Sisters in Crime

by Mike Ashley

  Now, though I had obtained no positive information, when I came to ponder upon the negative aspects of the case I found much to think about and make me feel apprehensive lest all my high opinions of this fascinating pair were going to be ‘unshipped’, to use a nautical phrase.

  Evidently Madame had strong reasons for the silence which she maintained concerning the past of her son and herself. I wanted to be able to show the baronet that they really were the aristocrats they seemed to be, but it appeared as if I were going to be foiled by the unconscious subjects of our little experiment themselves.

  Refugees abounded in and near London, and so many of them were eventually proved to be fugitives for criminal instead of political reasons that it was of imperative importance that those who had nothing disgraceful to conceal should be perfectly open regarding their past. Why then, I reflected, was Madame so secretive? It was while pondering this question that a certain doubt entered my head for the first time.

  It was one of the many recommendations of this mother and son that they spoke English with a perfectly pure and native accent. Could it be that they were not Poles after all and that the land of the Lecszinskys and Sobieskis knew them not? The supposition was startling, for if proved to be impostors in one direction it was natural to suppose that all was not well with them in other ways.

  I had been nearly a week masquerading as a literary gentleman without having made any actual or definite discoveries when our handsome young friend came home one day looking very ill indeed and complaining of frightful pains in his head. Every mother is alarmed when her only child is smitten with sudden illness, but I never saw anything to equal Madame’s terror and prostration. We soon had a doctor on the spot who found the mother almost as helpless as the son, who, after lying down on his bed dressed as he had come home, seemed incapable of further effort or movement.

  ‘He must be got into bed at once,’ said the doctor. ‘He has been overworked, and I should fancy he has had a great deal of worry with the result that he has broken down. It will be a case of brain fever, I expect. I will look in again in an hour, by which time you will have him as comfortable as possible.’

  I was the only man in the house at the time, and Mrs Hales was unfeignedly thankful that I should be at hand to render assistance in undressing poor Feodor, who was by this time quite unconscious. But when I offered to commence this necessary duty at once, Madame became terribly excited and implored both Mrs Hales and myself to leave the room, saying that she could manage very well herself.

  As this was clearly an utter impossibility, for the old lady was very fragile, I gently resisted her importunities and said that I would leave the room after seeing our patient safely in bed.

  But Madame became so excited and distressed that we hardly knew what to do until Mrs Hales whispered, ‘I am afraid the poor old lady will be laid up, too, if we do not humour her. Just go into the next room while I try to persuade her. I will come for you directly.’

  In two minutes she followed me, not, however, to urge me to return, but because Madame had fiercely refused to allow her to remain and had then locked the door behind her to prevent intrusion on our part. We listened anxiously at the door, determined to break it open if necessary. It was just as we expected. We heard the old lady panting with exertion for a few moments, and then a smothered shriek told us that something was amiss.

  In another second I had put my back to the wall and my foot to the door, forcing the latter from its hinges with very little trouble.

  A singular spectacle met our gaze. Madame had fallen fainting to the floor while Feodor had sprung from the bed and was wildly pacing the room, uttering unintelligible sentences, probably in some language which we did not understand. I promptly raised Madame and carried her into the adjoining room, placing her upon the couch pro tem. Then I hurried back to Feodor’s assistance. He had already collapsed again, and Mrs Hales was preventing him from sinking.

  Together we placed him upon the bed, having previously turned the covers down ready to receive him. Then we rapidly proceeded to divest him of his upper clothing. No sooner, however, had we removed the vest than we made a startling discovery, which fully accounted for Madame’s reluctance to permit us to remain in the room.

  A dramatic situation is none the less dramatic because it is hailed in commonplace language, and Mrs Hales’s horrified exclamation – ‘Oh, my goodness gracious! It’s a woman!’ – was just as much of a surprise to me as if her discovery had been announced in classical phraseology.

  A woman! Well, this was a complication I had never thought of! But I judged it best to leave Mrs Hales in possession while I attended to Madame’s wants and held myself prepared to render immediate help should it be necessary. However, my aid was not needed as the patient remained quiet for a while. Not so Madame.

  On recovering from her swoon she looked into my face, and, reading there that her secret was betrayed, she gave way to an outburst of grief which made me feel very sorry for her, saying that her darling Feodor was now ruined.

  I used my best endeavours to console her but had not made much progress in this direction when the doctor appeared. He was considerably surprised to find that his patient was a woman who had been masquerading in man’s clothes, but he was discreet and promised to keep the secret until the mother could be induced to give her reasons for taking part in so strange a farce.

  A few hours later our interesting patient was in the care of a competent nurse who had been summoned after all traces of Feodor’s assumption of masculinity, even to the smart little false moustache, had been removed, and we had persuaded Madame of the advisability of being perfectly open and candid now that there was no longer any possibility of concealing Feodor’s true sex.

  This, in brief, is the lady’s story. She and her daughter were not Poles, as I had begun to suspect. But Madame was really the widow of an English baronet, and her daughter, whose real name was Feodore, had been born and brought up under the happiest auspices. Unfortunately, the estates of Sir Godfrey Bryant were strictly entailed, and when he was killed in the hunting field it was found that for neither wife nor child had any provision been made. The new baronet was greedy, insolent and cruel and barely gave his aunt and cousin time to vacate the beloved home which they had never dreamed of losing.

  For Lady Bryant to think of throwing herself upon the charity of erstwhile friends was as impossible as it was for her to attempt to earn her own livelihood at her age. But Feodore proved equal to the burdens laid upon her brave young shoulders. After a good deal of anxious thought she announced her plan of campaign to her mother, but it was some time before she could induce her to agree to it, though the reasons she urged were cogent enough.

  ‘I shall never have the same chance of earning a livelihood by appearing as my natural self that I should have if I posed as an interesting male foreign refugee,’ she had said, and the sequel proved that she was right.

  A certain noble lord was taken into confidence, and his recommendations and testimonials soon procured employment for the young professor. Her own abilities and personal qualities did the rest.

  All things considered, I saw no reason why the brave girl’s secret should be made public, and, as the doctor and Mrs Hales were also of my opinion, Miss Bryant might have figured again as a Polish professor after her recovery but for one thing. I urged Lady Bryant to permit me to explain the real state of affairs to Sir Selby Grant, since his daughter was so much in love with Feodore that it would require a strong remedy to cure her – nothing short of the truth, in fact.

  Lady Bryant was not so reluctant as might have been imagined, for she was actually acquainted with Sir Selby and knew him for a generous, kind-hearted gentleman who would respect the confidence placed in him.

  But she scarcely anticipated the actual result of this confidence. I made it my business to see Sir Selby at once and explain the whole affair to him, and he, in his turn, told his daughter that she had bestowed her maiden affections upon a woman. So
far from this producing any ill effect upon the girl, she said that there was now nothing which need prevent her from visiting her dear friend. Her father agreed with her, and even accompanied her to pay his respects to his old friend Lady Bryant.

  Matters were kept very quiet for a time, but as soon as Miss Bryant was convalescent she and her mother were taken to Grant Lodge to pay a long visit to the baronet and his daughter.

  The last time I heard of them Miss Bryant had become Lady Grant. Her mother was comfortably established in a dower house attached to the Grant estate, and she was perfectly idolized by her stepdaughter Mabel, who had consented to marry Lord Gutherton at no distant date.

  As for myself, I received such a handsome special douceur for my pains that a few such well-paid cases would have enabled me to enter my name on the retiring list long ago.

  Mary E. Wilkins

  THE LONG ARM

  Mary Eleanor Wilkins (1852–1930) – who became Mary Wilkins Freeman after her marriage in 1902 – was one of the best of the New England regional writers in the years up to and just after the end of the nineteenth century. She was best known for her short stories and particularly her ghost stories, some of which were collected in The Wind in the Rose-Bush (1903). Her novel Pembroke (1894) contains echoes of much of Mary’s own life, exploring a series of romantic entanglements and disappointments in a small town in Massachusetts. The subtext of sexual tension and repression reflects Mary’s own strict religious upbringing and what some have suggested were her suppressed lesbian tendencies. Wilkins had a strong attachment for her childhood friend Mary Wales, with whom she lived for sixteen years before her marriage to Dr Charles Freeman. Though Wilkins initially revelled in her marriage, chiefly because it meant she was no longer thought of as an old spinster, it was not a happy relationship, and the couple later separated after Dr Freeman’s decline into alcoholism.

  ‘The Long Arm’ has become recognized as one of the nineteenth century’s significant lesbian texts. It is one of the few detective stories that Mary Wilkins wrote, and it came about when her friend Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, then editor of Youth’s Companion magazine, wrote to her about the notorious case of Lizzie Borden, who was tried but acquitted of the murder of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892. The crime was never solved. Chamberlin suggested to Mary that maybe they could try to solve the crime in fiction. How much Chamberlin contributed to the final story is not known, and it is probable that Wilkins wrote it entirely while incorporating suggestions by Chamberlin. The final story won a $2,000 story contest sponsored by The Critic in July 1895 and was syndicated in many US newspapers and published complete in Britain in Chapman’s Magazine in August 1895. While it doesn’t solve the Lizzie Borden case it was the first, and remains the most important, story to be inspired by the murders.

  The Long Arm

  I

  The Tragedy

  From notes written by Miss Sarah Fairbanks immediately after the report of the Grand Jury.

  AS I TAKE my pen to write this I have a feeling that I am in the witness box – for, or against myself, which? The place of the criminal in the dock I will not voluntarily take. I will affirm neither my innocence nor my guilt. I will present the facts of the case as impartially and as coolly as if I had nothing at stake. I will let all who read this judge me as they will.

  This I am bound to do, since I am condemned to something infinitely worse than the life-cell or the gallows. I will try my own self in lieu of judge and jury; my guilt or my innocence I will prove to you all, if it be in mortal power. In my despair I am tempted to say I care not which it may be, so something be proved. Open condemnation could not overwhelm me like universal suspicion.

  Now, first, as I have heard is the custom in the courts of law, I will present the case. I am Sarah Fairbanks, a country schoolteacher, twenty-nine years of age. My mother died when I was twenty-three. Since then, while I have been teaching at Digby, a cousin of my father’s, Rufus Bennett, and his wife have lived with my father. During the long summer vacation they returned to their little farm in Vermont, and I kept house for my father.

  For five years I have been engaged to be married to Henry Ellis, a young man whom I met in Digby. My father was very much opposed to the match and had told me repeatedly that if I insisted upon marrying him in his lifetime he would disinherit me. On this account Henry never visited me at my own home, while I could not bring myself to break off my engagement. Finally, I wished to avoid an open rupture with my father. He was quite an old man, and I was the only one he had left of a large family.

  I believe that parents should honour their children as well as children their parents, but I had arrived at this conclusion: in nine-tenths of the cases wherein children marry against their parents’ wishes, even when the parents have no just grounds for opposition, the marriages are unhappy.

  I sometimes felt that I was unjust to Henry and resolved that, if ever I suspected that his fancy turned towards any other girl, I would not hinder it, especially as I was getting older and, I thought, losing my good looks.

  A little while ago a young and pretty girl came to Digby to teach the school in the south district. She boarded in the same house with Henry. I heard that he was somewhat attentive to her, and I made up my mind I would not interfere. At the same time it seemed to me that my heart was breaking. I heard her people had money, too, and she was an only child. I had always felt that Henry ought to marry a wife with money because he had nothing himself and was not very strong.

  School closed five weeks ago, and I came home for the summer vacation. The night before I left Henry came to see me and urged me to marry him. I refused again, but I never before had felt that my father was so hard and cruel as I did that night. Henry said that he should certainly see me during the vacation, and when I replied that he must not come he was angry and said … but such foolish things are not worth repeating. Henry has really a very sweet temper and would not hurt a fly.

  The very night of my return home Rufus Bennett and my father had words about some maple sugar which Rufus made on his Vermont farm and sold to father, who made a good trade for it to some people in Boston. That was father’s business. He had once kept a store but had given it up and sold a few articles that he could make a large profit on here and there at wholesale. He used to send to New Hampshire and Vermont for butter, eggs and cheese. Cousin Rufus thought father did not allow him enough profit on the maple sugar, and in the dispute father lost his temper and said that Rufus had given him underweight. At that, Rufus swore an oath and seized father by the throat. Rufus’s wife screamed, ‘Oh, don’t! Don’t! Oh, he’ll kill him!’

  I went up to Rufus and took hold of his arm.

  ‘Rufus Bennett,’ said I, ‘you let go of my father!’

  But Rufus’s eyes glared like a madman’s, and he would not let go. Then I went to the desk drawer where father had kept a pistol since some houses in the village were broken into. I got out the pistol, laid hold of Rufus again and held the muzzle against his forehead.

  ‘You let go of my father,’ said I, ‘or I’ll fire!’

  Then Rufus let go, and father dropped like a log. He was purple in the face. Rufus’s wife and I worked a long time over him to bring him to.

  ‘Rufus Bennett,’ said I, ‘go to the well and get a pitcher of water.’ He went, but when father had revived and got up Rufus gave him a look that showed he was not over his rage.

  ‘I’ll get even with you yet, Martin Fairbanks, old man as you are!’ he shouted out and went into the outer room.

  We got father to bed soon. He slept in the bedroom downstairs, out of the sitting-room. Rufus and his wife had the north chamber, and I had the south one. I left my door open that night and did not sleep. I listened; no one stirred in the night. Rufus and his wife were up very early in the morning, and before nine o’clock left for Vermont. They had a day’s journey and would reach home about nine in the evening. Rufus’s wife bade father goodbye, crying, while Rufus w
as getting their trunk downstairs; but Rufus did not go near father nor me. He ate no breakfast; his very back looked ugly when he went out of the yard.

  That very day about seven in the evening, after tea, I had just washed the dishes and put them away and went out on the north doorstep where father was sitting and sat down on the lowest step. There was a cool breeze there; it had been a very hot day.

  ‘I want to know if that Ellis fellow has been to see you any lately?’ said father all at once.

  ‘Not a great deal,’ I answered.

  ‘Did he come to see you the last night you were there,’ said father. ‘Yes, sir,’ said I, ‘he did come.’

  ‘If you ever have another word to say to that fellow while I live I’ll kick you out of the house like a dog, daughter of mine though you be,’ said he. Then he swore a great oath and called God to witness. ‘Speak to that fellow again, if you dare, while I live!’ said he.

  I did not say a word. I just looked up at him as I sat there. Father turned pale and shrank back and put his hand to his throat where Rufus had clutched him. There were some purple finger marks there.

  ‘I suppose you would have been glad if he had killed me,’ father cried out.

  ‘I saved your life,’ said I.

  ‘What did you do with that pistol?’ he asked.

  ‘I put it back in the desk drawer.’

  I got up and went around and sat on the west doorstep, which is the front one. As I sat there the bell rang for the Tuesday evening meeting, and Phoebe Dole and Maria Woods, two old maiden ladies, dressmakers, our next-door neighbours, went past on their way to the meeting. Phoebe stopped and asked if Rufus and his wife were gone. Maria went around the house. Very soon they went on, and several other people passed. When they had all gone it was as still as death.