Another Confession
“Before I came to the Desert Moon——” she began, but Hubert Hand
stopped her.
“Never mind, Ollie. No need confessing, as you say, any of that. Sam
knows all about us. He’d guessed it, or most of it, years ago. I’ve
just now told him the rest. It is all right with him. I mean—he
realizes it’s all long past. He thinks, as I do, that the best thing
we can do is to forget it; and, as he says, keep on living straight
and decent.”
“Do you know all of our story?” Mrs. Ricker lifted her faded eyes to
Sam.
“Enough,” Sam sort of sighed it. “I don’t care about details. All
but—I was kind of wondering what became of the brown-eyed baby, named
Vera, who the papers from the orphanage were made out for.”
“I found her a home with the mother and father of one of the nurses in
the hospital. They thought that she was my own child. They loved her,
and were kind to her. Until she died, during the influenza epidemic in
San Francisco, in 1918, I sent half of my salary to them, for her,
each month.”
“I always knew you were a good woman,” Sam said. “Now what do you say
we forget it, let by-gones be by-gones?”
“No,” said Mrs. Ricker. “Martha did not kill Gaby, as you think she
did, Sam. I killed her.”
Sam dropped his pipe.
There was another one of those dead, awful silences.
“The guilt,” Mrs. Ricker went on, “is entirely mine. All of my life I
have been cursed with an abnormal jealousy, and with the violent
temper that usually accompanies such jealousy. Martha, you all know,
possessed both of these traits—a heritage from her mother—without the
balancing power of an adult mind.” She turned to Hubert Hand. “Have
you told about Nina Ziegelman?”
“No,” he spoke sharply. “I wouldn’t, Ollie. No need——”
“But I would,” she said, and continued, more rapidly. “About four
months before Martha was born a woman named Nina Ziegelman betrayed
us—Hubert and me. I had given her a confidence, and she betrayed it.
When I found what she had done I went to her hotel room and tried to
kill her. I did not succeed. I shot her; but she recovered. For many
reasons, of their own, she and her friends proffered no charges
against me. I went free. But I had marked Martha for murder. She was
powerless against it; as powerless as she would have been against any
evil physical inheritance. She can’t be blamed. No one could dare
blame her for that. It was I, who planted those seeds of violence,
jealousy, hatred, and murderous intent, who killed Gabrielle. Martha
was only the helpless instrument.”
I was sorry that there was eagerness, mixed with the pity in John’s
voice, as he asked, “Did Martha tell you that she committed the
murder?”
“No. Other parental heritages of hers were a lying tongue, and
slyness. She persisted in her denials, to me. But it is all so
evident.
“Gabrielle joined Martha at the rabbit hutch. You know how one sits
down on one’s heels to peer in at the rabbits in the low hutch. I
think Gaby must have been squatting, so, when Martha jumped at her and
overpowered her. Martha was strong, you know. Her hands were very
strong. You remember, Mary, how she could open fruit jars that neither
you nor I could budge? She had hated Gaby ever since Gaby had come.
Martha had said to me, dozens of times, that someday she thought she
would kill Gaby.
“The marks on her throat, I thought, and so did the coroner, looked as
if she had been caught by someone who had been standing behind her.
Seized unawares, it would not take long to strangle a person. Martha
must have done it in two or three minutes. She took the bracelet then,
rolled the body under the clump of berry bushes, right there, and came
straight into the house.
“She showed no feeling of guilt, because she had none. At that moment,
we should all have suspected something. We should have known that girl
would not, suddenly, have given Martha the bracelet. Later, she told
you about it, didn’t she, Sam? And you left Chad in the barn, to
hoodwink Hubert, and came up and hid the body for her?”
“By God, I did not,” Sam said.
“No need to deny it, now, Sam,” she said. “It was the deed of a good
man. Martha was never responsible—but courts might not have
understood. Now we will all shield her—keep her secret. Chad’s
confession will satisfy the world. Danny must know, I suppose; but no
one else need ever know——”
“But I tell you——” Sam shouted.
I don’t know how, without raising her voice, she made it sound through
his shouting, and silence it, but she did. “Sam—don’t. Why can’t we be
honest, now, among ourselves? You see, I know that both you and Martha
were on those stairs when the body was put there——”
My thoughts jumped out into words. “Chad must have known it, too. He
must have decided that he’d rather die than betray either Sam or
Martha.”
“He might have thought it,” Sam said, with a lack of emphasis that
edged stupidity. “He could not have known it. It is not true.”
“Mrs. Ricker,” John questioned, “what makes you think that dad and
Martha had both been on the stairs?”
“Sam’s pipe ashes were strewn about. And there was an old tatting
shuttle, with which I had been trying to teach Martha to tat, that
morning. She had it in her pocket. It must have dropped out. I think
that Mary tried to clean the pipe ashes away. They were gone when I
saw the body the second time. I should have tried to do it, but I
didn’t think. I had no time. I was frantic with fear.
“Wait,” she answered our looks and our exclamations of astonishment.
“I will explain. Martha and I, as you know, were alone here in the
house while the rest of you were out looking for Gaby. Martha was
sleepy. I was worried about her sleeping so much, and tried all sorts
of ways to keep her awake until bed time. I kept sending her out to
look at the sky, to see whether a storm was coming to spoil her
fireworks. She would run out, and right in again, to curl on the
davenport and try to sleep. Finally, though, she stayed outside, for a
long time. But for Sam’s pipe ashes, I would think that then she had
managed to drag the body upstairs by herself. Still—though I believe
that she did have strength enough to move the body, I do not believe
that she would have had wits enough.
“When the wind rose, I looked first for Martha. I called her several
times before she answered. Finally she came around the house from the
direction of the rabbit hutch, again. Surely, you must have noticed,
as I did, that she had seemed strangely excited during all the late
afternoon and early evening. At the time, I thought it was because she
had been given the monkey charm, and because she was to have the
fireworks.
“But, when we were alone, she talked very foolishly—even for her. She
began with it again, when she had answered my call. She kept insisting
that soon we were all going to be surprised about something; something
very nice, that had to do with Chad—but she would never, never tell
what it was. As a rule, I should not have paid any attention to such
talk. But, for some reason, her excitement, and her insistence about a
surprise, disturbed me. I spent some minutes quizzing her. I even
tried to bribe her. I could get nothing from her but further talk
about the nice surprise.
“At last I gave it up, and ran upstairs to begin closing the house
against the storm. I thought I’d begin with the attic, and come down
through the house. I tried the attic door. It was locked, and the key
was missing. I was alarmed. Possibly, because we were all disturbed
concerning Gaby’s absence; and possibly, because inside doors are so
seldom locked here. I remembered the old skeleton key hanging in the
broom closet. I ran down and got it.
“I opened the door. I saw the body. I touched it—and knew, even before
I saw the tatting shuttle there, and the beaded bag, covered with
Sam’s pipe ashes. I snatched the shuttle and hid it in my dress. At
that instant, through the open window at the end of the hall, I heard
your voices, as you ran up the road from the garage to escape the
rain. I shut the door, locked it, and ran downstairs. Do you know,
when I met you, I had that key in my hand?
“Mary came up to me to help me close the French windows. I did not
think. I had a wild desire to rid myself of that key. I was determined
to protect Martha, at any cost. Mary’s pocket was hanging like an open
bag, right below me. I dropped the key into it. It was a frightful
mistake. If I had kept it, and thrown it away, everyone in the house
would have been exonerated. It was, as you know, the one link that
connected this household with the crime. That is, after Mary had
cleaned away the pipe ashes. The little fleck or two of them, which
Danny saw, might have fallen there days before——”
“Mary,” Sam questioned, “were my pipe ashes on the bag? Did you stop
to clean them off, before you gave the alarm?”
“Yes, they were, Sam. Yes, I did.”
“Then,” Sam said, “whoever put the body there, put the pipe ashes
there to throw suspicion on me; and whoever it was, knew my habits,
too. He must have put the tatting shuttle there, as well, for good
measure. Does anyone of you think that Martha would have had the wits
to save ashes out of my pipe and put them on the bag? I tell you, that
would take an amount of logic, of reasoning, that Martha could no more
have managed than a kitten could.”
“Chad!” John almost sang it, in his eagerness. “He was wise enough,
and fool enough. His one idea was to protect Martha. He helped her get
the body up there, between seven and eight o’clock, and he put the
ashes there to shield her. I said fool enough. But, come to think of
it, he knew what he was doing. He was protecting her with the one
person in the house who could not have done it; with the one person
that no Nevada jury would convict. Then, he turned around and shielded
dad with his death and his written confession. From start to finish,
it works out, plain as day. Gosh! Say—it is terrible. Gosh—horrible!
Think of it—— But, thank God, it is cleared up, anyway.”
“‘Cleared up, _anyway_’ is right,” Sam said, and looked around at all
of us, pityingly, like he’d look at a litter of sickly puppies.