by Mike Ashley
‘What did your father do for work the day before he died?’ he then asked.
I reflected and said that he had unpacked some stores which had come down from Vermont and done some work out in the garden.
‘What did he wear?’
‘I think he wore the pepper-and-salt trousers and the black vest. He wore no coat while at work.’
Mr Dix went quietly back to father’s room and his closet, I following. He took out the grey trousers and the black vest and examined them closely.
‘What did he wear to protect these?’ he asked.
‘Why, he wore overalls!’ I said at once. As I spoke I remembered seeing father go around the path to the yard with those blue overalls drawn up high under his arms.
‘Where are they?’
‘Weren’t they in the kitchen closet?’
‘No.’
We looked again, however, in the kitchen closet. We searched the shed thoroughly. The cat came in through her little door as we stood there and brushed around our feet. Mr Dix stooped and stroked her. Then he went quickly to the door, beside which her little entrance was arranged, unhooked it and stepped out. I was following him, but he motioned me back.
‘None of my boarding-mistress’s windows command us,’ he said, ‘but she might come to the back door.’
I watched him. He passed slowly around the little winding footpath which skirted the rear of our house and extended faintly through the grassy fields to the rear of Phoebe Dole’s. He stopped, searched a clump of sweetbrier, went on to an old well and stopped there. The well had been dry many a year and was choked up with stones and rubbish. Some boards are laid over it, and a big stone or two to keep them in place.
Mr Dix, glancing across at Phoebe Dole’s back door, went down on his knees, rolled the stones away then removed the boards and peered down the well. He stretched far over the brink and reached down. He made many efforts, then he got up and came to me and asked me to get for him an umbrella with a crooked handle or something that he could hook into clothing.
I brought my own umbrella, the silver handle of which formed an exact hook. He went back to the well, kneeled again, thrust in the umbrella and drew up, easily enough, what he had been fishing for. Then he came bringing it to me.
‘Don’t faint,’ he said and took hold of my arm. I gasped when I saw what he had – my father’s blue overalls all stained and splotched with blood!
I looked at them then at him.
‘Don’t faint,’ he said again. ‘We’re on the right track. This is where the button came from – see, see!’ He pointed to one of the straps of the overalls, and the button was gone. Some white thread clung to it. Another black metal button was sewed on roughly with the same white thread that I found on the button in my box of clues.
‘What does it mean?’ I gasped out. My brain reeled.
‘You shall know soon,’ he said. He looked at his watch. Then he laid down the ghastly bundle he carried. ‘It has puzzled you to know how the murderer went in and out and yet kept the doors locked, has it not?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I am going out now. Hook that door after me.’
He went out, still carrying my umbrella. I hooked the door. Presently I saw the lid of the cat’s door lifted, and his hand and arm thrust through. He curved his arm up towards the hook, but it came short by half a foot. Then he withdrew his arm, and thrust in my silver-handled umbrella. He reached the door hook easily enough with that.
Then he hooked it again. That was not so easy. He had to work a long time. Finally he accomplished it, unhooked the door again and came in.
‘That was how!’ I said.
‘No, it was not,’ he returned. ‘No human being, fresh from such a deed, could have used such patience as that to fasten the door after him. Please hang your arm down by your side.’
I obeyed. He looked at my arm, then at his own.
‘Have you a tape measure?’ he asked.
I brought one out of my work-basket. He measured his arm, then mine and then the distance from the cat door to the hook.
‘I have two tasks for you today and tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I shall come here very little. Find all your father’s old letters and read them. Find a man or woman in this town whose arm is six inches longer than yours. Now I must go home, or my boarding-mistress will get curious.’
He went through the house to the front door, looked all ways to be sure no eyes were upon him, made three strides down the yard and was pacing soberly up the street with his cyclopædia under his arm.
I made myself a cup of coffee, then I went about obeying his instructions. I read old letters all the forenoon. I found packages in trunks in the garret; there were quantities in father’s desk. I have selected several to submit to Mr Dix. One of them treats of an old episode in father’s youth which must have years since ceased to interest him. It was concealed after his favourite fashion – tacked under the bottom of his desk. It was written forty years ago by Maria Woods, two years before my father’s marriage – and it was a refusal of an offer of his hand. It was written in the stilted fashion of that day; it might have been copied from a ‘Complete Letter-writer’.
My father must have loved Maria Woods as dearly as I love Henry to keep that letter so carefully all these years. I thought he cared for my mother. He seemed as fond of her as other men of their wives, though I did used to wonder if Henry and I would ever get to be quite so much accustomed to each other.
Maria Woods must have been as beautiful as an angel when she was a girl. Mother was not pretty; she was stout, too, and awkward, and I suppose people would have called her rather slow and dull. But she was a good woman and tried to do her duty.
Tuesday night – This evening was my first opportunity to obey the second of Mr Dix’s orders. It seemed to me the best way to compare the average length of arms was to go to the prayer meeting. I could not go about the town with my tape measure and demand of people that they should hold out their arms. Nobody knows how I dreaded to go to the meeting, but I went, and I looked not at my neighbours’ cold altered faces but at their arms.
I discovered what Mr Dix wished me to, but the discovery can avail nothing, and it is one he could have made himself. Phoebe Dole’s arm is fully seven inches longer than mine. I never noticed it before, but she has an almost abnormally long arm. But why should Phoebe Dole have unhooked that door?
She made a prayer – a beautiful prayer. It comforted even me a little. She spoke of the tenderness of God in all the troubles of life and how it never failed us.
When we were all going out I heard several persons speak of Mr Dix and his Biblical Cyclopædia. They decided that he was a theological student, book-canvassing to defray the expenses of his education.
Maria Woods was not at the meeting. Several asked Phoebe how she was, and she replied, ‘Not very well.’
It is very late. I thought Mr Dix might be over tonight, but he has not been here.
Wednesday – I can scarcely believe what I am about to write. Our investigations seem to point all to one person, and that person … It is incredible! I will not believe it.
Mr Dix came as before, at dawn. He reported, and I reported. I showed Maria Woods’s letter. He said he had driven to Acton and found that the jeweller there had engraved the last date in the ring about six weeks ago.
‘I don’t want to seem rough, but your father was going to get married again,’ said Mr Dix.
‘I never knew him to go near any woman since mother died,’ I protested.
‘Nevertheless, he had made arrangements to be married,’ persisted Mr Dix.
‘Who was the woman?’
He pointed at the letter in my hand.
‘Maria Woods!’
He nodded.
I stood looking at him, dazed. Such a possibility had never entered my head.
He produced an envelope from his pocket and took out a little card with blue and brown threads neatly wound upon it.
‘Let m
e see those threads you found,’ he said.
I got the box, and we compared them. He had a number of pieces of blue sewing-silk and brown woollen ravellings, and they matched mine exactly.
‘Where did you find them?’ I asked.
‘In my boarding-mistress’s piece-bag.’
I stared at him. ‘What does it mean?’ I gasped out.
‘What do you think?’
‘It is impossible!’
VI
The Revelation
Wednesday, continued – When Mr Dix thus suggested to me the absurd possibility that Phoebe Dole had committed the murder, he and I were sitting in the kitchen. He was near the table; he laid a sheet of paper upon it and began to write. The paper is before me.
‘First,’ said Mr Dix, and he wrote rapidly as he talked, ‘whose arm is of such length that it might unlock a certain door of this house from the outside? Phoebe Dole’s.
‘Second, who had in her piece-bag bits of the same threads and ravellings found upon your parlour floor where she had not by your knowledge entered? Phoebe Dole.
‘Third, who interested herself most strangely in your bloodstained green silk dress, even to dyeing it? Phoebe Dole.
‘Fourth, who was caught in a lie while trying to force the guilt of the murder upon an innocent man? Phoebe Dole.’
Mr Dix looked at me. I had gathered myself together.
‘That proves nothing,’ I said. ‘There is no motive in her case.’
‘There is a motive.’
‘What is it?’
‘Maria Woods shall tell you this afternoon.’
He then wrote.
‘Fifth, who was seen to throw a bundle down the old well in the rear of Martin Fairbanks’s house at one o’clock in the morning? Phoebe Dole.’
‘Was she … seen?’ I gasped.
Mr Dix nodded. Then he wrote.
‘Sixth, who had a strong motive, which had been in existence many years ago? Phoebe Dole.’
Mr Dix laid down his pen and looked at me again.
‘Well, what have you to say?’ he asked.
‘It is impossible!’
‘Why?’
‘She is a woman.’
‘A man could have fired that pistol, as she tried to do.’
‘It would have taken a man’s strength to kill with the kind of weapon that was used,’ I said.
‘No, it would not. No great strength is required for such a blow.’
‘But she is a woman!’
‘Crime has no sex.’
‘But she is a good woman, a church member. I heard her pray yesterday afternoon. It is not in character.’
‘It is not for you nor for me nor for any mortal intelligence to know what is or is not in character,’ said Mr Dix.
He arose and went away. I could only stare at him in a half-dazed manner.
Maria Woods came this afternoon, taking advantage of Phoebe’s absence on a dressmaking errand. Maria has aged ten years in the last few weeks. Her hair is white, her cheeks are fallen in, her pretty colour is gone.
‘May I have the ring he gave me forty years ago?’ she faltered. I gave it to her; she kissed it and sobbed like a child.
‘Phoebe took it away from me before,’ she said; ‘but she shan’t this time.’
Maria related with piteous sobs the story of her long subordination to Phoebe Dole. This sweet child-like woman had always been completely under the sway of the other’s stronger nature. The subordination went back beyond my father’s original proposal to her; she had, before he made love to her as a girl, promised Phoebe she would not marry; and it was Phoebe who, by representing to her that she was bound by this solemn promise, had led her to write a letter to my father declining his offer and sending back the ring.
‘And, after all, we were going to get married if he had not died,’ she said. ‘He was going to give me this ring again, and he had had the other date put in. I should have been so happy!’
She stopped and stared at me with horror-stricken enquiry.
‘What was Phoebe Dole doing in your back yard at one o’clock that night?’ she cried.
‘What do you mean?’ I returned.
‘I saw Phoebe come out of your back shed door at one o’clock that very night. She had a bundle in her arms. She went along the path about as far as the old well, then she stooped down and seemed to be working at something. When she got up she didn’t have the bundle. I was watching at our back door. I thought I heard her go out a little while before and went downstairs and found that door unlocked. I went in quick and up to my chamber and into my bed when she started home across the fields. Pretty soon I heard her come in, then I heard the pump going. She slept downstairs; she went on to her bedroom. What was she doing in your back yard that night?’
‘You must ask her,’ said I. I felt my blood running cold.
‘I’ve been afraid to,’ moaned Maria Woods. ‘She’s been dreadful strange lately. I wish that book agent was going to stay at our house.’
Maria Woods went home in about an hour. I got a ribbon for her, and she has my poor father’s ring concealed in her withered bosom. Again I cannot believe this.
Thursday – It is all over. Phoebe Dole has confessed! I do not know now in exactly what way Mr Dix brought it about, how he accused her of her crime. After breakfast I saw them coming across the fields. Phoebe came first, advancing with rapid strides like a man, Mr Dix followed and my father’s poor old sweetheart tottered behind with her handkerchief at her eyes. Just as I noticed them, the front door bell rang. I found several people there, headed by the high sheriff. They crowded into the sitting-room just as Phoebe Dole came rushing in with Mr Dix and Maria Woods.
‘I did it!’ Phoebe cried out to me. ‘I am found out, and I have made up my mind to confess. She was going to marry your father – I found it out. I stopped it once before. This time I knew I couldn’t unless I killed him. She’s lived with me in that house for over forty years. There are other ties as strong as the marriage one that are just as sacred. What right had he to take her away from me and break up my home?
‘I overheard your father and Rufus Bennett having words. I thought folks would think he did it. I reasoned it all out. I had watched your cat go in that little door, I knew the shed door hooked, I knew how long my arm was. I thought I could undo it. I stole over here a little after midnight. I went all around the house to be sure nobody was awake. Out in the front yard I happened to think my shears were tied on my belt with a ribbon, and I untied them. I thought I put the ribbon in my pocket – it was a piece of yellow ribbon – but I suppose I didn’t because they found it afterwards and thought it came off your young man’s whip. I went around to the shed door, unhooked it and went in. The moon was light enough. I got out your father’s overalls from the kitchen closet; I knew where they were. I went through the sitting-room to the parlour.
‘In there I slipped off my dress and skirts and put on the overalls. I put a handkerchief over my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. I crept out then into the sitting-room. There I pulled off my shoes and went into the bedroom.
‘Your father was fast asleep. It was such a hot night, the clothes were thrown back, and his chest was bare. The first thing I saw was that pistol on the stand beside his bed. I suppose he had had some fear of Rufus Bennett coming back after all. Suddenly I thought I’d better shoot him. It would be surer and quicker, and if you were aroused I knew that I could get away and everybody would suppose that he had shot himself.
‘I took up the pistol and held it close to his head. I had never fired a pistol, but I knew how it was done. I pulled, but it would not go off. Your father stirred a little – I was mad with horror – I struck at his head with the pistol. He opened his eyes and cried out, then I dropped the pistol and took these’ – Phoebe Dole pointed to the great shining shears hanging at her waist – ‘for I am strong in my wrists. I only struck twice, over his heart.
‘Then I went back into the sitting-room. I thought I heard a noise i
n the kitchen – I was full of terror then – and slipped into the sitting-room closet. I felt as if I were fainting and clutched the shelf to keep from falling.
‘I felt that I must go upstairs to see if you were asleep, to be sure you had not waked up when your father cried out. I thought if you had I should have to do the same by you. I crept upstairs to your chamber. You seemed sound asleep, but, as I watched, you stirred a little, but instead of striking at you I slipped into your closet. I heard nothing more from you. I felt myself wet with blood. I caught something hanging in your closet, and wiped myself over with it. I knew by the feeling it was your green silk. You kept quiet, and I saw you were asleep, so I crept out of the closet and down the stairs, got my clothes and shoes and, out in the shed, took off the overalls and dressed myself. I rolled up the overalls and took a board away from the old well and threw them in as I went home. I thought if they were found it would be no clue to me. The handkerchief, which was not much stained, I put to soak that night and washed it out next morning before Maria was up. I washed my hands and arms carefully that night and also my shears.
‘I expected Rufus Bennett would be accused of the murder and, maybe, hanged. I was prepared for that, but I did not like to think I had thrown suspicion upon you by staining your dress. I had nothing against you. I made up my mind I’d get hold of that dress – before anybody suspected you – and dye it black. I came in and got it, as you know. I was astonished not to see any more stains on it. I only found two or three little streaks that scarcely anybody would have noticed. I didn’t know what to think. I suspected, of course, that you had found the stains and got them off, thinking they might bring suspicion upon you.
‘I did not see how you could possibly suspect me in any case. I was glad when your young man was cleared. I had nothing against him. That is all I have to say.’
I think I must have fainted away then. I cannot describe the dreadful calmness with which that woman told this – that woman with the good face whom I had last heard praying like a saint in meeting. I believe in demoniacal possession after this.
When I came to, the neighbours were around me, putting camphor on my head and saying soothing things to me, and the old friendly faces had returned. But I wish I could forget!
