Mr. Holcombe was up very early the next morning. I heard him moving
around at five o'clock, and at six he banged at my door and demanded
to know at what time the neighborhood rose: he had been up for an hour
and there were no signs of life. He was more cheerful after he had had
a cup of coffee, commented on Lida's beauty, and said that Howell was
a lucky chap.
"That is what worries me, Mr. Holcombe," I said. "I am helping the
affair along and--what if it turns out badly?"
He looked at me over his glasses. "It isn't likely to turn out badly,"
he said. "I have never married, Mrs. Pitman, and I have missed a great
deal out of life."
"Perhaps you're better off: if you had married and lost your wife--" I
was thinking of Mr. Pitman.
"Not at all," he said with emphasis. "It's better to have married and
lost than never to have married at all. Every man needs a good woman,
and it doesn't matter how old he is. The older he is, the more he
needs her. I am nearly sixty."
I was rather startled, and I almost dropped the fried potatoes. But
the next moment he had got out his note-book and was going over
the items again. "Pillow-slip," he said, "knife _broken_, onyx
clock--wouldn't think so much of the clock if he hadn't been so
damnably anxious to hide the key, the discrepancy in time as revealed
by the trial--yes, it is as clear as a bell. Mrs. Pitman, does that
Maguire woman next door sleep all day?"
"She's up now," I said, looking out the window.
He was in the hall in a moment, only to come to the door later, hat in
hand. "Is she the only other woman on the street who keeps boarders?"
"She's the only woman who doesn't," I snapped. "She'll keep anything
that doesn't belong to her--except boarders."
"Ah!"
He lighted his corn-cob pipe and stood puffing at it and watching me.
He made me uneasy: I thought he was going to continue the subject of
every man needing a wife, and I'm afraid I had already decided to take
him if he offered, and to put the school-teacher out and have a real
parlor again, but to keep Mr. Reynolds, he being tidy and no bother.
But when he spoke, he was back to the crime again: "Did you ever work
a typewriter?" he asked.
What with the surprise, I was a little sharp. "I don't play any
instrument except an egg-beater," I replied shortly, and went on
clearing the table.
"I wonder--do you remember about the village idiot and the horse? But
of course you do, Mrs. Pitman; you are a woman of imagination. Don't
you think you could be Alice Murray for a few moments? Now think--you
are a stenographer with theatrical ambitions: you meet an actor and
you fall in love with him, and he with you."
"That's hard to imagine, that last."
"Not so hard," he said gently. "Now the actor is going to put you on
the stage, perhaps in this new play, and some day he is going to marry
you."
"Is that what he promised the girl?"
"According to some letters her mother found, yes. The actor is
married, but he tells you he will divorce the wife; you are to wait
for him, and in the meantime he wants you near him; away from the
office, where other men are apt to come in with letters to be typed,
and to chaff you. You are a pretty girl."
"It isn't necessary to overwork my imagination," I said, with a little
bitterness. I had been a pretty girl, but work and worry--
"Now you are going to New York very soon, and in the meantime you have
cut yourself off from all your people. You have no one but this man.
What would you do? Where would you go?"
"How old was the girl?"
"Nineteen."
"I think," I said slowly, "that if I were nineteen, and in love with a
man, and hiding, I would hide as near him as possible. I'd be likely
to get a window that could see his going out and coming in, a place so
near that he could come often to see me."
"Bravo!" he exclaimed. "Of course, with your present wisdom and
experience, you would do nothing so foolish. But this girl was in her
teens; she was not very far away, for he probably saw her that Sunday
afternoon, when he was out for two hours. And as the going was slow
that day, and he had much to tell and explain, I figure she was not
far off. Probably in this very neighborhood."
During the remainder of that morning I saw Mr. Holcombe, at intervals,
going from house to house along Union Street, making short excursions
into side thoroughfares, coming back again and taking up his door-bell
ringing with unflagging energy. I watched him off and on for two
hours. At the end of that time he came back flushed and excited.
"I found the house," he said, wiping his glasses. "She was there, all
right, not so close as we had thought, but as close as she could get."
"And can you trace her?" I asked.
His face changed and saddened. "Poor child!" he said. "She is dead,
Mrs. Pitman!"
"Not she--at Sewickley!"
"No," he said patiently. "That was Jennie Brice."
"But--Mr. Howell--"
"Mr. Howell is a young ass," he said with irritation. "He did not take
Jennie Brice out of the city that morning. He took Alice Murray in
Jennie Brice's clothing, and veiled."
Well, that is five years ago. Five times since then the Allegheny
River, from being a mild and inoffensive stream, carrying a few boats
and a great deal of sewage, has become, a raging destroyer, and has
filled our hearts with fear and our cellars with mud. Five times since
then Molly Maguire has appropriated all that the flood carried from my
premises to hers, and five times have I lifted my carpets and moved
Mr. Holcombe, who occupies the parlor bedroom, to a second-floor room.
A few days ago, as I said at the beginning, we found Peter's body
floating in the cellar, and as soon as the yard was dry, I buried him.
He had grown fat and lazy, but I shall miss him.
Yesterday a riverman fell off a barge along the water-front and was
drowned. They dragged the river for his body, but they did not find
him. But they found something--an onyx clock, with the tattered
remnant of a muslin pillow-slip wrapped around it. It only bore out
the story, as we had known it for five years.
The Murray girl had lived long enough to make a statement to the
police, although Mr. Holcombe only learned this later. On the
statement being shown to Ladley in the jail, and his learning of the
girl's death, he collapsed. He confessed before he was hanged, and his
confession, briefly, was like this:
He had met the Murray girl in connection with the typing of his play,
and had fallen in love with her. He had never cared for his wife, and
would have been glad to get rid of her in any way possible. He had not
intended to kill her, however. He had planned to elope with the Murray
girl, and awaiting an opportunity, had persuaded her to leave home and
to take a room near my house.
Here he had visited her daily, while his wife was at the theater.
They had planned to go to New York together on Monday, March the
fifth. On Sunday, the fourth, however, Mr. Bronson and Mr. Howell
had made their curious proposition. When he accepted, Philip Ladley
maintained that he meant only to carry out the plan as suggested. But
the temptation was too strong for him. That night, while his wife
slept, he had strangled her.
I believe he was frantic with fear, after he had done it. Then it
occurred to him that if he made the body unrecognizable, he would be
safe enough. On that quiet Sunday night, when Mr. Reynolds reported
all peaceful in the Ladley room, he had cut off the poor wretch's head
and had tied it up in a pillow-slip weighted with my onyx clock!
It is a curious fact about the case that the scar which his wife
incurred to enable her to marry him was the means of his undoing. He
insisted, and I believe he was telling the truth, that he did not know
of the scar: that is, his wife had never told him of it, and had been
able to conceal it. He thought she had probably used paraffin in some
way.
In his final statement, written with great care and no little literary
finish, he told the story in detail: of arranging the clues as Mr.
Howell and Mr. Bronson had suggested; of going out in the boat, with
the body, covered with a fur coat, in the bottom of the skiff: of
throwing it into the current above the Ninth Street bridge, and of
seeing the fur coat fall from the boat and carried beyond his reach;
of disposing of the head near the Seventh Street bridge: of going to a
drug store, as per the Howell instructions, and of coming home at four
o'clock, to find me at the head of the stairs.
[Illustration: While his wife slept.]
Several points of confusion remained. One had been caused by Temple
Hope's refusal to admit that the dress and hat that figured in the
case were to be used by her the next week at the theater. Mr. Ladley
insisted that this was the case, and that on that Sunday afternoon
his wife had requested him to take them to Miss Hope; that they had
quarreled as to whether they should be packed in a box or in the brown
valise, and that he had visited Alice Murray instead. It was on the
way there that the idea of finally getting rid of Jennie Brice came
to him. And a way--using the black and white striped dress of the
dispute.
Another point of confusion had been the dismantling of his room that
Monday night, some time between the visit of Temple Hope and the
return of Mr. Holcombe. This was to obtain the scrap of paper
containing the list of clues as suggested by Mr. Howell, a clue that
might have brought about a premature discovery of the so-called hoax.
To the girl he had told nothing of his plan. But he had told her she
was to leave town on an early train the next morning, going as his
wife; that he wished her to wear the black and white dress and hat,
for reasons that he would explain later, and to be veiled heavily,
that to the young man who would put her on the train, and who had seen
Jennie Brice only once, she was to be Jennie Brice; to say as little
as possible and not to raise her veil. Her further instructions were
simple: to go to the place at Horner where Jennie Brice had planned
to go, but to use the name of "Bellows" there. And after she had been
there for a day or two, to go as quietly as possible to New York. He
gave her the address of a boarding-house where he could write her, and
where he would join her later.
He reasoned in this way: That as Alice Murray was to impersonate
Jennie Brice, and Jennie Brice hiding from her husband, she would
naturally discard her name. The name "Bellows" had been hers by a
previous marriage and she might easily resume it. Thus, to establish
his innocence, he had not only the evidence of Howell and Bronson that
the whole thing was a gigantic hoax; he had the evidence of Howell
that he had started Jennie Brice to Horner that Monday morning, that
she had reached Horner, had there assumed an incognito, as Mr.
Pitman would say, and had later disappeared from there, maliciously
concealing herself to work his undoing.
In all probability he would have gone free, seeing no one in the
church in all that throng but the boy who waited at the end of the
long church aisle--I wanted to run out and claim her, my own blood, my
more than child.
I sat down and covered my face. And from the pew behind me some one
leaned over and patted my shoulder.
"Miss Bess!" old Isaac said gently. "Don't take on, Miss Bess!"
He came the next day and brought me some lilies from the bride's
bouquet, that she had sent me, and a bottle of champagne from the
wedding supper. I had not tasted champagne for twenty years!
That is all of the story. On summer afternoons sometimes, when the
house is hot, I go to the park and sit. I used to take Peter, but now
he is dead. I like to see Lida's little boy; the nurse knows me
by sight, and lets me talk to the child. He can say "Peter" quite
plainly. But he does not call Alma "Grandmother." The nurse says she
does not like it. He calls her "Nana."
Lida does not forget me. Especially at flood-times, apologies, the
chiffon gown her mother had worn at her wedding. Alma had never worn
it but once, and now she was too stout for it. I took it; I am not
proud, and I should like Molly Maguire to see it.
Mr. Holcombe asked me last night to marry him. He says he needs me,
and that I need him.
I am a lonely woman, and getting old, and I'm tired of watching the
gas meter; and besides, with Peter dead, I need a man in the house all
the time. The flood district is none too orderly. Besides, when I have
a wedding dress laid away and a bottle of good wine, it seems a pity
not to use them.
I think I shall do it.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Case of Jennie Brice, by Mary Roberts Rinehart