It seemed everyone was there. All, with the exception of the prime suspect, Jim Wilcox, and the girl’s father, William Cropsey.
“We might as well start,” the Mayor said. And then he repeated it louder, until the room settled. “The purpose of this meeting is to inform you all on the progress of the investigation, and to organize the basis for further action. You probably all know the story. Ella Maud Cropsey is the daughter of William Cropsey of Riverside Ave. She is nineteen. She disappeared from her front porch last Wednesday night or early Thursday. The police have made inquiries all over town and in the surrounding counties. More than one hundred residences have been searched in this city alone. The last person to see her, Jim Wilcox, has been interviewed twice by Bill Dawson and Charlie Reid. He professes to know nothing of her fate…”
At the mention of Wilcox, a murmur went through the crowd.
“That she would have harmed herself has been dismissed by everyone who knew her. She is a happy, vivacious, innocent young woman. She lived in the bosom of a large family, and was popular with her friends and acquaintances in the Methodist congregation…” He nodded in the direction of Rev. Tuttle, who nodded back. “If you’re anything like me, you are repulsed at the notion that a young girl like Miss Ella Maud could simply disappear off the face of the earth. If there is any function to the instrument of civilization, it is that the most vulnerable among us may live without fear of violence. For if that degree of basic safety is not assured, why should we bother with the contrivances of police and jails at all? Why not let us all descend to a state of barbarism?”
Voices rose in reply: “No!”—a resolute no to criminality, fear, and barbarism.
“At this juncture,” the Mayor continued, “we must acknowledge that the needs of this investigation may exceed the resources of our peace officers. That said, and with the approval of Mr. Cropsey, I hereby call upon this community to form a special Citizens’ Committee, for the purpose of ascertaining the fate of Miss Ella. The writ of this body would be to pursue whatever avenues necessary to get to the bottom of this mystery, without regard to privilege, party, or faction. And so, let the assembled show they stand in favor by a show of hands…”
Seven hundred arms shot into the air.
“Those opposed?”
Only two arms rose, but they were significant ones: those of Bill Dawson, Chief of Police, and his deputy Charlie Reid.
“The motion passes,” Wilson pronounced. “And now the floor is open to nominations to this here Citizen’s Committee.”
The voting resulted in the installation of several local luminaries: H.T. Greenleaf (lumber and surveying), Roscoe W. Turner (lawyer), L.A. Winder (town inspector), W.M. Baxter (ice and lumber), A.K. Kramer (shipbuilding), and H.M. Hinton (schoolmaster). The body became known as the Committee of Five, though with the election of Hinton as ‘alternate’, it numbered six.
In his acceptance of the Committee’s Chairmanship, Greenleaf mounted the stage and delivered a peroration on the solemnity of the task he and his fellows had, with heavy heart, taken upon themselves. “For we pledge before you this afternoon to leave no stone unturned in the resolution of this mystery. I have had the pleasure myself of knowing the young lady in question. Not in any familiar way, but as a valued member of this community…” In this way he described his sole encounter with her, passing her in the street with a doff of his hat and a nod of her sweet chin. “…And in that familiarity, we hereby shoulder the burden, no matter what the cost. As I trust all of us do, to the extent of his ability…”
With this cue, two satchels were passed around the room for the men to fill with cash.
By the time the meeting dissolved, and the men retired to the saloons, they had left behind the sum of $236 in coin, folding money, and IOUs. The immediate effect of this generosity was for many of the town’s barmen to suffer requests for the extension of their patrons’ tabs, for they had given away the day’s drinking money for the greater good. Rarely was heard around the town such a high-minded excuse to drink on the house.
The collected funds were supplemented by private donations. The total exceeded $1400. The Committee’s first acts were to hire contractors to expand the search: a detective to track down leads far and wide, and a dredging outfit to expand it below, into the dusky waters. As all the members considered themselves men of science, it was proposed to hire a diver to sweep the river bottom. They did this knowing full well that the river’s currents might have deposited a body anywhere up and down miles of barren, uninhabited estuary. The Pasquotank, moreover, was a broad stream at the point of Fearing’s Marine Railway—wider, in fact, than the East River in New York.
They knew these things, but had to appear to make all due diligence. An expert salvage diver, John M. Edwards of Washington, NC, was placed on retainer for the sum of $20. The dredging by Captain Williams cost $22.50, and the detective, the not-inconsiderable sum of $125. Their activities were set to begin immediately, for the mystery was beginning to preoccupy the town like nothing had before. Citizens were in the streets not shopping, not working, but standing around to discuss Nell Cropsey and Jim Wilcox. To the commerce-minded committeemen, the girl’s disappearance was not only a moral emergency, but an economic disaster.
Police Chief Dawson shared their concern, but could not be persuaded to take the Committee’s mission seriously. He refused to meet with the members as a group. Instead, Greenleaf, Baxter and Turner could only attempt to buttonhole him at odd moments, such as when he came out of the courthouse, or on his way to the cigar shop. Dawson was cold to them every time. He was opposed to sharing his duties with a gang of vigilantes, no matter how well-heeled, whether appointed by popular vote or not. To their requests for cooperation, he was vague. To their legitimacy, he was contemptuous.
By the 28th, Nell had been missing for a week. Ollie, who had shared a bed with her sister since she could remember, could not sleep alone. She found herself wide awake at 4 a.m., waiting for the light of dawn to filter through the curtains. At first gleaming, she rose, dressed and went downstairs to the dining room, where the cups and saucers had been set for breakfast the night before. She had tea, and poured it from the cup to the saucer to cool, but suffered a languor that prevented her from putting it to her lips. She stared at it, watching the curls of steam rise with the detached appreciation of a spectator watching a storm far out to sea.
That was when the first explosion shook the house. The china and cutlery rattled, and her tea spilled on the tablecloth. The dogs outside barked. Her father was suddenly down the stairs, dressed only in his long underwear. Dazed, he cast his eyes around the ground floor, as if expecting to find the source of the explosion there.
“What was that?” he asked Ollie.
“It came from the river.”
Cropsey went to the window. With his back turned to Ollie, she saw the trap door of his drawers was unbuttoned, showing a considerable length of tufted crack. She averted her eyes.
The riverbank was only a couple of hundred feet from the Cropseys’ front door. A few hundred feet beyond that, where the water was still shallow, there was a row boat with two men. As Cropsey watched, one of them stood up, braced one leg against the gunnel, and tossed something into the water.
In silence, an enormous spout of water erupted, and a second later the sound reached the house. The explosion shook the window panes, and Cropsey felt his innards recoil. He shut the curtains.
“The fools are using dynamite,” he said.
At seven, Ollie arranged a tray with some bread, butter and a fresh pot of tea. As she carried it upstairs, the rattle of the tray’s contents seemed deafening in a space that, since Nell was gone, had taken on the aspect of a funeral parlor. No one wanted to open the curtains. At the top of the second floor stairs she encountered her cousin Carrie, who ran her eyes over the tray and nodded her approval. She accompanied Ollie to the door at the foot of the garret stairs, and preceded her up. When she reached her mother, Carrie was kneeling be
side her, cheek resting on her shoulder, grasping her hand.
“Look, Aunt Mary. Ollie has fetched breakfast!”
Mary Cropsey said nothing, and did not turn her eyes from the window. The day after Nell’s disappearance she had taken up her vigil in the turret, which offered a clear view of the front yard and the river beyond. She had stayed there every minute of those seven days, with only brief interruptions to see to her most basic needs.
Her husband understood why she did this—at first. He had sat with her that first night. But he soon grew frustrated. From downstairs, the children heard one side of their argument, because only he was shouting: “What about the rest of us! Do you intend to…Of course!…Oh what complete nonsense…How could you think that?…You never cared for me!…And don’t think I won’t bring that up!…Yes, I said it…Well, then stay up here and rot for all I care, you damn cow!…Or join her down there! I don’t care.”
After that he no longer went up to see her, but slept in their bed alone.
The Cropsey daughters took turns with her. As she had stopped tending to her appearance, they brushed her long gray hair out over her shoulders, and emptied her chamber pot. They rigged up a makeshift shade to protect her eyes, which were glazed and wide open in the rude daylight. They kept up steady chatter with her, confining themselves to the most innocuous remarks. But when she responded, it was only to wax incredulous at the river. “It’s so big,” she would say, in a voice that grew weaker and more elderly each day. “Why does it have to be so big?”
Lately she watched the dredging barge towed into place. From that distance she could see the faces of the men on it. She could see them talking, and smiling, and dragging on their cigarettes as they worked the dredging lines. They tossed the butts in the water, which physically pained her, for they might have been despoiling the very bed in which her daughter slept.
And now came the men with dynamite. They didn’t smoke, but they were high-spirited, as any young man would be when given permission to play with explosives. The turret creaked with every blast. Mary Cropsey caught her breath as she waited for the results—the dislocation of the body from wherever it was lodged on the bottom. Nothing ever came up, not even trash. But with each blast, it felt to Mary Cropsey as if less of her breath returned to her body.
That very moment, less than two miles away, Jim Wilcox was on his way to work. He was dressed in the usual uniform of a dockside manhandler: heavy dungarees, wool workshirt, kerchief around his neck. In a cloth sack, he carried the lunch his mother had made for him. He was a short man, but broad and thickly muscled, and he walked with a definite waddle, as if the robustness of his frame interfered with his gait.
Yet he was not unhandsome. His blond hair and mustache were striking; instead of wearing his kerchief like a child’s bib, he tied it rakishly around his neck, as if he was a French artist embarking for the country to paint. He was used to women giving him second and third glances. He, in turn, liked to decorate his proximity with pretty girls. If pressed to give an account of himself, Jim would have said he was blessed, a happy man with an indefinite but bright future.
But that was all before the night of November 20th. When he walked the streets now, he was conscious of people avoiding his gaze. Housewives out sweeping their porches would abruptly go inside when he appeared. Children playing on sidewalks were suddenly called inside. Riders in buggies kept their eyes forward.
And then there were the young men who would actually call out to him. “Hey Jim, where’s your girl?” they would say. “Hey Jim, why don’t you help find Nell?” He mostly pretended these taunts were beneath his notice, unless they struck him in a particularly foul mood, and he would put down his lunch sack and challenge the heckler to repeat the question to his face. None ever did—for physically Jim was not to be taken lightly.
For his part, Jim had worn himself sleepless with thoughts of Nell. Half the time he agreed with Chief Dawson, that he should not have left her on the porch in such an overwrought state. The other half he resented her for disappearing. For he knew that Nell, who seemed so sweet to everyone else, had a cruel streak that had cut him many times over three-and-a-half years. He wouldn’t put it past her to run off just to humiliate him. Indeed, he had come to realize that the one had enabled the other: if he had escorted her back inside that night, none of her ingenious spite could have been blamed directly on him. He had been stupid, and he was paying dearly for it now.
While Nell’s perversity came as little surprise, he was bewildered by the way the rest of the Cropseys had turned on him. His courtship of Nell, such as it was, had begun mere weeks since the family had moved into the Fearing house, in ’98. For more than three years he had been a fixture in their home. He was on easy, first-name terms with all the Cropsey daughters, and had given little thoughtful gifts not just to Nell, but to all of them. William Cropsey had never been overly warm, but the mother appeared to go out of her way to make up for her husband’s diffidence. At no time had any of them made him feel unwelcome. Nor did he take anything less than tender care of Nell’s virtue—even when he had her out late, without a chaperone.
And yet, the very night she went missing, when it was not even clear there was any crime or misadventure involved, the Cropseys seemed determined to cast him as the villain. Jim was a tough young man, loath to admit anything bothered him. But the blood suspicion of the Cropseys—so unfounded, so unjust—pierced him to the quick.
One thing was for sure: he would not gratify Nell by playing along. He would not take part in the idiot extremes the town had taken to find her ‘body’. Despite his mistakes, he would not make a spectacle of his regrets. Instead, his public manner would be cool, like a man confident of his innocence. In his current predicament, with a storm of suspicion swirling around him, it was the only measure of control he had. For he was sure Nell was somewhere nearby—probably in the country, or in some house across the river, watching him, hoping he would crack.
“To hell with you, Nell Cropsey!” he said aloud. Too loud, in fact: he had just arrived at Hayman’s yard.
“What was that you said, Jim?” asked Mr. Hayman.
“Nothing. Forget it,” Jim replied, and hung up his overcoat on his usual peg.
“You okay?”
“Sure. Why?” he said, and gave a smile that looked more like a guilty grimace.
The dismal November ended. Over that time, Nell continued to be the favorite subject of conjecture around town. Just as interest would start to fade, a story would pop up in the newspapers claiming that Nell had been found. Bodies supposedly washed up at Sand Hills and New Begun. Live women answering to Nell’s description were reported in Norfolk, Wilmington, Wilson, Hamilton, Baltimore and other towns, largely by the initiative of the people living there, who seemed as preoccupied with her disappearance as those in Elizabeth City. The detective hired by the Committee of Five was of little use in verifying these claims, as he had never met Nell and knew her only from the blurry photos kept by her parents. Inevitably, Chief Dawson or a member of the Committee would have to go up and confirm these stories. None of the girls turned out to be Nell. The Committeemen soon learned to dread these reports, which forced them to undertake a lot of fruitless travel, always at their own expense.
The dredging went on, covering one area of river before Williams’ barge was disanchored and towed to the next. Edwards, the diver, donned his brass helmet and suit of canvas armor and slipped below; his assistant, meanwhile, sat in the boat, maintaining the air pump and smoking. Sometimes, he was seen to open the supply hose and blow cigarette smoke into it. This was apparently for Edwards’ benefit. For it was dreary work, walking those dark, oily depths for such a grim purpose, and the diver had to savor whatever distractions he could.
And when neither dredgers nor diver were at work, the men with the dynamite took to the water. The theory was that the ‘percussion' touched off by the explosions would free a corpse that had lodged on the bottom. If any of the good people of Elizabeth
City were liable to forget the Cropsey tragedy, even for a day, the explosions were a constant reminder. The blasting dragged on for weeks, in the early mornings and evenings, shaking all the houses on the waterfront. Cracks appeared in windowpanes and masonry, causing much grumbling on Riverside Avenue. Yet no one complained. For who would begrudge any attempt to solve the mystery of the poor girl—least of all the men of other families, who also had daughters at vulnerable ages?
With the possible exception of Hurricane Branch and his dogs, the most compelling figure to enter the investigation at this time was Madame Snell Newman of Norfolk. According to her frequent advertisements in the Norfolk papers, she was “THE Renowned Clairvoyant and Business Medium” who “can be consulted at her parlors of all life matters; her tests are wonderful.” Word reached the Committee of Five that Madame Newman had attained certain knowledge that Nell Cropsey was dead—abducted and murdered by Jim Wilcox. She let it be known that if she were given access to the environs of the crime, she would gladly lead the authorities to the location of the body. Her ‘tests’, she declaimed, would be offered purely on a pro bono basis.
The Committee paid for her morning train ticket down. When Madame Newman arrived at the Cropsey home, she was accompanied by Greenleaf and Winder, but not Chief Dawson or Deputy Reid, who refused to encourage such nonsense. Ollie opened the door, and was greeted by an apparition in purple and black lace. She floated into the house like a taffeta cloud, filling up the space with her perfume and her eminence. She took tea in the sitting room until all the Cropsey adults and children were gathered from around the farm. All except for Mary Cropsey, who would not abandon her watch in the turret.
Ella Maud Page 3
