At the gate, looking intently at me through the light iron lattice work, was a slender, very dark, dirty and dishevelled man. The face was that of a devil in anguish. In horror I gazed at this incarnation of a lost soul, repeating to myself “It’s a devil! He is a devil!” His very piteous, God-forsaken look seemed defilement to me. I feared that by standing so absorbed on the front porch, I had attracted the attention of a drunken tramp; and I quickly entered the house. It was the murderer, who had come to carry off Hélène, having now unburied my husband, according to his subsequent statement. I learned after, from Isaac and the other servants, that he passed through the gate at once, and went in to the kitchen, where he asked for Hélène. Isaac said she was at dancing school. Where? He neither knew nor cared. They were all impressed by the murderer’s singular manner and appearance, & decided that he was, as usual, drunk, because of the terrible expression of his eyes, whose convulsive rolling he could not control.
I had hardly entered the parlor, when [my friend] Miss Gazer was announced. I tried to hide my anxiety, unwilling to court comments which would be difficult to answer. Perhaps I was never more gay. She asked how it happened that I was not driving with Capt. Dawson—“This is your hour; I confess I did not expect to find you!”
“I have not started yet for the office,” I said. And for a moment I feared I would tell her “I believe he is murdered!” and so create a painful impression of my sanity.
I saw her out, and fled to his room. I sat by his bedside, looking at the sunset, & vainly endeavoring to read “The Century” which I had held the whole time. If I could but make an excuse to call the office by telephone, without betraying my fears!
The clock, which he kept so exact, struck half past six. I flew to the telephone, and summoned the upper office to answer the question that only the lower office would reply to.
“Were the wood & coal ordered for me to-day?”
They would inquire below.
“Oh! no matter. Is Capt. Dawson there?”
“No ma’am! He has not yet returned.”
I closed the telephone mechanically. “Returned!” Then he had gone out—and the haunting dread of all these years—Murder—might have overtaken him. Again I stood by his bed, staring at the sunset, dreading to move or speak for fear of the formless horror on the threshold. From four o’clock, I had been able to see him only as murdered, doubled up, and thrust in a corner. Do what I would, I could not rid myself of this haunting conviction.
The telephone again called, within a very few minutes. I dashed out, thinking it was he. It was the lower office, & Mr. La Coste. Strangely enough, it was my own question: “Did you get the wood and coal?”
“No—but—”
“Is Capt. Dawson there?”
“No! Mr. La Coste! I believe he has been waylaid & murdered!”
Sharply the telephone was cut off.
I was angry with myself for not compelling him to listen to my pain. I did not know that he was repeating to the Chief of Police my cry, or that Golden was answering “His life may depend on your silence,” as he ran out.
Again I returned to his window, staring at a sky that contained no morning for me. I said to myself “If he indeed lies stark and dead—doubled up—in a corner—and I remember that I suffered all these hours doing nothing while I might have saved him—!” I turned to the dark in fresh terror.
Twenty minutes to seven. I dashed out to the telephone, determined that someone should hear me.
Mr. Armstrong answered.
I called “Mr. Armstrong, Capt. Dawson has not returned to dinner. This has never before happened without a note, or a messenger. I am very anxious!”
“What are you afraid of, in his perfect health and strength?” he laughed.
“He is in perfect health, thank God! But you do not know what I have suffered since four o’clock! I believe he has been waylaid and murdered!”
As I uttered that word, a wail, not of this world, came across the telephone wire. It was a soul in anguish. I have no explanation to give; I only know the terror that froze my very blood.
The next moment I heard Mr. Armstrong’s voice: “Did you remember the Granite committee at seven?”
“No! or I would not have spoken! But please go to the committee room! Tell him I am sorry to be unreasonable, but that I am so unhappy about him that I can know no rest until he sends me word that all is well with him!”
“Not only that, but I will never leave him until I place him under your eyes! You shall see for yourself that nothing has harmed him!”
“Thanks! quickly, then!” I called.
The children in running to me from their dancing, had paused on the stair, followed by all the servants who came to ask further orders about the delayed dinner, etc.
Ethel threw her arms around me as I turned from the telephone.
“Pourquoi me cacher que tu étais inquiète a propos de cher papa? Je t’aurais bien vite consolér!” [Why didn’t you tell me you were worried about Papa? I’d have consoled you right away!]
“Rien de saurait me consoler quand je crains un malheur pour ton papa,” I answered. [Nothing can console me when I’m afraid that something has happened to your father.] Again, I now remembered Hélène’s strange question “Quelque chose est donc arrivé?” [Has something happened?]
“Rien. Il paraît que monsieur est retenu par des affaires qui me touchent. Il arrive. Préparez vite sa salade.” [Nothing has happened. The captain is detained by business matters. He’s coming. Quickly fix his salad.]
To the cook, I gave orders to change the dinner to a hot supper, not forgetting the dessert for which he had asked for the first time that he ever asked any dish. To Isaac, I gave the order to re-set the table, substituting the blue china for the red dinner service.
Jane, as usual, wanted to borrow [money]. I gave her $5.00 & change. Celia began a very bitter and impertinent tirade. I told her that I was very tired of her ingratitude and inefficiency; that I had borne her very patiently for God’s sake, and would feel greatly relieved when she could find another place, & so relieve me of an intolerable burden. I turned to finish a letter to Miriam, when [my friend] Mrs. Sinkler was announced. I remember that she talked for quite fifteen minutes, neither sitting nor pausing. I ran back to my letter. Hardly the second page was finished when Henry Baynard was announced. I ran gladly down the steps, meeting him under the crimson hall light.
“You bring me a message from Capt. Dawson!” I cried eagerly.
“No—!”
“No message? Where is he?”
“Is he not here?”
“No! If you bring me no message, Mr. Baynard—what has happened?”
“Nothing! I thought I would like to call, that is all.”
“Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr. Baynard! pray come in! The fact is I am very anxious about my husband—so anxious that I am not civil! Where is he?”
“At the office!”
“And sent me no message? Is anything the matter, Mr. Baynard?” For I suddenly perceived that Mr. Baynard was either insane, or deeply agitated.
“Oh! nothing is the matter! He is well! Very well!” and he burst into tears and fell at my feet kneeling.
I knew that his brother Swinton deserved death at Frank’s hands, and that Frank repeatedly said that ex-mayor Courtenay would yet force him to kill him, (Courtenay) by his infamous slanders and persecution. I thought Henry Baynard had come to tell me of the death of one of these, at my husband’s hands.
Strange to say, this awful thought gave me superhuman strength.
“Has he killed any one? I do not care!” I cried. I meant that nothing could separate him from my love.
“He has killed no one! He would hurt no one! He is quite, quite well! In the office, you know!”
Then I knew that Henry Baynard was a madman—at least I believed it. I must humor him, and temporize until I could hear Frank’s step. He must be almost at the gate, now! But my own haunting fears, and the agony of Mr. Baynard
were beyond my endurance. I felt my life ebbing. I could only articulate “Mr. Baynard I am in a very critical state. I feel I shall die before many minutes. Will you put me out of pain, and tell me what has happened to you?”
His tears were raining on my hands as he knelt before the chair where I had fallen to die, as I believed.
He only sobbed “Nothing! nothing has happened to me!”
I heard hurried steps—many of them! Frank’s was among them then! He would save my life! The door burst open. Mr. Hemphill and Mr. Weber stood before me.
“Mr. Hemphill! What has happened?”
“I know nothing! I came to ask!”
“Mr. Baynard knows something! make him tell me, or I shall die!”
Mr. Baynard could only cry in anguish. Mr. Hemphill led him from the room. I stood facing Mr. Weber. We never spoke or moved. As they re-entered the back parlor, I advanced calmly.
“Is my husband dead?”
“Yes.”
* * *
LATER THAT EVENING the bundle was brought, the bundle that she should not have seen. It was the clothes, muddied and soiled, that had been taken from his body for the autopsy.
Later still they brought his body.
39.
6:00, March 12, 1889. Charleston
McDOW STARES AT Mrs. Morgan. He has never met her; she is from another world. Their circles would never overlap. She stands at the top of the two flights of white stairs, staring at him with blazing eyes. He sees that she knows. He can’t move. He doesn’t dare speak to her.
She turns and goes inside. He watches the door close. He has been inside that hall, he knows the red lamp. He knows the rooms. He feels his knowledge swell and vibrate within him.
McDow goes down to the carriage gate, slips inside, and walks up the driveway to the kitchen building. He opens the door without knocking. In the kitchen Celia leans over the big table. When she sees him her face turns closed and angry. Jane comes in from the pantry, holding a basin.
“What do you want here?” Jane asks.
“Marie,” McDow says. He can hardly speak. His head is swollen inside, filled with flickering and sound.
“She’s not here.” Jane bangs the basin down on the table and wipes her hands on her apron.
“I need to tell her something,” McDow says. He looks around. Isaac sits on a chair in the corner, his white jacket unbuttoned. He stares at McDow. “Where is she?”
“Dancing school,” Isaac says.
“She took the children,” Jane adds.
“But where?” McDow asks. He needs to find her. She lies at the heart of all this. He’s killed the captain on her behalf. She must be told.
Dawson’s body is in the middle of his brain, motionless on the floor. He thinks of the chest rising, the black coat shifting as the ribcage expands. He must tell Marie, she will know what it means. She knows it had to happen. She was there this morning when he said it would happen. She’s part of this.
“Where is she?” he asks, looking from person to person. He sees that they all hate him here.
Celia makes a disgusted face and turns to the stove.
“Where is she indeed,” says Jane. The basin is full of string beans, and she begins snapping the ends off.
It’s Isaac who knows exactly where she is, he drove the carriage. McDow looks at him. He can feel himself tilting—is he tilting? Is his body tilting? He leans surreptitiously in the other direction.
“Don’t know where they are,” Isaac says with finality. He stands up, holding the edge of his jacket, and leaves the room. McDow sways slightly. The two women ignore him. He waits for a moment. He feels the evening gathering around him, rushing against his brain. He needs Marie, and she’s not here. He can’t tell these people what has happened. He feels that he looks strange, he feels himself made into something else, but he has no control. He sways slightly, and with a great effort he turns without stumbling and goes outside.
The light is beginning to fade, the trees becoming dark overhanging silhouettes. He walks back down the driveway, out onto the sidewalk. He needs to tell someone. Julia told him he must turn himself in. That may be what he will do. He can’t be sure.
On the corner is the old groundnut woman. Her head is wrapped in a red kerchief. She stares at him balefully. He sees from her glare that she knows about him. The world knows what he has done.
He will turn himself in.
At home he tells Moses to get out the horse and buggy. Moses brings it out and McDow gets onto the seat and sets off. At the corner is Officer Gordon, in plain clothes. Gordon has been sent to watch him. He understands that this is how it will be, that he will be watched. Everyone knows. The world is contracting and expanding around him, he has no control over it.
He has done everything. The body is cleaned and laid out on the carpet; the office has been straightened, his keys are in the drawer with the pistol, his papers square on the desk. This is the next step. He repeats the phrase in his mind: He caned me. He caned me. No man of courage would allow it.
The words seem lustrous, powerful.
Though he doesn’t actually want to say that he’s been caned. He hesitates between rousing outrage and admitting shame. He’s persuaded himself now that Dawson did hit him with his walking stick when he pushed him. Thrust him away. He can still feel that insulting shove against his breastbone. And his head still hurts from Mrs. Fair’s doorway, and the low closet lintel.
It’s all Dawson’s fault, starting with the detective on the streetcar. Though that now seems in another century, the ride through the morning sunlight, Marie climbing on board, glancing at him, then turning her head. Knowing they would get off together. After that everything spiraled into a tornado, that old woman who wouldn’t let them step inside her house for three minutes, that doctor turning up in the buggy, being hounded through the streets. Mrs. Fair’s maid, her horrified face, as he ran past her. All Dawson’s fault, mounting into such a whirlwind. Now everything is urging him on. It’s like a waterfall, the current now too powerful to resist.
Gordon watches McDow as the buggy approaches.
“Evening, Doctor,” Gordon says.
“Officer,” McDow says, “I want to turn myself in. I’ve committed a murder.”
“A murder.” Officer Gordon looks anxious.
“I’ve killed Captain Dawson,” McDow says. He feels as though he’s falling off the edge of something, a precipice.
* * *
BECAUSE HE HAS turned himself in, and because Dawson is famous, McDow is given certain unofficial allowances. On the way to the station he is permitted to visit the man he wants to hire as counsel, Judge Andrew Magrath.
The news has already begun to spread, and by the time he arrives at jail, McDow has become a celebrity: he has killed the most important man in Charleston. He is put in the police chief’s office instead of a cell. He sits in the chief’s chair and asks Detective McManus to go out to buy him cigars. When McManus returns McDow asks for better ones. He sends out for dinner. His manner is agitated and excited. He gives an interview to a reporter from the World, who asks him several times to calm down.
McDow tells his story: Dawson was aggressive and hostile. He commanded McDow to stop seeing Hélène, and threatened to ruin him. When McDow defied him, Dawson struck him a terrific blow on the chest and gave him a cut on the head with his cane, denting his hat. When Dawson attacked him McDow made his way across the room to seize his pistol. Afraid for his life, he fired.
McDow says nothing about the three hours that elapse between Dawson’s death and his turning himself in. He doesn’t mention dragging the body to the closet under the stairs, the loose floorboards, the soft dry soil. He says nothing about Julia Smith. He says nothing about the gold watch he gave Marie Burdayron, or his proposals.
* * *
A GROWING CROWD gathers around the jail. People in the street pass the word that Frank Dawson has been shot. Dawson is dead.
* * *
MAGRATH WASN’T AT HO
ME when McDow stopped at his house, but he received McDow’s request before Sarah had been told her husband was dead, before she knew she would need help for herself. Magrath agreed to take McDow’s case. This left Sarah the choice of someone less eminent, less experienced, less brilliant. She chose the firm of Jervey and Mitchell, whose partners were both friends of Dawson. Their firm had argued against Judge Magrath at an earlier trial, when Dr. Amos Bellinger had been accused of the murder of Stephney Riley, a black livery stable owner. Thomas McDow had been one of the autopsy doctors. He had watched Magrath perform. He had seen him walking up and down before the jury, orating, giving those big sweeping gestures, letting the silence grow. Thundering, whispering. Magrath was theatrical and authoritative. McDow had watched Magrath win the case. He’d seen Bellinger go free. He’d seen Jervey and Mitchell argue on the other side. He’d seen them lose.
40.
THE TRIAL WAS in late June, when Charleston was murmuring toward summer. The trees were in full leaf, the sidewalks generously dappled with shade. The roses were over by then. Dawson’s favorites, the luscious pink Paul Neyron and the biscuit-colored Gloire de Dijon, had shed their satiny petals in loose cascades onto the moist earth. The phlox stood glowing in tall pale masses against the dark green box bushes, and the lacy white heliotrope made its floppy arches, giving off its sweet wedding-cake fragrance. The evenings were still cool; ladies wore wraps. Sarah seldom went out, and when she did she wore a heavy veil, two layers of thick gauzy net over her face. She wanted to meet no one’s eyes.
Newspapers all over the country covered the trial.
On the first day it rained, big slashing sheets that pounded against the windows. The sky was low, muffled in heavy storm-filled clouds. The streets pooled with water. Crowds shuffled slowly along the sidewalks, awkward with umbrellas. They crammed themselves into the courthouse. Inside, the windows were steamy, the air close.
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