The Stillwater Tragedy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  III

  On the afternoon of the following day Mr. Shackford was dulyburied. The funeral, under the direction of Mr. Richard Shackford,who acted as chief mourner and was sole mourner by right of kinship,took place in profound silence. The carpenters, who had lost a day onBishop's new stables, intermitted their sawing and hammering whilethe services were in progress; the steam was shut off in theiron-mills, and no clinking of the chisel was heard in the marbleyard for an hour, during which many of the shops had their shuttersup. Then, when all was over, the imprisoned fiend in the boilers gavea piercing shriek; the leather bands slipped on the revolving drums,the spindles leaped into life again, and the old order of things wasreinstated,--outwardly, but not in effect.

  In general, when the grave closes over a man his career is ended.But Mr. Shackford was never so much alive as after they had buriedhim. Never before had he filled so large a place in the public eye.Though invisible, he sat at every fireside. Until the manner of hisdeath had been made clear, his ubiquitous presence was not to beexorcised. On the morning of the memorable day a reward of onehundred dollars--afterwards increased to five hundred, at theinsistence of Mr. Shackford's cousin--had been offered by the boardof selectmen for the arrest and conviction of the guilty party.Beyond this and the unsatisfactory inquest, the authorities had donenothing, and were plainly not equal to the situation.

  When it was stated, the night of the funeral, that a professionalperson was coming to Stillwater to look into the case, theannouncement was received with a breath of relief.

  The person thus vaguely described appeared on the spot the nextmorning. To mention the name of Edward Taggett is to mention a namewell known to the detective force of the great city lying sixty milessouthwest of Stillwater. Mr. Taggett's arrival sent such a thrill ofexpectancy through the village that Mr. Leonard Tappleton, whoseobsequies occurred this day, made his exit nearly unobserved. Yetthere was little in Mr. Taggett's physical aspect calculated to stireither expectation or enthusiasm: a slender man of about twenty-six,but not looking it, with overhanging brown mustache, sparseside-whiskers, eyes of no definite color, and faintly accentuatedeyebrows. He spoke precisely, and with a certain unembarrassedhesitation, as persons do who have two thoughts to one word,--ifthere are such persons. You might have taken him for a physician, ora journalist, or the secretary of an insurance company; but you wouldnever have supposed him the man who had disentangled the complicatedthreads of the great Barnabee Bank defalcation.

  Stillwater's confidence, which had risen into the nineties, fellto zero at sight of him. "Is _that_ Taggett?" they asked. Thatwas Taggett; and presently his influence began to be felt like asea-turn. The three Dogberrys of the watch were dispatched on secretmissions, and within an hour it was ferreted out that a man in a carthad been seen driving furiously up the turnpike the morning after themurder. This was an agricultural district, the road led to a markettown, and teams going by in the early dawn were the rule and not theexception; but on that especial morning a furiously driven cart wassignificant. Jonathan Beers, who farmed the Jenks land, had heard thewheels and caught an indistinct glimpse of the vehicle as he wasfeeding the cattle, but with a reticence purely rustic had not beenmoved to mention the circumstance before.

  "Taggett has got a clew," said Stillwater under its breath.

  By noon Taggett had got the man, cart and all. But it was onlyBlufton's son Tom, of South Millville, who had started in hot hastethat particular morning to secure medical service for his wife, ofwhich she had sorely stood in need, as two tiny girls in a willowcradle in South Millville now bore testimony.

  "I haven't been cutting down the population _much,"_ saidBlufton, with his wholesome laugh.

  Thomas Blufton was well known and esteemed in Stillwater, but ifthe crime had fastened itself upon him it would have given somethinglike popular satisfaction.

  In the course of the ensuing forty-eight hours four or five trampswere overhauled as having been in the neighborhood at the time of thetragedy; but they each had a clean story, and were let go. Then oneDurgin, a workman at Slocum's Yard, was called upon to explain somehalf-washed-out red stains on his overalls, which he did. He hadtightened the hoops on a salt-pork barrel for Mr. Shackford severaldays previous; the red paint on the head of the barrel was fresh, andhad come off on his clothes. Dr. Weld examined the spots under amicroscope, and pronounced them paint. It was manifest that Mr.Taggett meant to go to the bottom of things.

  The bar-room of the Stillwater hotel was a center of interestthese nights; not only the bar-room proper, but the adjoiningapartment, where the more exclusive guests took their seltzer-waterand looked over the metropolitan newspapers. Twice a week a socialclub met here, having among its members Mr. Craggie, the postmaster,who was supposed to have a great political future, Mr. Pinkham,Lawyer Perkins, Mr. Whidden, and other respectable persons. The roomwas at all times in some sense private, with a separate entrance fromthe street, though another door, which usually stood open, connectedit with the main salon. In this was a long mahogany counter, onesection of which was covered with a sheet of zinc perforated like asieve, and kept constantly bright by restless caravans of lager-beerglasses. Directly behind that end of the counter stood a Gothicbrass-mounted beer-pump, at whose faucets Mr. Snelling, the landlord,flooded you five or six mugs in the twinkling of an eye, and raisedthe vague expectation that he was about to grind out some popularoperatic air. At the left of the pump stretched a narrow mirror,reflecting he gaily-colored wine-glasses and decanters which stood oneach other's shoulders, and held up lemons, and performed variousacrobatic feats on a shelf in front of it.

  The fourth night after the funeral of Mr. Shackford, a dismalsoutheast storm caused an unusual influx of idlers in both rooms.With the rain splashing against the casements and the wind slammingthe blinds, the respective groups sat discussing in a desultory waythe only topic which could be discussed at present. There had been ageneral strike among the workmen a fortnight before; but even thathad grown cold as a topic.

  "That was hard on Tom Blufton," said Stevens, emptying the ashesout of his long-stemmed clay pipe, and refilling the bowl with cutcavendish from a jar on a shelf over his head.

  Michael Hennessey sat down his beer-mug with an air ofargumentative disgust, and drew one sleeve across his glisteningbeard.

  "Stevens, you've as many minds as a weather-cock, jist! Didn't yesay yerself it looked mighty black for the lad when he was took?"

  "I might have said something of the sort," Stevens admittedreluctantly, after a pause. "His driving round at daybreak with anempty cart did have an ugly look at first."

  "Indade, then."

  "Not to anybody who knew Tom Blufton," interrupted Samuel Piggott,Blufton's brother-in-law. "The boy hasn't a bad streak in him. It wasan outrage. Might as well have suspected Parson Langly or FatherO'Meara."

  "If this kind of thing goes on," remarked a man in the corner witha patch over one eye, "both of them reverend gents will be hauled up,I shouldn't wonder."

  "That's so, Mr. Peters," responded Durgin. "If my respectabilitydidn't save me, who's safe?"

  "Durgin is talking about his respectability! He's joking."

  "Look here, Dexter," said Durgin, turning quickly on the speaker,"when I want to joke, I talk about your intelligence."

  "What kind of man is Taggett, anyhow?" asked Piggott. "You sawhim, Durgin."

  "I believe he was at Justice Beemis's office the day Blufton and Iwas there; but I didn't make him out in the crowd. Shouldn't know himfrom Adam."

  "Stillwater's a healthy place for tramps jest about this time,"suggested somebody. "Three on 'em snaked in to-day."

  "I think, gentlemen, that Mr. Taggett is on the right trackthere," observed Mr. Snelling, in the act of mixing another OldHolland for Mr. Peters. "Not too sweet, you said? I feel it in mybones that it was a tramp, and that Mr. Taggett will bring him yet."

  "He won't find him on the highway yonder," said a tall, swarthyman named Torrini, an Italian. Nationalities clash in
Stillwater."That tramp is a thousand miles from here."

  "So he is if he has any brains under his hat," returned Snelling."But they're on the lookout for him. The minute he pawns anything,he's gone."

  "Can't put up greenbacks or gold, can he? He didn't take nothingelse," interposed Bishop, the veterinary surgeon.

  "Now jewelry nor nothing?"

  "There wasn't none, as I understand it," said Bishop, "except asilver watch. That was all snug under the old man's piller."

  "Wanter know!" ejaculated Jonathan Beers.

  "I opine, Mr. Craggie," said the school-master, standing in theinner room with a rolled-up file of the Daily Advertiser in his hand,"that the person who--who removed our worthy townsman will never bediscovered."

  "I shouldn't like to go quite so far as that, sir," answered Mr.Craggie, with that diplomatic suavity which leads to postmastershipsand seats in the General Court, and has even been known to oil a dullfellow's way into Congress. "I cannot take quite so hopeless a viewof it. There are difficulties, but they must be overcome, Mr.Pinkham, and I think they will be."

  "Indeed, I hope so," returned the school-master. "But there arecases--are there not?--in which the--the problem, if I may sodesignate it, has never been elucidated, and the persons whoundertook it have been obliged to go to the foot, so to speak."

  "Ah, yes, there are such cases, certainly. There was the Burdellmystery in New York, and, later, the Nathan affair--By the way, I'vesatisfactory theories of my own touching both. The police werebaffled, and remain so. But, my _dear_ sir, observe for a momentthe difference."

  Mr. Pinkham rested one finger on the edge of a little round table,and leaned forward in a respectful attitude to observe thedifference.

  "Those crimes were committed in a vast metropolis affording athousand chances for escape, as well as offering a thousandtemptations to the lawless. But we are a limited community. We haveno professional murderers among us. The deed which has stirredsociety to its utmost depths was plainly done by some wayfaringamateur. Remorse has already arrived upon him, if the police haven't.For the time being he escapes; but he is bound to betray himselfsooner or later. If the right steps are taken,--and I have myself thegreatest confidence in Mr. Taggett,--the guilty party can scarcelyfail to be brought to the bar of justice, if he doesn't bring himselfthere."

  "Indeed, indeed, I hope so," repeated Mr. Pinkham.

  "The investigation is being carried on very closely."

  "Too closely," suggested the school-master.

  "Oh dear, no," murmured Mr. Craggie. "The strictest secrecy isnecessary in affairs of this delicate nature. If Tom, Dick, and Harrywere taken behind the scenes," he added, with the air of one wishingto say too much, "the bottom would drop out of everything."

  Mr. Pinkham shrunk from commenting on a disaster like that, andrelapsed into silence. Mr. Craggie, with his thumbs in the arm-holesof his waistcoat, and his legs crossed in an easy, senatorialfashion, leaned back in the chair and smiled blandly.

  "I don't suppose there's nothing new, boys!" exclaimed a fat,florid man, bustling in good-naturedly at the public entrance, andleaving a straight wet trail on the sanded floor from the thresholdto the polished mahogany counter. Mr. Wilson was a local humorist ofthe Falstaffian stripe, though not so much witty in himself as thecause of wit in others.

  "No, Jimmy, there isn't anything new," responded Dexter.

  "I suppose you didn't hear that the ole man done somethin'handsome for me in his last will and testyment."

  "No, Jemmy, I don't think he has made any provision whatever foran almshouse."

  "Sorry to hear that, Dexter," said Willson, absorbedly chasing abit of lemon peel in his glass with the spoon handle, "for thereisn't room for us all up at the town-farm. How's your grandmother?Finds it tol'rably comfortable?"

  They are a primitive, candid people in their hours of unlacedsocial intercourse in Stillwater. This delicate _tu quoque_ wasso far from wounding Dexter that he replied carelessly,--

  "Well, only so so. The old woman complains of too muchchicken-sallid, and hot-house grapes all the year round."

  "Mr. Shackford must have left a large property," observed Mr.Ward, of the firm of Ward & Lock, glancing up from the columns of theStillwater Gazette. The remark was addressed to Lawyer Perkins, whohad just joined the group in the reading-room.

  "Fairly large," replied that gentleman crisply.

  "Any public bequests?"

  "None to speak of."

  Mr. Craggie smiled vaguely.

  "You see," said Lawyer Perkins, "there's a will and no will,--thatis to say, the fragments of what is supposed to be a will were found,and we are trying to put the pieces together. It is doubtful if wecan do it; it is doubtful if we can decipher it after we have doneit; and if we decipher it it is a question whether the document isvalid or not."

  "That is a masterly exposition of the dilemma, Mr. Perkins," saidthe school-master warmly.

  Mr. Perkins had spoken in his court-room tone of voice, with onehand thrust into his frilled shirt-bosom. He removed this hand for asecond, as he gravely bowed to Mr. Pinkham.

  "Nothing could be clearer," said Mr. Ward. "In case the paper isworthless, what then? I am not asking you in your professionalcapacity," he added hastily; for Lawyer Perkins had been known tosend in a bill on as slight a provocation as Mr. Ward's.

  "That's a point. The next of kin has his claims."

  "My friend Shackford, of course," broke in Mr. Craggie. "Admirableyoung man!--one of my warmest supporters."

  "He is the only heir at law so far as we know," said Mr. Perkins.

  "Oh," said Mr. Craggie, reflecting. "The late Mr. Shackford mighthave had a family in Timbuctoo or the Sandwich Islands."

  "That's another point."

  "The fact would be a deuced unpleasant point for young Shackfordto run against," said Mr. Ward.

  "Exactly."

  "If Mr. Lemuel Shackford," remarked Coroner Whidden, softlyjoining the conversation to which he had been listening in histimorous, apologetic manner, "had chanced, in the course of his earlysea-faring days, to form any ties of an unhappy complexion"--

  "Complexion is good," murmured Mr. Craggie. "Some Hawaiian lady!"

  --"perhaps that would be a branch of the case worth investigatingin connection with the homicide. A discarded wife, or a disowned son,burning with a sense of wrong"--

  "Really, Mr. Whidden!" interrupted Lawyer Perkins witheringly, "itis bad enough for my client to lose his life, without having hisreputation filched away from him."

  "I--I will explain! I was merely supposing"--

  "The law never supposes, sir!"

  This threw Mr. Whidden into great mental confusion. As coroner washe not an integral part of the law, and when, in his officialcharacter, he supposed anything was not that a legal supposition? Butwas he in his official character now, sitting with a glass oflemonade at his elbow in the reading-room of the Stillwater hotel?Was he, or was he not, a coroner all the time? Mr. Whidden stroked anisolated tuft of hair growing low on the middle of his forehead, andglared mildly at Mr. Perkins.

  "Young Shackford has gone to New York, I understand," said Mr.Ward, breaking the silence.

  Mr. Perkins nodded. "Went this morning to look after thereal-estate interests there. It will probably keep him a couple ofweeks,--the longer the better. He was of no use here. Lemuel's deathwas a great shock to him, or rather the manner of it was."

  "That shocked every one. They were first cousin's weren't they?"Mr. Ward was a comparatively new resident in Stillwater.

  "First cousins," replied Lawyer Perkins; "but they were never veryintimate, you know."

  "I imagine nobody was ever very intimate with Mr. Shackford."

  "My client was somewhat peculiar in his friendships."

  This was stating it charitably, for Mr. Perkins knew, and everyone present knew, that Lemuel Shackford had not had the shadow of afriend in Stillwater, unless it was his cousin Richard.

  A cloud of mist and rain was blown i
nto the bar-room as the streetdoor stood open for a second to admit a dripping figure from theoutside darkness.

  _"What's_ blowed down?" asked Durgin, turning round on hisstool and sending up a ring of smoke which uncurled itself withdifficulty in the dense atmosphere.

  "It's only some of Jeff Stavers's nonsense."

  "No nonsense at all," said the new-comer, as he shook the heavybeads of rain from his felt hat. "I was passing by Welch'sCourt--it's as black as pitch out, fellows--when slap went somethingagainst my shoulder; something like wet wings. Well, I was scared.It's a bat, says I. But the thing didn't fly off; it was stillclawing at my shoulder. I put up my hand, and I'll be shot if itwasn't the foremast, jib-sheet and all, of the old weather-cock onthe north gable of the Shackford house! Here you are!" and thespeaker tossed the broken mast, with the mimic sails dangling fromit, into Durgin's lap.

  A dead silence followed, for there was felt to be something weirdlysignificant in the incident.

  "That's kinder omernous," said Mr. Peters, interrogatively.

  "Ominous of what?" asked Durgin, lifting the wet mass from hisknees and dropping it on the floor.

  "Well, sorter queer, then."

  "Where does the queer come in?" inquired Stevens, gravelly. "Idon't know; but I'm hit by it."

  "Come, boys, don't crowd a feller," said Mr. Peters, gettingrestive. "I don't take the contract to explain the thing. But it doesseem some way droll that the old schooner should be wrecked so soonafter what has happened to the old skipper. If you don't see it, orsense it, I don't insist. What's yours, Denyven?"

  The person addressed as Denyven promptly replied, with a finesonorous English accent, "a mug of 'alf an' 'alf,--with a head on it,Snelling."

  At the same moment Mr. Craggie, in the inner room was saying tothe school-master,--

  "I must really take issue with you there, Mr. Pinkham. I admitthere's a good deal in spiritualism which we haven't got at yet; thescience is in its infancy; it is still attached to the bosom ofspeculation. It is a beautiful science, that of psychologicalphenomena, and the spiritualists will yet become an influential classof"--Mr. Craggie was going to say voters, but glided overit--"persons. I believe in clairvoyance myself to a large extent.Before my appointment to the post-office I had it very strong. I'veno doubt that in the far future this mysterious factor will be madegreat use of in criminal cases; but at present I should resort to itonly in the last extremity,--the very last extremity, Mr. Pinkham!"

  "Oh, of course," said the school-master deprecatingly. "I threw itout only as the merest suggestion. I shouldn't think of--of--youunderstand me?"

  "Is it beyond the dreams of probability," said Mr. Craggie,appealing to Lawyer Perkins, "that clairvoyants may eventually beintroduced into cases in our courts?"

  "They are now," said Mr. Perkins, with a snort,--"the police bring'em it."

  Mr. Craggie finished the remainder of his glass of sherry insilence, and presently rose to go. Coroner Whidden and Mr. Ward hadalready gone. The guests in the public room were thinning out; agloom, indefinable and shapeless like the night, seemed to havefallen upon the few that lingered. At a somewhat earlier hour thanusual the gas was shut off in the Stillwater hotel.

  In the lonely house in Welch's Court a light was still burning.