—Excise commissioner for New Utrecht, said Chief Dawson.
Cropsey came south to this place to farm and trade, because (the commercial circulars said) the low tidewater and sound country was a garden spot. Just scratch the surface of its soil and the land would embarrass with the riches it could grow. Turn the rich soil and the blue clay and the lime marl and the rot of embedded shells, raise it to the surface, and the fertility would embarrass.
The girl Nell Cropsey was to have gone north with her cousin for Thanksgiving and part of the winter, Chief Dawson told Branch. She was supposed to have left tomorrow, Saturday the twenty-third of November.
Hurricane Branch took it all in: there were bushes about the house grounds, utility stairs and a small double porch around at the back of the west side, broad panes of glass in the front windows. It had been a bright night by the moon, and she had come out onto this dark porch and disappeared.
Seven Pines, the Cropsey home
—People don’t send for me less there’s trouble, Branch said to William Cropsey. Cropsey, taciturn and not given to any appreciation of attention drawn to himself, looked over the crowd, which though not unruly was pressing at his fence as men shuffled and craned their necks. At his glance many dropped their eyes.
—Always work with such an audience, Mr. Branch? Cropsey gestured.
—Folks like to see these dogs work. Most times hounds are out it’s convicts at night. Nobody’s going to turn out for convicts at night, but this, this is different, Branch said. Could you get me some of Miss Cropsey’s socks or stockings?
Dawson and Branch spoke low while Cropsey went inside, talking about how the crowd could ruin the attempt at tracking the lost girl, how a criminal investigation could turn into a carnival event, and then Branch had a few words for the crowd.
—Good people. Good people, this is Hurricane Branch speaking, he began from the porch steps, like any stump politician. He warned them about his dogs not exactly being house pets, how they could get nervous if anybody disturbed them while they were working, they got that intense. How the Chief would deal with anybody planning to get in the way, cut up or carry on, because there was a young lady missing and this was serious business.
William Cropsey returned with a pair of Nell Cropsey’s shoes and stockings and held them out to Hurricane Branch.
—Will these do?
—Do just fine, Branch said. He put the shoes and stockings to his hounds’ noses and dropped them on the porch floor. He let them get worked up and snuffling.
—Looka here, Tiger, Sampson. Looka here.
The crowd was transfixed.
Branch had pulled the tether up tight so that he was standing right over the hounds when they had enough scent from the shoes and were ready to go on it.
—All right, yelled Hurricane Branch, and they were off down the front steps and the path with the hounds going steadily and snuffling through the wide gate and through a parting in the crowd and continuing apace across the road to the summerhouse at the river’s edge. They went in and around the gazebo several times before the one called Tiger tugged back toward the big house. Branch let the tether out and the hounds pulled him toward the fence some ten yards or so to the west or town side of the front gate. Chief Dawson held the tether line as the hounds went under the low slat of the fence and Branch climbed over top. They cut across Cropsey’s turnip patch till some fifty yards along that path the bloodhounds stopped and turned back again in the direction of the Pasquotank River. There was a gasp, a collective, involuntary Oh! from the slack-jawed mob.
The flamboyant Branch followed his hounds on their beeline to a short gate in the fence some two hundred fifty yards from the Cropsey porch. He stayed right with them. Through the short gate without slackening they followed that track across the rivershore road and onto a pier that ran a couple hundred feet out into the river.
At the end of that pier they stopped.
These were the finest sleuth hounds in Virginia.
—We’ll try it again, Branch said coolly and traipsed through the crowd with the snuffling hounds to start over with the lost girl’s shoes and socks at the front porch. And again the hounds ambled down to the river, then cut back across the turnip patch, turned and smelled their way to the end of the pier, and so on all afternoon, till the dark started coming on and the townspeople had had enough of the dog chase and carnival, and the hounds were tired and confused from the tramping of the mob and could no longer make track beyond the porch. The excitement was over, and the mob broke down into small knots of men staring out at the black river and pointing at the summerhouse, the turnip patch, and the pier and talking with morbid speculation.
Hurricane Branch fed and watered his bloodhounds Tiger and Sampson while Chief Dawson went to tell William Cropsey what they would do next. They would search the houses, especially in the Negro district, and the businesses. Search the town, sure, on the slim chance she was hiding or somebody was keeping her.
After that, only one thing left to do.
DRAGGING THE RIVER
The Pasquotank, one of five rivers that rise and flow unnaturally out of the morass of the Great Dismal Swamp, meanders its dark serpentine way from South Mills, where the canal locks were, on to Camden the courthouse crossroads, and then the last four slow, rolling miles down to the Narrows at Elizabeth City. There round that horseshoe bend it fans out wide—the Pask-e-’tan-ki of the Tuscarora and the Croatan, a black, murky, pungent river.
It was November 1901, and a cold snap had set hard upon the little river town. Saturday, November 23d, was the day the missing girl was supposed to have taken the Old Dominion steamer up the Chesapeake with her cousin Carrie on their way north. Instead it was the day when townsmen came out in their skiffs and dories and sharpies and beneath a platinum sky began dragging the Pasquotank for her body.
Others watched from among the rust-gold cypresses and tall pines along shore while the men in boats threw the draglines out. Time and again the grapnel flukes snagged and the lines tightened and, with apprehension, other men in other boats stopped and looked to see if they were bringing her up. But it would just be some muck-covered stump or cast-off debris from the mills.
They looked for Nell Cropsey in this black river.
Its water was dark from tannic-acid leachings of the juniper trees along the rivershore back up toward the headwaters, and those leachings were preservative—the dark, discolored water wouldn’t go bad and had often filled the water casks of ocean-bound ships, had even gone along with Admiral Perry to Japan fifty years before.
It was a gruesome business, and as on the day before with Hurricane Branch and his dogs, the crowds on shore thinned as the work of the drag boats became routine and seemed destined to fail. A few knots of onlookers and speculators remained, and there was talk.
—She ain’t in that river, they said.
—Somebody carried her away by boat, they said.
—Somebody carried her off and they’re holding her for ransom. I heard her uncle’s a big judge up in New York—she’s worth good money live.
Rumor grew into theory and theory into purported fact. There was no shame that morbid curiosity could not quash. No one in the community tired of retelling and refiguring the case of Nell Cropsey, and every hour that elapsed upped the emotional ante.
—Anything could have happened, they said. She could be anywhere.
Jim Wilcox did not work on the drag boats, but he watched and was watched. Once, when the draglines tightened, they thought they really had her this time, and a fellow named Davenport was standing near Jim on shore.
—It was right opposite the old brickyard, Davenport said, and I had been hearing so much talk that when I saw something coming up I looked at Jim very straight and I thought I saw his face turn pale.
JIM WILCOX
I got off the Southern eastbound in Raleigh a few days before Christmas 1918. Four newspapermen come walking up to me out of the steam fog from the train brakes.
> —How’s it feel?
—What’d you tell the governor?
—Going home for Christmas?
I was coming in from the prison farm up in the mountains where I’d been when I got word about the pardon.
I was a trusty and they’d never locked me up. They didn’t have to. I heard em say that never in the history of the North Carolina prisons had there been a perfect record like mine with not one black spot against it.
I’d started pulling my time at Central Pen in Raleigh in 1903. Once while I was there the lighting system broke down so I sent word to the warden to let me try and fix it. I did, too. And that phrenologist who come through testing prisoners said I’d of been a great engineer if I’d got proper training. Another Edison. Later they sent me on up to the mountains.
I heard how my poor mama went door to door back in Elizabeth City looking to get signatures on her petitions to the governor to get me out. People didn’t answer their doors or else they sent their colored help to say they was gone and they was sorry, Missus Wilcox. Mama went through it anyway but twice Governor Craig turned me down. If I’d had any chance for a pardon it sure got shot to hell when Nell’s mother wrote the governor and talked against me like she and all the rest of the Cropseys have ever since Nell disappeared.
When Mama was dying she wrote me from her deathbed saying please Jim and begging me to tell her the truth about Nell Cropsey cause she had to know before she died. I wrote her right back the truth was I was innocent as a baby, and before she passed on she sent me a Bible. I kept a lock of Nell’s hair inside it, and I had her picture on my wall. During the Great War I come down with the TB and they said I weren’t going to make it. I told this one prisoner there with me that I couldn’t go to my Maker with a lie on my lips, so help me God. I called him over to what they said was going to be my deathbed and told him I wanted the world to know I was not guilty of the crime for which I stood accused and convicted.
Well, I pulled through after all, but I never could shake this cough.
Captain Peoples come to see me when I was better. He was the prison superintendent and he knew me all the time I’d been sent up. He wanted me to write the new governor, Bickett, who he said would listen to my case and understand it. He said Governor Bickett was a good man who paid attention to the plight of the prisoners and that he was catching hell in the papers because he reviewed so many cases and turned so many men loose that he thought had pulled enough time. They said in the papers that he was running a pardon mill down at the governor’s mansion. That’s what Captain Peoples told me.
I was a model prisoner.
I tried to help out back when Nell was first missing and everybody turned against me. Daddy sent for Deputy Charlie Reid to come and carry me over to the Cropseys’ and clear things up between me and them about Nell. Right after she was first gone.
I was around on the back porch and I heard Deputy Reid’s knocking and went and let him in. He talked with Mama and Daddy a while and Mama was crying. Daddy said he wanted the whole town to know that Wilcoxes didn’t buck the law and Deputy Reid would be there to witness.
I set out with him and I was nervous about it but I had to do it. Before we’d even got to the Charles Creek bridge, he dug into me and told me I oughta talk.
—If you know anything, Jim, in justice to your family you ought to let it be known.
I held my temper best I could and thought about how tired I was getting of nobody believing me when I said I told all I knew, but before I said a word Deputy Reid spoke again.
—Looks to me you ought to explain this whole thing, Jim, as it’s getting you in trouble. Not just for your sake but for your mother’s sake too.
It broke her heart, I know, for me to be in such a scrape and no way out unless Nell Cropsey just showed up. People had it in for me from the start.
—I’ve told all I can tell, I said.
Well, Captain Peoples wrote a letter to the governor and showed it to me. He told Governor Bickett that it was the first time in eighteen years with the prison system he’d ever appealed to a governor on a prisoner’s behalf, but that he’d known me for fifteen years and my record was perfect so he was appealing for mercy for me.
So when I had recovered enough from the TB, I sat down and wrote:
Dear Governor Bickett:
For sixteen years and over I have been unjustly punished and now broken in spirit and health I come to you asking mercy. I too can see that the circumstances are against me for it is a very mixed up affair but I do not know any more about the affair than an unborn babe. For fifteen years and seven months I have worked hard and faithful, a record few men ever attain, fifteen years with nothing against it. My mother and father have been taken away during that time. Do you not think I have been punished enough? I ask you to please pardon me and let me spend my last days with what is left of my loved ones.
We put the two letters in an envelope together and sent them off to the governor.
It was December 1918, and the war was over.
Governor Bickett made a special trip to the prison farm to see me and spent the afternoon talking with me alone. He told me that people back in Pasquotank had come around and many had written letters saying they were satisfied I’d been punished enough, that I should be let go. And there were more who thought me innocent and were finally willing to come out and say so. Solicitor Ward who’d become a judge—he wrote Governor Bickett six months before he died asking mercy for me.
The telegram arrived December 20th, 1918, saying the Governor granted me full pardon and I was free to go home.
Captain Peoples helped me get ready. He gave me a Kodak and the best clothes we could find round the prison farm off there in the middle of nowhere. I got me a brown suit and a army shirt and a red tie for a belt and I wore my high hunting boots. Oh, and my slouch hat with the special hatband that was the skin of an eleven-rattle rattler I’d killed up there. I shaved except for my mustache and the captain got the four-in-hand supply rig ready for me and somebody to drive me in. We shook hands and said good-bye and I was off to catch the next Southern east.
The newspapermen come at me on the platform there at the Raleigh station and I told em finally somebody believed I was innocent, and I was awful glad it was the governor. I rolled a cigaret and waited there for the state carriage to come carry me down to spend the night at Central Pen. The next day they’d give me a certified copy of my pardon and then I’d pull out.
That carriage didn’t come and didn’t come and those newsmen got to making me nervous so I figured I’d duck em. I said I was sorry but I was going to wait in a café near there till the carriage came. But they just followed me in and it was like they were closing in on me. I rolled a cigaret and they stared at the way I struck a light between my thumb and pointing finger.
—How bout a picture, Jim? one of em said.
That called my mind to those photographers from the Chicago papers back at the trial in 1902. I’d had enough pictures of me took back then. So I pulled out that Kodak Captain Peoples gave me and told em joking like to watch out I’d shoot them if they weren’t careful.
—Come on, Jim, just one picture.
I told em I’d pose for one down at the newspaper office but not there in the café that night. I’d been traveling all day and I was tired and those newsboys made me nervous. I told em I’d be around Raleigh for a day or two but I knew I wouldn’t.
I won’t broke, not me. Had some money on me from selling leatherwork and carved canes I’d made when I was in prison. I got my pardon and the hell with the newsboys. I just dropped out of sight for a few days, figuring I’d lay low and just plain let the dust settle a bit fore I went home.
I caught the morning train out of Norfolk on Christmas Eve 1918, and it was late, nearly two in the afternoon, when it pulled into the new station out at the far end of Main Street. I remember the red curvetile roof, and my sisters Sadie and Annie Mae, and a good bunch of others waiting for the train.
—W
here’ve you been, Jim?
—We’ve met every train. We’ve been wild worrying.
—We got no word from you.
They were both crying, and I guess I was too. I was back home free and pardoned after sixteen years being sent up. I told em I was glad to be home.
A young woman I didn’t recognize spoke to me there and said she was Josh Dawson’s girl, did I remember her?
Lord have mercy.
This was what had become of Josh’s little three-year-old Evelyn that he’d brought by the Elizabeth City jail to say good-bye before I went off to Central Pen in 1903. The guard closed the cell door behind Josh and his little girl and when it slammed she looked so frightened I picked her up and set her on my knee.
—Don’t you worry now, I told her. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re not in any trouble, child.
And there she was when I come home in 1918, grown up and saying, Here, Mister Jimmy, this is my husband John Tuttle, and then they were off in a hurry to get on the train. Going over to Hertford to spend Christmas with her husband’s folks.
The train pulled out and the steam fog swirled round the new station. I remember thinking the Tuttles were nice to me and I’d go see em after they got back from the holiday. Never thought I’d be begging them to put me up like this, but here I am.
Here I am.
OLLIE CROPSEY
Papa had gone out the Sunday afternoon after Nell was lost. He went down to one of the shipyard piers to look for her. Not a word from her and by then the papers were starting to take it up. Papa told us there was going to be a town meeting about it.
When he came back from the piers I was surprised because he had brought Jim Wilcox back with him. A colored boy had run up to Papa out on the pier and said Deputy Reid wanted a word with him in the shipyard office. Papa walked over and heard a tap on the office window and Deputy Reid was motioning him in. He had Jim inside with him. They talked a bit but Jim wouldn’t cooperate. He didn’t even want to come over to our place and face Mama, and Papa just about had to make him.
The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey Page 3
