The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17

by Lisa Scottoline

  Yes, Mr. Hedges, I’m getting on. I just want you to see what it meant to me when Jasper Thorley came to board.

  If I had just one word to describe Jasper Thorley, it would be kind. Kind to everything and everybody. He’s the first teacher Oak Ridge ever had who didn’t have to lick the daylights out of the older boys just to prove he could. Jasper would just smile and get their minds off on something else, or maybe laugh with them if the trick was really good. He seemed to feel they were all there to learn something, him along with the scholars. Why, once he took a whole afternoon to let Pete Marsden talk about trapping, and then Jasper showed them how to make a new kind that caught but didn’t hurt the rabbits.

  And it came out at the trial how he and Amos had almost come to blows over the mare Amos used for plowing when he shouldn’t. And he walked all the way to Tabor to find homes for Priscilla’s kittens, the ones Miss Thyrza had told him to drown. Why, Mr. Hedges, that cat didn’t even have a name till Jasper came; it was just the cat to rid the barn of mice, but he made her a personality.

  And as for me—

  It wasn’t only that he was always patient and ready to explain, while most folks cut it short rather than bother with a slate and squeaky pencil, but he acted like he was glad, that it meant something to him, too, that he was learning from me. And he used to tell me how Edison said it was a blessing to be deaf as it let him concentrate on his work, and that Beethoven, who was a famous musician, couldn’t hear a note. And he said nature always made it up to people like me by increasing their other faculties, that I could “feel” things other people couldn’t—like the corn shooting up on hot nights, or a rain coming on miles away, or bees getting ready to swarm.

  And he gave me books.

  It’s hard for you to understand what that meant to me, Mr. Hedges, for you believe the world is the way it seems here at Tabor and are content. But life isn’t like this. There are places where it’s bright and exciting, gay like a song, where people are noble and great and kind. Whatever comes to me, I’ll be happier for knowing there are people like that, someplace, wherever it may be, though I’ll never see them myself.

  They were books from the school library, and he’d slip them, careless-like, into my room at night with a candle (for Miss Thyrza would miss the oil from the lamp), and there I would sit, propped up in bed, with the quilt tucked around like a shawl, and my fingers stiff and blue, so cold that my breath was smoke, while the green-plastered ceiling dripped sweat and the frost traced pictures on the windowpanes—and ride with d’Artagnan and fight with Ivanhoe and dream of Lorna Doone.

  But Dickens was the one I loved best. Oliver Twist and Little Dorrit—I know them, and they would know me better than any of you in Tabor ever could. David Copperfield and Sidney Carton—“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done...”

  Yes, Mr. Hedges, I was only resting a minute. My fingers were cramped. This is the longest, and hardest, writing I’ve ever done. And I’ve hardly started. But I know what you and the district attorney want and I’ll be to it soon. “We’ll be here all day if that dummy keeps on at this rate,” you are saying. Have you forgotten I can read lips, Mr. Hedges, or don’t you care? There’s all the time in the world. (I never noticed before how Mr. Morgan bites off his words: “Let him tell it his own way. Give him rope enough...”)

  I never knew why Jasper married Miss Thyrza, but I’m sure it wasn’t for money like you folks thought.

  And I don’t believe Jasper knew either. Maybe he felt sorry for her, or maybe she told him there had been gossip. All I ever knew was what she said to Amos at breakfast one morning: “Me and Jasper was married Saturday”—they always went to town on Saturday to take the eggs to market—“and you and Ernie can start plowing the crik field today. Everything will be just as usual.”

  And it was, except that she started wearing wrappers to breakfast. Amos and I still called her Miss Thyrza, and every now and then Jasper would catch himself doing the same. That’s the way he felt toward her, too, I think; ten years’ difference between them seemed even more, for he was young for twenty-five.

  As for her, she never loved him, leastways not what I mean by love. But she liked to feel he was hers, that all the girls and women could flutter around him at church socials and school suppers but she owned him.

  Like she used to stand on a hilltop in the wind, and her nostrils would quiver and her jaw set tight, because as far as she could see the land was hers and all the crops on it, and the grain in the barns and the silo of fodder, horses, cows, hogs, and chickens—everything that breathed belonged to Thyrza Rudd!

  She took me because I could be “bound,” and marriage was her way of binding Jasper.

  That’s why she was willing to take Effie, when her father skipped out to no one knew where and her mother died and it looked as if she would have to go on the county, since she didn’t have money enough to get back to some second cousins in Tennessee and she was too old for the Home—seventeen.

  “Bring her here for a couple of days,” she told Jasper, and he did: an ugly, scrawny little thing, with peaked face, leaf-brown hair, and dull eyes, red from crying, who trembled all the time and jumped when anyone spoke to her. Miss Thyrza liked that, and when she saw how the girl took hold, what a cook she was, how quick and quiet, how grateful and beholden for any kindness, like a stray half-starved dog, she gave her a little room under the eaves and let her stay on to do for us all.

  You’ve seen spring beauties, all wilted and drooped, come back to life when you put them in water? Well, that’s the way it was with Effie for the next two years.

  Yes, sir, like spring beauties, sturdy but with a delicate grace. Her face and throat still white but stained now and then with a wildflower pink, her hair still brown but with glints of gold, and her eyes a deep blue, quiet and steady, except when she was talking to Jasper over her books (he’d helped her go on with her schooling outside), and then they’d turn black with excitement and glisten like stars.

  For Jasper helped her, lifted her up, as he did us all, and with him she had wings.

  Then suddenly Amos stopped teasing her. He’d always done things to annoy, such as tracking up the floor when it was fresh scrubbed, upsetting her kindling, eating slow to hold her back with her work. But now he began to pay her compliments and bring her store candy from town and make excuses to follow her about her work and brush against her. And once, when she was carrying a crock of milk from the springhouse, he slipped up in back and kissed her cheek. She wheeled around and threw the milk, crock and all, straight in his face, then ran to the house, crying, to scrub her cheek with lye soap. Miss Thyrza scolded her terrible for her carelessness, and she took it, afraid to tell the truth. But from then on she hated Amos and drew back whenever he came near, shivering like he was some animal she feared. And that’s the way things were up to the trial.

  Yes, Mr. Hedges, I know you know all about the trial and you needn’t swear at me either. But what you know was like the wrong side of a carpet; the pattern’s the same as on the right, but the colors are all turned about. That’s the way it was with what really happened and what came out in court.

  It was Saturday night, you remember, and Jasper and Miss Thyrza had gone to town in the afternoon as usual and stayed for the band concert. Amos was out in the yard smoking (Miss Thyrza wouldn’t allow it in the house), Effie had gone to her room, and I was reading in bed. I remember it was Heart of Midlothian. It must have been pretty late, anyway after nine, when I felt a sudden shaking of the rafters and walls, and an instant later there was the smell of smoke. A lamp’s overturned, I thought, and rushed to the door.

  There, across the hall, on the threshold of her room, stood Effie, in her nightdress, hair flying, hand clutched to her heart, and eyes wide and staring in horror. And by her side, with one arm around her shoulders and the other holding a gun, was Jasper.

  And Amos lay dead at their feet. That was the thud I had felt.

  I know that’s not th
e story you got at the trial, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I looked that up last night in the eighth-grade history book: the Constitution says no man shall be twice in jeopardy of life and limb for the same offense; and Jasper’s been tried once for killing Amos McGill. Else I shouldn’t be telling you now. And there wasn’t any perjury either—but I’ll come to that later.

  I don’t know how long we stood there, the three of us, for you can’t judge time in a moment like that.

  Then the front door opened and closed, the stairs quivered and trembled, and Miss Thyrza stood on the landing. She didn’t see Amos’s body, nor me, just the two in each other’s arms, for Jasper had dropped the gun and was trying to hush Effie’s sobs.

  And you could tell from her face all that was in her mind.

  If it hadn’t been so awful, it would have been funny. In fact, it was kind of funny anyway—at least I wanted to laugh or scream, do anything to break up the hideous thoughts that were racing through her brain.

  At last she found her tongue. I’m not sure of the words, for they poured out so fast; you’ve heard of tongue-lashings—this was one.

  “So this is why you pretended to go to Hebron and left the Birches to bring me home! No wonder you wanted to get an early start! No wonder you didn’t want me to go with you! I can see now why you were so anxious! And this hussy—” She started on Effie. “That’s what comes of taking in trash! How long has it been going on? How many times have you two—”

  Jasper cut in to explain. His face was turned so I couldn’t tell what he said, but as I learned afterward, Amos had watched Effie from the yard and when he saw her lamp go out had sneaked up the stairs to her room. Her screams had roused Jasper, who’d been home an hour or so, he’d grabbed his gun, which was always kept handy for chicken thieves, and it had gone off in the struggle.

  For the first time Miss Thyrza noticed the dead man, but even that didn’t stop her.

  “What’s it to you where Amos was going or what happened? Why should you care? Tell me that! Answer me! Tell me!”

  Tears were streaming down her face, her eyes were hawk-bright, and her fingers clasped her throat as if she was choking while she waited for him to speak. In spite of all that has happened, looking back, even now, I’m sorry for her then, for she was stripped of her pride and vanity and saw things as they were: that she was old and yellow and wrinkled and Jasper had never loved her, that no one had ever loved her or ever would.

  His answer was quick and stern: “She’s a young girl we’ve taken in our home and it’s our place to protect her.”

  Her color flowed back at that. “You’ll swear there’s been nothing between you?”

  “Yes, I’ll swear it, but I’m ashamed of you for asking, Thyrza. I’m ashamed of you and for you.”

  She believed him. It was so clearly true—you could have told by Effie’s innocent eyes as well as Jasper’s words.

  He went on: “But whatever you think, there’s no time for it now. There’s a man that’s dead—and I’ve got to give myself up.”

  Effie gave a little moan and caught his arm. Miss Thyrza’s fear came back. “What’ll you tell them?”

  “The truth,” said he.

  “And what’ll they say?” Thyrza replied. “I believe you, Jasper, but they won’t. You know they won’t. And they’ll say you’ve been carrying on with the hired girl under my very eyes. And they’ll say—” She broke off, and the awfulest fear a human can know came into her eyes—the fear of laughter. An old wife made a laughingstock by a young husband who’d married her for her money—that was in her eyes.

  Effie hadn’t even heard her words, so busy was she thinking of him. “But they can’t do anything to you, can they, Mr. Thorley?”

  “Of course they’ll do something to him! Send him to prison for life or hang him!” She was glad to turn on the girl again. “And it’s your fault. If it hadn’t been for you, none of this would have happened!”

  “Let me go with you,” Effie begged, clutching Jasper’s arm, “and tell them it was my fault, that you had to do it!”

  “To save you? That’s no defense!” Thyrza cut in savage-like. “Why should he kill a man for you? He’s got no call to protect you—you’re nothing to him! There’s no law says he’s got a right to kill anyone for you.” She turned slowly to Jasper, and you could see the plan a-borning in her eyes. “But if it was for me—if you’d done it for your wife, Jasper. If it was my bedroom Amos had come to...”

  For an hour we rehearsed the story we would tell—they wrote it down for me, word for word.

  Then we acted it out, for Miss Thyrza said she didn’t want any perjury on her soul; whatever she said on the witness stand must be the truth. Even carrying Amos to their room, with Thyrza alone, and Jasper coming up the stairs and finding him there, even the second shot to call Effie and rouse me from my book. And at midnight Jasper rode into town and gave himself up for shooting and killing Amos McGill, with a plea of the unwritten law. But Miss Thyrza needn’t have worried about the perjury, for as wife she couldn’t testify, and the only one who lied was Mr. Nichols, the lawyer, and that doesn’t count. It may in heaven but not in law, for he’s not sworn to tell the truth like witnesses. Why is that? Why doesn’t it count when a lawyer lies? Why don’t they make them swear to tell the truth like other people?

  The Birches earnestly swore how they’d brought Miss Thyrza home at half after nine that night, as Jasper had gone on to Hebron to see a man about some hogs. Then Mr. Nichols insinuated how when Jasper reached the crik he’d found the spring freshets had washed out the bridge and so had come home sooner than his wife expected. And what was to show his mare had lost a shoe and he’d never been near the crik but had reached home a good half-hour before Miss Thyrza?

  And Effie, standing out from everyone else in the courtroom—do you remember how she looked, Mr. Hedges, as if there was a light shining over her, and through her, and from her!—described the scene she saw when the shot was fired.

  Then I wrote down my answers, and also told how, back when she took me to raise, Miss Thyrza had told the matron it was to keep tongues quiet about her and Amos; and that when she was in the garden, he was in the garden, when she was in the barn, he was in the barn, and when he was in the orchard, she went traipsing after. And it was true—she was trying to egg him on with his work, but they never asked me why. Why do they make you swear to tell the whole truth, Mr. Hedges, then snap you off the minute the lawyer’s got the answer he wants and never ask you why?

  Jasper didn’t take the stand at all, just sat with his head in his hands, meeting no one’s eyes.

  But Miss Thyrza held hers high, for though she couldn’t testify, there was nothing to keep her from nodding yes to all the lawyer said so the jury could see her do it and think that’s what she’d like to say. With her eyes all bright and shiny, her hair curled and cheeks painted (the lawyer had said she must look kind of fast to bear out his story while he told what a dangerous woman she was, how irresistible and appealing), she looked real handsome, just like all the papers said.

  Altogether it was a great week for her, for it’s not every woman that’s left on the carpet for forty years who lives to hear herself called a Cleopatra with all the neighbors standing around to hear—women she’d gone to school with, men who’d called her an old maid, all standing around now, gawking and wondering.

  “Well, what any man can see in her!” That was the womenfolk’s verdict.

  But the men all kind of snickered and looked wise and said they couldn’t exactly explain but there was “something,” they’d always felt it, a certain “something.”

  Then the newspapermen from the city tried to analyze the strange lure that had set Amos and Jasper to battling for her charms. Some said it was her hawk-black eyes that held them spellbound, others said her throaty voice, others the line of her jaw and the Mona Lisa smile, cold and enigmatic; and they called her the Iron Woman Who Lures Men to Destruction, and ran her picture alongside of C
irce, Madame de Pompadour, and Ninon de Lenclos, who had lovers at the age of ninety, which was very encouraging as Miss Thyrza was still well under fifty.

  But once the verdict was in, it was like a pin in a balloon or a Fourth of July tableau when you take away the red and blue lights.

  The reporters and picturemen vanished back to the city; the lawyers, who’d got their pay in advance, melted away. Only the townsfolk were left, and Jezebel was the one she made them think of. Even the jury that had said “not guilty” because of the unwritten law skulked off as if they thought he’d protected a home, all right, like any real man should, but it wasn’t the kind they’d care to set foot in. So it was that no one grabbed his hand to wish him luck when at last he walked out of the courthouse, free; and alone he followed Miss Thyrza down the narrow, dark stairs, through the empty hall, and across the square to the hitching rings, where the surrey stood waiting.

  They were in back, I climbed in front with Effie, and we started the long drive back to the farm to pick up life again.

  I’ll never forget that cold winter sunshine and the sundogs that came up just as we turned in the lane.

  The house, on the hilltop, looked dark and lonely and evil—like a house where a murder had been, like a house where love could not live, where decency would be strangled. The tree branches twisted and writhed in the wind like black snakes over the roof; and the windows, shot with the last yellow light from over the hill, gleamed like a nest of copperheads I’d found in the woods one day.

  And it’s here my statement really starts.