that
story about my pipe ashes——”
“Dad,” John said, and high time he was saying something, “Dan didn’t
invent any story. I know that she was clear off about the pipe ashes,
and I think she shouldn’t have made such a mistake. Since they
couldn’t have been there, she couldn’t have seen them. But Danny
doesn’t lie. She thought she saw the ashes there, or she would not
have said so.”
“All right, son,” Sam conceded. “I’d a heap rather think that than
not. But, see here, did anyone else think they saw my pipe ashes
around there?”
I looked into my own blue voile lap. I imagined I could feel Hubert
Hand’s eyes boring into me. My face burned. I could feel the waves of
red going up into my scalp and spreading out around my ears. I prayed
a quick, private prayer to the Lord. But I have learned, through the
years, that trying to instruct the Lord, through the pretense of
prayer, is a supreme impudence that he usually punishes pretty
promptly. My face burned hotter than ever. I raised my eyes. Sam was
staring straight at me.
“Mary,” he said, “you found the body. Did you see pipe ashes there,
then?”
My only excuse is, that it takes longer than a minute or two minutes
to betray a person who has been your best friend for twenty-five
years.
I said, “No.”
“I am going to ask you to swear to that. Somebody get the Bible.”
Nobody moved.
“You haven’t made any of the others swear to anything,” I said.
“I haven’t caught any of the others in what I was sure was a direct
and deliberate lie.”
I felt weaker than filtered water. It is one thing to tell a lie,
offhand into the free air. I haven’t much use for a person who can’t
do that, when absolutely necessary. It is another thing to put your
hand on the Good Book and swear to a lie. I knew that I could not do
it.
“Martha,” Sam said, “run and get the Bible for dad.”
Martha seemed to be sound asleep again. I did not notice anything
queer about her appearance. Mrs. Ricker must have noticed something
queer. She jumped to her feet and dashed across the room to where
Martha was lying. A shriek went piercing through the house,
splintering the air into quivering bits of agony.
Everyone has wakened from sleep, cold with the sweating terror of some
hideous nightmare, but with only the vaguest impressions of its
detail. So it is with me, and that nightmare hour. I can not
reconstruct it. It remains, yet, in my mind as nothing but a horror of
confusions.
We all ran about. I know that there was telephoning. That some of us
made desperate attempts with restoratives. I remember Sam’s crying,
with his face uncovered, like a child. I can hear him saying that he
had given her the sleeping powder, had forced it upon her. I can hear,
plainest of all, Mrs. Ricker’s voice, with all the pent up passions of
years breaking forth in torrents of heartbreak.
“My baby. My baby girl. My darling. Mother’s life. Mother’s heart.
Speak to mother. My lamb. My baby . . .”
Her voice again, but cruel now, as she shrieks at Hubert Hand. “Stand
there, you beast! Stand there, dry eyed and look at your dead
daughter. The child you deserted. The child you ignored——”
I remember the feeling of the fresh air as I walked beside Sam, who
was carrying Martha, out of the house. I think that it was John who
explained to me that the doctor, who had left Telko, was going to meet
us on the road, in order to save time. We must have walked slowly, but
I can not rid myself of the impression of Mrs. Ricker, running beside
us. I remember her scream, when—futile, unnecessary horror—Sam
stumbled with his burden as he went to step into the sedan.
As the car went dashing away, I remember looking out of its windows at
the house—the great structure, with its wide expanses and its towers;
and it seemed to me that it looked like some monster, crouching there
in the green; some grim, horrible monster, waiting for its victims.
Three of us had been caught in its clutches. Were any of us to escape?