I
I had been as nervous as an old woman about Aunt Gracia all during
these everlasting proceedings. She and I had ridden to Quilterville
together to keep from crowding the carriage.
We were no sooner mounted, and off, than she began to talk to me about
hoping I’d be “discreet” at the inquest. I did not understand her, at
first. We had held sort of a family council before we had left home
and Grandfather had talked to us. Over and over—you know how unusual
it is for Grandfather to be reiterative—he had impressed upon us the
necessity for telling the absolute truth.
He explained, of course, that he did not suppose any of us would lie,
but that affairs of this sort were apt to invite attempted diplomacy,
finesse. None of us, Grandfather went on to say, had any reason to
fear the truth. Truth, he asked us to remember, was the one thing that
could not ultimately be defeated. He gave us rather a sermon,
insisting that truth bred truth as surely as cabbages bred cabbages,
or as lies bred lies. Grandfather, as you know, would neither dictate
nor appeal; but he came closer to each, in this talk to us, than I had
ever heard him come.
I was still thinking of his last statement (Lucy would call it a
pearl), “One cannot bargain with truth,” when Aunt Gracia began her
talk about discretion. It seemed to me that she was unsaying most of
the things Grandfather had said; but it was easier to doubt my own
understanding than it was to doubt either Aunt Gracia’s dutifulness or
her rigid integrity. It wasn’t long, though, until she gave me no
opportunity for choice; so then I asked her, straight, if she was
disagreeing with what Grandfather had said to us in the parlour.
She answered that Grandfather was old, very old, and at present
frightfully weakened from shock, grief, and the impending horror of
disgrace. She said that, fundamentally, what Grandfather had been
telling us about truth was sound; but, in many circumstances, truth
should become a delicate thing, to be handled delicately, not swung as
a bludgeon. She said that truth might breed truth, if it were planted
in the proper soil. If it were tossed carelessly to the four winds it
might breed nothing—as cabbage seeds sown in the sagebrush would breed
nothing—or it might breed anything: destruction, disgrace.
Grandfather’s idealism, she remarked, like many other beautiful
things, was not always the most practical asset in a time of
emergency.
You will understand, Judy, that I actually had to turn in my saddle
and look to make sure that it was Aunt Gracia, of the nonadjustable
moralities, who was riding beside me.
She misread my look, because she said: “Exactly, Neal. We are to use
the truth to-day, but we are to use it carefully, with discretion. For
instance, dear, the fact that I can find comfort in the knowledge that
Dick died in a state of perfect grace, need not be brought out. Unless
we are directly questioned, I should think the entire circumstance of
Dick’s recent baptism might better be omitted from the testimony. Too,
I can see no reason for telling anyone who may be there to-day about
the fact that Dick and Christopher had recently exchanged rooms.”
“Aunt Gracia,” I asked, “do you think that some one of us meant to
kill Chris, and blundered into Father’s room, by mistake?”
She evaded that by saying it was more important, now, to plan for the
future than it was to probe into the past.
I told her that I agreed with her. But, I fancy, we did not mean the
same thing. It was a peach of a morning, Judy. The snow had melted.
The air was sweet. Hiroshige had done the sky, and our brown old hills
lay softly in front of it. It was not the realization of death, it was
the realization of life—of a world alive; even our hills were only
napping—that made me go suddenly rabid.
Aunt Gracia interrupted my ravings. “Don’t, Neal. Don’t,” she
commanded. “You sound like Jasper in _Edwin Drood_.”
That was plain enough, wasn’t it? “Aunt Gracia,” I said, “it is
bothering you, isn’t it, to decide whether I shot Father because I
thought that he was going insane, or whether I meant to go into
Chris’s room that night, and shot Father by mistake?”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Because you say we must mention neither the baptism nor the changed
rooms at the inquest to-day. Because I know that you have suspected
me, from the first. Would it help you any to have me swear to you, out
here in the open, that I am as innocent as you are?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I swear it, Aunt Gracia.”
We rode along and had made the ford before she said another word. She
came up beside me on the east river path.
“Neal,” she said, “this is an irreligious community. Consequently,
there are two words they like to roll around their tongues—‘Religious
fanatic.’ I am hoping they won’t think of those two words to-day.”
She grew intense. She does, you know, once in a blue moon. She said
that she wasn’t a coward. She said she would be glad to say that she
had killed Father, and then go to join him, and Mother, and the others
in one of the highest states of glory. But, she said, such a false
confession could do nothing but bring added shame and grief to the
family. If only, she said, she were not a Quilter—then how eagerly she
would sacrifice her own life and honour for the honour of the
Quilters.
I felt, of course, like asking her not to be an idiot. I didn’t.
I produced some banality about the uselessness of such a
sacrifice—allowing the real criminal to go free, all that.
“I know,” she answered, “but—the ecstasy of it! The exquisite, vivid
ecstasy of such a sacrifice. Or—of any sacrifice. Isn’t it odd, Neal,
that no one ever pities Isaac?”
You can understand, Judy, that that just about knocked me a twister.
You can understand, too, why I had been dreading Aunt Gracia’s turn as
a witness. I tell you what, Jude, every one of the family has got the
rotten habit of thinking that, because Aunt Gracia’s mind is different
from our own, it is inferior—deformed. We have no right to the
comparison. It is as unfair as comparing—well, say ice and water. I’d
be bound to muddle a metaphor here—but Aunt Gracia’s mind is surely
more fluid in its mysticism than are ours in their set materialism.
This is all pretty poor. I wish you might have been there, to-day, to
see and hear Aunt Gracia.
II
When I saw her gather up the skirt of her long black riding habit and
walk across that dirty room and take her place in the witness chair,
the thought flashed through my mind that it was a wonder that Olympe,
ill or not, would have forgone such an opportunity. Only, and I’m not
meaning to knock Olympe, either, Aunt Gracia’s dignity and distinction
were natural, untrimmed: the difference between one of our Percherons
in a meadow or decked out in a circus parade.
Hank put her through the usual preliminaries, and then asked her, as
he had asked us, to tell the jury what she knew about the murder.
Sitting there, dressed in black in that gloomy room, with her face a
white oval and her long hands, white and still in her lap, she needed
a Rembrandt. She is old, past thirty, but she is beautiful; especially
beautiful with her head tipped as she had it this afternoon, so that
her thin features are a bit foreshortened. And as for her voice—they
can extol soft, velvety, throaty voices for women. But I’ll take Aunt
Gracia’s voice every time—it is like a clear glass bell being rung
with decorum.
“My story,” she said, “would be precisely the same as the stories the
others have told you. My fright, my efforts to open my door, my
release, could further in no way the purposes of this inquiry. You
have listened, patiently, to three accounts of the sort; but you are,
I believe, no nearer the truth than you were in the beginning. It
seems wise to me, now, to bring several matters to your attention.
“You have not taken into account the fact that whoever was in my
brother’s room on Monday night must have been there for sometime
before the shot was fired. The rope was not put in place after the
shot was fired. From the position of the rope in the snow, and from
the amount of snow that had fallen on it, we were able to tell that
the rope must have been lying, for at least an hour, exactly where we
found it.
“My brother was a light sleeper. Does it seem reasonable, even
possible, that anyone could come into his room, open a window, tie a
rope around his bedstead, toss the rope out of the window, while he
slept? Or, while he lay there in bed and calmly watched the person
making these preparations? If, for some reason, my brother had been
unable to move—though he was not unable to move—don’t you know that he
would have called, cried out for help? You have listened to the
testimony that members of the family could be plainly heard shouting
to one another through the closed locked doors. Would my brother,
would any man, lie in silence, motionless, and allow some intruder to
remain in his room?
“No; not unless he were forced to do so. What could have forced him?
The gun that killed him—nothing else. But not the gun alone. The gun
in the hands of some strong, powerful person of whom my brother would
have been afraid.
“I wonder how many people in this county would testify that Richard
Quilter was a brave man? Every person, I think, who knew him. I wonder
how many people would have dared to sneak into my brother’s room and
menace him with a gun. Very few, I believe.
“It has been suggested, or, perhaps, I should say insinuated, that my
cousin, Irene Quilter, shot my brother. Look at her. Do you think she
would have dared? Assume that she did dare. Do you think that she
could have frightened my brother—a man six feet tall and afraid of
nothing? How long do you think it would have taken him to leap from
his bed and seize any weapon held in her trembling hands? She is a
frail woman, bred in an Eastern city. Probably she has never
discharged a gun in her life. She, as you must know, could not menace
a coward for five minutes. Could she have menaced Richard Quilter for
an hour—two hours?
“It took a man who was expert with a gun to be able to keep my brother
covered while he stooped to tie that rope around the foot of the bed.
True, he had it in readiness, or so it would surely seem. He had one
loop made, shall we say? But, gentlemen, to draw fifty feet of rope
through a loop is not the work of an instant. The murderer had to
stoop to fasten the rope. He had to do it with his left hand, while
his right hand held the gun that cowed my brother.
“Dr. Elm has told me, and will testify under oath, that my brother was
not drugged at the time of his death; that he had been given no drug
of any sort before his death. Can you see Dick Quilter, as you knew
him, alert, active, fearless, lying there in bed while some weak,
inadequate person crouched to place that rope? I think you cannot.
“Three women were in the house that night: an old lady, past sixty—my
aunt, Olympe Quilter—Irene Quilter, and I. Also, there was my little
niece, Richard’s daughter, a twelve-year-old child. Do you think that
Richard would have allowed any one of us to threaten him with a gun
for a longer time than it took him to reach us and take the thing away
from us?
“My father was in the house that night. You know him. But, aside from
that, you have seen him on the witness stand to-day. He is eighty
years old. Would Richard have been afraid to unarm him, do you fancy?
Would Richard have been afraid to unarm this eighteen-year-old son of
his? Or, could Richard have been afraid of our cousin, Christopher
Quilter?
“I dislike saying this, here, but I will say it because I must. My
brother loved our Cousin Christopher; but he scorned him. He thought,
perhaps rightly, that Christopher was a weakling. Though Richard had
been ill for some time, he could work all day at tasks that tired
Christopher in a few hours. What opportunity in an Eastern university,
in his studies abroad, had Christopher had to develop prowess with a
gun? He was never a sportsman. As a boy he never went hunting. I doubt
that he has fired a gun half a dozen times in his life. All of which
would mean nothing, perhaps, but for the fact that Richard knew it as
well as I know it. Do you think that Christopher, a man of much
frailer physique than my brother, could have frightened him for five
minutes; could have kept him cowed and silent for an hour? Do you
think that Dick Quilter, with any one of these seven people, would not
have made an attempt to save himself?”
Thopson interrupted and wanted to know if Aunt Gracia was not
overlooking the fact that, perhaps, Richard Quilter was in the act of
making that attempt when he was shot.
“I will remind you,” Aunt Gracia said, “that the rope had been in the
position we found it for at least an hour. Nothing but knowledge that
such an attempt would mean certain death could have held my brother
passive for an hour. As you suggest, it is possible that at last, in
desperation, he did make an attempt to save himself. You know the
result.
“There is another point that has not been touched upon: the lighted
lamp in Richard’s room that night. I had put the small bedside lamp,
newly filled, as usual, in his room that evening. At midnight, the
lamp was burning low; the oil was all but exhausted. Since, I have
refilled the lamp and tested it for time. It took two hours and a half
to consume as much oil as had been consumed on Monday night. It had
never been my brother’s practice to read in bed. There was no book or
magazine near his bed. Why should the lamp have burned throughout the
night?
“Assume that when Richard went into his room that night, the murderer
was hiding there—probably in the clothes closet—and, after Richard had
got into bed, but before he had reached to extinguish the light, the
man had stepped out, with the gun levelled on him——”
“Wouldn’t you say, Miss Quilter, that two hours and a half was a long
time for the murderer to have spent in your brother’s room?”
“I should, indeed.”
“A long time, too, for such a man as your brother to have allowed
himself to be ‘menaced’ without making an attempt to disarm the
fellow, without raising his voice in outcry?”
“It seems to me that is precisely what I have been contending, Mr.
Thopson. I presume, however, that you have thought ahead to the second
point which I was about to make. This:
“We have no way of knowing what went on in Dick’s room that night.
None of us, I am sure, knows all there is to be known about any other
person. We think that there was no hidden chapter, no hidden page or
paragraph in my brother’s life. We cannot know it. Suppose some
ruffian was making a blackmailing demand from Richard. Suppose that
Richard was as eager as was the man himself to keep the rest of us
from knowing that he—the murderer, I mean—was in the house; had any
reason for being there.
“We know nothing of these possibilities now. I hope we may know, in
time. What we do know now is that no member of this family could have
caused Richard one moment’s alarm. That he could have and would have
disarmed any one of us in the snatch of a second, and sent us ashamed
away from him.
“My brother’s corpse is lying in the adjoining room. I ask the jury to
look at it. To see the size of the man, the breadth of his shoulders.
I ask them to see what can be seen in his dead face—the strength, the
purpose, the courage. I ask them to return and look at us, here. Then
they will know, since they are just, wise men, that I have spoken the
truth.”
Impressive? Golly, Jude, it was a knockout. On the square, it is
thanks to Aunt Gracia—the family disgrace because she happens to be a
mystic—that Irene, or Chris, or, probably, both of them aren’t going
to have to appear before the Grand Jury. And, if you will forgive the
old wise crack, it wasn’t so much what she said as the way she said
it. Sitting there, so aloof and so lovely, speaking in that clear,
unafraid voice of hers, she conveyed the impression that no man’s
doubt could damage her; that any man’s doubt would prove him a fool or
a monster. One doesn’t, you know, look at the white moon in a black
night’s sky and remark, “I don’t believe it.” And yet, after all, the
moon is not a large and luminous dinner plate.
Note, Judy: Aunt Gracia had made a special point, to me in private, of
the fact that Father was taking medicine that made him sleep heavily.
Dr. Joe knew it. Would he have called a sleeping medicine “drugs”?
Possibly, almost certainly, not if he had had a talk with Aunt Gracia
before the inquest. Because, you see, if Father had been drugged into
a heavy sleep, all Aunt Gracia’s arguments would amount to nothing.
The person could have crept into the room, made the arrangements with
the rope without waking Father; could have fired the shot, and could
have got away. Smash goes the fact of Father’s lack of fear; smash
goes the fact of his disarming any one of us; smash goes the expert
gunman—smash for all of it. Not much bravery is required to shoot a
sleeping man.
It doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose that, even if Father had been
drugged and asleep, some guy would have had the nerve to stick around
in the room for a couple of hours with the lamp burning. But it is
possible, anyway, that Father got into bed and was so dopey, and tired
that he dropped off to sleep and forgot to blow out the light.
Here is another thing, Judy. If the guy had been hiding in Father’s
room before Father came into it, couldn’t he have fixed the rope then?
Sure he could. Father didn’t look under his bed at night, did he? He
would have noticed if the window had been open and the rope stretched
across to it as we found it. But he wouldn’t have noticed a loop of
rope around the leg of his bed. The fellow did not, necessarily, have
to pull the fifty feet of rope through the loop with one hand while he
used the other hand to keep Father covered with a gun.
Since I didn’t think through to any of this until I was riding home
from Quilterville this evening, I am fairly certain that the jury
hasn’t come to it yet. For one thing, as I have said, Aunt Gracia
obviated doubt by making it seem idiotic and indecent. For another
thing, the jury, at the last, was straining every nerve to live up to
her description and look like wise and just men.
When Aunt Gracia had finished her speech, which I’ve copied straight
from Mattie’s notes for you, she began to gather her skirts into one
hand, preparatory to leaving the witness chair.
Chris whispered to me, “Bless her, she’s turned the tide!”
Thopson said, “One moment, please, Miss Quilter.”
Aunt Gracia sat back in her chair, and dropped her hands, quiet as
dead things, into her lap again.
III
Thopson started off with a lot of con talk about how helpful she had
been, and about how she had his gratitude and the gratitude of the
jury for her plain speaking. It was only through such methods as hers,
extolled he, that the guilty wretch could ever be brought to justice.
It sounded great. But I felt, like the carpenter, that the butter was
spread too thick. Aunt Gracia sat, pale and placid, and looking about
as susceptible to flattery as my but recently mentioned moon.
“You have implied,” Thopson finally came to it, “that your brother
might have had an enemy. By a rigorous searching of your memory, would
it be possible for you to recall who this enemy might be?”
“But, of course,” Aunt Gracia answered, “I thought that you knew.
Seventeen, nearly eighteen years ago, my brother killed a man as he
would have killed a mad dog, or a rattlesnake, or any dangerous thing
that was attacking his wife. He was tried, and acquitted. The jury did
not leave the room. The judge apologized to Richard—or so I have been
told—explaining that the trial had been merely a conformance to the
letter of the law.”
“Do you know the name of the man whom Richard Quilter killed?”
“Enos Karabass. The Pennsylvania Dutch, I believe, are unfortunate
people to anger.”
“His family lives in this vicinity?”
“No, they do not.”
“Were they informed concerning the manner of his death?”
“We were unable to find that he had any people.”
Thopson gave himself over to pity. “But, my dear Miss Quilter——”
“You asked me if it could be possible that my brother had an enemy.
Any man who has ever killed another man might, it seems to me, have
dangerous enemies from that time forth.”
“I see. I see. Granted, then, for the sake of argument that that man
had a brother, or a son, who wanted to avenge his death. Would it have
been possible for him to enter your home without detection?”
“Quite possible. Our outside doors are never locked until the last
thing at night. While we were at supper, in the dining room, anyone
could have walked in, quietly, and gone upstairs.”
“You have no watchdogs on your place?”
“We have two dogs. I mentioned suppertime because, usually at that
hour, the dogs are at the back of the house waiting for, or eating,
their suppers.”
“Very well. He could have gotten into the house. He could have hidden
in your brother’s bedroom. But—— Could he have gotten out of the
house? That is, could he have gotten out of the house without leaving
any footprints in the snow? This does seem to bring us back to the
beginning, doesn’t it?”
Aunt Gracia said, “He could have got out of the house, because he did
get out. How he escaped we have not, as yet, been able to discover.
That is the problem to be solved. We have one fact. He is not in our
home at present. That leads to another fact, unexplained, but not
conjectural. He has escaped. It is stupid, and so it is an insult to
the intelligence of this jury for us to keep insisting that the man
could not have got out of the house, when we all know that he _has_
got out of the house.”
The jury shone from the sensation of having their intelligences
mentioned.
“Very well,” Thopson assumed acceptance, “we’ll rest that for the
present. Now, if you please, I’d like to take up, with you, the matter
of the locked doors.”
Aunt Gracia invited, “Yes. I wish you would.”
I am asking you, Judy, is she a clever woman, or isn’t she?
“All of the outside doors were locked, on the inside, I presume, on
the night of October eighth?”
“No. We have three outside doors. The side door was locked, on the
inside. Both the front and back doors were unlocked. Anyone could have
come downstairs and have walked straight out of the house through
either of those doors.”
“Without leaving footprints in the snow?”
“I am sorry,” Aunt Gracia said, “I thought that we were speaking now
only of the doors.”
“Whose duty was it to lock those outside doors at night?”
“It was no one’s duty. Usually, the last person downstairs, in the
evening, attended to locking the house.”
“Who was the last person downstairs that night?”
“My brother. That is, he was the last person to retire. It should have
been his care to lock the doors.”
“Would it have been possible for him to have forgotten to lock them?”
“Very possible. Locked doors are given, or were given, very little
attention on our ranch. I fancy that we slept many nights with the
doors unlocked.”
It seemed to me that, if I had been in Thopson’s place, I should have
asked, then, how it happened, in a house where locked doors were given
no attention, that there were keys for all the upstairs doors. (Aunt
Gracia’s statement was truthful enough. She had said, “were given.” A
month or so ago, not one of our bedroom doors had a key to it. Aunt
Gracia had had to hunt them all out from the hardware box in the
attic.) Thopson missed it, however, and went on to ask her to tell him
exactly which doors were locked that night.
“Except for the seven bedroom doors, which were locked on the
outside,” she said, “and for the side door, downstairs, I think every
door in the house was unlocked, including the inside and outside
cellar doors. To be sure, I had almost forgotten, the door to the back
stairway was locked. Irene Quilter has told you how that came to be
locked.”
“Into what downstairs room,” Thopson inquired, “does the back stairway
lead?”
“Into the sitting room.”
“Not the room in which Mrs. Christopher Quilter was sleeping that
night?”
“Yes.”
“Why, then, did Mrs. Christopher Quilter not unlock that door, and go
up the back stairway, instead of going through the several downstairs
rooms, in order to use the front stairway?”
“That question is easily answered, Mr. Thopson. The back stairway is
crooked and narrow. We none of us ever use it. In her terrorized
state, my cousin would surely act according to habit. Her habit was to
use the front stairway.”
Can you sort the truth out of that, Judy? Irene, who never did any
work, and who was never in a hurry, generally did use the front
stairway. The rest of us used the back stairway as often as we used
the front one. Do you know why Aunt Gracia deliberately lied about it?
I don’t know, entirely. And I don’t know why Irene did not run right
up the back stairway that night. I wish that I did know. Though,
surely, Aunt Gracia might have been right about Irene’s acting
according to habit. It was her habit to go upstairs the front way, and
she was badly frightened. I guess we’ll have to let it go at that.
Thopson’s next question was a stunner. “Could you swear, Miss Quilter,
that no member of your family could have gone into Richard Quilter’s
room, committed the murder, slipped out through the hall and back into
his own room? I understand that the turmoil in the hall would have
covered any slight noise that night.”
For the first time, Aunt Gracia hedged. “I think that I understand
your question, Mr. Thopson; but may I ask you to state it a bit more
directly, so that I may give a direct answer?”
“Would you swear that there was not time for any member of your family
to have gone into your brother’s room, committed the murder, and got
back into his own room, before Irene Quilter came into the upper
hall?”
“No. I could not swear to that, because there was time. I could and do
swear, however, that no member of our family did do what you have
suggested because, though there was time, there was not opportunity. I
make this oath for two reasons. The one reason, I have given you: No
member of our family could have kept Dick Quilter cowed for five
minutes—much less for an hour or longer. The second reason I have not,
as yet, given to you. It is this: Each member of the Quilter family
was locked in his or her room that night at the time of the murder.
All seven bedroom doors were locked on the outside. One of the
bedrooms was unoccupied—but that door was also locked. Irene Quilter
found seven keys in my brother’s room, and used one key to unlock each
door. No, Mr. Thopson, we have more than Irene’s word for that. The
keys were left on the outside of the locks. Only a few minutes later
my father and I turned all those keys again. We did this, hoping that
the murderer might be hiding in one of these rooms, and that we could
keep him locked there while we searched the remainder of the house.”
“Granted,” Thopson said, “that six of you were locked in your rooms on
that night. There still remains a seventh, Miss Quilter, who was not
locked in her room.”
Aunt Gracia said: “Mr. Thopson, please be fair about this. Can you
imagine anyone who would plan a murder by carefully establishing
alibis for every person in the house except herself? Do you suppose
that if Irene Quilter had planned to kill my brother, she would have
arranged to be the one person in the house who was not locked in a
room at the time?”
“Am I unfair when I suggest that plans sometimes miscarry?”
“No, you are not. That is a fair thing to say. But no person ever
plans a murder so that the burden of suspicion, even stupid suspicion,
falls upon himself. It would seem, too, Mr. Thopson, that in this
instance the murderer’s carefully laid plans had not miscarried. My
brother is dead. The murderer has escaped—got clear and away, and, as
yet, no one of us has one clue as to his identity.”
She put it over, Judy. All honour to Aunt Gracia! Mr. Ward knew better
than to say a word when Thopson signified that he was ready to excuse
her. It was she, the family misfortune, who got the verdict for us—the
verdict that allowed us all to go free.
Thopson called Dr. Joe again. Dr. Joe testified, under oath, that
Father had been given no drug of any sort that night. Do you suppose
that Dr. Joe could salve his conscience, if he needed to, with the
difference between “had been given no drug” and “had taken no drug”?
As Dr. Joe came back to sit with us, Gus Wildoch and the two guys who
had been at the ranch with him came sneaking in at the back of the
room. They had been subpœnaed for witnesses, and had been called right
after Dr. Joe—as I should have mentioned. But Hank had explained that
they had sent in word that they might be a little late, owing to a
rush of duties, and he had proceeded to go along without them. I fancy
that Hank was trying to keep them out of it. Or, perhaps Gus himself,
with his regard for the elder Quilters, was trying to evade
testifying. Their evidence, however, was certainly not damaging.
Since each of them said the same thing, in almost the same way, I’ll
lump their testimony to save your time and my space.
They had come with Christopher Quilter, at his request, to Q 2 Ranch
on the morning of Tuesday, October the ninth. They had seen and had
carefully examined the body of Richard Quilter. He had been shot
through the left chest. Rigor mortis had been complete when they had
arrived. They had inspected the Quilter mansion and grounds. They
couldn’t say as to footprints—the place was pretty well tracked up by
the time they got there. Gus didn’t “go much on these here footprints,
anyhow—too many ways to get around them, such as wearing the other
fellow’s shoes.” They had been unable to form any opinions as to who
the murderer might be.
Thopson tried none of his baiting with them. The two deputies, I was
later informed, were Gus’s two brothers who have come recently from
Texas, and the three made rather a formidable trio: combined heights
about nineteen feet; combined weights close to six hundred pounds.
They were excused, and Hank grew confidential with the jury. He told
them that if they wanted to go into the other room and talk things
over for a few minutes, they could—he guessed. But he reminded them
that they and he should get home and get their milking and other
chores put through. He guessed that they saw, as he saw, that a lot of
time had been wasted, and that, “futthermore,” there wasn’t sense nor
reason in fiddle-faddling much longer. Some dirty son of a sea cook
had broken into the Quilter mansion and shot Dick Quilter and made a
getaway. Hank finished by expressing his deep regret that the law
wasn’t able to help the Quilters out in any way, right now; and,
adding his fervent hope that soon it might be able to lay hands on the
Dutchman, or whatever dirty crook had done it, he turned the case over
to the jury.
If I had been writing a book, I’d have kept their verdict a dark
secret until now. But since I have sacrificed my literary style to
your peace of mind, I have had to miss my climax.
However, perhaps this will serve: What Aunt Gracia told the jury, with
my comments appended.
1. Father was the strongest member of the family.
True a year ago. Not true a week ago.
2. Father could have disarmed any member of the family.
Doubtful, certainly, a week ago. But, say that he could have
disarmed any one of us. Would he have tried to? Can you see
Father jumping at any one of us, and snatching a gun from us? I
can’t. Judy, you and I know that he would have lain there in bed
and tried to shame us out of our nonsense. Aunt Gracia was right
about that. He couldn’t have feared a one of us. He would have
thought that we were staging a bluff. Would he have called it?
Yes, and for any length of time. I can imagine him lying there in
bed and laughing at us.
3. Father had not been drugged. He was in full possession of
all his faculties.
Is this the truth? Did Dr. Joe lie helpfully?
4. None of us ever used the back stairway.
We all used it, except possibly Irene.
5. Since the murderer was not in our house, he must have
escaped from it.
You don’t need me to point the sophistry of that.
6. We were all locked in our rooms. Proof: Irene found seven
keys, unlocked seven doors, and left seven keys on the outside
of the doors.
There are ten doors in our upper hall. Irene found and used
seven keys. You can think that out. I’m not going to write it.
Remember that all the keys to the locks in the upper hall are
interchangeable. The attic door had had no key. It has now. I
have brought it down from the hardware box in the attic. My one
bit of sleuthing. But whether that was its first or second trip
downstairs within the week, it did not say.
IV
Judy, I’m not crazy—though sometimes I feel, almost, as if I were. I
am not trying to prove, with this quibbling, that some member of the
Quilter family shot and killed Father. It seems to me that the single
hope I have left, for anything, is to prove that no member of the
family is a murderer. But I am bound to be with Grandfather concerning
truth. I have to get my proof through truth—nothing else can satisfy
me. I have to establish Quilter innocence, and reëstablish Quilter
honour, before I can begin to try to establish anything else.
Aunt Gracia proved Quilter innocence to the six good men and true. I’d
give a thousand of the best grazing acres on Q 2 to have had her prove
it to me. I’d give more than that. My own life, of course—but it is
not worth shucks. I’d give Lucy’s life, or Grandfather’s, just as they
would give them, for that certainty.
Do you know, I have found one way I can almost get it. My way hasn’t
anything to do with ropes, or keys, or coal oil. It hasn’t anything to
do with footprints, or motives, or drugs.
I do this. I take us, one at a time. I begin with Grandfather, and I
come straight through the list to Lucy. I stop at each name. I think.
I put into that thinking every particle of knowledge I have concerning
each person, and I keep out of it every particle of prejudice and
every atom of affection or of admiration. I judge them as objectively
as I judge cattle for buying or breeding. Each time I do it, I come
out with a clean slate. That method, and nothing else, gives me my
certainty, my sure knowledge that not one of the Quilter family could
be guilty of crime.
And that, after consideration, I am bound to state is a lie. It gives
me my certainty—with one exception. That is why I don’t go after it
more often. That is why I am afraid of my certainty. Each time, more
positively than the last, it omits one person. Probably you don’t need
to have me tell you who the one person is. Neal Quilter.
Neal Quilter could have done it. Suppose that he had. Suppose that he
had planned the thing keenly, as it was planned, from beginning to
end. And then, as Aunt Gracia said, since we are dealing with
suppositions, suppose that the horror of having done such a thing
should have driven him clear out of his mind; should have caused a
real brain storm—so that, when the storm had cleared, he had forgotten
every incident connected with the crime.
I wish I knew more about minds. I wish I knew whether a thing of the
sort ever had happened or ever could happen. Chris says that great
strides in psychology are to be made within the next decade. I tried
to pump him about it, since he is interested in the subject. But of
course, since I was unwilling to say to him what I have said to you, I
got no real satisfaction. Still, since it is recognizedly possible
that a man may forget his entire past, including his own name, and
continue to go about as a fairly normal person, I don’t see why it
should be impossible for him to forget, entirely, some one particular
horror.
Granting the amnesia, I could have done it. I could have gone upstairs
some time in the late afternoon and fixed that rope on the bed, and
collected the keys from the inside of the doors. (Where I got a gun,
and what I did with it afterwards, are, of course, other things I
would have forgotten. I can reconstruct with the material now at hand.
I cannot remember.) Then, on Monday night, before Father put out his
light, I could have stepped across the hall to his room. If I had gone
in there, threatening him with a gun, do you think he’d have jumped
out of bed and taken the gun away from me? I think not. Aunt Gracia
was night about that. Father would not have been afraid of any one of
us. Why, even I would laugh if any member of our family came dodging
into my room flourishing a gun. Or, perhaps I should say, even I, a
week ago, would have laughed.
But we’ll say I didn’t show my gun. We’ll say that I kept it in my
back pocket for an hour or so while we talked, Father and I. If I had
decided to kill him rather than allow him to go insane, I might have
desired a long, confirmatory talk. Unless the rope is clear outside
the whole affair of the murder—as Chris still insists—we can no longer
suppose that I had meant to shoot Chris, and shot Father by mistake.
That hour, with the rope out across the porch roof, has to be
accounted for.
I might have fixed the rope at eleven o’clock, deciding that I would
use it in the next five minutes. And, after that, something might have
caused me to delay for another hour. The rope hocus-pocus certainly
would not have caused Father to take either me or my threats any more
seriously. Can’t you imagine the conversation?
“What are you planning to do with the clothes-line, my son?”
“I am going to use it to escape out of the window after I have shot
you.”
We know that Father would have laughed at me; unless, of course, he
had decided that I had gone mad. In that case, he might have started
to get out of bed to take the gun away from me.
Well, then, I had the rope fixed, we’ll say. I shot Father. I went to
the window and discovered the snow. I knew that the rope could not be
used, then, because the footprints on the roof would betray me. What
might I have done? It is absurdly simple. I might have stepped across
the hall to my own room and locked myself in—_with the key to the
attic door_. Yes, as I have said, I have since found the key in the
hardware box in the attic. But if Grandfather, or Aunt Gracia, had
discovered an extra key in my room, when they were searching the
house, would they have declaimed concerning it, or would they have
hidden it away in the box?
Why I should have had the key, if I had planned the rope escape, I
can’t think. Why I should have planned the rope, I can’t think. I
might have had some wily scheme, involving both the key and the rope.
Or the entire idea of the rope might have been one of the fool
mistakes that murderers, according to the best traditions, always
make. Leaving the door between my room and Lucy’s unlocked would seem,
certainly, to have been another mistake.
The question of time is a nice one. I needed, after the shot was
fired, to have looked out of the window, crossed the full width of
Father’s room, got across the hall and into my own room, locked the
door, picked up a chair, and battered the door with it. Lucy needed to
have got out of bed, put on her slippers, lighted her lamp, run across
her room to my door, opened it. It might work out. I don’t know. I
think that I couldn’t have done my part of it in two minutes. Then I
remember how long two minutes were when you were taking Greg’s
temperature.
On the whole, the time seems to be against me. What I could have done
with the gun seems to be for me. When I remember how this house was
searched, it seems impossible that I could have hidden a gun anywhere
in it. It certainly would have been found. I could not have thrown it
out of a window. We’d have seen it in the snow. Though, after all, I
have a good baseball arm; I might have thrown it out of Father’s open
window. No, that’s nonsense. It would have been found, long before
this. However, the fact that the gun is gone doesn’t weigh very
heavily against the facts that no one got out of the house that night
and that no one was hiding in the house that night.
I suppose you might suggest that Chris was as capable of the crime as
I was. It won’t do. Chris loved Father: not enough to kill him rather
than have him lose that splendid mind of his, but too much to kill him
for any other reason. Father had stopped opposing the sale of the
ranch. Chris had Father’s ill health and overwork on this place to use
as an excuse for selling us out. He had Father’s ability as a rancher
to salve his conscience if he stuck us on some dinky valley truck
farm. Also, Chris is a rank sentimentalist and—may I say
consequently—something of a coward.
Yet, when I go to calling Chris names, I suspect that I should go
softly. I have wondered, these last few days, whether instead of
fighting what I have always decried as Quilter sentimentality, I have
been fighting, merely, a subtle sensitiveness, an ability for loving,
which I have been too boorish to possess or to understand. The thought
of marrying some queen and giving her a right to paw over me and call
me “Boofel,” nauseates me. Look at Uncle Phineas tethered to Olympe.
Look at Chris deeded to Irene! You and Greg are different; but you are
friends. You bake your bread, instead of feasting on the yeast.
And—you are a Quilter woman. But what I started to say was, that I
have wondered whether this lack of sentimentality in me denoted simply
a hard streak, a streak of yellow, perhaps a streak of cruelty.
I’ve wondered, too, if the fact that Father killed that cur a few
months before I was born, and that Mother saw him do it, might have
made me different. People seem to think that prenatal influences are
important. I have never believed it, because it seems to me if that
were true of people it would be true of animals. Still, what do I know
about it? Or about anything? There is this: I don’t feel as if I were
incapable of love, if love is the rather tremendously serious, and
yet, someway, the very humorous, clutching feeling I have for the
family and for Q 2. But I do feel as if talking about it, showing it
off as Irene and Chris show it off, defiled it.
There is Aunt Gracia, to-day, and the feeling I have about her. She
sat there, lying under oath, to save the Quilter family; to save, I
know, either Irene and Chris or Irene and me. There isn’t one of us, I
suppose, who would not have been willing to sacrifice his own honour,
peace of mind, and the rest, to such a cause. But, by Jove, I think
Aunt Gracia is the only one of us who is brave enough to sacrifice
eternity. I know exactly what she did to-day. Should I go to her and
spiel a lot of mushy stuff about loving her for it? Should I cheapen
her magnificence to gratify my own emotionalism? Should I write my
name in red pencil on the base of a marble column?
In other words—what a good boy am I! Sitting here, teetering with
tragedy, and revelling in congratulatory self-analysis. Ask me this,
Judy. Ask me why I have not mentioned again the important fact that
was brought out during to-day’s inquisition? That is, why I have so
carefully avoided further discussion of the fact that Father’s death
may bring to his family a payment of ten thousand needed dollars?
Should you believe me if I told you that, for the last several hours,
I had forgotten it? I hope you are too sensible to believe that. Ask
me why, just now, when I was making out the case against myself, I did
not mention a ten-thousand-dollar motive? Ten thousand dollars would
mean enough money for Irene and Chris to go where they please, with
enough left over to carry Q 2 through to safety. I remarked, during
the inquest, that I had not known about the accident policy. I seemed
to be believed. I seem to have believed myself——
V
Later.
Sorry, Judy dear. I am a fool. Even this forgetting business would, I
suppose, need to stop somewhere. I had not known about the policy. And
talking is rot. My apology, if you’ll have it, is that Father’s death
has been a knockout. I’ve been feeling too much—unaccustomed feelings.
I have been thinking, or trying to think, until my brain has worn out
from effort.
I am all right again now. I’ve been out with Uncle Phineas walking and
waiting for the sunrise. He is all cut up, torn up about Father. And
yet, somehow, the fact that he was not here on Monday night, and that
he didn’t have the horror of that first hour, seems to make him more
wholesome, saner than any of us.
He was here at home when we got back from the inquest last evening. He
came running down the path to meet us, with tears washing out of his
eyes and all over his cheeks, but he was paying no more attention to
them than he would have paid to rain. He is one of us—a Quilter
straight through—and neck deep in trouble with us. But it is as if he
had come in, on purpose, while the rest of us have been chucked in.
Olympe was out of bed, when we came from Quilterville yesterday, as
chipper as you please in Aunt Gracia’s best kitchen dress with a
little doily of an apron. She actually had helped Lucy prepare supper
for the three of them. Olympe would be correctly costumed for the
frying of ham and eggs.
(Dr. Joe has envoys scouring Chinatown for Dong Lee, but he is not to
be discovered. He was to have stayed a week; so we know that he’ll be
back on Monday; but we could do with him sooner. It is tough for Aunt
Gracia, this having him gone just now.)
While the rest of us were getting a pick-up supper in the kitchen,
Olympe disappeared. Sure enough, in a few minutes, here she came,
wearing that black lace rig of hers, with the red roses and red velvet
loops ripped off of it. A pity, since, by that time, Lucy and I were
the only ones who had stayed downstairs.
Olympe stopped in the kitchen doorway and asked us where Pan was. We
told her that he had gone to Grandfather’s room with him. She trailed
forward to the table, delivered the first part of her “God help the
Quilter wives” speech, and turned to sweep from the room. Lucy
laughed.
You see, in her haste to get into mourning, Olympe had forgotten the
back of her gown. Do you remember its long, square train, caught up in
two places with great blobs of a horrible shade of red velvet and red
roses? She had forgotten to remove them.
It was not amusing. Lucy laughed, as you know, not in spite of our
trouble, but because of it. If Lucy had not been all to pieces,
unnerved and half hysterical, she could no more have laughed at
anything about Olympe than she could have cat-called in church. I
don’t recall that any of us children were taught that we must never
laugh at Olympe. And yet, of course, laughing at her has always been
one of the major Quilter heresies.
Olympe wheeled about. She was so white that the little dabs of rouge
on her cheekbones looked as if they might tumble off. I went and stood
close to Lucy.
Olympe said, “Are you laughing at me?”
I tried to tell her that Lucy was not laughing. That she was all to
pieces, hysterical, and did not know what she was doing.
“She may not know,” Olympe said, “but I know that she is laughing at
me. Why? Because I am old, and weak, and no longer beautiful; because
my husband humiliates me, and neglects me.”
She trailed away then, riding the trimmings on her train. Lucy, of
course, burst into tears.
I have gone well around Robin Hood’s barn, with all this. I wanted to
give you something as a sample, perhaps as an excuse for what I am
going to ask you to do.
Judy, I want you to write and insist on having Lucy come to you for a
time. Don’t hint that it is for Lucy’s sake. Lucy is too game to
desert. Say that it is for your sake. Say that you need her to help
you with Greg—so on. I don’t need to dictate your letter, but make it
strong. I’ll manage her railway fare, somehow or other. She has to get
away from here for the present.
She is twelve years old, imaginative and impressionable. We have been
fools to leave her alone so much with Olympe, here of late. I don’t
need to tell you how brave and sensible Lucy usually is. She will come
through even this all right, if we give her half a chance. She won’t
get the half chance, here, now, with Olympe treating her to scenes
like the one last evening, and telling her—the Lord knows what, and
making her promise not to tell. The kid has something extra on her
mind. And, though Lucy won’t tell me, I am darn sure it was Olympe who
loaded it there. I couldn’t insist that Lucy break a promise. But can
you imagine anyone who would be fool enough to add the burden of a
secret and a promise to Lucy’s troubles right now?
When this afternoon is over—the funeral is to be this afternoon—I am
going to Olympe about it. Not that I think it will amount to a hill of
beans; but, since we won’t be able to get Lucy to you for a week or
so, I’ll have to get things straightened out for her in the meantime.
She is scared, Judy, Lucy is. When I got her quieted down, last night,
I urged her to go upstairs to bed. She wouldn’t go. She said that she
was lonesome alone, and that she wanted to stay with me. Then, of a
sudden, you know how she lights and flashes, she said: “That is a
story, Neal. I’ve turned coward. Please don’t tell Grandfather. I am
afraid to go upstairs and stay alone in my room.”
I fixed her a fine bed, and screened it off from the light, on the
sitting-room sofa. And, gosh knows, I shouldn’t have thought it
strange, even from Lucy, if she had begun to be afraid a bit
sooner—the first night or the second. I can’t pretend that any of us
has been entirely without something that at least approximated fear.
Grandfather has locked the place himself, each night. And, as you
know, I have stayed up all night, on guard, every night this week.
(Chris offered to spell me, but I’ve liked the quiet nights for
writing to you. I have needed the job badly, so I have liked it.) No,
Lucy’s fear would have been natural enough, if it had begun sooner.
Coming now, it must mean that whatever fool thing Olympe told her
yesterday, and made her promise not to tell, has frightened her. With
this added to the rest, I am sure you’ll agree with me that we must
get Lucy right away from here.
Aunt Gracia is in the kitchen attending to breakfast. I’ll go and
cadge an advance snack, and then I’ll ride into Quilterville with this
in time to get it off on Number Twenty-four.
Your loving brother,
Neal.
Saturday, October 13, 1900.
Dear Judy: We buried Father to-day. To gratify Aunt Gracia, we had the
Siloamite ceremony. They did the best they could to re-break our
hearts, if that could have been possible. Since mummery is not always
ineffective, there should be a law decreeing that no one but a man’s
enemies be allowed to attend his funeral.
The entire county was there, I think. There were ponderously perfumed
flowers, tortured into unnatural shapes, over which furry,
caterpillarish-looking letters writhed into words, “At Rest,” and such
originalities.
When we came home neighbours had been here and had done strange,
geometrically unfamiliar things to the rooms, and had left a table
spread with an astonishing repast in odd dishes, which we never use.
Nothing was lacking, you see, from the best funereal traditions—not
even the baked meats. Nothing was lacking, except any sense of the
fitness of things, or of the comfort of finality, or the dignity of
death, or the realization that we are a supposedly civilized people,
living in the year 1900 A. D.
Sorry, Judy. I am not fit to write this evening. I am going to bed
to-night. If Chris wishes to keep up this fool night herding he may. I
am through.
Your loving brother,
Neal.