"Good heavens, Maggie! What difference does it make?"
"W'you mind if I got the ice-pick and unscrewed the box?"
My menage is always notoriously short of tools.
I forbade it at once, and ordered her back to the kitchen, and after a
final squint along the carpet, head flat, she dragged herself out and to
her feet.
"I'll get the jelly off," she said, "and then maybe a hat pin'll reach
it. I can see the edge of it."
A loud crack from the kitchen announced that cook had forgotten the
silver spoon, and took Maggie off on a jump. I went back to the library
and "Bolivar County," and, I must confess, to a nap in my chair.
I was roused by the feeling that some one was staring at me. My eyes
focused first on the icepick, then, as I slowly raised them, on Maggie's
face, set in hard and uncompromising lines.
"I'd thank you to come with me," she said stiffly.
"Come where?"
"To the telephone."
I groaned inwardly. But, because submission to Maggie's tyranny has
become a firm habit with me, I rose. I saw then that she held a dingy
quarter in one hand.
Without a word she turned and stalked ahead of me into the hall. It is
curious, looking back and remembering that she had then no knowledge of
the significance of things, to remember how hard and inexorable her back
was. Viewed through the light of what followed, I have never been able
to visualize Maggie moving down the hall. It has always been a menacing
figure, rather shadowy than real. And the hail itself takes on grotesque
proportions, becomes inordinately long, an infinity of hall, fading away
into time and distance.
Yet it was only a moment, of course, until I stood by the telephone.
Maggie had been at work. The wooden box which covered the battery-jars
had been removed, and lay on its side. The battery-jars were uncovered,
giving an effect of mystery unveiled, a sort of shamelessness, of
destroyed illusion.
Maggie pointed. "There's a paper under one of the jars," she said. "I
haven't touched it, but I know well enough what it is."
I have not questioned Maggie on this point, but I am convinced that she
expected to find a sort of final summons, of death's visiting-card, for
one or the other of us.
The paper was there, a small folded scrap, partially concealed under a
jar.
"Them prints was there, too," Maggie said, non-committally.
The box had accumulated the flocculent floating particles of months,
possibly years--lint from the hall carpet giving it a reddish tinge. And
in this light and evanescent deposit, fluttered by a breath, fingers
had moved, searched, I am tempted to say groped, although the word seems
absurd for anything so small. The imprint of Maggie's coin and of her
attempts at salvage were at the edge and quite distinct from the others.
I lifted the jar and picked up the paper. It was folded and refolded
until it was not much larger than a thumb-nail, a rather stiff paper
crossed with faint blue lines. I am not sure that I would have opened
it--it had been so plainly in hiding, and was so obviously not my
affair--had not Maggie suddenly gasped and implored me not to look at
it. I immediately determined to examine it.
Yet, after I had read it twice, it had hardly made an impression on my
mind. There are some things so incredible that the brain automatically
rejects them. I looked at the paper. I read it with my eyes. But I did
not grasp it.
It was not note paper. It was apparently torn from a tablet of glazed
and ruled paper--just such paper, for instance, as Maggie soaks in
brandy and places on top of her jelly before tying it up. It had been
raggedly torn. The scrap was the full width of the sheet, but only three
inches or so deep. It was undated, and this is what it said:
"To Whom it may concern: On the 30th day of May, 1911, I killed a woman
(here) in this house. I hope you will not find this until I am dead.
"(Signed) EMILY BENTON."
Maggie had read the confession over my shoulder, and I felt her
body grow rigid. As for myself, my first sensation was one of acute
discomfort--that we should have exposed the confession to the light
of day. Neither of us, I am sure, had really grasped it. Maggie put a
trembling hand on my arm.
"The brass of her," she said, in a thin, terrified voice. "And sitting
in church like the rest of us. Oh, my God, Miss Agnes, put it back!"