The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders

by Mignon F. Ballard

  The captain stepped outside at the commotion and I heard him speak softly. “Please, ma’am, let’s go in here where you can sit down. I wish there were some kinder way to tell you…”

  I stood aside to make room for them: the trim, matronly woman in what looked to be a designer dress, and beside her, a tall graying man who cried silently. “Now, we don’t know, honey. We don’t know,” he said. His hand shook on her arm. He knew. I had seen those same expressions on the television news, on the front page of the newspaper wherever tragedy and disaster pointed a grim finger.

  What if it had been Julie? My Julie? My own daughter wasn’t much older than the young girl we had found that day. How could I bear it? How could they?

  Nobody noticed when I slipped outside and hurried to my car and home. I wanted Ben to hold me, and I wanted Augusta to tell me everything was going to be all right.

  Chapter Five

  “I’ll have to admit, I’m not a bit surprised. I just had a feeling something awful had happened to that girl,” my neighbor Nettie McGinnis said the next day when I dropped by to reassure her about her niece.

  “You had a feeling the first time you flew on a plane, too,” I reminded her. “Remember when you went to your cousin’s wedding in Richmond? Made out your will and everything.” I laughed, hoping my teasing would prod her out of her doldrums.

  It didn’t work. “And what’s all this I hear about that English teacher? The one who’s written that book. I always did think that man was peculiar. Leslie doesn’t have him for any of her classes, does she?”

  “You mean Dr. Hornsby? I doubt it. I think he only teaches upperclassmen.”

  “That’s the one, all right—the one with the dowdy wife. Sour-faced as a dish of clabber, and about as appealing.” Nettie flapped across the kitchen in her pink fuzzy bedroom slippers and removed a pile of needlework from a cane-bottom chair, gesturing for me to sit. “Know what that woman told Willene?”

  Sitting obediently, I shook my head.

  “Said she’d just as soon live in the backwoods as to be stuck here in Stone’s Throw!” She lowered her voice. “It’s all over town her husband and that poor little Hunter girl were carrying on.”

  I said I’d heard. “I’m sure the police plan to question him,” I told her.

  “Humph! They’ll have to find him first. Nobody’s seen him since his last class yesterday.”

  I frowned. “How do you know?” Since I wasn’t due at Sarah Bedford until later that day, I hadn’t been to the campus.

  “You know Kim—does my hair at the Total Perfection—well, her daughter Belinda sits for them some, and she says he didn’t come home last night at all.” Nettie shook her head. “Can you imagine? And him with all those little children, too! Well, the police will round him up in short order.”

  Round him up? It sounded as though the missing professor was divided into numerous little pieces that the authorities would scoop together like bits of clay. I remembered watching the man calmly reading his paper in the cafeteria only the day before. Had he been planning his getaway even then?

  My neighbor put a hand on my arm as I was leaving. “And by the way, what’s the deal with that boarder you took in last year? The woman who’s staying in Charlie’s old office? I see her light from time to time, so how come I never see her?”

  “Augusta? Oh, I think you’d like her, Nettie. She’s simply an angel.” I slipped through the door before she could pursue the subject. It’s funny, but if you tell people the truth, I’ve found, they seldom ever believe you.

  “Joy Ellen says D.C. probably was killed early Saturday morning,” I told Augusta and Ellis over supper that night. The history teacher still wasn’t thrilled about my being there, but at least she wasn’t hostile when we met for a planning session that afternoon.

  Augusta had discovered the slow cooker and planned the week’s meals around it. Tonight it was chicken stew. Ellis, whose husband Bennett had some kind of dinner meeting that night, contributed her “homemade” biscuits (out of the freezer case at Harris Teeter) and I had stirred up a dessert.

  Augusta broke open a steaming biscuit and slathered it with some of her strawberry jam. “How does she know that?” she asked.

  “Heard one of the policemen talking about it. Said it looked like the Hunter girl died from a blow to her head, possibly from a fall. That old shed has a stone floor, but you probably wouldn’t notice it for all the dirt that’s accumulated there.”

  “I think it used to be a stable,” Ellis said. “And after that, the college stored lawn tools there, things like that.”

  I nodded. “Joy Ellen said Londus Clack told her he remembers when it served as a concession stand back when students still swam in the Old Lake.”

  “When was that?” Augusta asked. “Ellis, you’ll have to give me the recipe for these biscuits. They’re simply delicious.”

  “Had to have been more than thirteen or fourteen years ago,” I said. “Roger dated several girls at Sarah Bedford and I’m sure the lake was posted off limits even then.”

  Steam rose about her face as Augusta sipped her coffee. “Londus Clack? He’s the maintenance person you spoke about, isn’t he? The one who sings? Has he been with the school that long?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ellis said, “but Londus grew up here, you know. His father worked for the college.”

  “Then he must feel right at home there,” I said.

  Ellis ladled more stew into her bowl. “Maybe. Maybe not. The college let his father go. I remember Bennett talking about it. He was on the board of directors when it happened. Caused quite a stink at the time. Bennett never did believe he’d done it. Old Dorsey Clack was as honest as the day is long, he said. Turned out later, he was right.”

  “What did they think he’d done?” Augusta asked.

  “Some student accused him of stealing jewelry—a ring, I think. Said she’d seen him in her room.” Ellis shook her head, her face stormy. “Of course he was in her room. They’d called him to fix the radiator. Months later they found the girl’s ring behind the commode. She’d set it on top of the tank while she took a shower—but by then the damage had been done.”

  “What do you mean, damage?” I spooned up bowls of lemon mystery for everyone. It’s really lemon pudding cake, but Mama always called it lemon mystery—makes it sound sort of exotic.

  “Ruined his health, that’s what. Poor thing fretted so, he went downhill like ice on a hot slide,” Ellis said. “I don’t think Dorsey Clack lived a year after that.”

  So the singing janitor had reason to have a grudge against the college, but would he go so far as to take it out in murder?

  Ellis must’ve had the same thought. “Londus just doesn’t seem the sort to go around doing in young women.”

  I thought of all those interviews I’d read where neighbors claimed what a nice, sweet boy he was…why, they couldn’t imagine him doing an awful thing like that! “Maybe not,” I said, “but he certainly had the opportunity.”

  I cleared away the dishes after supper while Augusta helped Ellis with the cross-stitch she was attempting for her soon-to-be new grandson. Her daughter Susan was expecting in January and Ellis had brought over her snarled efforts and appealed to Augusta’s angelic nature. “I’ll give you the secret recipe for my biscuits,” she promised. When Clementine began barking at footsteps on the back porch, I assumed Roger had come to take advantage of dessert, but it was my cousin Jo Nell who stuck her head in the doorway. “I meant to give this back to you after our meeting Monday,” she said, presenting me with our great-grandmother’s china platter wrapped in layers of newspaper. Our ancestor had hand-painted it with a dainty scattering of violets and it had a special place in my dining room. Jo Nell borrows it as often as possible, but the platter had been left to me and I mean to keep it.

  “There’s no rush, you know,” I said, thanking her. “I could’ve picked it up later, but since you’re here, how about some dessert and a cup of coffee?” I knew my cousi
n had come because she wanted to pump me about what was going on at Sarah Bedford.

  “I can’t stay long, but…is that lemon mystery? Well, maybe just a little…” My cousin sat in the chair next to Augusta’s, but of course she couldn’t see her. “I suppose you’ve heard about all the awful goings-on with that Hornsby fellow—meeting in that old shed with that young girl. Willene Benson told me they’d found all sorts of things in that loft. A regular love nest, she said.”

  My stomach did a somersault as I watched her spoon up another mouthful of dessert, and I wished I hadn’t eaten so much stew.

  “I know how these girls talk—thought you might’ve heard more about it. The sooner they catch up with that one, the better!”

  I nodded in agreement. “Sounds like you know more about it than I do,” I said, and began drying dishes at the sink so I wouldn’t have to watch her eat. The conversation had taken a revolting turn and I was ready to change the subject.

  “Can’t help but feel sorry for Blythe Cornelius,” she continued mournfully. “Willene says she feels responsible.”

  Ellis tugged at a thread. “Why is that?”

  “She wasn’t in the dorm for most of the night. One of the girls came down with a really bad virus and Blythe sat up with her in the infirmary. That old nurse they’ve got over there is so lazy she wouldn’t bring you water if she was sittin’ next to the sink, and she must be near about as old as I am.”

  “But Blythe isn’t a housemother,” I said. “It shouldn’t be her business to look after these girls just because she lives in the dorm.”

  “I know, but she babies those girls something awful. Should’ve had about ten of her own,” Jo Nell said. “Anyway, Willene said Blythe came back to the dorm sometime before dawn to get the sick girl some fresh pajamas, and one of the students at Emma Harris had left a note on her door about the Hunter girl.”

  Ellis muttered something that sounded like “shit” and threw her stitching aside. “What about her?” she snarled.

  “Somebody thought they’d heard her crying and wanted Blythe to check on her, but by then the girl’s room was quiet, so naturally Blythe didn’t want to wake her. Besides, the sick one was over in the infirmary with soiled pajamas and a temperature of a hundred and two.” My cousin eyed Ellis’s wadded-up needlework with a look of dismay. “A person can’t be in two places at once,” she said.

  I said I guessed they couldn’t and put away the last pan. “Why does Blythe Cornelius live in the dorm?” I asked.

  “Couldn’t find a place to rent when she started to work there and the college had it available. I don’t think she pays much for it,” Jo Nell said. “And it is convenient. A lot of the staff at Sarah Bedford live in faculty housing. That whole block across from the campus belongs to the college, you know, and then there’s a couple of apartment units as well.”

  “Is that where Willene Benson lives?” Ellis asked.

  “Oh, no. Willene lives right on campus in that little brick building behind administration. Used to be a garage. She and Blythe kind of keep one another company, I think. Blythe came from a big family, but most of her relatives are scattered now. And Willene…well, there’s something a little sad about her. Can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  I told her how Willene had acted when the police came. “Couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “High-strung,” Jo Nell said. “And timid as a mouse.”

  Ellis scowled as she examined the finger she’d stuck with a needle. “If Willene Benson had lived a hundred years ago,” she said, “she’d probably have the vapors.”

  Having had her fill of the local gossip and lemon mystery, my cousin prepared to leave. “You just be careful on that campus, Lucy Nan Pilgrim! No tellin’ who’s lurking around over there. Until they find that professor or whoever’s responsible for that girl’s murder, nobody’s safe anymore.”

  But if Professor Hornsby was responsible for killing D. C. Hunter, why did he wait so long to leave? I wondered.

  “Maybe he didn’t think he’d get caught,” Celeste suggested the next day as we measured walnut hulls into an iron pot and added water and salt to set the dye. One of the women who demonstrated spinning at Bellawood had donated skeins of wool for our experiment, only we cheated, using the gas stoves in the Home Economics Department instead of an open fire. When the water was dark enough, we would simmer the yarn until it turned a rich brown.

  Looking thoughtful, Debra, Celeste’s roommate, stirred the potent brew. “Wonder when Paula and Miriam will come back to class. I heard they were so shook up they’ve been excused for the next few days. Just think—it could’ve been one of us. It could’ve been me!”

  “You saw her, didn’t you, Miss Lucy?” Celeste wanted to know. “Did he really…you know…cut her with a sickle?”

  I closed my eyes against the thought. “I didn’t see any sickle. It was enough to know she was dead.” But I had noticed the plastic container of breath mints that I later heard bore Professor Hornsby’s fingerprints. However, both Paula and Miriam had reported seeing the dark-stained sickle beside the girl’s body.

  “I heard they’d been screwin’ around—oops, sorry!” One of the girls flushed and grinned. “I mean getting it on out there for weeks. ‘Horny’ Hornsby, they call him. And all this time I’ve been sitting right there in his class. Gives me the creeps! I wonder what she saw in him.”

  “Or he in her,” Celeste said. “But he didn’t have to kill her.”

  “She was gone all day Friday, you know, and so was he. They must’ve met somewhere,” Troll suggested. “Maybe he wanted to break it off and she threatened to tell his wife. That’s probably why she was crying the next morning.” Troll was one of a group tending simmering pokeberries at the next stove and she carelessly shoved hair from her face, leaving a dark red smear. Though the girls were swathed in huge aprons and wore rubber gloves almost to their elbows, it was impossible to protect every inch. My old once-white sneakers were spattered in yellowish-brown, and I knew I had painted my nose when I gave in to an itch.

  “Wait just a minute,” I said. “We don’t know that he did kill her.”

  Celeste fanned away walnut fumes and made a face. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “Maybe he’s just scared,” I said.

  She shrugged. “That makes two of us.”

  It occurred to me as I drove home that afternoon that not one person had mentioned the suspicious letter D. C. Hunter was supposed to have received in the mail, which must mean that only the police knew about it. “Just like that other girl got,” the sergeant had said. But what other girl? The girl who was killed four years ago? If only I knew what had been inside that envelope!

  “What envelope?” Augusta asked when I told her about it that night.

  “Then they must be keeping it quiet for a reason,” she said when I told her what I had heard at Blythe Cornelius’s apartment. “And by the way, your cousin called and left a message just before you got home. Seems the professor turned himself in this afternoon.”

  “Where was he? Has he admitted anything?”

  “Jo Nell said he showed up at the police station around four—been staying with a relative. Says he didn’t do it.” Augusta had laid a fire in the sitting room and now she gazed at the embers, absently stroking Clementine’s black-and-white head. “I wonder how long he’s been at the college. Could he have had anything to do with the other girl’s death?”

  “I’m sure Captain Hardy’s looking into that,” I said. “He seems to know what he’s doing. Do you think there might be a connection?”

  Augusta’s amber necklace reflected the flickering blaze on the hearth. “It might be a good idea,” she said, “to look into some of the old newspaper files. You never can tell what might turn up.”

  “But don’t you think the police have already done that?”

  The angel turned her gray-green gaze on me. “That’s just the point, Lucy Na
n. You’ll be looking at this with an open mind. You just might catch something that went right past them. Something so ordinary they wouldn’t think it was important.”

  I frowned. “You mean like mysterious letters?”

  “I mean, you’ll know it when you see it,” she said.

  Chapter Six

  I wasn’t so sure about that, so I convinced Augusta to come along with me. It didn’t take a lot of persuading.

  Stone’s Throw’s weekly newspaper, The Messenger (Ellis calls it The Mess because she claims there’s a typo on every other line), shares a yellow brick building facing the town park with Petal Pushers, the new florist (“We sell every blooming thing!”) and McBride’s Pharmacy.

  The receptionist put her telephone conversation on hold long enough to point out the small room where back issues were kept on microfilm, and Augusta, fascinated by the whole procedure, hovered over my shoulder as I scanned several weeks of news. “Imagine getting all that information on that little piece of film!” she said as the pages rolled past. I didn’t bother to explain that technology had developed an even more advanced technique used by most contemporary publishers.

  Rachel Isaacs’s murder took up most of the front page of the October 5 issue that year. Londus Clack had discovered the girl’s submerged body caught on debris just beneath the surface of the water as he trimmed the tall grass around the lake. She had been stunned or knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, then apparently was shoved into the water to drown.

  “‘The victim could have stood if she had been able, as the water was only about four feet deep in the spot where she was found,’” Augusta read aloud. “That poor girl! What a cruel thing to do!” She sank onto the chair next to mine, her gray-green eyes filled with the horror of it.