The circumstances under which Joram Turmore became a widower have never
been popularly understood. I know them, naturally, for I am Joram
Turmore; and my wife, the late Elizabeth Mary Turmore, is by no means
ignorant of them; but although she doubtless relates them, yet they
remain a secret, for not a soul has ever believed her.
When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin she was very wealthy, otherwise I
could hardly have afforded to marry, for I had not a cent, and Heaven
had not put into my heart any intention to earn one. I held the
Professorship of Cats in the University of Graymaulkin, and scholastic
pursuits had unfitted me for the heat and burden of business or labor.
Moreover, I could not forget that I was a Turmore--a member of a family
whose motto from the time of William of Normandy has been _Laborare est
errare_. The only known infraction of the sacred family tradition
occurred when Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore, an illustrious
master burglar of the seventeenth century, personally assisted at a
difficult operation undertaken by some of his workmen. That blot upon
our escutcheon cannot be contemplated without the most poignant
mortification.
My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the Graymaulkin University had
not, of course, been marked by any instance of mean industry. There had
never, at any one time, been more than two students of the Noble
Science, and by merely repeating the manuscript lectures of my
predecessor, which I had found among his effects (he died at sea on his
way to Malta) I could sufficiently sate their famine for knowledge
without really earning even the distinction which served in place of
salary.
Naturally, under the straitened circumstances, I regarded Elizabeth Mary
as a kind of special Providence. She unwisely refused to share her
fortune with me, but for that I cared nothing; for, although by the laws
of that country (as is well known) a wife has control of her separate
property during her life, it passes to the husband at her death; nor can
she dispose of it otherwise by will. The mortality among wives is
considerable, but not excessive.
Having married Elizabeth Mary and, as it were, ennobled her by making
her a Turmore, I felt that the manner of her death ought, in some sense,
to match her social distinction. If I should remove her by any of the
ordinary marital methods I should incur a just reproach, as one
destitute of a proper family pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable
plan.
In this emergency I decided to consult the Turmore archives, a priceless
collection of documents, comprising the records of the family from the
time of its founder in the seventh century of our era. I knew that among
these sacred muniments I should find detailed accounts of all the
principal murders committed by my sainted ancestors for forty
generations. From that mass of papers I could hardly fail to derive the
most valuable suggestions.
The collection contained also most interesting relics. There were
patents of nobility granted to my forefathers for daring and ingenious
removals of pretenders to thrones, or occupants of them; stars, crosses
and other decorations attesting services of the most secret and
unmentionable character; miscellaneous gifts from the world's greatest
conspirators, representing an intrinsic money value beyond computation.
There were robes, jewels, swords of honor, and every kind of
"testimonials of esteem"; a king's skull fashioned into a wine cup; the
title deeds to vast estates, long alienated by confiscation, sale, or
abandonment; an illuminated breviary that had belonged to Sir Aldebaran
Turmore de Peters-Turmore of accursed memory; embalmed ears of several
of the family's most renowned enemies; the small intestine of a certain
unworthy Italian statesman inimical to Turmores, which, twisted into a
jumping rope, had served the youth of six kindred generations--mementoes
and souvenirs precious beyond the appraisals of imagination, but by the
sacred mandates of tradition and sentiment forever inalienable by sale
or gift.
As the head of the family, I was custodian of all these priceless
heirlooms, and for their safe keeping had constructed in the basement of
my dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose solid stone walls
and single iron door could defy alike the earthquake's shock, the
tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity's unholy hand.
To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of sentiment and tenderness, and
rich in suggestions of crime, I now repaired for hints upon
assassination. To my unspeakable astonishment and grief I found it
empty! Every shelf, every chest, every coffer had been rifled. Of that
unique and incomparable collection not a vestige remained! Yet I proved
that until I had myself unlocked the massive metal door, not a bolt nor
bar had been disturbed; the seals upon the lock had been intact.
I passed the night in alternate lamentation and research, equally
fruitless, the mystery was impenetrable to conjecture, the pain
invincible to balm. But never once throughout that dreadful night did my
firm spirit relinquish its high design against Elizabeth Mary, and
daybreak found me more resolute than before to harvest the fruits of my
marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring me into nearer spiritual
relations with my dead ancestors, and to lay upon me a new and more
inevitable obedience to the suasion that spoke in every globule of my
blood.
My plan of action was soon formed, and procuring a stout cord I entered
my wife's bedroom finding her, as I expected, in a sound sleep. Before
she was awake, I had her bound fast, hand and foot. She was greatly
surprised and pained, but heedless of her remonstrances, delivered in a
high key, I carried her into the now rifled strong-room, which I had
never suffered her to enter, and of whose treasures I had not apprised
her. Seating her, still bound, in an angle of the wall, I passed the
next two days and nights in conveying bricks and mortar to the spot, and
on the morning of the third day had her securely walled in, from floor
to ceiling. All this time I gave no further heed to her pleas for mercy
than (on her assurance of non-resistance, which I am bound to say she
honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of her limbs. The space
allowed her was about four feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of
the top course, in contact with the ceiling of the strong-room, she bade
me farewell with what I deemed the composure of despair, and I rested
from my work, feeling that I had faithfully observed the traditions of
an ancient and illustrious family. My only bitter reflection, so far as
my own conduct was concerned, came of the consciousness that in the
performance of my design I had labored; but this no living soul would
ever know.
After a night's rest I went to the Judge of the Court of Successions and
Inheritances and made a true and sworn relation of all that I had
done--except that I ascribed to a servant the manual labor of building
the wall. His honor appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful
examination of the work, and upon his report Elizabeth Mary Turmore
was, at the end of a week, formally pronounced dead. By due process of
law I was put into possession of her estate, and although this was not
by hundreds of thousands of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it
raised me from poverty to affluence and brought me the respect of the
great and good.
Some six months after these events strange rumors reached me that the
ghost of my deceased wife had been seen in several places about the
country, but always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin. These
rumors, which I was unable to trace to any authentic source, differed
widely in many particulars, but were alike in ascribing to the
apparition a certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity combined
with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts. Not only was the spirit
attired in most costly raiment, but it walked at noonday, and even
drove! I was inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking there
might be something more than superstition in the popular belief that
only the spirits of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some
workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the now long unentered
strong-room, and ordered them to demolish the brick wall that I had
built about the partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body of
Elizabeth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal part might be
willing to accept as an equivalent to the privilege of ranging at will
among the haunts of the living.
In a few minutes we had broken down the wall and, thrusting a lamp
through the breach, I looked in. Nothing! Not a bone, not a lock of
hair, not a shred of clothing--the narrow space which, upon my
affidavit, had been legally declared to hold all that was mortal of the
late Mrs. Turmore was absolutely empty! This amazing disclosure, coming
upon a mind already overwrought with too much of mystery and excitement,
was more than I could bear. I shrieked aloud and fell in a fit. For
months afterward I lay between life and death, fevered and delirious;
nor did I recover until my physician had had the providence to take a
case of valuable jewels from my safe and leave the country.
The next summer I had occasion to visit my wine cellar, in one corner of
which I had built the now long disused strong-room. In moving a cask of
Madeira I struck it with considerable force against the partition wall,
and was surprised to observe that it displaced two large square stones
forming a part of the wall.
Applying my hands to these, I easily pushed them out entirely, and
looking through saw that they had fallen into the niche in which I had
immured my lamented wife; facing the opening which their fall left, and
at a distance of four feet, was the brickwork which my own hands had
made for that unfortunate gentlewoman's restraint. At this significant
revelation I began a search of the wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I
found four historically interesting but intrinsically valueless objects:
First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of state (Florentine) of the
eleventh century; second, an illuminated vellum breviary with the name
of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore inscribed in colors on the
title page; third, a human skull fashioned into a drinking cup and
deeply stained with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander
of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins by Poison.
That was all--not an object having commercial value, no papers--nothing.
But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong-room. My wife
had early divined the existence and purpose of that apartment, and with
the skill amounting to genius had effected an entrance by loosening the
two stones in the wall.
Through that opening she had at several times abstracted the entire
collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of
the realm. When with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all
satisfaction in the memory I decided to build her into the wall, by some
malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable
stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she
had removed them and, slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced
them as they were originally laid. From the cellar she had easily
escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts. I have
endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of
Indictment and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead, and says
my only course is to go before the Master in Cadavery and move for a
writ of disinterment and constructive revival. So it looks as if I must
suffer without redress this great wrong at the hands of a woman devoid
alike of principle and shame.