The Case of Jennie Brice Read online

  CHAPTER XV

  After twenty-four hours' deliberation, the jury brought in a verdictof guilty. It was a first-degree verdict. Mr. Howell's unsupportedword had lost out against a scar.

  Contrary to my expectation, Mr. Holcombe was not jubilant over theverdict. He came into the dining-room that night and stood by thewindow, looking out into the yard.

  "It isn't logical," he said. "In view of Howell's testimony, it'sridiculous! Heaven help us under this jury system, anyhow! Look at thefacts! Howell knows the woman: he sees her on Monday morning, andputs her on a train out of town. The boy is telling the truth. He hasnothing to gain by coming forward, and everything to lose. Verywell: she was alive on Monday. We know where she was on Tuesday andWednesday. Anyhow, during those days her gem of a husband was in jail.He was freed Thursday night, and from that time until his rearrest onthe following Tuesday, I had him under observation every moment. Heleft the jail Thursday night, and on Saturday the body floated in atSewickley. If it was done by Ladley, it must have been done on Friday,and on Friday he was in view through the periscope all day!"

  Mr. Reynolds came in and joined us. "There's only one way out that Isee," he said mildly. "Two women have been fool enough to have a nametattooed over their hearts. No woman ever thought enough of me to have_my_ name put on her."

  "I hope not," I retorted. Mr. Reynold's first name is Zachariah.

  But, as Mr. Holcombe said, all that had been proved was that JennieBrice was dead, probably murdered. He could not understand the defenseletting the case go to the jury without their putting more stress onMr. Howell's story. But we were to understand that soon, and manyother things. Mr. Holcombe told me that evening of learning from JohnBellows of the tattooed name on Jennie Brice and of how, after analmost endless search, he had found the man who had cut the name away.

  At eight o'clock the door-bell rang. Mr. Reynolds had gone to lodge,he being an Elk and several other things, and much given to regaliain boxes, and having his picture in the newspapers in differentoutlandish costumes. Mr. Pitman used to say that man, being denied hisnatural love for barbaric adornment in his every-day clothing, took tothe different fraternities as an excuse for decking himself out. Butthis has nothing to do with the door-bell.

  It was old Isaac. He had a basket in his hand, and he stepped into thehall and placed it on the floor.

  "Evening, Miss Bess," he said. "Can you see a bit of companyto-night?"

  "I can always see you," I replied. But he had not meant himself. Hestepped to the door, and opening it, beckoned to some one across thestreet. It was Lida!

  She came in, her color a little heightened, and old Isaac stood back,beaming at us both; I believe it was one of the crowning momentsof the old man's life--thus to see his Miss Bess and Alma's childtogether.

  "Is--is he here yet?" she asked me nervously.

  "I did not know he was coming." There was no need to ask which "he."There was only one for Lida.

  "He telephoned me, and asked me to come here. Oh, Mrs. Pitman, I'mso afraid for him!" She had quite forgotten Isaac. I turned to theschool-teacher's room and opened the door. "The woman who belongs hereis out at a lecture," I said. "Come in here, Ikkie, and I'll find theevening paper for you.

  "'Ikkie'!" said Lida, and stood staring at me. I think I went white.

  "The lady heah and I is old friends," Isaac said, with his splendidmanner. "Her mothah, Miss Lida, her mothah--"

  But even old Isaac choked up at that, and I closed the door on him.

  "How queer!" Lida said, looking at me. "So Isaac knew your mother?Have you lived always in Allegheny, Mrs. Pitman?"

  "I was born in Pittsburgh," I evaded. "I went away for a long time,but I always longed for the hurry and activity of the old home town.So here I am again."

  Fortunately, like all the young, her own affairs engrossed her. Shewas flushed with the prospect of meeting her lover, tremulous overwhat the evening might bring. The middle-aged woman who had come backto the hurry of the old town, and who, pushed back into an eddy of theflood district, could only watch the activity and the life from behinda "Rooms to Let" sign, did not concern her much. Nor should she have.

  Mr. Howell came soon after. He asked for her, and going back to thedining-room, kissed her quietly. He had an air of resolve, a sort ofgrim determination, that was a relief from the half-frantic look hehad worn before. He asked to have Mr. Holcombe brought down, and sobehold us all, four of us, sitting around the table--Mr. Holcombe withhis note-book, I with my mending, and the boy with one of Lida's handsfrankly under his on the red table-cloth.

  "I want to tell all of you the whole story," he began. "To-morrow Ishall go to the district attorney and confess, but--I want you all tohave it first. I can't sleep again until I get it off my chest. Mrs.Pitman has suffered through me, and Mr. Holcombe here has spent moneyand time--"

  Lida did not speak, but she drew her chair closer, and put her otherhand over his.

  "I want to get it straight, if I can. Let me see. It was on Sunday,the fourth, that the river came up, wasn't it? Yes. Well, on theThursday before that I met you, Mr. Holcombe, in a restaurant inPittsburgh. Do you remember?"

  Mr. Holcombe nodded.

  "We were talking of crime, and I said no man should be hanged onpurely circumstantial evidence. You affirmed that a well-linked chainof circumstantial evidence could properly hang a man. We had a longargument, in which I was worsted. There was a third man at thetable--Bronson, the business manager of the Liberty Theater."

  "Who sided with you," put in Mr. Holcombe, "and whose views I refusedto entertain because, as publicity man for a theater, he dealt infiction rather than in fact."

  "Precisely. You may recall, Mr. Holcombe, that you offered to hang anyman we would name, given a proper chain of circumstantial evidenceagainst him?"

  "Yes."

  "After you left, Bronson spoke to me. He said business at the theaterwas bad, and complained of the way the papers used, or would not use,his stuff. He said the Liberty Theater had not had a proper deal, andthat he was tempted to go over and bang one of the company on thehead, and so get a little free advertising.

  "I said he ought to be able to fake a good story; but he maintainedthat a newspaper could smell a faked story a mile away, and that,anyhow, all the good stunts had been pulled off. I agreed with him. Iremember saying that nothing but a railroad wreck or a murder hit thepublic very hard these days, and that I didn't feel like wrecking thePennsylvania Limited.

  "He leaned over the table and looked at me. 'Well, how about a murder,then?' he said. 'You get the story for your paper, and I get someadvertising for the theater. We need it, that's sure.'

  "I laughed it off, and we separated. But at two o'clock Bronson calledme up again. I met him in his office at the theater, and he told methat Jennie Brice, who was out of the cast that week, had asked for aweek's vacation. She had heard of a farm at a town called Horner, andshe wanted to go there to rest.

  "'Now the idea is this,' he said. 'She's living with her husband, andhe has threatened her life more than once. It would be easy enough toframe up something to look as if he'd made away with her. We'd get aweek of excitement, more advertising than we'd ordinarily get in ayear; you get a corking news story, and find Jennie Brice at the end,getting the credit for that. Jennie gets a hundred dollars and a rest,and Ladley, her husband, gets, say, two hundred.'

  "Mr. Bronson offered to put up the money, and I agreed. The flood camejust then, and was considerable help. It made a good setting. I wentto my city editor, and got an assignment to interview Ladley aboutthis play of his. Then Bronson and I went together to see the Ladleyson Sunday morning, and as they needed money, they agreed. But Ladleyinsisted on fifty dollars a week extra if he had to go to jail. Wepromised it, but we did not intend to let things go so far as that.

  "In the Ladleys' room that Sunday morning, we worked it all out. Thehardest thing was to get Jennie Brice's consent; but she agreed,finally. We arranged a list of clues, to be left around, and Ladley
was to go out in the night and to be heard coming back. I told him toquarrel with his wife that afternoon,--although I don't believethey needed to be asked to do it,--and I suggested also the shoe orslipper, to be found floating around."

  "Just a moment," said Mr. Holcombe, busy with his note-book. "Did yousuggest the onyx clock?"

  "No. No clock was mentioned. The--the clock has puzzled me."

  "The towel?"

  "Yes. I said no murder was complete without blood, but he kicked onthat--said he didn't mind the rest, but he'd be hanged if he was goingto slash himself. But, as it happened, he cut his wrist while cuttingthe boat loose, and so we had the towel."

  "Pillow-slip?" asked Mr. Holcombe.

  "Well, no. There was nothing said about a pillow-slip. Didn't he sayhe burned it accidentally?"

  "So he claimed." Mr. Holcombe made another entry in his book.

  "Then I said every murder had a weapon. He was to have a pistol atfirst, but none of us owned one. Mrs. Ladley undertook to get a knifefrom Mrs. Pitman's kitchen, and to leave it around, not in full view,but where it could be found."

  "A broken knife?"

  "No. Just a knife."

  "He was to throw the knife into the water?"

  "That was not arranged. I only gave him a general outline. He was toadd any interesting details that might occur to him. The idea, ofcourse, was to give the police plenty to work on, and just whenthey thought they had it all, and when the theater had had a lot ofbooming, and I had got a good story, to produce Jennie Brice, safeand well. We were not to appear in it at all. It would have workedperfectly, but we forgot to count on one thing--Jennie Brice hated herhusband."

  "Not really hated him!" cried Lida.

  "_Hated_ him. She is letting him hang. She could save him by comingforward now, and she won't do it. She is hiding so he will go to thegallows."

  There was a pause at that. It seemed too incredible, too inhuman.

  "Then, early that Monday morning, you smuggled Jennie Brice out of thecity?"

  "Yes. That was the only thing we bungled. We fixed the hour a littletoo late, and I was seen by Miss Harvey's uncle, walking across thebridge with a woman."

  "Why did you meet her openly, and take her to the train?"

  Mr. Howell bent forward and smiled across at the little man. "Oneof your own axioms, sir," he said. "Do the natural thing; upset thecustomary order of events as little as possible. Jennie Brice went tothe train, because that was where she wanted to go. But as Ladley wasto protest that his wife had left town, and as the police wouldbe searching for a solitary woman, I went with her. We went in aleisurely manner. I bought her a magazine and a morning paper, askedthe conductor to fix her window, and, in general, acted the devotedhusband seeing his wife off on a trip. I even"--he smiled--"I evenpromised to feed the canary."

  Lida took her hands away. "Did you kiss her good-by?" she demanded.

  "Not even a chaste salute," he said. His spirits were rising. It was,as often happens, as if the mere confession removed the guilt. I haveseen little boys who have broken a window show the same relief aftertelling about it.

  "For a day or two Bronson and I sat back, enjoying the stir-up. Thingsturned out as we had expected. Business boomed at the theater. I gota good story, and some few kind words from my city editor. Then--theexplosion came. I got a letter from Jennie Brice saying she was goingaway, and that we need not try to find her. I went to Horner, but Ihad lost track of her completely. Even then, we did not believe thingsso bad as they turned out to be. We thought she was giving us a badtime, but that she would show up.

  "Ladley was in a blue funk for a time. Bronson and I went to him. Wetold him how the thing had slipped up. We didn't want to go to thepolice and confess if we could help it. Finally, he agreed to stick itout until she was found, at a hundred dollars a week. It took all wecould beg, borrow and steal. But now--we have to come out with thestory anyhow."

  Mr. Holcombe sat up and closed his note-book with a snap. "I'm not sosure of that," he said impressively. "I wonder if you realize, youngman, that, having provided a perfect defense for this man Ladley, youprovided him with every possible inducement to make away with hiswife? Secure in your coming forward at the last minute and confessingthe hoax to save him, was there anything he might not have dared withimpunity?"

  "But I tell you I took Jennie Brice out of town on Monday morning."

  "_Did you_?" asked Mr. Holcombe sternly.

  But at that, the school-teacher, having come home and found old Isaacsound asleep in her cozy corner, set up such a screaming for thepolice that our meeting broke up. Nor would Mr. Holcombe explain anyfurther.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Mr. Holcombe was up very early the next morning. I heard him movingaround at five o'clock, and at six he banged at my door and demandedto know at what time the neighborhood rose: he had been up for an hourand there were no signs of life. He was more cheerful after he had hada cup of coffee, commented on Lida's beauty, and said that Howell wasa lucky chap.

  "That is what worries me, Mr. Holcombe," I said. "I am helping theaffair along and--what if it turns out badly?"

  He looked at me over his glasses. "It isn't likely to turn out badly,"he said. "I have never married, Mrs. Pitman, and I have missed a greatdeal out of life."

  "Perhaps you're better off: if you had married and lost your wife--" Iwas thinking of Mr. Pitman.

  "Not at all," he said with emphasis. "It's better to have married andlost than never to have married at all. Every man needs a good woman,and it doesn't matter how old he is. The older he is, the more heneeds her. I am nearly sixty."

  I was rather startled, and I almost dropped the fried potatoes. Butthe next moment he had got out his note-book and was going overthe items again. "Pillow-slip," he said, "knife _broken_, onyxclock--wouldn't think so much of the clock if he hadn't been sodamnably anxious to hide the key, the discrepancy in time as revealedby the trial--yes, it is as clear as a bell. Mrs. Pitman, does thatMaguire woman next door sleep all day?"

  "She's up now," I said, looking out the window.

  He was in the hall in a moment, only to come to the door later, hat inhand. "Is she the only other woman on the street who keeps boarders?"

  "She's the only woman who doesn't," I snapped. "She'll keep anythingthat doesn't belong to her--except boarders."

  "Ah!"

  He lighted his corn-cob pipe and stood puffing at it and watching me.He made me uneasy: I thought he was going to continue the subject ofevery man needing a wife, and I'm afraid I had already decided to takehim if he offered, and to put the school-teacher out and have a realparlor again, but to keep Mr. Reynolds, he being tidy and no bother.

  But when he spoke, he was back to the crime again: "Did you ever worka typewriter?" he asked.

  What with the surprise, I was a little sharp. "I don't play anyinstrument except an egg-beater," I replied shortly, and went onclearing the table.

  "I wonder--do you remember about the village idiot and the horse? Butof course you do, Mrs. Pitman; you are a woman of imagination. Don'tyou think you could be Alice Murray for a few moments? Now think--youare a stenographer with theatrical ambitions: you meet an actor andyou fall in love with him, and he with you."

  "That's hard to imagine, that last."

  "Not so hard," he said gently. "Now the actor is going to put you onthe stage, perhaps in this new play, and some day he is going to marryyou."

  "Is that what he promised the girl?"

  "According to some letters her mother found, yes. The actor ismarried, but he tells you he will divorce the wife; you are to waitfor him, and in the meantime he wants you near him; away from theoffice, where other men are apt to come in with letters to be typed,and to chaff you. You are a pretty girl."

  "It isn't necessary to overwork my imagination," I said, with a littlebitterness. I had been a pretty girl, but work and worry--

  "Now you are going to New York very soon, and in the meantime you havecut yourself off from all your people. You have n
o one but this man.What would you do? Where would you go?"

  "How old was the girl?"

  "Nineteen."

  "I think," I said slowly, "that if I were nineteen, and in love with aman, and hiding, I would hide as near him as possible. I'd be likelyto get a window that could see his going out and coming in, a place sonear that he could come often to see me."

  "Bravo!" he exclaimed. "Of course, with your present wisdom andexperience, you would do nothing so foolish. But this girl was in herteens; she was not very far away, for he probably saw her that Sundayafternoon, when he was out for two hours. And as the going was slowthat day, and he had much to tell and explain, I figure she was notfar off. Probably in this very neighborhood."

  During the remainder of that morning I saw Mr. Holcombe, at intervals,going from house to house along Union Street, making short excursionsinto side thoroughfares, coming back again and taking up his door-bellringing with unflagging energy. I watched him off and on for twohours. At the end of that time he came back flushed and excited.

  "I found the house," he said, wiping his glasses. "She was there, allright, not so close as we had thought, but as close as she could get."

  "And can you trace her?" I asked.

  His face changed and saddened. "Poor child!" he said. "She is dead,Mrs. Pitman!"

  "Not she--at Sewickley!"

  "No," he said patiently. "That was Jennie Brice."

  "But--Mr. Howell--"

  "Mr. Howell is a young ass," he said with irritation. "He did not takeJennie Brice out of the city that morning. He took Alice Murray inJennie Brice's clothing, and veiled."

  Well, that is five years ago. Five times since then the AlleghenyRiver, from being a mild and inoffensive stream, carrying a few boatsand a great deal of sewage, has become, a raging destroyer, and hasfilled our hearts with fear and our cellars with mud. Five times sincethen Molly Maguire has appropriated all that the flood carried from mypremises to hers, and five times have I lifted my carpets and movedMr. Holcombe, who occupies the parlor bedroom, to a second-floor room.

  A few days ago, as I said at the beginning, we found Peter's bodyfloating in the cellar, and as soon as the yard was dry, I buried him.He had grown fat and lazy, but I shall miss him.

  Yesterday a riverman fell off a barge along the water-front and wasdrowned. They dragged the river for his body, but they did not findhim. But they found something--an onyx clock, with the tatteredremnant of a muslin pillow-slip wrapped around it. It only bore outthe story, as we had known it for five years.

  The Murray girl had lived long enough to make a statement to thepolice, although Mr. Holcombe only learned this later. On thestatement being shown to Ladley in the jail, and his learning of thegirl's death, he collapsed. He confessed before he was hanged, and hisconfession, briefly, was like this:

  He had met the Murray girl in connection with the typing of his play,and had fallen in love with her. He had never cared for his wife, andwould have been glad to get rid of her in any way possible. He had notintended to kill her, however. He had planned to elope with the Murraygirl, and awaiting an opportunity, had persuaded her to leave home andto take a room near my house.

  Here he had visited her daily, while his wife was at the theater.

  They had planned to go to New York together on Monday, March thefifth. On Sunday, the fourth, however, Mr. Bronson and Mr. Howellhad made their curious proposition. When he accepted, Philip Ladleymaintained that he meant only to carry out the plan as suggested. Butthe temptation was too strong for him. That night, while his wifeslept, he had strangled her.

  I believe he was frantic with fear, after he had done it. Then itoccurred to him that if he made the body unrecognizable, he would besafe enough. On that quiet Sunday night, when Mr. Reynolds reportedall peaceful in the Ladley room, he had cut off the poor wretch's headand had tied it up in a pillow-slip weighted with my onyx clock!

  It is a curious fact about the case that the scar which his wifeincurred to enable her to marry him was the means of his undoing. Heinsisted, and I believe he was telling the truth, that he did not knowof the scar: that is, his wife had never told him of it, and had beenable to conceal it. He thought she had probably used paraffin in someway.

  In his final statement, written with great care and no little literaryfinish, he told the story in detail: of arranging the clues as Mr.Howell and Mr. Bronson had suggested; of going out in the boat, withthe body, covered with a fur coat, in the bottom of the skiff: ofthrowing it into the current above the Ninth Street bridge, and ofseeing the fur coat fall from the boat and carried beyond his reach;of disposing of the head near the Seventh Street bridge: of going to adrug store, as per the Howell instructions, and of coming home at fouro'clock, to find me at the head of the stairs.

  While his wife slept.]

  Several points of confusion remained. One had been caused by TempleHope's refusal to admit that the dress and hat that figured in thecase were to be used by her the next week at the theater. Mr. Ladleyinsisted that this was the case, and that on that Sunday afternoonhis wife had requested him to take them to Miss Hope; that they hadquarreled as to whether they should be packed in a box or in the brownvalise, and that he had visited Alice Murray instead. It was on theway there that the idea of finally getting rid of Jennie Brice cameto him. And a way--using the black and white striped dress of thedispute.

  Another point of confusion had been the dismantling of his room thatMonday night, some time between the visit of Temple Hope and thereturn of Mr. Holcombe. This was to obtain the scrap of papercontaining the list of clues as suggested by Mr. Howell, a clue thatmight have brought about a premature discovery of the so-called hoax.

  To the girl he had told nothing of his plan. But he had told her shewas to leave town on an early train the next morning, going as hiswife; that he wished her to wear the black and white dress and hat,for reasons that he would explain later, and to be veiled heavily,that to the young man who would put her on the train, and who had seenJennie Brice only once, she was to be Jennie Brice; to say as littleas possible and not to raise her veil. Her further instructions weresimple: to go to the place at Horner where Jennie Brice had plannedto go, but to use the name of "Bellows" there. And after she had beenthere for a day or two, to go as quietly as possible to New York. Hegave her the address of a boarding-house where he could write her, andwhere he would join her later.

  He reasoned in this way: That as Alice Murray was to impersonateJennie Brice, and Jennie Brice hiding from her husband, she wouldnaturally discard her name. The name "Bellows" had been hers by aprevious marriage and she might easily resume it. Thus, to establishhis innocence, he had not only the evidence of Howell and Bronson thatthe whole thing was a gigantic hoax; he had the evidence of Howellthat he had started Jennie Brice to Horner that Monday morning, thatshe had reached Horner, had there assumed an incognito, as Mr.Pitman would say, and had later disappeared from there, maliciouslyconcealing herself to work his undoing.

  In all probability he would have gone free, the richer by a hundreddollars for each week of his imprisonment, but for two things: theflood, which had brought opportunity to his door, had brought MrHolcombe to feed Peter, the dog. And the same flood, which should havecarried the headless body as far as Cairo, or even farther on down theMississippi, had rejected it in an eddy below a clay bluff atSewickley, with its pitiful covering washed from the scar.

  Well, it is all over now. Mr Ladley is dead, and Alice Murray, andeven Peter lies in the yard. Mr Reynolds made a small wooden crossover Peter's grave, and carved "Till we meet again" on it. I dare saythe next flood will find it in Molly Maguire's kitchen.

  Mr Howell and Lida are married. Mr Howell inherited some money, Ibelieve, and what with that and Lida declaring she would either marryhim in a church or run off to Steubenville, Ohio, Alma had to consent.I went to the wedding and stood near the door, while Alma swept in, inlavender chiffon and rose point lace. She has not improved with age,has Alma. But Lida? Lida, under my mother's wedding veil, wit
h hereyes like stars, seeing no one in the church in all that throng butthe boy who waited at the end of the long church aisle-I wanted to runout and claim her, my own blood, my more than child.

  I sat down and covered my face. And from the pew behind me some oneleaned over and patted my shoulder.

  "Miss Bess!" old Isaac said gently. "Don't take on, Miss Bess!"

  He came the next day and brought me some lilies from the bride'sbouquet, that she had sent me, and a bottle of champagne from thewedding supper. I had not tasted champagne for twenty years!

  That is all of the story. On summer afternoons sometimes, when thehouse is hot, I go to the park and sit. I used to take Peter, but nowhe is dead. I like to see Lida's little boy; the nurse knows me bysight, and lets me talk to the child. He can say "Peter" quiteplainly. But he does not call Alma "Grandmother." The nurse says shedoes not like it. He calls her "Nana."

  Lida does not forget me. Especially at flood-times, she always comesto see if I am comfortable. The other day she brought me, withapologies, the chiffon gown her mother had worn at her wedding. Almahad never worn it but once, and now she was too stout for it. I tookit; I am not proud, and I should like Molly Maguire to see it.

  Mr. Holcombe asked me last night to marry him. He says he needs me,and that I need him.

  I am a lonely woman, and getting old, and I'm tired of watching thegas meter; and besides, with Peter dead, I need a man in the house allthe time. The flood district is none too orderly. Besides, when I havea wedding dress laid away and a bottle of good wine, it seems a pitynot to use them.

  I think I shall do it.

  THE END