Then two more months passed. By now it was late fall, with winter
near. The current news, as I saw it, was decidedly humdrum. There was
no local news to speak of. I scarcely glanced at the papers from day
to day, no more than to see whether some particular illustration I
had done was in and satisfactory or not. But then, of a sudden, came
something which was genuine news. Steele’s wife was laid low by a box
of poisoned candy sent her through the mails, some of which she had
eaten!
Just how the news of this first reached the papers I have almost
forgotten now, but my recollection is that there was another
newspaperman and his wife—a small editor or reporter on another
paper—who lived in the same vicinity, and that it was to this
newspaperman’s wife that Mrs. Steele, after having called her in,
confided that she believed she had been poisoned, and by a woman whose
name she now gave as Mrs. Marie Davis, and with whom, as she then
announced, her husband had long been intimate—the lady of the Steamer
_Ira Ramsdell_. She had recognized the handwriting on the package from
some letters written to her husband, but only after she had eaten of
the candy and felt the pains—not before. Her condition was serious. She
was, it appeared, about to die. In this predicament she had added, so
it was said, that she had long been neglected by her husband for this
other woman, but that she had suffered in silence rather than bring
disgrace upon him, herself and their child. Now this cruel blow!
Forthwith a thrill of horror and sympathy passed over the city. It
seemed too sad. At the same time a cry went up to find the other
woman—arrest her, of course—see if she had really done it. There
followed the official detention, if not legal arrest, of Mrs. Davis
on suspicion of being the poisoner. Although the charge was not yet
proved, she was at once thrown into jail, and there held to await
the death or recovery of Mrs. Steele, and the proof or disproof of
the charge that the candy had been sent by her. And cameras in hand,
reporters and artists were packed off to the county jail to hear the
accused’s side of the story.
As I at once suspected on hearing the news, she proved to be none other
than the lady of the _Ira Ramsdell_, and as charming as I had at first
assumed her to be. I, being one of those sent to sketch her, was among
the first to hear her story. She denied, and very vehemently, that she
had sent any poisoned candy to any one. She had never dreamed of any
such thing. But she did not deny, which at the time appeared to me to
be incriminating, that she had been and was then in love with Steele.
In fact, and this point interested me as much then as afterwards,
she declared that this was an exceptional passion—her love for him,
his love for her—and no mere passing and vulgar intimacy. A high and
beautiful thing—a sacred love, the one really true and beautiful thing
that had ever come to her—or him—in all their lives. And he would
say so, too. For before meeting her, Wallace Steele had been very
unhappy—oh, very. And her own marriage had been a failure.
Wallace, as she now familiarly called him, had confessed to her that
this new, if secret, love meant everything to him. His wife did not
interest him. He had married her at a time when he did not know what he
was doing, and before he had come to be what he was. But this new love
had resolved all their woes into loveliness—complete happiness. They
had resolved to cling only to each other for life. There was no sin in
what they had done because they loved. Of course, Wallace had sought to
induce Mrs. Steele to divorce him, but she would not; otherwise they
would have been married before this. But as Mrs. Steele would not give
him up, both had been compelled to make the best of it. But to poison
her—that was wild! A love so beautiful and true as theirs did not need
a marriage ceremony to sanctify it. So she raved. My own impression
at the time was that she was a romantic and sentimental woman who was
really very greatly in love.
Now as to Steele. Having listened to this blazoning of her passion
by herself, the interviewers naturally hurried to Steele to see what
he would have to say. In contrast to her and her grand declaration,
they found a man, as every one agreed, who was shaken to the very
marrow of his bones by these untoward events. He was, it appeared, a
fit inhabitant of the environment that nourished him. He was in love,
perhaps, with this woman, but still, as any one could see, he was not
so much in love that, if this present matter were going to cost him
his place in this commonplace, conventional world, he would not be
able to surrender to it. He was horrified by the revelation of his
own treachery. Up to this hour, no doubt, he had been slipping about,
hoping not to be caught, and most certainly not wishing to be cast out
for sin. Regardless of the woman, he did not wish to be cast out now.
On the contrary, as it soon appeared, he had been doing his best in the
past to pacify his wife and hold her to silence while he slaked his
thirst for romance in this other way. He did not want his wife, but he
did not want trouble, either. And now that his sin was out he shivered.
In short, as he confided to one of the men who went to interview him,
and who agreed to respect his confidence to that extent, he was not
nearly so much in love with Mrs. Davis as she thought he was—poor
thing! True he had been infatuated for a while, but only a little
while. She was pretty, of course, and naturally she thought she loved
him—but he never expected anything like this to happen. Great cripes!
They had met at a river bathing-beach the year before. He had been
smitten—well, you know. He had never got along well with his wife, but
there was the little boy to consider. He had not intended any harm to
any one; far from it. And he certainly couldn’t turn on his wife now.
The public wouldn’t stand for it. It would make trouble for him. But he
could scarcely be expected to turn on Mrs. Davis, either, could he, now
that she was in jail, and suspected of sending poisoned candy to his
wife? The public wouldn’t stand for that, either.
It was terrible! Pathetic! He certainly would not have thought that
Marie would go to the length of sending his wife poison, and he didn’t
really believe that she had. Still—and there may have been some actual
doubt of her in that “still,” or so the reporting newspapermen thought.
At any rate, as he saw it now, he would have to stick to his wife
until she was out of danger. Public opinion compelled it. The general
impression of the newspapermen was that he was a coward. As one of them
said of his courage, “Gee, it’s oozing out of his hair!”
Nevertheless, he did go to see Mrs. Davis several times. But apart from
a reported sobbing demonstration of affection on her part, I never
learned what passed between them. He would not talk and she had been
cautioned not to. Also, there were various interviews with his wife,
who had not died, and now that the storm was on, admitted that she had
intercepted letters between her husband and Mrs. Davis from time to
time. The handwriting on the candy wrapper the day she received it so
resembled the handwriting of Mrs. Davis that after she had eaten of it
and the symptoms of poisoning had set in—not before—she had begun to
suspect that the candy must have emanated from Mrs. Davis.
V
In the meantime Mrs. Davis, despite the wife’s sad story, was the major
attraction in the newspapers. She was young, she was beautiful, she
had made, or at least attempted to make, a blood sacrifice on the altar
of love. What more could a daily newspaper want? She was a heroine,
even in this very moral, conservative, conventional and religious city.
The rank and file were agog—even sympathetic. (How would the moralists
explain that, would you say?) In consequence of their interest, she was
descended upon by a corps of those women newspaper writers who, even in
that day, were known as sob-sisters, and whose business it was—and this
in advance of any proof of crime or indictment even—to psychologize
and psychiatrize the suspect—to dig out if they could not only every
vestige of her drama, but all her hidden and secret motives.
As I read the newspapers at the time, they revealed that she was and
she was not a neurotic, a psychotic, who showed traces of being a
shrewd, evasive and designing woman, and who did not. Also she was a
soft, unsophisticated, passionate and deeply illusioned girl, and she
was not. She was guilty, of course—maybe not—but very likely she was,
and she must tell how, why, in what mood, etc. Also, it appeared that
she had sent the poison deliberately, coldly, murderously. Her eyes and
hands, also the shape of her nose and ears, showed it. Again, these
very things proved she could not have done it. Had she been driven to
it by stress of passionate emotion and yearning which had been too
much for her to bear? Was she responsible for that—a great, destroying
love? Of course she was! Who is not responsible for his deeds? A great,
overwhelming, destroying love passion, indeed! Rot! She could help it.
She could not help it. Could she help it? So it went.
Parallel with all this, of course, we were treated to various
examinations of the Steele family. What sort of people were they,
anyhow? It was said of Steele now that he was an average, fairly
capable newspaperman of no very startling ability, but of no particular
vices—one who had for some years been a serious and faithful employé
of this paper. Mrs. Steele, on the other hand, was a good woman,
but by no means prepossessing. She was without romance, imagination,
charm. One could see by looking at her and then looking at so winsome
and enticing a woman as Mrs. Davis why Steele had strayed. It was the
old eternal triangle—the woman who was not interesting, the woman who
was interesting, and the man interested by the more interesting woman.
There was no solving it, but it was all very sad. One could not help
sympathizing with Mrs. Steele, the wronged woman; and again one could
not help sympathizing with Mrs. Davis, the beautiful, passionate,
desirous, helpless beauty—helpless because she was desirous.
In the meantime, the District Attorney’s office having taken the case
in hand, there were various developments in that quarter. It was
necessary to find out, of course, where the candy had been purchased,
how it had been drugged, with what it had been drugged, where the
drug had been purchased. Chemists, detectives and handwriting experts
were all set to work. It was no trouble to determine that the drug
was arsenic, yet where this arsenic was purchased was not so easy
to discover. It was some time before it was found where it had been
procured. Dissimilarly, it was comparatively easy to prove where
the candy had come from. It had been sent in the original box of a
well-known candy firm. Yet just who had purchased it was not quite
so easy to establish. The candy company could not remember, and Mrs.
Davis, although admitting that the handwriting did resemble hers,
denied ever having addressed the box or purchased any candy from the
firm in question. She was quite willing to go there and be identified,
but no clerk in the candy-store was able to identify her as one woman
who had purchased candy. There were one or two clerks who felt sure
that there had been a woman there at some time or other who had looked
like her, but they were not positive. However, there was one girl who
had worked in the store during the week in which the candy had been
purchased, and who was not there any longer. This was a new girl who
had been tried out for that week only and had since disappeared. Her
name was known, of course, and the newspapers as well as the District
Attorney’s office at once began looking for her.
There were some whispers to the effect that not only Mrs. Davis but
Steele himself might have been concerned in the plot, or Steele alone,
since apparently he had been anxious to get rid of his wife. Why not?
He might have imitated the handwriting of Mrs. Davis or created an
accidental likeness to it. Also, there were dissenting souls, even
in the office of the paper on which I worked, who thought that maybe
Mrs. Steele had sent the candy to herself in order to injure the other
woman. Why not? It was possible. Women were like that. There had
been similar cases, had there not? Argument! Contention! “She might
have wanted to die and be revenged on the other woman at the same
time, might she not?” observed the railroad editor. “Oh, hell! What
bunk!” called another. “No woman would kill herself to make a place
for a rival. That’s crazy.” “Well,” said a third, “she might have
miscalculated the power of her own dope. Who knows? She may not have
intended to take as much as she did.” “Oh, Christ,” called a fourth
from somewhere, “just listen to the Sherlock Holmes Association in
session over there! Lay off, will you?”
A week or more went by, and then the missing girl who had worked in the
candy-store was found. She had left the city the following week and
gone to Denver. Being shown the pictures of Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Steele
and some others and asked whether on any given day she had sold any of
them a two-pound box of candy, she seemed to recall no one of them save
possibly Mrs. Steele. But she could not be sure from the photograph.
She would have to see the woman. In consequence, and without any word
to the newspapers who had been leading the case up to then, this girl
was returned to the city. Here, in the District Attorney’s office, she
was confronted by a number of women gathered for the occasion, among
whom was placed Mrs. Davis. But on looking them all over she failed to
identify any one of them. Then Mrs. Steele, who was by then up and
around, was sent for. She came, along with a representative of the
office. On sight, as she entered the door, and although there were
other women in the room at the time, this girl exclaimed: “There she
is! That’s the woman! Yes, that’s the very woman!” She was positive.