The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  My father, while he carried little money about his person, was in the habit of keeping considerable sums in the house; there is no bank within ten miles. However, he was wary; he had a hiding place which he had revealed to no one but myself. He had a small stand in his room near the head of his bed. Under this stand, or rather under the top of it, he had tacked a large leather wallet. In this he kept all his spare money. I remember how his eyes twinkled when he showed it to me.

  “The average mind thinks things have either got to be in or on,” said my father. “They don’t consider there’s ways of getting around gravitation and calculation.”

  In searching my father’s room I called to mind that saying of his, and his peculiar system of concealing, and then I made my discovery. I have argued that in a search of this kind I ought not only to search for hidden traces of the criminal, but for everything which had been for any reason concealed. Something which my father himself had hidden, something from his past history, may furnish a motive for someone else.

  The money in the wallet under the table, some five hundred dollars, had been removed and deposited in the bank. Nothing more was to be found there. I examined the bottom of the bureau, and the undersides of the chair seats. There are two chairs in the room, besides the cushioned rocker—green-painted wooden chairs, with flag seats. I found nothing under the seats.

  Then I turned each of the green chairs completely over, and examined the bottoms of the legs. My heart leaped when I found a bit of leather nicely tacked over one. I got the tack hammer and drew the tacks. The chair leg had been hollowed out, and for an inch the hole was packed tight with cotton. I began picking out the cotton, and soon I felt something hard. It proved to be an old-fashioned gold band, quite wide and heavy, like a wedding ring.

  I took it over to the window and found this inscription on the inside: “Let love abide forever.” There were two dates—one in August, forty years ago, and the other in August of this present year.

  I think the ring has never been worn; while the first part of the inscription is perfectly clear, it looks old, and the last is evidently freshly cut.

  This could not have been my mother’s ring. She had only her wedding ring, and that was buried with her. I think my father must have treasured up this ring for years; but why? What does it mean? This can hardly be a clue; this can hardly lead to the discovery of a motive, but I will put it in the box with the rest.

  Sunday night.—To-day, of course, I did not pursue my search. I did not go to church. I could not face old friends that could not face me. Sometimes I think that everybody in my native village believes in my guilt. What must I have been in my general appearance and demeanor all my life? I have studied myself in the glass, and tried to discover the possibilities of evil that they must see in my face.

  This afternoon, about three o’clock, the hour when people here have just finished their Sunday dinner, there was a knock on the north door. I answered it, and a strange young man stood there with a large book under his arm. He was thin and cleanly shaved, with a clerical air.

  “I have a work here to which I would like to call your attention,” he began; and I stared at him in astonishment, for why should a book agent be peddling his wares upon the Sabbath?

  His mouth twitched a little. “It’s a Biblical Cyclopedia,” said he.

  “I don’t think I care to take it,” said I.

  “You are Miss Sarah Fairbanks, I believe?”

  “That is my name,” I replied stiffly.

  “Mr. Henry Ellis of Digby sent me here,” he said next. “My name is Dix—Francis Dix.”

  Then I knew that he was Henry’s cousin from Boston—the detective who had come to help me. I felt tears coming to my eyes. “You are very kind to come,” I managed to say.

  “I am very selfish, not kind,” he returned, “but you had better let me come in, or my chance of success in my book agency is lost, if the neighbors see me trying to sell it on a Sunday. And, Miss Fairbanks, this is a bona fide agency. I shall canvass the town.”

  He came in. I showed him all this that I have written, and he read it carefully. When he had finished he sat still for a long time, with his face screwed up in a peculiar, meditative fashion.

  “We’ll ferret this out in three days at the most,” said he finally, with a sudden clearing of his face and a flash of his eyes at me.

  “I had planned for three years, perhaps,” said I.

  “I tell you, we’ll do it in three days,” he repeated. “Where can I get board while I canvass for this remarkable and interesting book under my arm? I can’t stay here, of course, and there is no hotel. Do you think the two dressmakers next door, Phoebe Dole and the other one, would take me in?”

  I said they had never taken boarders.

  “Well, I’ll go over and inquire,” said Mr. Dix; and he had gone, with his book under his arm, almost before I knew it.

  Never have I seen anyone act with the strange, noiseless, soft speed that this man does. Can he prove me innocent in three days? He must have succeeded in getting board at Phoebe Dole’s, for I saw him go past to meeting with her this evening. I feel sure he will be over very early to-morrow morning.

  CHAPTER V: THE EVIDENCE POINTS TO ONE

  MONDAY NIGHT.—The detective came as I expected. I was up as soon as it was light, and he came across the dewy fields with his cyclopedia under his arm. He had stolen out of Phoebe Dole’s back door.

  He had me bring my father’s pistol; then he bade me come with him out into the back yard. “Now fire it,” he said, thrusting the pistol into my hands. As I have said before, the charge was still in the barrel.

  “I shall arouse the neighborhood,” I said.

  “Fire it!” he ordered.

  I tried; I pulled the trigger as hard as I could.

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  “And you are a reasonably strong woman, too, aren’t you?”

  I said I had been considered so. Oh, how much I have heard about the strength of my poor woman’s arms, and their ability to strike that murderous weapon home!

  Mr. Dix took the pistol himself, and drew a little at the trigger. “I could do it,” he said, “but I won’t. It would arouse the neighborhood.”

  “This is more evidence against me,” I said despairingly. “The murderer had tried to fire the pistol and failed.”

  “It is more evidence against the murderer,” said Mr. Dix.

  We went into the house, where he examined my box of clues long and carefully. Looking at the ring, he asked whether there was a jeweler in this village, and I said there was not. I told him that my father oftener went on business to Acton, ten miles away, than elsewhere.

  He examined very carefully the button which I found in the closet, and then asked to see my father’s wardrobe. That was soon done. Besides the suit in which father was laid away, there was one other complete one in the closet in his room. Besides that, there were in this closet two overcoats, an old black frock coat, a pair of pepper-and-salt trousers, and two black vests. Mr. Dix examined all the buttons; not one was missing.

  There was still another old suit in the closet off the kitchen. This was examined, and no button found wanting.

  “What did your father do for work the day before he died?” he asked then. I reflected, and said that he had unpacked some stores which had come down from Vermont, and done some work out in the garden.

  “What did he wear?”

  “I think he wore the pepper-and-salt trousers and the black vest. He wore no coat while at work.”

  Mr. Dix went quickly back to father’s room and his closet, I following. He took out the gray trousers and the black vest, and examined them closely.

  “What did he wear to protect these?” he asked.

  “Why, he wore overalls!” I said at once. As I spoke I remembered seeing father go around the path to the yard, with those blue overalls drawn up high under the arms.

  “Where are they?”

  “Weren’t they in the
kitchen closet?”

  “No.”

  We looked again, however, in the kitchen closet; we searched the shed thoroughly. The cat came in through her little door, as we stood there, and brushed around our feet. Mr. Dix stooped and stroked her. Then he went quickly to the door, beside which her little entrance was arranged, unhooked it and stepped out. I was following him, but he motioned me back.

  “None of my boarding mistress’s windows command us,” he said, “but she might come to her back door.”

  I watched him. He passed slowly along the little winding footpath which skirted the rear of our house and extended faintly through the grassy field to the rear of Phoebe Dole’s. He stopped, searched a clump of sweetbriar, went on to an old well, and stopped there. The well has been dry many a year, and was choked up with stones and rubbish. Some boards are laid over it, and a big stone or two, to keep them in place.

  Mr. Dix, glancing across at Phoebe Dole’s back door, went down on his knees, rolled the stones away, then removed the boards, and peered down the well. He stretched far over the brink and reached down. He made many efforts; then he got up and came to me, and asked me to get for him an umbrella with a crooked handle, or something that he could hook into clothing.

  I brought my own umbrella, the silver handle of which formed an exact hook. He went back to the well, knelt again, thrust in the umbrella and drew up, easily enough, what he had been fishing for. Then he came, bringing it to me.

  “Don’t faint!” he said, and took hold of my arm. I gasped when I saw what he had—my father’s blue overalls, all stained and splotched with blood!

  I looked at them, then at him.

  “Don’t faint!” he said again. “We’re on the right track. This is where the button came from. See?” He pointed to one of the straps of the overalls, and the button was gone. Some white thread clung to it. Another black metal button was sewed on roughly with the same white thread I had found on the button in my box of clues.

  “What does it mean?” I gasped out. My brain reeled.

  “You shall know soon,” he said. He looked at his watch. Then he laid down the ghastly bundle he carried. “It has puzzled you to know how the murderer went in and out, and yet kept the doors locked, has it not?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I am going out now. Hook that door after me.”

  He went out, still carrying my umbrella. I hooked the door. Presently I saw the lid of the cat’s door lifted, and his hand and arm thrust through. He curved his arm up toward the hook, but it came short by a half-foot. Then he withdrew his arm, and thrust in my silver-handled umbrella. He reached the door-hook easily enough with that.

  Then he hooked it again. That was not so easy—he had to work a long time. Finally he accomplished it, unhooked the door again, and came in.

  “That was how?” I said.

  “No, it was not,” he returned. “No human being, fresh from such a deed, could have used such patience as that to fasten the door after him. Please hang your arm down by your side.”

  I obeyed. He looked at my arm, then at his own.

  “Have you a tape measure?” he asked.

  I brought one out of my work basket. He measured his arm, then mine, and then the distance from the cat-door to the hook.

  “I have two tasks for you to-day and to-morrow,” he said. “I shall come here very little. Find all your father’s old letters and read them. Find a man or woman in this town whose arm is six inches longer than yours. Now I must go home, or my boarding mistress will get curious.”

  He went through the house to the front door, looked all ways to be sure no eyes were upon him, made three strides down the yard, and was pacing soberly up the street with his cyclopedia under his arm.

  I made myself a cup of coffee; then I went about obeying his instructions. I read old letters all the forenoon; I found packages in trunks in the garret—there were quantities in father’s desk. I have selected several to submit to Mr. Dix. One of them treats of an old episode in father’s youth, which must have years since ceased to interest him. It was concealed after his favorite fashion—tacked under the bottom of his desk. It was written forty years ago, by Maria Woods—two years before my father’s marriage—and it was a refusal of an offer of his hand. It was written in the stilted fashion of that day; it might have been copied from a “Complete Letter-writer.”

  My father must have loved Maria Woods as dearly as I love Henry, to keep that letter so carefully all these years. I thought he cared for my mother. He seemed as fond of her as other men of their wives, although I did use to wonder if Henry and I would ever get to be quite so much accustomed to each other.

  Maria Woods must have been as beautiful as an angel when she was a girl. Mother was not pretty—she was stout, too, and awkward, and I suppose people would have called her rather slow and dull. But she was a good woman and tried to do her duty.

  Tuesday evening.—This evening was my first opportunity to obey the second of Mr. Dix’s orders. It seemed to me the best way to compare the average length of arms was to go to the prayer meeting. I could not go about the town with my tape measure and demand of people that they should hold out their arms. Nobody knows how I dreaded to go to that meeting, but I went, and I looked not at my neighbor’s cold, altered faces, but at their arms.

  I discovered what Mr. Dix wished me to, but the discovery can avail nothing, and it is one he could have made himself. Phoebe Dole’s arm is fully seven inches longer than mine. I never noticed it before, but she has an almost abnormally long arm. But why should Phoebe Dole have unhooked that door?

  She made a prayer—a beautiful prayer; it comforted even me a little. She spoke of the tenderness of God in all the troubles of life, and how it never failed us.

  When we were all going out I heard several persons speak of Mr. Dix and his Biblical Cyclopedia. They decided that he was a theological student, book canvassing to defray the expenses of his education.

  Maria Woods was not at the meeting. Several asked Phoebe how she was, and she replied, “Not very well.”

  It was very late. I thought Mr. Dix might be over to-night, but he has not been here.

  Wednesday.—I can scarcely believe what I am about to write. Our investigations seem all to point to one person, and that person—it is incredible! I will not believe it. Mr. Dix came as before, at dawn. He reported, and I reported. I showed Maria Woods’s letter. He said he had driven to Acton and found that the jeweler there had engraved the last date in the ring about six weeks ago.

  “I don’t want to seem rough, but your father was going to get married again,” said Mr. Dix.

  “I never knew him to go near any woman since mother died,” I protested.

  “Nevertheless he had made arrangements to be married,” persisted Mr. Dix.

  “Who was the woman?”

  He pointed at the letter in my hand.

  “Maria Woods?”

  He nodded.

  I stood looking at him—dazed. Such a possibility had never entered my head.

  He produced an envelope from his pocket, and took out a little card with blue and brown threads neatly wound upon it. “Let me see those threads you found,” he said.

  I got the box, and we compared them. He had a number of pieces of blue sewing silk and brown woolen ravelings, and they matched mine exactly.

  “Where did you find them?” I asked.

  “In my boarding mistress’s piece-bag.”

  I stared at him. “What does it mean?” I gasped out.

  “What do you think?”

  “It is impossible!”

  CHAPTER VI: THE REVELATION

  WEDNESDAY (CONTINUED).—When Mr. Dix thus suggested to me the absurd possibility that Phoebe Dole had committed the murder, he and I were sitting in the kitchen. He was near the table; he laid a sheet of paper upon it and began to write. The paper is before me.

  “First,” said Mr. Dix, and he wrote as he talked, “whose arm is of such length that it might unloc
k and lock a certain door of this house from the outside? Phoebe Dole’s.

  “Second, who had in her piece-bag bits of the same threads and ravelings found upon your parlor floor, where she had not by your knowledge entered? Phoebe Dole.

  “Third, who interested herself most strangely in your blood-stained green silk dress, even to dyeing it? Phoebe Dole.

  “Fourth, who was caught in a lie, while trying to force the guilt of the murder upon an innocent man? Phoebe Dole.”

  Mr. Dix looked at me. I had gathered myself together.

  “That proves nothing,” I said. “There is no motive in her case.”

  “There is a motive.”

  “What is it?”

  “Maria Woods shall tell you this afternoon.”

  He then wrote:

  “Fifth, who was seen to throw a bundle down the old well, in the rear of Martin Fairbanks’s house, at one o’clock in the morning? Phoebe Dole.”

  “Was she—seen?” I gasped.

  Mr. Dix nodded. Then he wrote:

  “Sixth, who had a strong motive, which had been in existence many years ago? Phoebe Dole.”

  Mr. Dix laid down his pen and looked at me again. “Well, what have you to say?” he asked.

  “It is impossible!”

  “Why?”

  “She is a woman.”

  “A man could have fired that pistol, as she tried to do.”

  “It would have taken a man’s strength to kill with the kind of weapon that was used,” I said.

  “No, it would not. No great strength is required for such a blow.”

  “But she is a woman!”

  “Crime has no sex.”

  “But she is a good woman, a church member. I heard her pray yesterday afternoon. It is not in character.”

  “It is not for you, nor for me, nor for any mortal intelligence to know what is or is not in character,” said Mr. Dix.

  He arose and went away. I could only stare at him in a half-dazed manner.

  Maria Woods came this afternoon, taking advantage of Phoebe’s absence on a dressmaking errand. Maria has aged ten years in the last few weeks. Her hair is white, her cheeks are fallen in, her pretty color is gone.