Sisters in Crime

by Mike Ashley

  Neither at the preliminary examination nor before the grand jury was I allowed to make the full and frank statement that I am making here. I was told simply to answer the questions that were put to me and to volunteer nothing, and I obeyed.

  I know nothing about law. I wished to do the best I could, to act in the wisest manner, for Henry’s sake and my own. I said nothing about the green silk dress. They searched the house for all manner of things at the time of my arrest, but the dress was not there; it was in Phoebe Dole’s dye-kettle. She had come over after it one day when I was picking beans in the garden and had taken it out of the closet. She brought it back herself and told me this, after I had returned from Dedham, ‘I thought I’d get it and surprise you,’ said she. ‘It’s taken a beautiful black.’

  She gave me a strange look – half as if she would see into my very soul in spite of me; half as if she were in terror of what she would see there – as she spoke. I do not know just what Phoebe Dole’s look meant. There may have been a stain left on that dress after all, and she may have seen it.

  I suppose if it had not been for that flour paste which I had learned to make, I should have hanged for the murder of my father. As it was, the grand jury found no bill against me because there was absolutely no evidence to convict me, and I came home a free woman. And if people were condemned for their motives, would there be enough hangmen in the world?

  They found no weapon with which I could have done the deed. They found no bloodstains on my clothes. The one thing which told against me, aside from my ever-present motive, was the fact that on the morning after the murder the doors and windows were fastened. My volunteering this information had, of course, weakened its force as against myself.

  Then, too, some held that I might have been mistaken in my terror and excitement, and there was a theory, advanced by a few, that the murderer had meditated making me also a victim and had locked the doors that he might not be frustrated in his designs but had lost heart at the last and had allowed me to escape and then fled himself. Some held that he had intended to force me to reveal the whereabouts of father’s money, but his courage had failed him.

  Father had quite a sum in a hiding-place which only he and I knew. But no search for money had been made, as far as anyone could see – not a bureau drawer had been disturbed, and father’s gold watch was ticking peacefully under his pillow; even his wallet in his vest pocket had not been opened. There was a small roll of bank notes in it and some change; father never carried much money. I suppose if father’s wallet and watch had been taken, I should not have been suspected at all.

  I was discharged, as I have said, from lack of evidence and have returned to my home – free, indeed, but with this awful burden of suspicion on my shoulders. That brings me up to the present day. I returned yesterday evening. This evening Henry Ellis has been over to see me; he will not come again, for I have forbidden him to do so. This is what I said to him: ‘I know you are innocent; you know I am innocent. To all the world beside we are under suspicion – I more than you, but we are both under suspicion. If we are known to be together, that suspicion is increased for both of us. I do not care for myself, but I do care for you. Separated from me the stigma attached to you will soon fade away, especially if you should marry elsewhere –’

  Then Henry interrupted me. ‘I will never marry elsewhere,’ said he.

  I could not help being glad that he said it, but I was firm. ‘If you should see some good woman whom you could love, it will be better for you to marry elsewhere,’ said I.

  ‘I never will!’ he said again. He put his arms around me, but I had strength to push him away.

  ‘You never need, if I succeed in what I undertake before you meet the other,’ said I. I began to think he had not cared for that pretty girl who boarded in the same house after all.

  ‘What is that?’ he said. ‘What are you going to undertake?’

  ‘To find my father’s murderer,’ said I.

  Henry gave me a strange look, then, before I could stop him, he took me fast in his arms and kissed my forehead.

  As God is my witness, Sarah, I believe in your innocence,’ he said, and from that minute I have felt sustained and fully confident of my power to do what I had undertaken.

  My father’s murderer I will find. Tomorrow I begin my search. I shall first make an exhaustive examination of the house, such as no officer in the case has yet made, in the hope of finding a clue. Every room I propose to divide into square yards by line and measure, and every one of these square yards I will study as if it were a problem in algebra.

  I have a theory that it is impossible for any human being to enter any house and commit in it a deed of this kind and not leave behind traces which are the known quantities in an algebraic equation to those who can use them.

  There is a chance that I shall not be quite unaided. Henry has promised not to come again until I bid him, but he is to send a detective here from Boston, one whom he knows. In fact, the man is a cousin of his, or else there would be small hope of our securing him even if I were to offer him a large price.

  The man has been remarkably successful in several cases, but his health is not good; the work is a severe strain upon his nerves, and he is not driven to it from any lack of money. The physicians have forbidden him to undertake any new case for a year at least, but Henry is confident that we may rely upon him for this.

  I will now lay aside this and go to bed. Tomorrow is Wednesday. My father will have been dead seven weeks. Tomorrow morning I will commence the work in which, if it be in human power, aided by a higher wisdom, I shall succeed.

  IV

  The Box of Clues

  The pages which follow are from Miss Fairbanks’s journal, begun after the conclusion of the notes already given to the reader.

  Wednesday night – I have resolved to record carefully each day the progress I make in my examination of the house. I began today at the bottom – that is, with the room least likely to contain any clue, the parlour. I took a chalk line and a yardstick and divided the floor into square yards, and every one of these squares I examined on my hands and knees. I found in this way literally nothing on the carpet but dust, lint, two common white pins and three inches of blue sewingsilk.

  At last I got the dustpan and brush, and yard by yard swept the floor. I took the sweepings in a white pasteboard box out into the yard in the strong sunlight and examined them. There was nothing but dust and lint and five inches of brown woollen thread – evidently a ravelling of some dress material. The blue silk and the brown thread are the only possible clues which I found today, and they are hardly possible. Rufus’s wife can probably account for them.

  Nobody has come to the house all day. I went down to the store this afternoon to get some necessary provisions, and people stopped talking when I came in. The clerk took my money as if it were poison.

  Thursday night – Today I have searched the sitting-room, out of which my father’s bedroom opens. I found two bloody footprints on the carpet which no one had noticed before – perhaps because the carpet itself is red and white. I used a microscope which I had in my school work. The footprints, which are close to the bedroom door, pointing out into the sitting-room, are both from the right foot; one is brighter than the other, but both are faint. The foot was evidently either bare or clad only in a stocking – the prints are so widely spread. They are wider than my father’s shoes. I tried one in the brightest print.

  I found nothing else new in the sitting-room. The bloodstains on the doors, which have been already noted, are still there. They had not been washed away, first by order of the sheriff and next by mine. These stains are of two kinds: one looks as if made by a bloody garment brushing against it; the other, I should say, was made in the first place by the grasp of a bloody hand and then brushed over with a cloth. There are none of these marks upon the door leading to the bedroom – they are on the doors leading into the front entry and the china closet. The china closet is really a pantry, though
I use it only for my best dishes and preserves.

  Friday night – Today I searched the closet. One of the shelves, which is about as high as my shoulders, was bloodstained. It looked to me as if the murderer might have caught hold of it to steady himself. Did he turn faint after his dreadful deed? Some tumblers of jelly were ranged on that shelf, and they had not been disturbed. There was only that bloody clutch on the edge.

  I found on this closet floor, under the shelves, as if it had been rolled there by a careless foot, a button, evidently from a man’s clothing. It is an ordinary black enamelled metal trousers button; it had evidently been worn off and clumsily sewn on again, for a quantity of stout white thread is still clinging to it. This button must have belonged either to a single man or to one with an idle wife.

  If one black button had been sewn on with white thread, another is likely to be. I may be wrong, but I regard this button as a clue.

  The pantry was thoroughly swept – cleaned, indeed, by Rufus’s wife the day before she left. Neither my father nor Rufus could have dropped it there, and they never had occasion to go to that closet. The murderer dropped the button.

  I have a white pasteboard box which I have marked ‘Clues.’ In it I have put the button.

  This afternoon Phoebe Dole came in. She is very kind. She had recut the dyed silk, and she fitted it to me. Her great shears clicking in my ears made me nervous. I did not feel like stopping to think about clothes. I hope I did not appear ungrateful, for she is the only soul besides Henry who has treated me as she did before this happened.

  Phoebe asked me what I found to busy myself about, and I replied, ‘I am searching for my father’s murderer.’ She asked me if I thought I should find a clue, and I replied, ‘I think so.’ I had found the button then, but I did not speak of it. She said Maria was not very well.

  I saw her eyeing the stains on the doors, and I said I had not washed them off, for I thought they might yet serve a purpose in detecting the murderer. She looked closely at those on the entry door – the brightest ones – and said she did not see how they could help, for there were no plain finger marks there, and she should think they would make me nervous.

  ‘I’m beyond being nervous,’ I replied.

  Saturday – Today I have found something which I cannot understand. I have been at work in the room where my father came to his dreadful end. Of course, some of the most startling evidences have been removed. The bed is clean and the carpet washed, but the worst horror of it all clings to that room. The spirit of murder seemed to haunt it. It seemed to me at first that I could not enter that room, but in it I made a strange discovery.

  My father, while he carried little money about his person, was in the habit of keeping considerable sums in the house; there is no bank within ten miles. However, he was wary; he had a hiding place which he had revealed to no one but myself. He had a small stand in his room near the end of his bed. Under this stand, or rather under the top of it, he had tacked a large leather wallet. In this he kept all his spare money. I remember how his eyes twinkled when he showed it to me.

  ‘The average mind thinks things have either got to be in or on,’ said my father. ‘They don’t consider there’s ways of getting around gravitation and calculation.’

  In searching my father’s room I called to mind that saying of his and his peculiar system of concealment, and then I made my discovery. I have argued that in a search of this kind I ought not only to search for hidden traces of the criminal but for everything which had been for any reason concealed. Something which my father himself had hidden, something from his past history, may furnish a motive for someone else.

  The money in the wallet under the table, some five hundred dollars, had been removed and deposited in the bank. Nothing more was to be found there. I examined the bottom of the bureau and the undersides of the chair seats. There are two chairs in the room besides the cushioned rocker – green-painted wooden chairs with flag seats. I found nothing under the seats.

  Then I turned each of the green chairs completely over, and examined the bottoms of the legs. My heart leaped when I found a bit of leather tacked over one. I got the tack-hammer and drew the tacks. The chair-leg had been hollowed out, and for an inch the hole was packed tight with cotton. I began picking out the cotton, and soon I felt something hard. It proved to be an old-fashioned gold band, quite wide and heavy, like a wedding-ring.

  I took it over to the window and found this inscription on the inside: ‘Let love abide for ever’. There were two dates: one in August forty years ago, and the other in August of the present year.

  I think the ring had never been worn. While the first part of the inscription is perfectly clear, it looks old, and the last is evidently freshly cut.

  This could not have been my mother’s ring. She had only her wedding-ring, and that was buried with her. I think my father must have treasured this ring for years. But why? What does it mean? This can hardly be a clue, this can hardly lead to the discovery of a motive, but I will put it in the box with the rest.

  Sunday night – Today, of course, I did not pursue my search. I did not go to church. I could not face old friends that could not face me. Sometimes I think that everybody in my native village believes in my guilt. What must I have been in my general appearance and demeanour all my life? I have studied myself in the glass and tried to discover the possibilities of evil that they must see in my face.

  This afternoon about three o’clock, the hour when people here have just finished their Sunday dinner, there was a knock on the north door. I answered it, and a strange young man stood there with a large book under his arm. He was thin and cleanly shaved, with a clerical air.

  ‘I have a work here to which I would like to call your attention,’ he began, and I stared at him in astonishment, for why should a book agent be peddling his wares upon the Sabbath?

  His mouth twitched a little.

  ‘It’s a Biblical Cyclopædia,’ said he.

  ‘I don’t think I care to take it,’ said I.

  ‘You are Miss Sarah Fairbanks, I believe?’

  ‘That is my name,’ I replied stiffly.

  ‘Mr Henry Ellis of Digby sent me here,’ he said next. ‘My name is Dix – Francis Dix.’

  Then I knew it was Henry’s first cousin from Boston, the detective who had come to help me. I felt the tears coming to my eyes. ‘You are very kind to come,’ I managed to say.

  ‘I am selfish, not kind,’ he returned, ‘but you had better let me come in, or any chance of success in my book agency is lost if the neighbours see me trying to sell it on a Sunday. And, Miss Fairbanks, this is a bona fide agency. I shall canvass the town.’

  He came in. I showed him all that I have written, and he read it carefully. When he had finished he sat still for a long time with his face screwed up in a peculiar meditative fashion.

  ‘We’ll ferret this out in three days at the most,’ said he finally with a sudden clearing of his face and a flash of his eyes at me.

  ‘I had planned for three years perhaps,’ said I.

  ‘I tell you, we’ll do it in three days,’ he repeated. ‘Where can I get board while I canvass for this remarkable and interesting book under my arm? I can’t stay here, of course, and there is no hotel. Do you think the two dressmakers next door, Phoebe Dole and the other one, would take me in?’

  I said they had never taken boarders.

  ‘Well, I’ll go over and enquire,’ said Mr Dix, and he had gone, with his book under his arm, almost before I knew it.

  Never have I seen anyone act with the strange noiseless soft speed that this man does. Can he prove me innocent in three days? He must have succeeded in getting board at Phoebe Dole’s, for I saw him go past to meeting with her this evening. I feel sure he will be over very early tomorrow morning.

  V

  The Evidence Points to One

  Monday night – The detective came as I expected. I was up as soon as it was light, and he came across the dewy fields with his cyclop
ædia under his arm. He had stolen out from Phoebe Dole’s back door.

  He had me bring my father’s pistol, then he bade me come with him out into the back yard.

  ‘Now, fire it,’ he said, thrusting the pistol into my hands. As I have said before, the charge was still in the barrel.

  ‘I shall arouse the neighbourhood,’ I said.

  ‘Fire it,’ he ordered.

  I tried. I pulled the trigger as hard as I could.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said.

  ‘And you are a reasonably strong woman, too, aren’t you?’

  I said I had been considered so. Oh, how much I heard about the strength of my poor woman’s arms and their ability to strike that murderous weapon home!

  Mr Dix took the pistol himself, and drew a little at the trigger.

  ‘I could do it,’ he said, ‘but I won’t. It would arouse the neighbourhood.’

  ‘This is more evidence against me,’ I said despairingly. ‘The murderer had tried to fire the pistol and failed.’

  ‘It is more evidence against the murderer,’ said Mr Dix.

  We went into the house where he examined my box of clues long and carefully. Looking at the ring, he asked whether there was a jeweller in this village, and I said there was not. I told him that my father oftener went on business to Acton, ten miles away, than elsewhere.

  He examined very carefully the button which I had found in the closet and then asked to see my father’s wardrobe. That was soon done. Beside the suit in which father was laid away there was one other complete one in the closet in his room. Besides that, there were in this closet two overcoats, an old black frock-coat, a pair of pepper-and-salt trousers and two black vests. Mr Dix examined all the buttons; not one was missing.

  There was still another old suit in the closet off the kitchen. This was examined, and no button found wanting.