I
Friday night,
October 12, 1900.
Dear Judy: We have been all day in Quilterville, attending the
coroner’s inquest. It was pretty bad. Worse than I had expected. Hank
Buckerman was all right, decent as could be. But a fly guy from the
district attorney’s office was there, trying to show off—make a name
for himself; Lord only knows what he was trying to do besides chivy
us. His name is Benjamin Thopson. He put the screws on, right enough.
The men on the jury were John Skrope, Roy Ulander, George Houndel,
Pete Garret, and a couple of Swedes that have just bought the livery
stable Jim Murtaine used to have, down near the river. It was the
Swedes, I’ll bet, who kept the jury out so long. Two hours and ten
minutes, Jude, while we hung around waiting, before they brought in
their verdict: Died on the night of October eighth, from the results
of a gunshot wound inflicted by person or persons unknown.
None of us said so while we were waiting. None of us has said so yet.
But I know what I was afraid of, and I know what the others were
afraid of: a verdict against Irene, or against Irene and Chris
together. That is what they would have handed us, Jude, just as sure
as I’m living to tell it, if it had not been for Aunt Gracia. But I
must tell you that later. It is early evening now. I have all night to
write in. I want to give you the thing straight, from beginning to
end.
I had never been in that courtroom before, and I know you have never
been there. It is a dirty, dark hole of a place, with the windows too
high and the ceiling too low. They kept the windows shut, and the big
coal stove in the centre of the room blazing away, red hot all the way
around part of the time, and eating up the air.
Hank, looking like a good-humoured eagle, sat up behind a desk where
the judge sits during trials. This smart aleck Thopson and Bruno
Ward—the Portland lawyer, you know, whom Father and Dr. Joe have been
consulting since Mr. White died—and Mattie Blaine sat at a long table
below and in front of Hank’s desk. (Mattie had to take the whole works
down in shorthand.) We Quilters sat together in a front seat, to the
side. The remainder of the room was filled, chiefly, with canaille.
While I was in the witness chair I had a chance to size up our
audience. I was pleased to see how many people we knew had enough good
taste and tact to stay away. None of the Beckers were there, and none
of the Youngs. Chris said Tod Eldon was there with his wife, but I
didn’t see them. None of the Binghams were there. But a quarter
section of the room was filled with the Dunlapper tribe.
Dr. Joe testified first. Death was caused by an intrathoracic
hemorrhage, due to a bullet shot into the left chest. The bullet
entered the left chest between the fifth and sixth ribs, pierced the
pericardium without injury to the heart, traversed the lung, and
lodged near the left scapula. (I’ve got this from Dr. Joe since then.)
Thopson asked, “Any possibility of suicide, Dr. Elm?”
Dr. Joe said, none. The absence of a weapon proved that suicide was
impossible. Also, absence of powder burns showed that the gun had been
fired from a distance of several feet.
Thopson asked Dr. Joe whether he knew what sort of gun had been used.
Dr. Joe told him that he had recovered the bullet. That it had been
fired, evidently, from a .38 calibre Colt’s.
Thopson said: “You were present in the house at the time of the
murder, Dr. Elm? You were among the first to discover the body?”
“No,” said Dr. Joe.
“Your testimony, then, regarding the absence of a weapon near the
bedside, was given from hearsay?”
Dr. Joe said, “If Dick had had a gun in his hand when they found him,
the absence of powder burns, and the position of the bullet, and the
whole thing would prove that he couldn’t have shot himself—if that’s
what you’re getting at.”
Thopson said he was through with the witness. Hank excused Dr. Joe and
called Irene to the stand.
The procedure, after that, was to call the witness, swear him or her
in, ask the name in full, where they lived, what the relationship was
to the victim, that sort of thing, and then Hank would say, “Tell the
jury what you know about the shooting.”
Irene seemed delicate, and pretty, and out of place stuck up there in
that dirty old hole.
She told her story straight, just as she had told it to us at home.
Except she said that, when she found the door locked she thought that
Chris was trying to play a joke on her. She omitted their quarrel, you
see—good job, too—and the part about having cried herself to sleep.
Thopson led off by asking, “Is your husband in the habit of locking
you out of your room at night, for a joke?”
Irene said, “No, he isn’t.”
“How many times has he locked you out?”
“He has never locked me out.”
“What gave you the idea, then, that it was a joke?”
Irene said, “It could have been nothing else.”
“It wasn’t a joke, though, in the end, was it?”
“It proved not to be. It also proved not to have been my husband who
had locked the door.”
“It never occurred to you to knock on your own door and find out why
your husband was—er—playing this joke on you?”
“I did not wish to disturb the family.”
“Very considerate. A light rap, with a dainty hand, on your own door,
would have aroused and disturbed the entire family, you think?”
Mr. Ward jumped up. “Mr. Coroner,” he said, “this is a deliberate
baiting of the witness, and a waste of time. This lady has explained
that, though she thought the locked door was a joke, she was not
entirely in sympathy with it. Mr. Thopson questions because she did
not pound on the door like a vixen. It depends, I suppose, upon one’s
experience with ladies. This lady slipped quietly away, arranged, as
she has told us, a neat little retaliation, and went to sleep.”
I had thought that Dr. Joe was making a sucker play when he had got
Mr. Ward to come over from Portland. I changed my mind. Mr. Ward
wasn’t particularly brilliant, not one, two, three compared to Aunt
Gracia, but he was as useful as a left leg. Whenever this fly Thopson
would get too smart, Mr. Ward would jump up and appeal to Hank, and
Hank would shut Thopson off. Then, if Thopson started hollering about
it, Hank would inquire: “What’s eating you, say? This ain’t a trial.”
Perhaps it wasn’t a trial. But it came too close to being one to suit
me. Though, in another way, a real trial might have been better. Right
at the beginning, if Mr. Ward could have defended Irene, it would, at
least, have carried the enormous advantage of straight dealing. He
couldn’t defend Irene, because no one had accused her. What he was
fighting was the accusation. But he had to hide even that.
He played the rope, which the fiend had been afraid to use, and the
weapon that the fiend had carried away with him, hard and fast. The
trouble, or the chief trouble was, I think, that he did not believe in
them himself.
Thopson chivied Irene, next, on what he called “the victim’s last
words.”
Irene had told that Father had said, “Got away,” and then, “Red mask.”
“You think the victim meant to indicate that some person, wearing a
red mask, had got away?”
“I don’t know what the words indicated. I only know that he said
them.”
“You have, perhaps, thought of some other meaning that the words were
meant to convey?”
“No, I have not.”
“You have given the matter no thought whatever?”
Mr. Ward stopped that. He asked whether the purpose of this
investigation was to discover the facts of the case or to allow Mr.
Thopson to torture a grief-stricken lady. He said that, clearly,
Richard Quilter’s last words had meant to indicate that the man who
had murdered him had been masked, and had escaped. Knowing, Mr. Ward
said, that the family’s chief future concern would be to apprehend the
fiend who had committed this heinous crime, Richard Quilter had, in
spite of the fact that he was a dying man, done his best to aid his
dear ones with the frightful task which he knew, even then, would soon
devolve upon them. “His duty, first, gentlemen, though Richard Quilter
performed it from the edge of the grave. Duty done, he called for his
children, for his aged father——” On and on. But Ward was no fool.
Remember, Judy, the men who were on the jury. Ward was merely heating
his wind for the shorn lambs, as it were; or, at least, that was the
way I sized him up.
Thopson asked Mr. Ward, directly, if he thought that red masks were
the customary apparel for murderers.
Mr. Ward said, “Dying men don’t lie, Mr. Thopson.”
Thopson said, “No. Dying men do not.”
But I think that went high over the heads of the jury.
Thopson then began on the keys. How had Irene happened to see them
there on the table?
“They were directly under the lamp and beside the candlestick I had
put down.”
“And what gave you the assurance that those particular keys were the
keys to the bedroom doors?”
“Nothing gave me that assurance. At last I understood what the noise
in the hall must have meant—was meaning, that the others were locked
in their rooms. I saw keys there. I took the keys and went to unlock
the doors.”
“Very well. How long would you say it was from the time you heard the
shot until you happened to see the keys on the table, put them into
your pocket, and went and unlocked the doors?”
“The others say it was about ten minutes—or a bit longer—after the
shot was heard, before I unlocked the first door.”
“I am not asking you what the others say. I am asking you for your own
opinion.”
“I should have thought it was longer than that.”
“Time passed slowly, dragged, between the time of the shot and the
time to unlock the doors?”
Irene didn’t get it. I think the jury didn’t, either.
“It seemed a long time,” she answered.
“During this long time,” Thopson said, “did you make any search, near
the bed, for the weapon you thought the victim had used to kill
himself?”
“No. I was very much frightened and shocked. I did not know what to
do.”
“Were any weapons—any guns, that is—discovered later in the house?”
“Dick’s own gun was in the closet of his room. But the closet was a
long distance from the bed. The gun was on a high shelf, behind some
boxes, and it was found fully loaded.”
“That was the only gun in the house?”
“No. There were others. But they were all locked in the rooms with the
people who were locked in.”
“Through with witness,” Thopson said, and sat down.
They called me next, swore me in, and so on.
I told my story; just about what I have written to you, though in less
detail. How I had heard the shot, jumped out of bed, tried the door——
I was scared stiff, Jude. I thought, after what Thopson had given
Irene, when she was a lady and a pretty one, there was no imagining
what he might do to me. When I stopped talking and he said he was
through with me, and Hank said, “Witness excused,” I was so amazed
that I kept right on sitting there until he said again, “Witness
excused.”
They called for Lucy, next. But Grandfather had not allowed her to
come. He said that it was no place for her, that she was not
physically fit to go through with anything of the sort, and that,
since someone must stay at home with Olympe, Lucy should stay.
Mr. Ward said, “Mr. Coroner, Lucy Quilter, a little girl, twelve years
old, ill herself from shock and grief, is not in the courtroom. I may
add that she is at home attending her aunt, who is seriously
indisposed.”
“And furthermore,” Hank said (“furthermore” is one of his pet words,
you know; he pronounces it “futthermore”), “anybody who tries to start
anything about that little motherless and fatherless child being kep’
at home where she belongs, will find theirselves in a contempt of
court—or worse.”
He called Chris as a witness.
II
Chris told the same story. He had heard the shot—so on. All the
same—his fright, the noises we were making.
About then one of the Swedes got a bright idea. He wanted to know if
there weren’t any windows in our house, and why none of us had tried
to get out of our room by way of the window.
Chris told him that the rooms across the front of the house had
windows out on to the sloping roof of the downstairs porch, but that
the windows across the back of the house faced a sheer drop of close
to thirty feet.
Mr. Swede then decided that he had to have a plan of the upstairs
rooms drawn on the blackboard, right then and there. Hank asked one of
us to draw it. Who volunteered? Who would? Aunt Gracia, of course. It
looked about like the sketch that I enclose.
[Illustration: Gracia Quilter’s Sketch of the Second Floor. A
hand-drawn plan of the upper floor of a house, consisting of eight
bedrooms and one bathroom. A hallway runs through the middle from
front to back, with stairs leading down on either end. There are also
stairs leading up to the attic in the back, behind a narrow door. The
porch roof runs along one side of the building, underneath the windows
of the four bedrooms on that side, belonging to Christoper, Richard,
Thaddeus, and Olympe. Opposite these are the bedrooms belonging to
Neal, Lucy, Judith, and Gracia.]
Some fools tittered. I could have killed them. She had no ruler, and
the sketch was shaky, of course. But it was plain enough, and gave the
Swede exactly what he had wanted. That is, it showed that Chris, or
Grandfather, or Olympe could have got out of a window and gone along
the porch roof to Father’s room.
Thopson asked Chris why he had not done just that.
Chris said: “I was out of my mind with fright. My wife was missing
from our room. Someone had been shot. I could tell from the noises
that others of the family were also locked in their rooms. My one idea
was to get my door opened. Possibly, in another five minutes or so,
the idea of the window might have occurred to me. I don’t know. I know
that I did not, at the time, give a thought to the window.”
Mr. Ward went to the blackboard and marked more plainly the situation
of the window with regard to the roof—showing the distance, about five
feet, of Chris’s cupola window from the roof. He drew a slanted line,
to indicate a third pitch roof. He made a speech, trying to convey the
impression that any thought of the roof, in connection with the case,
was an absurdity. I don’t know about the jury, but I do know that I
remained unconvinced.
You understand, Judy, I am not slurring at Chris, or anything of the
sort. But it is doggone queer that he did not think of that window at
all. What I really believe about it is this: Physically, Chris has
always been something of a coward. Three months ago I’d have denied
moral cowardice for him; but his planning to sell us out because Irene
nagged him, makes me less inclined to that denial. You remember the
time Chris didn’t pull Lucy out of the river when she had a cramp? The
time you jumped in with all your clothes on, and did? And the time he
fell out of the cherry tree into a a hammock and fainted from fright,
though he wasn’t even bumped? It seems a lot more probable to me that
Chris did think of the window—that he looked out of it. The fact that
a man doesn’t drop out of a window on to a slippery, slanted porch
roof, at night, by no means makes him a murderer. There are different
sorts of courage. Chris married Irene and brought her home to Q 2.
I was afraid that Chris was in for a bad few minutes concerning the
window; but while Mr. Ward had been talking, Pete Garret had,
apparently, laboured. He brought forth a mouse. He asked Chris why he
had locked Irene out of the room.
Chris said, “I did not lock my wife out of the room.”
Mr. Ward reminded the jury that the key to Chris’s door had been
found, along with the keys to the other locked doors, on the table in
Father’s room.
“The fiend,” said Mr. Ward, “having no idea that this little lady was
below stairs, had locked that door, when he locked the other doors, in
order to make sure of the time required to effect his escape.”
I don’t know why Thopson had waited so long to take up the subject of
footprints. I imagine a good look at the jury had decided him not to
crowd them with ideas. Though Mr. Ward had missed no opportunity to
mention escape, Thopson had stopped Irene’s story, and mine, when we
had come to the place about rushing into Father’s room after Irene had
unlocked the doors.
“Mr. Ward,” Thopson said to Chris, “keeps mentioning the escape of the
criminal. Will you tell the jury, Mr. Quilter, exactly how you think
this escape was made?”
Chris said, “I have no idea as to his method of escape.”
“Mr. Ward has made repeated mention of a rope hanging out of the open
window of the victim’s room. Will you please give us the exact
situation of that rope?”
Chris told them what I have written to you.
“Do you agree with Mr. Ward that this rope was not used as a means of
escape?”
“Yes, I agree.”
“Will you tell us why?”
Chris told them.
“Now, Mr. Quilter, will you please tell the jury where you did
discover footprints that you had reason to believe were made by the
escaping criminal?”
Chris is a good looker, all right, Judy. I wasn’t ashamed of him,
sitting up there so clean and so alien to that dirty hole, answering
the questions in that low, educated voice of his.
“There were no discoverable footprints,” he said, “anywhere about our
grounds.”
“Indeed? That makes your perplexity, your—er—vagueness about his
method of escape readily understandable.”
“Nevertheless,” Chris inserted, “that he did find some method of
escape is evinced by the fact that he has not been found in hiding in
our home.”
“You all searched the place pretty well, I suppose?”
“We have searched repeatedly, and with absolute thoroughness.”
One of the Swedes spoke up, in that slow, drawling, damnable way they
have, “Yoost a minute, Mr. Coroner. Maaybe the fella is in the Quilter
house yet, but not hiding behind a door—aye?”
Hank said, “Say, get tired, can’t you? You guys don’t seem to
understand the offices of this here inquiry. What we’re here for ain’t
to put up a lot of tall talk. Futthermore, it is to find out how the
dirty son of a sea cook got into the Quilter mansion and killed Dick
Quilter—one of the squarest men that ever lived—and got away. We’ve
got time, sure. But, at that, we ain’t got all week, either, to set
here and listen to you guys beef about what ain’t got anything to do
with the offices of this inquiry. Futthermore, witness testified that
there weren’t no footprints they could find. Well, then, either they
overlooked the footprints, the which would be easy enough on a place
of that size, or else the guy hid in the house somewheres.
Futthermore, to sit here and yappy-yap about him not hiding behind a
door is wasting everybody’s time. Nobody said he hid behind a door,
did they? Shut up! I’m talking, ain’t I? Present witness excused.
We’ll ask Mr. Quilter, Senior, to take the stand, if he feels able.
And we’ll try to listen to him with the respect his years merit, to
say nothing of his attainments. Shut up! Am I coroner of Quilter
County, or ain’t I? Am I supposed to run these proceedings, or had I
better quit and turn them over to a rah-rah boy? Thank you, Chris. You
done fine. Now, then, Mr. Quilter, if you’d as lief take the stand?”
I got that speech straight from Mattie’s notes. She and I were talking
together while we were waiting for the verdict. She’s a good kid. I’ll
admit that I was sort of assuming the light and airy for her
benefit—self-defence, Judy, not orneriness; I can’t advertise my
reserves—and I said that speech of Hank’s was a classic, and that I’d
like to have it to preserve, word for word. She said, “I’ll copy it
from my notes for you,” and sat down and got to work. An hour later,
she came up with a bunch of papers, torn from her notebook. “I thought
you might like to have Miss Quilter’s testimony, too,” she said. “She
was so wonderful,” and she handed me the papers and skipped. It made
me sort of think that somebody must have told her about me pushing
Lump Jones’s face in for him, the night of the Youngs’ straw ride.
Gosh, but that seems twenty years removed from this afternoon, and
Grandfather’s having to take the witness stand, and be questioned.
III
Except for his manner of telling it, Grandfather’s story was not very
different from Chris’s or mine.
He had been wakened from his sleep by the sound of a gunshot. (I think
Grandfather called it a revolver shot.) He had been mightily
disturbed. He had lighted his lamp, risen from his bed, and gone to
the door. He had found it locked—a circumstance that greatly increased
his anxiety. He had donned his dressing gown and slippers. He had
looked about him for a key, and he had made various futile attempts to
open his door without it. He had gone to his window and opened it—had
perceived that snow had fallen. Caution, which his increasing years
had put upon him, had warned him against the folly of attempting to
retain his balance on the sloping, snow-covered roof. He had turned
again to his room, in search of some heavy implement with which to
batter down his door. He had been unable to find anything of the sort.
The turmoil made by other members of the family in their varied
attempts to open their own doors had materially abetted his own
agitation. Several times he had heard his daughter Gracia’s voice,
calling to him from behind her locked door, to ascertain the state of
his welfare. He had answered, but had seemed unable to reassure her.
Finally, after what had seemed an interminable period of time, he had
heard the welcome sound of running feet in the hall. Shortly after
that, his niece, Mrs. Christopher Quilter, had unlocked his door.
She had said to him his son’s name, “Dick!” and had hastened up the
hall.
He had gone at once to his son’s room. His nephew, Christopher, and
his son’s children, Lucy and Neal, had been in the room when he had
reached it. His son was dead. “Gentlemen, I invite your questioning.”
Thopson came clear off his perch and asked Grandfather, most
respectfully, whether he knew of anyone who would benefit by the death
of Richard Quilter.
“Sir,” Grandfather answered, “my son’s death, far from proving a
benefit to any living person, has and will prove a severe loss to
many. I am speaking now merely of material loss. My son was the
manager of Q 2 Ranch. On his ability and acumen the fortune of our
entire family largely depended.”
“I had heard,” Thopson said, “that there had been some talk of selling
the Q 2 Ranch.”
“My nephew, Christopher, had been approached with offers of purchase.
Up to the present time, he has accepted none of them. However, is that
not beside the point? Had the present Quilter properties been sold,
others would have been immediately purchased as an estate for the
family. My son’s services would have been more necessary, if possible,
on the new ranch than they have been on the old.”
Roy Ulander spoke up from the jury. For a minute, when he began to
speak, I was crazy mad, remembering all Grandfather had done for him,
and thinking that Roy was going to quiz him. I was mistaken. Roy took
that minute to attempt to console Grandfather. He said that he knew
Neal and Phineas and he—Grandfather—would be able to carry the ranch
along all right. He added, not wholly to my delight, that I was a
good, steady lad and a fine worker, with an old head on young
shoulders.
Grandfather thanked him.
Thopson wanted to know whether Father had left a will.
Grandfather said that he had not.
Thopson commented, “Very strange.”
Grandfather begged leave to differ with him. He explained that, aside
from Father’s modest personal effects, Father had nothing to will to
anyone.
“No life insurance?”
“None, sir,” Grandfather said.
“I see.” But Thopson managed to put into those two words a commentary,
caustic, on the character of a man who ventures to die without life
insurance.
Grandfather rebutted with the information that, until 1893, both he
and Father had carried large policies. Since that time, Grandfather
said, they had been unable to keep up the premiums.
Thopson grew faintly argumentative. He stated that the better
companies carried their policy holders for several years.
“As did our company, sir, for six years,” Grandfather replied.
Thopson observed that it was difficult for him to understand why a
family, who had ample means for all the luxuries of life, including
education in Eastern universities, foreign travel, and what-not, could
not afford the necessity of keeping up small life-insurance premiums.
“The premiums,” Grandfather informed him, “amounted to well over
fifteen hundred dollars a year. However, my understanding is, that the
purpose of this inquiry was to discover, if possible, where, when, and
by what means Richard Quilter came to his death. That its purpose was
not to inquire into the details of our domestic financial managements
and expenditures.”
“Precisely, Mr. Quilter,” Thopson accepted. “Precisely. Our purpose is
to discover, as you have said, where, when, and by what means Richard
Quilter came to his death. Now, Mr. Quilter, I think I may say,
without fear of contradiction, that you more than anyone else in this
room are desirous of discovering, also, the person who is responsible
for the death of your son. May I, then, offer you the results of my
experience?” (Hot lot of experience that guy has had. He is still
downy.)
His question, of course, was rhetorical. But Grandfather answered it,
when Thopson stopped to breathe.
“You may, sir.”
“In cases of this sort, the logical approach is to find, if possible,
the reason for the crime. That is to say, before we can discover who
committed the crime it is necessary to discover why the crime was
committed. Now, if your son had left money to some person, there we
would have what we professional men call a motive for the murder.”
“You have made yourself clear,” Grandfather said. “However,
unfortunately, perhaps, for you professional men, my son left not one
cent on earth.”
“You are positive of that?”
“No, sir.”
“You aren’t?”
“No, sir. I am confident of it. I am positive of nothing.”
“Then,” Thopson produced, “perhaps it won’t surprise you greatly when
I tell you that Richard Quilter did leave a neat little sum of money.”
For one flickering instant Grandfather exposed his complete
stupefaction to the rabble. Then, as he often does, he built a blind
of his Johnson and got behind it.
“You do not surprise me, sir. You do astonish me. Proceed, if you
please, to enlighten me.”
Up to this time, as I have said, Thopson had been as decent as a
mucker of his sort could be toward Grandfather. But now that he was to
enlighten, he assumed an oily, confidential, between-you-and-me manner
that made me have to hang on to my chair to keep from lifting myself
out of it and giving him a swift kick. Chris, who was sitting between
Irene and me, saw that I was getting hot, I think, because right then
he caught hold of my arm with a firm grip.
In this new manner of his, Thopson informed Grandfather, and all of
us, that, by the merest chance, he had discovered that Father had
carried an accident policy for the past eight years. A friend of
Thopson’s was an underwriter for the firm that Father had been insured
with. This agent—that’s a good enough word for me—had told Thopson
that, if Richard Quilter’s death proved to be accidental, their
company would have to pay the heirs ten thousand dollars.
“Sir,” Grandfather said, “I can but wish that your informant had been
himself correctly informed. My son did carry such a policy.
Unfortunately, it was allowed to lapse only last year.”
Thopson forgot himself. “Not on your life it wasn’t. The premium was
only forty dollars a year. If Richard Quilter himself didn’t keep up
the payments, then somebody else has kept them up. Undoubtedly, some
member of the family. Now, if we can find who made the last payment——”
Dr. Joe stood up. “I made that last payment,” he said, and sat down.
Thopson chose to get suddenly solemn. “Mr. Quilter, were you aware of
the fact that Dr. Elm had made this payment?”
Hank said, “Don’t answer him, Mr. Quilter. You’ve told him once. If
he’s deaf, we can’t fiddle-faddle around with him all week.
Futthermore, he’s a waste of time.”
“Mr. Thopson,” Grandfather said, “I was not aware of the fact that
anyone had made the payment. My belief was that the policy had been
allowed to lapse.”
“Mr. Quilter, can you give any reasonable explanation of the fact that
your son had not told you of Dr. Elm’s having paid this premium?”
“I trust, sir,” Grandfather replied, “that I should not attempt an
unreasonable explanation. I give you what seems to me a most
reasonable one when I state that I fancy my son was not cognizant of
the fact that his friend, Dr. Elm, had met this obligation for him.”
And again Thopson forgot himself. “You mean he didn’t know it? You bet
he knew it. Last August he went to the company’s office, in Portland,
and tried to collect damages for a sprained wrist, or something.”
Dr. Joe stood up, emphatically.
Thopson said, “One moment, Dr. Elm.”
Hank said, “Go on ahead, Doc, if you’ve got something to say.”
Dr. Joe said, “Oh—plenty of time.”
“Mr. Quilter,” Thopson had retrieved himself, solemnity and all,
“would ten thousand dollars make any particular difference to anyone
on the Q 2 Ranch at the present time?”
“The answer to the question, which I infer you are trying to put, is:
Yes, sir, it would.”
“To whom?”
“To all of us.”
“Then,” Thopson shot out, “if this ten thousand dollars is
collectible, every person on the Q 2 Ranch at present would benefit
because of it?”
“That is true,” Grandfather said.
Thopson said he had finished with the witness. Mr. Ward stood.
“Mr. Quilter,” he asked, “in all matters you were your son’s
confidant, were you not?”
“So I believed,” Grandfather answered.
“Since he had not told you that this policy was still operative, is it
probable that he had told any other member of the family?”
“It would seem not. However, I cannot be certain. My son had never
attached importance to that policy. He believed that the company was
an unreliable one. My son’s failure to tell me of Dr. Elm’s kindness
might have been because he knew of my dislike for monetary dealings
with our friends. It might have been that so trivial an episode passed
out of his mind. Or, it might have been that Dr. Elm himself asked
Richard not to mention his act of kindness. In any of these events, it
would seem unlikely that Richard had mentioned the affair to any other
member of the family. I have expressed myself poorly. My meaning is,
that the same considerations which would have kept Richard from
telling me of this would have kept him, also, from telling anyone
else.”
“Thank you, Mr. Quilter. One more question, if you will be so good.
You have told Mr. Thopson that your family would benefit from the
payment of the ten thousand dollars’ indemnity. There are few
families, I should think by the way, to whom ten thousand dollars
would be of no benefit whatever. The same question, put to any member
of the jury, would, I am certain, be answered as you have answered it.
My point is this: Would the money, for any reason, be more acceptable
to you now than it would have been at any time in the past ten years?
Or, to put it still more clearly: One year ago your son’s life was
insured for a large amount—twenty, thirty thousand dollars. Would not
thirty thousand dollars have been more useful to Q 2 Ranch than ten
thousand dollars?”
You see what he did, Judy? He asked the first question, and then he
would not allow Grandfather to answer it. He kept right on going. And
the question which Grandfather finally had to answer was: Which is the
larger amount, ten or thirty thousand dollars?
Do you know why Mr. Ward did that? I know. It was because he believes
that one of us Quilters is guilty. It is because he was afraid of
Grandfather’s honesty.
I thought that Grandfather might scorn the loophole. He did not. He
answered, “Sir, thirty thousand dollars would surely have been more
useful to the Q 2 Ranch than a problematical ten thousand dollars. I
may add, that my son’s life insurance was with an old, reliable
company. Have I correctly answered your question?”
“You have; and thank you, Mr. Quilter.”
I told you why Mr. Ward had asked the question as he had. I think I
don’t need to tell you why Grandfather answered it as he did. Or,
perhaps I should say, I have told you before this why Grandfather
answered it as he did.
Grandfather came back to his seat beside Aunt Gracia. Dr. Joe was
called to the stand.
IV
Thopson elected sternness. “Dr. Elm, where were you on the night of
Monday, October eighth?”
“I was attending Mrs. H. F. Ferndell, in Portland, Oregon. She gave
birth to an infant daughter at one o’clock in the morning.”
“You can, of course, produce witnesses to substantiate this alibi?”
“Not an alibi,” Dr. Joe said, with perfect gravity. “A birth.”
“You can prove that you were where you claim at have been on the night
of Richard Quilter’s death. And allow me to remind you, Dr. Elm, that
this is no place to indulge in forced witticisms.”
Dr. Joe said, “How does it go? ‘“There’s nae ill in a merry wind,”
quo’ the wife when she whistled through the kirk.’ Well, get on. Get
on!”
“I have asked you whether you could prove that you were where you
claim to have been in Portland, on the night of October eighth.”
“I don’t know. There were two grandmothers, three or four uncles and
aunts, the father, the patient, and, of course, the infant. The whole
thing hinges on whether or not those people could be got to confess
that they had me for their physician. I should say it was doubtful.
Oh, get on, you—you. Of course I can prove it.”
“Very well. Will you, then, tell this jury how it happened that a man
in your circumstances should have undertaken to keep up an insurance
policy for another man?”
Dr. Joe said, “I paid my board bill last month. Did you?”
Thopson turned to Hank. “Mr. Coroner, I appeal——”
Hank said, “He asked you a civil question. Can’t you answer it?”
One of the Swedes found voice. “Maaybe, I tank the doctor he don’t
want to tell about paying oop the insurance.”
Dr. Joe said, “Sure, I’d just as lief tell. I was out at Dick’s
house, early last year, when the bill came for his premium on this
policy. Dick said that he thought he would drop it—that it was a
shyster company. And it was—there’s something else I can prove,
Mr.—What’s-your-name—though I didn’t know it at the time. I had a
policy of my own with the same company. I told Dick I thought it was
foolish to drop a thing like that, for forty a year. He said forty was
too much to waste, and that he had spent his last available cent for
the month, anyway. I asked him to let me pay it this year—said he
could count it against what I owed him.”
“You were in debt to the deceased?”
“Yes. To him and his family.”
“What was the amount of this debt?”
Dr. Joe said, “I was afraid I might be asked that, so I reckoned it up
in cold figures here lately. It came to a million and four dollars and
twenty cents. Or, though likely you won’t understand, I am in debt to
these people for friendship, for a place that feels like home, for——”
“It is not a question, however, of actual monetary debt?”
“No, I don’t suppose you’d think so. Well, anyhow, I asked him to let
me send the check in for him this year, or until he was in cash again.
“He refused, point-blank. And there, as he thought, the matter ended.
When I left the ranch, I swiped the bill; and, later in the month, I
sent in a check with a letter telling the company to be sure to send
the receipt to me. Warning them, under no circumstances, to send it to
Q 2. Consequently, they mailed Dick the receipted bill in the next
mail.
“In the meantime, he had told Mr. Quilter here that he had decided to
allow the policy to lapse. Mr. Quilter agreed with him that it was as
well to have done so. Time will probably prove that he was right about
it. He usually is.
“When Dick got the receipted bill, he knew what I had done. I can’t
say that he was particularly grateful to me. He insisted that I take
his note—all that sort of stuff. He said that he wouldn’t say anything
to his father about it, because his father hated being under
obligations to friends. I told him he had better not tell his father.
Threat—you see. I guess that ends the story.”
Dr. Joe started to walk away. Thopson winged him with: “One minute,
please. Did the deceased tell any other member of his family about
this somewhat unusual proceeding?”
“They are here,” Dr. Joe said. “Do you want me to ask them?”
Hank said, “This ain’t a trial. I’ll ask them. Save time. Miss
Quilter—never mind leaving your seat for a little informal matter like
this—did you know Dick had this fake accident policy?”
Aunt Gracia said that she had known of it, several years ago. But that
Father had told her, when he had told Grandfather, that he had decided
to let it lapse.
“What about you, Neal?” Hank asked.
I told him I had known nothing about it. I had known that Father was
all cut up about having to let the life insurance go; and I had
supposed that it left him entirely uninsured.
Hank began to ask Chris, next; but Thopson got funny and said that he
insisted on having these answers under oath. I didn’t think Hank would
allow him to get away with it, but he did. I suppose he had to.
Thopson took Irene first. He asked her whether she had known about the
policy. She said that she had not. The witness was excused.
Chris was called, and sworn in. “Yes,” he said, “I knew that Dick was
carrying some sort of an accident policy. When we were in Portland
together, last August, my Uncle Phineas and I went with Dick to put in
his claim for payment because of his injured wrist.”
“How did all three of you happen to go? Did he think he’d need to be
backed up?”
“Not at all. We had been lunching together. After luncheon, Dick said
he was going to stop at the company’s office. We stopped with him.”
Chris then went on to say that they had been treated to various
insults, had been asked to produce witnesses to the accident, among
other extraordinary demands, and had finally been curtly dismissed
with instructions to call again. Chris said that he and Uncle Phineas
were both angry. But that Father had merely said it served him right
for attempting to deal with crooks, and that he would never go to
their office again, nor pay another premium. In so far as he was
concerned, Chris said, he had not given the matter of the policy
another thought. He had not known that it had carried any such
indemnity in case of accidental death. He had known nothing more
concerning it.
“Did you,” Thopson questioned, “happen to mention this matter to your
wife?”
“You have heard my wife’s testimony. I did not.”
“Not in the habit of confiding in your wife, eh?”
Chris kept his temper like a gentleman. It was more than I could have
done, but I was proud of him for doing it. “I am not in the habit of
burdening my wife with exhaustively trivial details which could
neither amuse nor interest her.”
“Did your uncle, Phineas Quilter, feel the same way about confiding in
his wife?”
“I should assume that he did. However, I am unable to answer for the
feelings of my uncle.”
“You don’t know, then, whether the lady who is at home sick in bed was
aware of the ten-thousand-dollar indemnity?”
“I think not. My aunt is not a secretive person. Had she known, I
fancy she would have told some one of us, at least. Also, my Uncle
Phineas had not known of the policy prior to the day when we called at
the office of the company with my Cousin Dick. Since that time, my
Uncle Phineas has not returned to Q 2 Ranch.”
“Your uncle, I suppose, never writes any letters to his wife?”
“He writes to her, certainly.”
“And if he had written to her about the policy, you think she would
not agree with you that the ten-thousand-dollar indemnity was too
trivial to mention?”
“I have told you, under oath, that I had not known of that indemnity.”
“It makes quite a difference as to the policy’s importance, doesn’t
it?”
“It does.”
“By the way, Mr. Quilter, have you tried, recently, to put another
mortgage on Q 2 Ranch?”
“I have.”
“Were you attending to that when you were in Portland, last August?”
“I was.”
“Did you succeed in raising the money you wanted?”
“I did not.”
“Mr. Quilter, how long have you and your wife been residing on Q 2
Ranch?”
“We came there last March.”
Thopson counted on his stubby fingers. “Seven months. You were not at
the Q 2 Ranch at any time last year, were you?”
“We were not.”
“Finished with the witness.”
I hoped that Mr. Ward would take Chris, then. He did not. He sat
still.
They called Aunt Gracia to the stand.