Neither emotion was on Mary Cropsey’s face. Instead, she was blank with exhaustion. Her shoulders slumped in her seat, and she seemed physically shrunken. To onlookers, it seemed as if she did not comprehend what was going on around her. When she left the church, she lacked the strength to mount the steps to her buggy, and had to be lifted into it.
“I’ll tell you this,” Tuttle continued. “We hear the saloons have been closed as a protection to a supposed criminal…It is not interesting that the dry goods stores are not closed, the grocery stores, the jewelry shops and other establishments, were not shut up…? Only the liquor saloons, which on other days remain open to corrupt the innocent…Is this not as clear an admission as our civil authorities can make, that those places are inherently dangerous…? That they lie at the very root of the criminality from which they are sworn to protect us…? Indeed, does it take so much an effort of imagination to see the plot that brought us to this sad pass, hatched in exactly those places, by minds addled by alcohol…? They tell us that their revenues sustain our city. I ask you to look there, friends, to the beauty in that casket…There lies your profit! There are the wages paid this unfortunate family by the demon!”
He closed the sermon with the lulling familiarity of scripture—15 Corinthians. But the indignation he had abetted in the congregation did not subside. It buzzed as the members of the Committee of Five and William Cropsey lifted the glistening casket on their shoulders, and to the accompaniment of Nearer My God to Thee bore her down the aisle, out the door, and down to the hearse.
The crowd parted. The horses snorted and shook the black plumes on their heads, and Andrew Cropsey stood at attention as the casket was lifted into the back.
Many of the mourners followed the body the half mile to the Norfolk & Southern Depot. They watched as it was loaded onto the special train chartered for the journey to New York. Hundreds lingered as the engine gave a long whistle, and with a last exhalation of steam into the overcast sky, began Nell’s journey home.
Two days later, on New Year’s Eve, the lawyer packed his valise with the Cropsey autopsy report, depositions, and Jim Wilcox’s indictment. He paused at the mirror to check that his mustache was straight, and swept away a flake of coal ash from his lapel. Then left his office on E. Main Street.
He stopped at a tobacconist on the corner.
“Afternoon Ed!”
“Afternoon Johnny. The usual please. And three packets of Duke’s Best.”
“Taken up cigarettes, Ed?”
“They’re for a client.”
“All on your tab?
“Yes, thanks.”
“Do I know him?”
“Who’s that?”
“Your new client.”
“Have a good afternoon, Johnny.”
On his way to the county jail he had to cross the square in front of the Courthouse. Four-man canvas tents—the kind not seen in these parts since the War—were pitched on the green, with weapons piled and sentries posted. In front of the tents, men sat talking, chewing tobacco and scratching. From the look of them, they didn’t seem like regular soldiers: some were beyond forty, spreading bellies pouring through their suspenders.
He was halted at the corner of Mathews and Pool, short of the jailhouse.
“State your business,” the picket ordered.
“Counsel for the defendant.”
“Prove it.”
He was at a loss. In Elizabeth City, everybody knew Edwin F. Aydlett, Esq., and he knew everybody else who was a lawyer too. The problem of having to prove his profession had simply never come up before. But the militia protecting Jim Wilcox from lynching was not from Elizabeth City.
“Where are you from, young man?”
“Currituck.”
“Biting fish out there?”
“Like you’ve never seen.”
Another militiaman came up and vouched for him, so they waved him through. Aydlett walked the last half-block in a curious state of solitude, with no other pedestrians and all the shops closed.
The deputy greeted him at the jailhouse.
“Morning Ed!”
“Morning Charlie. Any plans for the holiday?”
“Under the circumstances…” he replied, indicating in the direction of the cells, “Not this year.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
The cells in the Pasquotank County Jail were small—just seven feet on a side. They were engirdled not by bars but by lattices of flat steel ribs. There was one window, near the ceiling, that was propped open. There were ten cells in that block, but only one—labelled #19—was occupied.
Jim Wilcox was lying in the bunk, reading. The book looked like some kind of dime Western. When the key rattled in the lock he shot upright.
“Hey there Ed! Did’ya fetch the smokes?”
“Morning to you too, Jim.”
Wilcox took the packs and tore one open at once. As he took his first puff, his face suffused with relief. He fell back against the wall. Then he opened his eyes and saw Aydlett watching him closely.
“Not much to do in here,” he said.
“Stepping out now,” deputy Reid announced. “Ed, if you need me I’m right outside.”
“Thank you Charlie.”
Jim fetched up a laugh. “Suddenly I can’t be trusted alone with a body. You murder just one girl and look how they treat you!”
“That kind of joking ain’t gonna help you, Jim. You need to knock it off.”
The other tossed his head, took another drag.
“At least we’ve got some good news,” said Aydlett as he reached into his valise. “The coroner’s jury released a statement to the press.”
He handed over a newspaper clipping. But Jim could not summon the will to read it; it was too painful. He handed it back.
“Good news, how?”
“This part: ‘We are informed that 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.’”
“Sounds like the usual applesauce.”
“Exactly. But when it’s coming from town officials, and printed up in the papers, it can’t help but prejudice any possible jury. They’ve practically convicted you ex curia.”
“And how is that good?”
“Never seen anything like it in twenty years of practicing law. Wilcox’s ‘probable guilt’! That conclusion is practically a crime in itself. It’s clear grounds for the judge to grant us a change of venue for the trial.”
“Well, it would be nice to see the inside of a different cell.”
“I think we should try for Norfolk. There’s some sympathy there for the way you’ve been railroaded.”
“My pap says you’re a good lawyer, Ed, so tell me why I’m stuck in here. How come I can’t post bond?”
“I’m afraid, Jim, that has less to do with your roots in the community than with your physical safety.” And Aydlett tilted his head toward the door to indicate the general air of menace without.
Jim shrugged. He tapped the loose ashes from his cigarette into his water cup.
“So, you go to the funeral?”
“Yes.”
“Good turnout?”
“I think you know there was.”
“Yeah, I figured. I just wish I could have…”
He paused, took another drag, but didn’t continue.
“Her uncle took her up north to be buried with her people.”
The other nodded, bowed his head.
“Listen, Jim—I need to tell you something. Are you listening?”
“Aye-aye, counselor.”
“I don’t know what happened between you and Nell. I don’t care what you did. Maybe you had your reasons, maybe you didn’t. But I need you to be absolutely honest with me, and absolutely complete. So if there’s something you’re not telling me, I need to know it now. I don’t want
any surprises from the stand. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“So let’s go over the last time you were together. Is there anything that happened—anything that gives us a clue to her state of mind—that you've left out so far? I want you to really think.”
Jim scowled. “If you knew how many times I had to tell that story…”
“And you’ll tell it a thousand times more, too.”
The other smoked and stared through the gaps in his cage, brow furrowed.
“Well, there was one thing I noticed…”
“Go on.”
“I was about to leave, a little after eleven, when I asked if Nell would come out on the piazza with me. I looked right at her, you know, and said ‘Hey Nell, would you come outside with me for a minute?’ But she didn’t look at me when I spoke to her. She looked at Ollie first. Then she got up.”
“Did Miss Olive say anything to her? Did she give her a certain look?”
“Not that I noticed. She maybe just shrugged.”
“Why didn’t you say this before?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t seem important. Is it?”
“Maybe. Now tell me again how Nell reacted when you returned the sunshade and the pictures.”
“The parasol was white and made of silk. I busted the mechanism on it sometime a while back. Damned thing was so delicate. I told her I’d fix it, but I bought her a new one instead.”
“Did she thank you for that?”
“Did she!” Jim gave a sardonic laugh. “The one I got was worth twice the price. She kissed me on the cheek, and said ‘Ain’t you somethin’, Jim Wilcox!’”
“So why’d you bring back the broken one?”
“After we stopped speaking, she let it be known she wanted her property back. So I obliged. I always oblige a lady.”
“Did she put it inside the house?”
“Come again?”
“When you gave her back the parasol, did she go inside with it?”
“Not that I saw.”
Aydlett nodded, then shook his head. He had been considering these details for days, and they gave him a headache.
“That’s what I don’t understand, Jim. They say the pictures were never found, but the parasol was found in the front hall. If Nell never came back into the house that evening, how did it end up there?”
Jim took a final drag and flicked the smoking butt through the steel ribs of his cage.
“I couldn’t tell you, counselor. But whatever happened, I got a feeling it’s my fault.”
Jim learned about the militia the very day they arrived. The window in his cell, propped open to let out the cigarette smoke, let in sounds from the street. That afternoon, just after his lunch, he heard the crunch of marching feet, and the voices of the sergeants barking orders. Just after that, all sounds of wheeled traffic disappeared around the jail. It took a few moments for the implications of this to sink in. Then he proclaimed aloud, “So, this is what it’s come to.”
“Looks like the Governor made it official, Jim,” said the deputy. “You’re the most popular man in North Carolina!”
“You got to admit, Charlie: when I get in trouble, I do it right and proper.”
Reid laughed, “You got that right.”
Besides smoking and reading, he had a lot of time to turn things over in his mind as he sat in custody. The more he thought about how the Cropseys had wronged him, the more infuriated did he become. Setting that mob on him—so much for William Cropsey’s dedication to law and order. The hypocrite! Wouldn’t they like to think of him sitting there, quaking with fear? Wouldn’t his accusers like to shuffle Nell’s misery off upon him? For Nell was not the happy pet of the family that was described in the papers. He wasn’t a Cropsey, to be sure, but he had known Nell for more than three years, and had seen her outside the house, out of the influence of her father and Ollie and that prying simpleton, Uncle Hen. He had seen her away from Papa Cropsey—the potato general—swaggering in his fields with a bullwhip, lording it over workmen too poor and desperate to tell him what a fool he was. Away from Ollie Cropsey, whom he was chagrined to remember once attracted him.
There were times in the seats of buggies or rowboats that Nell let him sit close. They said she was a proper girl and that was true: there was nothing about her that brooked disrespect. If he put a hand on her leg, she looked at him in a way that expressed neither disgust, nor reproof, but bemused surprise, as if were an overeager boy accosting a grown woman. Nell was almost six years younger than Jim. Yet she had a way of making herself the grown-up between them—which suited Jim fine, since he liked to play the fool. Over the years it had become a comfortable sort of game between them. Jim would let himself sound like an unlettered rube, and let fly with whatever malapropism or off-color remark entered his head, and Nell would get to smile at his naïveté, and correct or scold him, and say “You silly boy. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?” At the age of twenty-five, Jim had already visited the brothels in the colored part of town, and was on familiar terms with some of the girls. When he glimpsed Nell’s bare wrist, or a flash of calf, he was well aware of the shape of the territory beyond. He was not ashamed to admit he burned to explore it. In their reversed roles, Jim’s experience was less threatening, and her lack of it was concealed.
But there were times when Nell sounded like the restless teen she was.
“Ollie was such a little witch today,” she told him one day at the skating rink.
“Is that a fact?”
“She knew I wanted that piece of organza for a particular purpose, and she got up early just to take and use it before I could forbid it.”
“Did she now!”
“She always hates it when I have something she doesn’t.”
“Sounds witchy to me.”
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re making fun of me. I’ve got a mind not to tell you anything, if you take that tone.”
“What tone?”
And she attempted to push away from him, but because she was such a poor skater, she lost her balance and fell against the boards. Jim took her back in his arms, and brushed a loose curl of hair from her eyes, and felt her body so small and bent and lithe in his grasp, and had to say, “You know I adore you.”
“If you adored me, you’d take me away from here.”
“Is this place so bad?”
She stiff-armed him as she gathered her feet.
“There doesn’t have to be anything wrong to want to get away,” she said.
Once he had gone up to New York to visit her at school. It was his first time outside of North Carolina. He brought his best duds for the occasion, and enjoyed promenading down the Ladies’ Mile in spats and yellow gabardine suit with such a fine girl on his arm. They plied Central Park Lake to the music of floating accordions. In Brooklyn, she showed him the Pratt Institute’s fine library, with its book stacks flooded with daylight through floors made of Tiffany glass.
“Anyone who lives or works in Brooklyn can borrow books from here, from the scholar to the humblest workman,” she told him, as proudly as if she built the place. Nell was not really a student, but Carrie took her to her classes whenever she was up for a visit, and the teachers at Pratt were happy to accommodate unofficial auditors. It was amusing to see how the college atmosphere excited her.
And indeed, the library was an striking place. It was a strange feeling to be walking on a floor made of glass, like a bug on the panes of an enormous window. But a man couldn’t very well admit being impressed with such things.
“They got any dime Westerns?”
There was a show of the students’ handiwork at the school that week, to which Carrie contributed a costume she and Nell had designed, cut and stitched.
After Jim was escorted through the throng of visitors on the third floor of the Ryerson Street building—dedicated to ‘the Domestic Arts & Sciences’—he was confronted by a red boating dress with pleated skirt, white lapels and buttonholes piped in g
old. The mannequin wore a straw hat festooned with swan feathers. It all seemed a bit much to him.
“So, what do you think?” asked Carrie.
“I’m imagining myself showing up at the docks in that.”
“Pearls before swine!” declared Nell. “Come along, Jim. Let’s get some hot chocolate.”
He was disinterested in most of the exhibits, but was pleased for the Cropseys when the judges awarded their creation ‘Honorable Mention’. For the sake of their beaming faces he refrained from wisecracks as they collected the certificate. When he noticed a reporter from the New York World was interviewing the students, he made sure he came over to talk to the girls. Under the reporter’s gentle questioning Carrie’s pride turned to bashfulness; she left it to Nell to describe the “basting” and “darting”. The reporter listened to the details with a look of polite distraction on his face, and did not write them down.
Later, Nell pulled him close, as if to kiss him.
“Jim, do me a favor, will you?”
“Anything.”
“Your accent. Maybe…if you talked less. In front of these other people.”
“What’s wrong with how I talk?” he replied, loudly.
“Nothing, Jim. Never mind.”
He was left to ponder this exchange for the rest of the afternoon.
He didn’t want to make a big deal out of this and other bits of disparagement. But he couldn’t conceal a certain despondency when he came home after an evening at the Cropseys. It was beginning to be a habit—to go over there with gifts for the family, full of expectation, but return undercut and baffled. It was a pattern that didn’t escape his father.
“I don’t know how you put up with them,” Tom Wilcox grumbled. “No pretty face is worth that.”
“Be careful what you tell me to get rid of.”
The old man glared at him as if Jim had swindled him. Then he muttered “Damn fool” and settled back into his newspaper.
But Tom Wilcox knew exactly what Jim was talking about.
When Jim was a boy, he saved the money he’d made doing neighborhood odd jobs and sent away for the pet of his dreams — a genuine, live falcon.
Ella Maud Page 13
