Miss Emily was ill. The news came through the grocery boy, who came
out every day on a bicycle, and teased the cat and carried away all
the pears as fast as they ripened. Maggie brought me the information at
luncheon.
"She's sick," she said.
There was only one person in both our minds those days.
"Do you mean really ill, or only--"
"The boy says she's breaking up. If you ask me, she caught cold the
night she broke in here and took your Paisley shawl. And if you ask my
advice, Miss Agnes, you'll get it back again before the heirs step in
and claim it. They don't make them shawls nowadays, and she's as like as
not to will it to somebody if you don't go after it."
"Maggie," I said quietly, "how do you know she has that shawl?"
"How did I know that paper was in the telephone-box?" she countered.
And, indeed, by that time Maggie had convinced herself that she had
known all along there was something in the telephone battery-box.
"I've a sort of second sight, Miss Agnes," she added. And, with a
shrewdness I found later was partially correct: "She was snooping around
to see if you'd found that paper, and it came on to rain; so she took
the shawl. I should say," said Maggie, lowering her voice, "that as like
as not she's been in this house every night since we came."
Late that afternoon I cut some of the roses from the arch for Miss
Emily, and wrapping them against the sun, carried them to the village.
At the last I hesitated. It was so much like prying. I turned aside at
the church intending to leave them there for the altar. But I could find
no one in the parish house, and no vessel to hold them.
It was late afternoon. I opened a door and stepped into the old church.
I knelt for a moment, and then sat back and surveyed the quiet building.
It occurred to me that here one could obtain a real conception of the
Benton family, and of Miss Emily. The church had been the realest thing
in their lives. It had dominated them, obsessed them. When the Reverend
Samuel Thaddeus died, they had built him, not a monument, but a parish
house. When Carlo Benton died (however did such an ungodly name come to
belong to a Benton?) Miss Emily according to the story, had done without
fresh mourning and built him a window.
I looked at the window. It was extremely ugly, and very devout. And
under it was the dead man's name and two dates, 1860 and 1911.
So Carlo Benton had died the year Miss Emily claimed to have done a
murder! Another proof, I reflected that Martin Sprague would say. He had
been on her hands for a long time, both well and ill. Small wonder if
little Miss Emily had fallen to imagining things, or to confessing them.
I looked at the memorial window once more, and I could almost visualize
her gathering up the dead man's hateful books, and getting them
as quickly as possible out of the house. Quite possibly there were
unmentionable volumes among them--de Maupassant, perhaps Boccaccio. I
had a distinct picture, too, of Mrs. Graves, lips primly set, assisting
her with hands that fairly itched with the righteousness of her actions.
I still held the roses, and as I left the church I decided to lay them
on some grave in the churchyard. I thought it quite likely that roses
from the same arch had been frequently used for that purpose. Some very
young grave, I said to myself, and found one soon enough, a bit of a
rectangle of fresh earth, and a jarful of pansies on it. It lay in the
shadow of the Benton mausoleum.
That was how I found that Carlo Benton had died on the 27th of May,
1911.
I cannot claim that the fact at the time had any significance for me,
or that I saw in it anything more than another verification of Martin
Sprague's solution. But it enabled me to reconstruct the Benton
household at the date that had grown so significant. The 30th would have
probably been the day after the funeral. Perhaps the nurse was still
there. He had had a nurse for months, according to Mrs. Graves. And
there would have been the airing that follows long illness and death,
the opened windows, the packing up or giving away of clothing, the
pauses and silences, the sense of strangeness and quiet, the lowered
voices. And there would have been, too, that remorseless packing for
destruction of the dead atheist's books.
And some time, during that day or the night that followed, little Miss
Emily claimed to have committed her crime.
I went home thoughtfully. At the gate I turned and looked back. The
Benton Mausoleum was warm in the sunset, and the rose sprays lay, like
outstretched arms, across the tiny grave.
Maggie is amazingly efficient. I am efficient myself, I trust, but
I modify it with intelligence. It is not to me a vital matter, for
instance, if three dozen glasses of jelly sit on a kitchen table a day
or two after they are prepared for retirement to the fruit cellar.
I rather like to see them, marshaled in their neat rows, capped with
sealing wax and paper, and armed with labels. But Maggie has neither
sentiment nor imagination. Jelly to her is an institution, not an
inspiration. It is subject to certain rules and rites, of which not the
least is the formal interment in the fruit closet.
Therefore, after much protesting that night, I agreed to visit the fruit
cellar, and select a spot for the temporary entombing of thirty-six
jelly tumblers, which would have been thirty-seven had Delia known the
efficacy of a silver spoon. I can recall vividly the mental shift from
the confession to that domestic excursion, my own impatience, Maggie's
grim determination, and the curious denouement of that visit.