The Unquiet Grave: A Novel

by Sharyn McCrumb

  All that was news to me. As far as I knew, no one had impugned the virtue of Zona Heaster Shue, and the implication that she had borne a child meant that there could be another person in the story. I wondered if there were more to it than just a past connection. “Did you notice any visitors going to the house?”

  Martha Jones shook her head. “No, I did not. I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering if Mrs. Shue had a man on the side, but she did not. Nothing like that was going on.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am. Those folks didn’t have any visitors at all—not any social callers, that is. No friends. One of us might do the odd chore for them now and again—chop some wood, do some washing or a little cleaning, especially after she took sick, that kind of thing—but we weren’t being sociable. I reckon we were neighborly, but Mr. Trout Shue paid us what he could. They always kept to themselves, though, even more than you’d expect newlyweds to do.”

  “But your son Anderson is reported to have found Mrs. Shue’s body, so he was inside the house.”

  “You’ll be wanting to talk to him about that, I expect, though much good it may do you.”

  She had a peculiar expression on her face when she said that, but I didn’t question her about it. I’d see Anderson Jones himself soon enough, because I wasn’t heading back to town until I did.

  “Andy will be back before long. He’s been out with his daddy for most of the day, but by now he may be out helping another one of our neighbors with some wood chopping. He was supposed to do that this afternoon, but he’ll be back directly. I suppose I could keep talking to you until then. I got biscuits to make. You better scoot back a ways from the table unless you want to get flour on that fine black suit of yours. Mind, I don’t think anything I can tell you will help that man you’re defending.”

  “I understand, ma’am. I’ll settle for the truth.”

  “I can give you that, best I know it. And a glass of spring water or a cup of coffee, before I get started, if you’re in need of either one.”

  “Coffee, then, if it’s no trouble.” While she busied herself with the coffeepot and the white china mugs, I told her I didn’t want to put words in her mouth, but if she knew anything that could help our defense, I needed to hear it. Until I’d heard what she could tell me, I didn’t know if she’d be any use as a witness at the trial or not, but I did have to talk to the boy who had found Mrs. Shue’s body. It seemed sensible to pass the time by having a pleasant chat with her. She might tell me things she didn’t know she knew.

  When the coffee was ready, she called for Margaret to start the chicken frying and to put the potatoes on to boil. When that had been accomplished to her satisfaction, she sat back down again. “We don’t have no sugar,” she told me. “Though I reckon I could get you a dollop of cream if you were wanting it.”

  “Thank you, no,” I said. “I’ll take it as it comes. Now you were telling me about Mr. and Mrs. Shue.”

  “Yes, sir, they were civil to one and all, but they kept to themselves right much,” said Martha Jones, pouring the coffee. She stood up at the table opposite me and set a thick white cloth on top of the table, sprinkling it with flour. She bustled about, getting a bowl for more flour and milk, and began kneading the dough for the biscuits. I watched at a safe distance as little puffs of flour flew here and there while she worked.

  “Yessir, they kept themselves to themselves. We didn’t think anything odd about that at first, since they were newlyweds. He was friendly enough, always wanting my Andy to do some trifling errand for him. They never had family to visit, though, neither one of them. I reckon none of the kinfolk lived close enough to come calling.”

  “I believe Mrs. Heaster’s family live out in Meadow Bluff, and his people are over in Pocahontas County, so perhaps you’re right about distance being the difficulty.”

  “It was wintertime.” She thumped the mound of floured dough on to the white cloth, and looked up at me with raised eyebrows. “I wouldn’t say that was the whole of it, though. I did wonder why he came over here in the first place. I believe his daddy is a blacksmith over in Pocahontas County. Why didn’t he stay put and work with him?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes people have to leave the family to grow up, I think.”

  She laughed. “Him? He’s past thirty, and I’ve heard tell that he’d had a wife before. Seems to me like he ought to be plenty grown up by now. But never mind him. What about his wife? Her family is in the county, over in Meadow Bluff, like you said. I think a new bride’s mama would want to visit her, at least to have a look at her daughter’s new home. When my Mary Ellen gets wed in May, I certainly intend to visit her in her new home. And we’ll all be invited to supper after the first week or two, you mark my words. Mary Ellen will still be part of this family, even after she becomes Mrs. Lomie Lewis. And Mrs. Shue was younger than my girl. What could her parents be thinking leaving her alone for so long with a man none of them hardly knew? Meadow Bluff ain’t all that far from Livesay’s Mill. But Mrs. Heaster’s family never once set foot in that house.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She shrugged. “You could ask them yourself, if they’ll talk to you. But when she was ailing and I went to look in on her, we got to talking about canning beans and ’maters, and I asked if her mama had seen all what she had stored away in the pantry. And she said her mama hadn’t come to visit. Turns out she brought most of that food from home, though.”

  “Yes, they married in late fall, so there wouldn’t have been much on hand for canning purposes by then.”

  Martha Jones gave me a knowing grin. “Well, if you know that much, I reckon you didn’t grow up on the moon after all, Mr. Gilt-Edged P. D. Gardner, but you sure are a rare bird for these parts.”

  I did not correct her about my name, nor did I offer her any information about my origins, and sure enough, after a few more moments of cutting dough into the shapes of biscuits, Mrs. Jones picked up the thread of her story again.

  “I knew that she couldn’t have canned all those vegetables, but I wouldn’t have called her on it if she had claimed she had. That wouldn’t have been courteous, and we take care not to have ructions with any of our neighbors, especially the white folks.”

  “Very wise,” I murmured. The origin of the canned goods mattered little, but I wanted to encourage her to continue her narrative. “So the Heasters did not visit? Perhaps the winter weather kept them away.”

  “Or maybe they knew they weren’t welcome. When Mrs. Shue said her mother had not come to the house yet, she sounded kind of sad about it. She allowed as how Mr. Shue had been set on them getting adjusted to married life and getting the house fixed up before he was willing to entertain guests. Curtains and more furniture, I understood her to mean. They didn’t have overmuch in the way of household goods. It was a hasty marriage, that’s for sure, and he didn’t bring nothing much with him from Pocahontas County. I reckon the family might have let her take a few things away with her when she went back to Meadow Bluff to be married. One wagonload is all they could have managed. He didn’t make much money at Crookshanks’s smithy, not enough to fill up a house with furniture right away. But nobody would have expected them to. And as for not wanting guests to see their unfinished house—now, me, I wouldn’t call close family guests, would you?”

  “I suppose not,” I said, but I was thinking, It would depend on how well I liked the family. Mrs. Jones was correct, though, in the main. Most people in that place and time associated almost exclusively with family connections, and it never would have occurred to them to stand on ceremony with close kin. It might have occurred to me, but then I had always known that I was a changeling, and I never assumed that my own reactions were in any way a reflection of the norm.

  Mrs. Jones flattened another biscuit between her palms, deep in thought, remembering her erstwhile neighbors. Finally she said, “I told you that the Heasters never visited their daughter, and that’s the truth, but I have met Miz Heaster since th
en.”

  I tried to contain my surprise. “Did you?”

  She nodded. “She came here back in the early spring, looking for something. There’s a little cabin down behind the house here, across the meadow amongst some rocks. And Miz Heaster came and asked could she go look into that shed, for her daughter wanted her to find something.”

  “What was she looking for?”

  “She didn’t rightly know. She said she had plumb forgot to ask when her daughter told her to go, because she was so surprised to see her.”

  “Mrs. Shue called upon her mother? When?”

  “Well, that’s just it. It was a couple of weeks after she passed.”

  I turned the words over in my mind, trying to put some other construction on their meaning, but there wasn’t one. Finally I said, “Do you mean that the woman claims to have seen her daughter’s ghost?”

  She nodded. “That’s what the lady said, and I may as well tell you that according to her, Miz Shue told her that it was Trout what killed her. Wrung her neck, she said. What’s more she believes it. Just so you know.”

  “Thank you,” I said, repressing a smile. “I don’t believe the law is allowed to recognize the testimony of deceased persons, but I’ll include it in my report to Dr. Rucker. Did Mrs. Heaster visit you before the autopsy or afterward?”

  “Afterward, though I don’t recall exactly when. It was after the weather got warmer, anyhow.”

  Of course it was, I thought. “And did the lady find what it was that she was supposed to be looking for in the shed at the end of the pasture?”

  Martha Jones shook her head. “I helped her look, but we didn’t find nothing, except some stains that might have been blood. Hog’s blood, for all we knew. Didn’t prove anything one way or t’other. She was mighty disappointed, and I thought she might ask again if her daughter’s ghost came back, but I guess it never did. Anyhow, I ain’t seen her since.”

  “I wonder if Mrs. Heaster got on well with her daughter. It seems odd that she did not visit the newlyweds.”

  “I think Mrs. Shue wanted her to come. She acted like she would have welcomed anybody’s company, especially when she was ailing, but it seemed to me like Mrs. Shue wasn’t given any say in the matter of visitors. It was all about what her new husband wanted. He was particular about his food, I’ll tell you that.”

  I was about to ask her more about Mr. Shue’s habits when a dog barked somewhere outside and someone called out from the yard, “Martha, we’re back! Sarah, come get these shoes!”

  “That will be Reuben and my boy.” Martha jumped up from her chair, her smile tinged with relief. She scooped up the baby and hurried to the door to meet them, followed by Margaret.

  I trailed along after them, because it seemed discourteous for me, a stranger, to sit there alone in the kitchen while the family gathered elsewhere. Through the open door I could see a wiry, grizzled man and a boy of perhaps twelve stooping to remove their mud-caked boots before they entered the house. At the door, the youngest daughter, Sarah, was waiting to collect their footwear to be cleaned outside. Mrs. Jones, I surmised, did not allow mud to be tracked through her tidy house.

  Her husband was not much taller than his wife, but considerably thinner. His farmwork had kept him fit, though the outdoor labor had turned his face to wrinkled leather. The fact that he had hugged his wife upon entering the room, and that his offspring crowded joyfully around him, led me to think that Mr. Jones was a naturally mild and genial fellow, but he regarded me with grave courtesy that hinted at a distrust of strangers, or perhaps of well-dressed strangers whose presence did not constitute a social call.

  I introduced myself to Mr. Jones, and solemnly we shook hands. “And is this young man Anderson?” I asked, ready to shake hands with the boy as well, but he hung back and eyed me with solemn reserve.

  Reuben Jones and his wife exchanged a look that struck me as both wary and awkward. After a moment’s pause, Martha Jones said, “That there is Samuel, Mr. Gardner. Anderson is our other boy. He’ll be along soon.”

  Sarah took the muddy boots out into the yard, and the rest of us stood in the living room, prolonging an awkward pause. Margaret hurried back to the kitchen to tend to the chicken, and Reuben Jones took charge of his young namesake, and plopped down in an old easy chair near the fireplace, motioning for me to pull up a chair and join him. His wife, lingering at the entrance to the kitchen, said, “Mr. Gardner is representing Mr. Trout Shue at his trial.”

  Reuben Jones nodded to me, but his expression gave nothing away. “Is that right?” he said, still polite but noncommittal. I detected a shade less warmth in his demeanor.

  “To be exact, I am assisting the lead attorney in the case—Dr. William Rucker.”

  “I see.”

  “Dr. Rucker is white,” I finished lamely.

  “Figured that.” He allowed the child to play pat-a-cake against one of his callused hands, but despite that I could tell that he was attending me closely, perhaps listening for the click of a springing trap.

  “So I came out here to speak to you folks—and especially to your son Anderson—to see what you can tell me about the people involved.”

  “They kept to themselves.”

  “Why do you think that was?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  Mr. Jones was not precisely uncivil, but he made it plain that he did not intend to say anything that could be twisted by lawyers into an accusation toward anyone. Perhaps he was protecting his son, or maybe he was just naturally cautious. It must have been a quarter of an hour before Anderson Jones returned home, and in that time I learned nothing at all from Reuben Jones.

  I confess that I was relieved when I heard the clatter of boots on the little wooden porch. Sarah hurried to the door to collect this brother’s shoes for cleaning, and Anderson came into the house in his stocking feet. He was grinning broadly until he saw me, and then the happy expression faded, and he cast an anxious look at his father, awaiting instructions.

  “Pull up a chair, son,” said Reuben Jones. “This here gentleman is a lawyer from town, and he’s wanting to ask you some questions. Nothing hard. Don’t worry. Just tell the truth.”

  I had not spoken, nor risen to shake his hand, because I was trying to master my consternation at the sight of him. All the accounts I had heard of the case had described Anderson Jones as a young boy, and I had been expecting to meet a child, but this strapping youth, as tall as I was, must have been nearly twenty.

  His father’s quiet words of reassurance did nothing to allay the young man’s fear of being questioned. Although I did my best to smile and make him feel at ease, he would not meet my eyes. He kept glancing this way and that, as if the slightest provocation would send him darting from the room in terror.

  “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout none of it—sir,” he said, eying me like a cornered rabbit.

  “But surely since you found the body of Mrs. Shue, you must know a little bit.”

  He shook his head. “He told me to go. Three times he came and told me. So along about eleven o’clock I went, and there she was—the lady—cold and dead in the hall. Folk already asked me all that, and I told ’em.”

  I realized then why young Anderson Jones had been characterized as a child in all the accounts of the case. In every respect save the corporeal, he was indeed a child, what people in those days referred to as a simpleton. The unworthy thought occurred to me then that if I were a murderer who wished to have the body of my victim discovered by someone other than myself, this harmless fellow would be the perfect choice. Both his color and his mental condition would mitigate against his standing in court as a credible witness, and he might well be too befuddled by his discovery to remember much of what he had seen.

  I could also see why his parents were uneasy at the thought of an investigation into the death of Mrs. Shue. Who could be more easily incriminated than this poor hapless youth? Who except his family would care what became of him?

  I asked a fe
w more desultory questions, but I learned nothing that would either help or hurt the defense of Edward Shue when the case went to trial. Then Martha Jones appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips, observing our conversation for a few moments. She frowned at the sight of her son shifting from one foot to the other in silent misery. At last she summoned a false smile, clapped her hands, and said, “Supper’s ready! Won’t you stay and join us, Mr. Gardner?”

  Nothing is so sure to speed a lingering guest as a perfunctory offer of hospitality. Besides, I knew that the flesh of a single chicken and a few beans and potatoes would hardly stretch to feed all the hungry mouths in the Jones household as it was, even without the addition of an unwanted guest. Thanking them profusely for their patience and kindness, and pleading the lateness of the hour, I retrieved my hat and coat, and fled.

  twenty

  GREENBRIER COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

  1897

  DEATH IS QUICK, but retribution moves at a snail’s pace. My Zona died near the end of January, but June will be nearly over by the time Edward Shue is finally made to stand trial for killing her. I hope he has had a sorry time of it, languishing in jail in Lewisburg. I hope he’s cold and pent up in a tiny cage, big as he is. I hope they aren’t feeding him enough, for there never was such a fool over victuals as Edward Shue. I hope he has to eat rats.