The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders

by Mignon F. Ballard

  Augusta must have noticed the anxiety in my voice because she reached out and touched my arm. “We’re almost there,” she said in her soothing lullaby voice.

  Still, it seemed we should have been there by now and I was beginning to wonder if we had taken a wrong turn when I saw the welcoming beam of a flashlight approaching and a familiar voice called my name. Nettie!

  “I’ve never been as glad to see anybody in all my life!” I yelled as the two of us hugged each other in the wavering yellow light. The man who held it was in uniform and looked as though he’d like for us to quit dancing around in the road and get inside where it was warm. He had a point.

  Augusta, I noticed, had already gone ahead and Nettie rode with me while the man with the light led the way. Ed Tillman had called the sheriff’s department there, my neighbor told me, and they told her I was on my way. “Where is she?” I asked as we bumped to a stop in Miss Corrie’s slate-and-clay yard. “Is Leslie all right?” When I opened my door, I saw Nettie was crying.

  “Oh, Lucy Nan, I wish I knew! We left home so quickly this morning, we forgot to pack a lot of things we needed, so early this afternoon I drove back to Sparta to do a little emergency shopping. Couldn’t have been gone more than an hour or so, but when I got back here they were both gone…and oh, dear God, I don’t know what to think!”

  The door was unlocked, Nettie said, and she thought Miss Corrie might have taken Leslie for a walk, but when they didn’t return after an hour, she telephoned the county police. Not long after that, Ed Tillman contacted the sheriff there about Blythe Cornelius.

  “And you haven’t heard anything since?” I asked as we walked inside together.

  “Nothing, except for Henry. That’s Miss Corrie’s ‘baby’ brother—funny old man—he told me not to worry, that his sister wouldn’t let any harm come to Leslie, and not to answer the phone. And then he left, just took off in that old beat-up truck of his, and he hasn’t come back. The sheriff’s been out here off and on all night, and they’ve put out an ABC—or whatever—on Blythe Cornelius.” Nettie took my arm as we warmed ourselves by Miss Corrie’s wood-burning stove where, I noticed, Augusta was already established. “Lucy Nan, do you really believe Blythe is behind all this? She seemed genuinely fond of those girls. And to think Leslie was right there in the building with her all that time!”

  “Yes, I believe it,” I said, and told her about Leslie’s phone call to Joy Ellen. “She must have called while you were out shopping—when she realized Blythe had been lying about seeing D. C. Hunter the night before she disappeared.”

  Nettie frowned. “Do you suppose that’s why Corrie took her away?”

  “Probably,” I said, to reassure myself as well as Nettie, “and maybe it’s just as well that she did.” I told her about Blythe locking me in the closet, but I didn’t tell her how she learned about Leslie’s identity. I never would. “Blythe took only two things from my handbag—Corrie’s address and my cell phone. I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to call.”

  “I expect she has,” Nettie said. “Corrie’s phone has rung several times, but Henry told me not to answer it, so I didn’t.” She nodded toward the lanky policeman. “James here stays in touch with everyone through his radio.”

  James had taken up residence in the kitchen, where he cracked and ate pecans and stayed in contact with his partner at the county sheriff’s department. He was there for the night, he assured us, and later, when Nettie was out of hearing range, confided that Blythe’s tan Buick had been sighted in the area.

  “Where?” I whispered. “How long ago was this?”

  He concentrated on picking a nut meat from its shell, then got up and loped to the window, squinting into the darkness. “Couple of times, ’bout ten minutes apart, but by the time we got there she was gone. Must know we’re on her tail, though. Last sighting was less than an hour ago.”

  “Then Leslie and Miss Corrie couldn’t be with her. They disappeared long before Blythe had time to get up here.” But where were they? And if they were safe, why didn’t they let us know?

  “You don’t think she’s found them, do you?” I spoke softly so Nettie wouldn’t hear. “I mean, Blythe doesn’t know the area, except maybe how to get here, and she must know you’re watching the house.”

  He nodded, and I could see he was avoiding my gaze. “Well, I reckon she could’ve called the girl on her cell phone—looks like she took it with her—told her some story or other to get her to meet her somewhere.”

  But knowing what Leslie did, I didn’t think she would agree to that. In the darkness outside the window a cold wind rattled the bare branches of a sourwood tree by the back porch. Surely the two women had taken shelter from the bone-chilling weather. “Does Miss Corrie have a car?” I asked.

  “No,” James said, “but her brother Henry does, and it’s not here.”

  And neither was Henry.

  Later, when Nettie disappeared into the kitchen to make hot chocolate to go with our “supper” of applesauce cake, Augusta reminded me that I hadn’t yet spoken with Eva Jean Philbeck to warn her about Blythe Cornelius.

  I was relieved to find her at home. “Blythe Cornelius…Blythe Cornelius…” I could almost hear the whirring of her mind. Then a gasp. “No, it can’t be! There was a woman by that name—I think it was Cornelius—in one of my classes when I took a few courses in summer school back in…”

  “When? When was it?”

  “It was the summer before Ken’s accident. Blythe and I took a computer course together. I’d been wanting to learn and she was working on a business degree. She seemed lonely. She was a widow, she said, and sometimes we’d have lunch together, or go for coffee or something. She told me she didn’t have any family, and I think she just wanted somebody to talk to.” Eva Jean’s voice quivered. “I think I must have talked too much.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “I told her about the Mad Jabberwocks. Oh, Lucy, I must have started it all!”

  After she had composed herself Eva Jean told me how the subject had come about. “We were talking about college,” she said. “Blythe was putting herself through school and I told her how I admired her for it, and how we had kind of taken things for granted at Sarah Bedford. She seemed interested—asked me about going to school there, when I was there, things like that. Of course I thought she was just being polite. Her sister went to school at Sarah Bedford, she said. And I suppose I must have been feeling guilty because I told her about our silly little club and how I was afraid we were to blame for a girl’s death. That always bothered me, you know—bothered me a lot—and Blythe was easy to talk to. You’ve met her, you know how she is.”

  What willpower it must have taken for Blythe Cornelius to appear calm and friendly after Eva Jean’s confession, I thought. A few months later she began her campaign of revenge, and the next year came to Sarah Bedford as Dean Holland’s secretary and took rooms in Emma P. Harris Hall. I felt a flulike chill just thinking of it.

  “How could she be sure these girls would be coming to Sarah Bedford?” I asked.

  “There was no way she could be positive, but I must have mentioned that Audrey and Irene had planned to send their daughters there. A lot of alums send their children to Sarah Bedford. Ken would probably have gone there, too, if he’d been a girl. It is a good little school, you know, for all our bad-mouthing it.”

  Or was. I hoped it could survive.

  Later I dozed in the old cane-back rocking chair in Miss Corrie’s tiny front parlor with one of her colorful handmade afghans over my lap. I had insisted that Nettie stretch out on the daybed, and although she swore she’d never sleep a wink, now and then I heard a soft little snore coming from beneath the faded patchwork quilt. The old house was cooling now, and once in a while a coal popped in the stove on the hearth. I was glad when the Walravens’ big white cat, Aunt Mamie, leaped into my lap and curled up like a warm muff.

  Captain Hardy had called earlier to get a report from James
, and to tell me he was trying to come up with a law I was breaking so he could lock me away. “If we’d known what was on your mind,” he said, “we would’ve let you stay in that closet! If Blythe Cornelius hadn’t been in such a hurry she would have silenced you the way she did Londus Clack. There’s no telling what the woman might do if your paths cross again.

  “Thought I’d better warn you,” he added. “We got a call a little while ago from Willene Benson—says her gun is missing. She got to worrying after you left there today and thought she’d better check. Thinks Blythe Cornelius must’ve taken it sometime before she got home this afternoon. Blythe has a key to her place, she said.”

  When the young patrolman went outside to check the grounds, I told Augusta what I had learned. “The captain said they were keeping in close contact with the sheriff here, but it looks like Blythe has gone underground for the night.”

  “Of course she might be anywhere,” Augusta reminded me. “There are plenty of places to hide in the mountains.”

  “Thank you for that comforting thought,” I said.

  Augusta warmed her hands at the stove. “What manner of person could hide her wickedness so well that she won not only the trust, but in some cases, the love of her intended victims?” Her eyes darkened to the same smoky twilight blue as the necklace she wore. “Poisoned with bitterness,” she said. “What a sad waste.”

  After a good bit of backtracking, I told her, Captain Hardy said they had dredged up enough information on Blythe Cornelius to explain the reasons for her mad behavior. Carolyn Steele, the girl who fell while attempting what she thought was an initiation requirement, was Blythe’s younger sister and only living relative. The two girls were orphaned at an early age, he said, and lived on a farm outside Columbia with an elderly aunt. After she died when Carolyn was ten, and Blythe, twenty, Blythe raised the child herself and saved for her education. Carolyn was all the family she had and she devoted herself to her.

  “But she must have married,” Augusta whispered with a glance at my sleeping neighbor, “since the sisters didn’t share the same last name.”

  Several years after Carolyn’s death, I explained, Blythe fell in love with Jack Cornelius, a carpenter, but they had been married only a short time when he was killed in an accident on a construction site. Lonely and bitter, when Blythe learned the truth about her sister’s death, the canker of vengeance grew until it blotted out everything else.

  “I suppose her pathetic need for a family led Blythe to invent one with other people’s old photographs,” Augusta said.

  I nodded. “Probably the only real family picture the woman owned was the one on her living room table, the photograph of the two sisters as children.”

  And now she had a gun. There was no verse about firearms in the “Jabberwocky” poem, but now that she was this close to the end, I didn’t think Blythe Cornelius would be a stickler for details.

  I shifted in my chair, waking the cat. The contours of the rocker had been molded to somebody with a much bigger bottom than Miss Corrie’s skinny little fanny, and the cushion underneath me did little to fill the hollow. I was on the edge of sleep when a car pulled up outside and a low exchange of male voices came from the kitchen. A few minutes later I heard the groaning of footsteps in the small back room and a light shone under the door. Henry must be home. Had he found Miss Corrie and Leslie? I threw off my lap robe to ask James, but he must have anticipated my question because he came to the door and whispered, “Go on back to sleep. I’ll wake you if we hear anything, but there’s not much we can do until morning.”

  The next thing I knew I was looking up at Santa Claus in earflaps, and Augusta was nowhere around.

  Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, I thought as I squinted past the not-so-little round belly and into his broad bearded face. He wore an ancient leather jacket over bib overalls and smelled of fresh sawdust. “It’s time,” Henry Walraven said.

  I yawned and pulled the coverlet up to my chin. “Time for what?”

  “If you want to see Corrie and the girl, we’d best be leavin’ now.”

  I heard a noise behind me and saw that Nettie was already dressed for the outdoors and had even found a pair of Leslie’s socks and walking shoes for me. I dug my gloves out of my jacket pocket, pulled the warm hood over my head, and started after them. The three of us left quietly out the front way because James was asleep with his head on the kitchen table and his feet sprawled on either side of his chair. The old Seth Thomas clock on Miss Corrie’s mantel that probably had ticked away at least a century said twelve minutes past six, and it was still dark outside.

  A current of warm air had descended on the mountain during the night and thick fog clung to the landscape. I could hardly see two feet in front of me, but Henry seemed to know where he was going, so Nettie and I followed along behind him, wading through tall wet grass and shoving aside branches. At one point the old man held apart rusty strands of barbed wire so that we could step through into what once must have been a pasture. On the other side he helped us over a clear stream that gurgled past smooth brown rocks.

  Still we climbed. Twigs snapped underfoot and we fought our way through loops of snakelike kudzu vines, dormant and brown for the winter. I smelled wood smoke from somebody’s fire, and a couple of squirrels scampered past, but other than our noisy passage they were the only signs of activity. I glanced at Nettie, puffing as she walked, but with a determined look on her round face. That treadmill she’d invested in last year must be paying off, as she didn’t seem as out of breath as I was.

  Henry had not spoken since we left the house and I had no idea what had happened to Augusta. Were we crazy to trust this strange old man without waking the sleeping policeman? Nettie pointed out that he had even pinned up the two dogs to keep them from following us. Now we seemed to be wandering aimlessly, following no path that I could see, and I had no idea where we were going.

  Finally we stopped, and through filmy patches of fog I saw the tops of trees below. It seemed we had been walking for at least an hour, but when I looked at my watch I saw that it had only been about thirty-five minutes.

  “Do-law, these old bones are about to give out on me!” Nettie said, taking advantage of a convenient rock to sit and rest. I was glad to join her.

  Henry shoved his cap in his pocket and smiled at us. “Oughtta be there right soon now.”

  “Where?” I asked. “Where are we going?”

  “Goin’ to Mama Doc’s up on the ridge a piece.”

  Nettie wiped moisture from her face with what she once jokingly called her “dew rag.” “Mama Doc’s. Is that where they are? Leslie and Miss Corrie?” Her tone said, You’d better not mess with me, man!

  Henry nodded. “Used to be the ‘yarb’ woman, Mama Doc did. Still does a little doctorin’, I reckon, but she’s gettin’ on close to ninety. Ain’t nobody knows whar she lives ’cept we’uns that growed up here. Nobody goin’ find her there.”

  After Henry started talking, seems like he didn’t want to stop. He told us how Blythe had called the day before and Leslie recognized her voice when she answered the phone. “Scared that young’un plumb to death, and Corrie knew she had to get her away from there afore dark.” He had driven his pickup all over the county the night before, he said, to see if he could catch a glimpse of Blythe’s car. “Got good eyesight,” he bragged. “Just as good as when I was a young’un, but I never seen it.”

  It wasn’t long afterward that I began to feel uneasy. I felt exposed, vulnerable, and longed for a nice safe hole to hide in. I could tell Henry sensed it, too. The two of us walked in silence, with me looking over my shoulder now and then to be sure no one was behind us, but Nettie kept up a constant chatter. Now that she knew Leslie was safe, she expressed her admiration for just about everything in sight: the size of the trees, the view from the hillside, the trickle of water over mossy stones.

  Finally, with a shake of his head, Henry laid a finger aside of his nose, making him look even
more like an old Coca-Cola ad. Nettie looked at me and shrugged, but plodded on in silence. The land had leveled off some, so the climb wasn’t as steep now, but fog had settled even closer in the higher regions, almost obscuring the ground.

  “Now, right hyare’s where the way branches off,” Henry said in a louder-than-usual voice. “The left leads back down toward the main road, but we want to keep straight. Mama Doc’s is jest a little ways ahead.” And he shot out his stout arms like a crossing guard, forcing Nettie and me behind him onto the path to the left, then signaled us to continue quietly up the hillside.

  One look at Nettie McGinnis told me she suspected the same thing I did. Someone—possibly Blythe Cornelius—was following us up the mountain, and yet I wasn’t afraid. Augusta was near. I could sense her reassuring presence, and I silently took my neighbor’s hand, hoping to pass along my new-found confidence. At this point it was essential that we remain calm—or “think blue,” as Augusta says. And Nettie must have gotten the message because she gave me a stiff little smile and squeezed my fingers.

  Draped in fog and with Henry in the lead, we inched a few steps farther until he directed us to crouch behind a large out-cropping of rock. Nettie’s knees popped as she stooped and I held my breath as I heard the crunch of footsteps coming closer. Leaning against the rock, Nettie stiffened and held a hand to her mouth as though to silence her breathing. We knew who it would be.

  I heard her breathing before the mist parted briefly and we saw her pass below us. A green plaid shawl covered her short graying curls and she wore the collar of her navy jacket turned up against the weather, but I recognized Blythe Cornelius. And she was carrying a gun. She must have hidden close by in her car all night waiting for us to lead her to Leslie, and if any of us made the slightest noise she wouldn’t have to be a crack shot to bring one of us down.