“The left temple is markedly contused. There is a small but significant amount of blood suffused into the tissue. It is likely that the blood was circulating when the injury occurred. There is an approximately two- by two-inch discoloration of the meninges. The skull itself is undamaged…”
“Well, we seem to have discovered the telling lick,” remarked Fearing.
“Proceed,” said Dr. Wood, his face as still as Nell’s.
With his saw, Fearing opened the cranium. Metal teeth ground on bone until the cap came loose—and the room was filled with a prodigious stench.
“Good lord!”
So far the body had seemed as fresh as if the girl had died that morning. The brain, however, had taken on the consistency of loose oatmeal, and lacked the solidity to remain in the skull. As the men watched, it ran onto the table and puddled in the creases of the canvas beneath the head.
“The brain is much corrupted,” continued McMullan. “There is a strong odor suggesting a stage of decomposition well beyond what is apparent in the rest of the body…”
Fearing probed what was left of the brain. This took enough time for Ferebee and the other jurymen to despair of their lunches. Just when the barber resolved he absolutely must duck outside for air, Fearing looked to McMullan and shook his head.
“As much as can be told despite the severe state of decomposition, the brain is not physically damaged. No vascular irregularity. No sign of bleeding. No tissue atrophy. It is unlikely that was cause of death.”
With that, Fearing put down his tools and removed his gloves.
“Well, gentlemen?”
“The bruising on the head tells the tale,” said Wood.
“Yes, without a doubt. She was struck before death, but the blow was not penetrating. Some sort of padded instrument, I would think…”
“…And then she entered the water.”
“But did the blow itself kill her,” asked McMullan, “or was she rendered senseless and then drowned?”
Fearing frowned. “Difficult to say, after so much time. But I think we know this was no suicide.”
The crowd had dispersed after the first autopsy, but not because the people were satisfied. The conversation on porches and street corners was invariably about hapless Nell Cropsey and the villain who had so cruelly undone her.
“That son of a bitch Wilcox!” was heard on Main Street: “If he were here now I’d give him what for. I swear it!”
“There’s not a body in this town that would stop you,” came the answer.
“Why’d he do it, you think?”
“She came to her senses and dropped him.”
“And he didn’t like that, did he?”
“I’m not a violent man…unless it’s somebody like Wilcox, and he deserves it.”
“They knew how to deal with the likes of him, once.”
“Whole world’s gone soft!
“I know for a fact Wilcox is not in town.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s fishing up on Frog Island, just as happy as you please!”
“The cold-hearted bastard.”
“Then again, if he happened to disappear in the swamp, who’d miss him?”
Laughter all around.
The peace-loving citizens of Elizabeth City would gladly have taken their cogitations to their local places of refreshment. But when they got there, they found them all closed. On the doors, signs were posted:
That day, around noon, Sheriff Dawson had gone to Mayor Wilson with a warning: now that Nell had turned up murdered, and out of an abundance of caution, the gin joints needed to be closed.
“Won’t that make folks even more angry?” asked the Mayor.
“Better angry and sober than angry and drunk,” replied Dawson.
So the order was given, and as the citizens of the town gathered in the streets, sober and slow to go home to their wives, it was widely agreed that—for the sake of their dry throats at least— Jim Wilcox was a dead man.
Wilcox only heard about the discovery of Nell’s body when Charlie Reid came out to to collect him. He had gone to his uncle’s place a few days before, as the mood in the town had gotten so hot that he decided—and the Sheriff agreed—it might be better for him to stay out of sight for a while. Not having to go to work wasn’t exactly a sacrifice, either; it had been too long since he had had some time to himself. That, and the fact that Mr. Hayman had fired him three days previous.
“Gonna have to let you go, Jim,” Mr. Hayman told him as he arrived that Tuesday morning. “You need to know, I ain’t never had anything against you. Never heard as much as a single complaint. But you know how things have gotten around here.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Jim. “I don’t suppose it matters if I swore to you I’m innocent, does it?”
Hayman sucked in his cheeks and shook his head.
“Afraid it doesn’t. But if that’s established as a fact, you’ve always got a job here. Deal?”
And Hayman stuck out his hand for Jim to shake. For a second, Jim thought about leaving the hand there, hanging and unshaken. But he supposed he understood the dilemma Hayman faced. So he shook his hand and took payment on his salary for the rest of the week.
His uncle’s farm was down near the Big Flatty Creek, southwest of town. He spent the first couple of days lazing about with a fishing rod in his hands, not really caring if he had the right kind of bait or whether it went anywhere near a fish. He was pensive at the dinner table, and his aunt and uncle didn’t disturb his peace. He was thinking about Nell—not about her disappearance, but about how he had truly lost her, long before that. Should he have put that toad in her bag? Would it have been so bad, after all, if he had gone to hear that preacher?
“You should take the Sharps and go for that woodchuck who’s tearin' up my pasture,” his Uncle finally said. “You’d be doin’ me a service.”
“Maybe I will.”
He did. And he was out there for two solid days, sitting out on a little hill with his uncle’s ancient rifle and a jug of applejack. By noon of neither day was he in decent shape to hit a cow, much less a rodent.
Morning of the third day he saw a figure approaching from the farmhouse. Closer, and he recognized Deputy Reid—and understood exactly what that meant.
“Any word on Nell?” he asked.
“They just pulled her out of the river, Jim. She’s gone.”
Jim nodded slowly. Then he reversed the rifle and offered it stock first to the Deputy.
It was close to twenty miles back to town. Elizabeth City didn’t own a covered police wagon, so he was driven in an open buggy through the streets. He was seared by a thousand burning eyes; he heard cuss words out of mouths of women and children, and men spat on the ground as he passed.
“Did she drown, Charlie?”
“Appears not.”
“How long was she in the river?”
Reid gave him a look that asked, “Shouldn’t you be telling me?”
Nell is dead, Jim thought. Dear sweet Nellie is no more. The words made sense to him, but not the meaning. How could she be gone, he wondered, when she was so young? How could she, when it felt as if he had just seen her? And just at that moment, he felt remorse at thinking she had intentionally went off, just to cause him trouble. How petty he could be with his suspicions! He was disgusted, and thought he would join in the contempt everyone was showing him, had he been standing in the street watching himself pass.
But Jim wasn’t one to parade his misgivings. When he was worried, he was wont to smile; when he was frightened, he hummed a tune. At his great-grandfather’s funeral, when he was ten, he had sported a new set of playing cards and performed card tricks on the pews. His apparent indifference struck some as disrespectful—but it was just his way.
Thus it was widely reported that Wilcox looked “well pleased with himself” and “without a care in the world” as he was driven to jail. To most onlookers, it didn’t look like the confidence of an innocent suspect
expecting to be exonerated. It looked like the maddening indifference of a depraved man.
The county jail was half a block north of the courthouse. As the buggy crossed the square, there seemed like a lot more people gathered there than on a typical Friday afternoon. Many of the men had liquor bottles in their hands.
“What a commotion. Did they close the saloons or something?”
“In fact, they did,” replied Reid. “Now let’s see if we get through this mob with our skins.”
Jim turned up his collar and lowered his head as Reid told the horses to get up. Every face turned to Wilcox. For a moment, the buzz among them was suspended, and it seemed like the encounter was poised on a razor’s edge between calm and chaos. Halfway across, Jim dared think calm had prevailed.
But then—from somewhere out of the crowd—a liquor bottle arced toward him. It was a good throw, missing him only by inches. A torrent of invective was suddenly uncorked:
“God damn Jim Wilcox to hell!”
“You’ll suck that river water soon, Jim!”
“Don’t think that jail will keep you safe, murderer!”
Reid whipped the horses, splitting the scrum as they passed the Fire House and up Pool Street. Jim was sure a few men must of been trampled by their hooves, or clipped by the buggy’s wheels, but he didn’t hazard a look back to see.
The report of the Coroner’s Jury was released to the newspapers the next day:
We, the coroner’s jury, having been duly summoned and sworn by Dr. I. Fearing to inquire what caused the death of Ella M. Cropsey, do hereby report that from the investigation made by three physicians of Elizabeth City and from their opinion and also from our personal observation that Ella M. Cropsey came to her death by being stricken a blow on the left temple and by being drowned in the Pasquotank River. We have not yet investigated or heard any testimony touching as to who inflicted the blow and did the drowning. We are informed that one James Wilcox is charged with the same and is now in custody. We recommend that an investigation as to his or any one else’s probable guilt be had by one or more magistrates in Elizabeth City township and that said Wilcox be held to await said investigation.
III.
William Cropsey telegraphed news of Nell’s discovery to his brother the day she was found. The reply came in an hour: Judge Andrew G. Cropsey—Carrie’s father— would be on the next train from Brooklyn.
The Judge appeared on their porch twenty hours later, holding a carpetbag. Inside, he greeted every family member in turn with a tighter-than-usual embrace, replete with due sympathy. When he encircled Ollie she smelled the odors of cigars and oysters. His brush mustache scratched her lip, and his spreading belly assaulted her midriff.
“This is difficult,” he whispered.
“Yes, it is.”
“Have you been taking care of your mother?”
“We all have.”
“It’s all we can do. Until justice is served.”
Uncle Andrew spoke frequently of justice. In appearance he was shorter than his brother, but more substantial—the thick gray stump to his brother’s gangling tree. Something about him brooked no defiance, even before he opened his mouth. No one thought to argue otherwise when he announced, “Now I will see your mother.”
Mary Cropsey had given up her vigil when Nell was brought in from the river. Her condition before had resembled a nervous breakdown, but now that Nell’s death was certain her inner turmoil seemed to manifest physically. When she was unfortunate enough to be awake, her hands writhed around each other like wrestling snakes. The whites of her left eye were bloody now—the consequence, Dr. Wood speculated, of a burst vessel.
“What’s all this got to do with blood vessels?” demanded Cropsey.
“If that’s the worst of it, Bill, I’d thank my stars.”
Ollie didn’t go in to watch Uncle Andrew greet her mother. Instead, she waited in the parlor until he and the other Cropsey men came out. Uncle Andrew fell upon the sofa with a sigh. Her father took the rocker, and Uncle Hen stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
“I take it you had her chaperoned whenever she was with that fellow, Wilcox?” asked the Judge.
“Of course.”
“In my profession I’ve seen these types, time and time again. When these boys get it in their heads to do something rash over matters of love, Lord knows what they’re capable of.”
“Yes.”
“Judging from the coroner’s report, it’s obvious she wasn’t drowned. She never talked about harming herself, did she?”
He was looking at Ollie.
“No, never.”
“Then by process of elimination, there can be only one possibility. She was abducted by this young fellow. Her state of preservation testifies to nothing else. She was abducted and held somewhere. Isn’t there a swamp around here?”
“The Dismal.” said Hen.
“Exactly. So as the noose tightened around Wilcox, the boy panicked. He had her killed, probably no more than a couple of days before she was found. Then they threw her in the river to make it look like suicide.”
Dyspepsia washed over William Cropsey’s face. The Judge thought little of it; it was the typical reaction of a man who didn’t like to be lectured by his elder brother.
“The hole in your theory,” William said, “is that Wilcox has been watched since the day Nell disappeared. How was he supposed to be keeping Nell captive while the deputies were on him every minute?”
“Obviously, he had accomplices. And perhaps a system of signals to communicate with them, like placing classified ads in the newspapers.”
“Accomplices? And he paid for their services, and their silence, with what? His great fortune? Knowing the state of Jim Wilcox’s schooling, I doubt he could properly address an envelope, much less concoct secret messages for the papers!”
“Bill, I know you are in grief, but you are making a damn fool of yourself. I’ve been around the criminal element my whole life. If you wish to debate the merits—”
He was interrupted by Ollie who, unable to hear any more, shot to her feet with a muffled scream.
All eyes fell on her as she stood there. Her face throbbed red as she feared her deception was exposed. Uncle Hen cleared his throat. Uncle Andrew looked exactly like what he was: a judge interrupted in mid-pronouncement.
“I’ll check on Mama.”
The men were silent as she left the room. She heard her uncle resume: “…debate the fine points of criminal investigation with a seasoned officer of the court…” as she shut the parlor door.
The funeral of Nell Cropsey took place at the Methodist Episcopal Church at Church & S. Martin. One and a half thousand people gathered that drizzly Sunday afternoon to bid goodbye to the girl few had ever laid eyes on, and almost none knew.
Ollie helped pick the dress Nell was buried in: a traveling suit of brown serge, with white silk chemisette and sleeves trimmed in bands of velvet. It was a dress, Ollie imagined, that Nell would have worn on one of the trips she dreamed of making.
Her body had been stitched back together by Dr. Fearing. The discoloration of her skin was concealed by arsenic paint on her face and hands that made her glisten faintly. As her hair never looked the same after the scalp was removed, she wore a lace burial cap that Lettie and Carrie had spent the night before embroidering with tiny daffodils. Ollie would have helped, but with eyes bleary from grief she couldn’t manage such fine work.
The embalmers had seen fit to paint Nell’s lips blood red. They were too bloody for her father’s taste. When he approached the casket to bid her farewell, he used his handkerchief to wipe the color away. He made a mess of it—the red paint smeared into the arsenic, making her look clownish. After the service, Ollie took the undertaker aside:
“You won’t let her go into the ground like that.”
“Of course not, my dear.”
Nell reposed to the right of the altar. Her casket was of polished black walnut, with white satin lining and
silver fixtures, topped by four overflowing floral arrangements engirdled by white and green ribbons. The undertaker had picked the colors—respectively, for ‘purity’ and ‘resurrection’. Ollie had sent to a greenhouse in Norfolk for asphodels, whose symbolism she hoped few of the other attendees would notice.
The crowd filled the church to capacity and spilled into the wet yard beyond. The rain came and went during the service, but as if in collective expiation, few bothered to open umbrellas. The town’s prominent clerics took turns eulogizing her as the farthest mourners bent their ears. The preachers doled out their words a sentence at a time, so the nearer congregants could relay them to those too far to hear.
Pastor Tuttle gave the main oration. His tone started little different from the one he took for every funeral sermon. But so wide and indiscriminate was public grief for Nell Cropsey, the occasion felt like no other memorial. Significant sniffles, and the sounds of quiet sobbing, came from every corner of the church.
“A sad and mysterious Providence has come to a home in our community…” he began, ladling his munificent gaze down on the pews, to William and Mary Cropsey. “We thank God that the family has been sustained in their sorrow…We thank Thee, that she accepted Christ in this very place, just thirty-eight days ago, before being taken away from us…All deaths are sad, but oh how inexpressibly sad it is to be cut off in the bloom of young womanhood and like this, though mystery surrounds her death, we have this promise about her beautiful life: ‘There is nothing secret that shall not be made manifest. Be sure your sins will find you out.’”
At this promise a murmur shot through the crowd. For it was known that Jim Wilcox was but a few blocks away, in the county jail. Indeed, it was the closest he had been to Nell since the night she disappeared. How easy it would have been for one or two hundred stout fellows—men with a thirst for justice—to take it upon themselves to break down the prison doors. In the church there was weeping, and there was hatred, often on the same faces simultaneously.
Ella Maud Page 12
