The Stillwater Tragedy Read online

  II

  That morning, when Michael Hennessey's girl Mary--a girl sixteenyears old--carried the can of milk to the rear door of the silenthouse, she was nearly a quarter of hour later than usual, and lookedforward to being soundly rated.

  "He's up and been waiting for it," she said to herself, observingthe scullery door ajar. "Won't I ketch it! It's him for growling andsnapping at a body, and it's me for always being before or behindtime, bad luck to me. There's no plazing him."

  Mary pushed back the door and passed through the kitchen, servingherself all the while to meet the objurgations which she supposedwere lying in wait for her. The sunshine was blinding without, butsifted through the green jalousies, it made a gray, crepuscular lightwithin. As the girl approached the table, on which a plate with knifeand fork had been laid for breakfast, she noticed, somewhatindistinctly at first, a thin red line running obliquely across thefloor from the direction of the sitting-room and ending near thestove, where it had formed a small pool. Mary stopped short, scarcelyconscious why, and peered instinctively into the adjoining apartment.Then, with a smothered cry, she let fall the milk-can, and a dozenwhite rivulets, in strange contrast to that one dark red line whichfirst startled her, went meandering over the kitchen floor. With hereyes riveted upon some object in the next room, the girl retreatedbackward slowly and heavily dragging one foot after the other, untilshe reached the gallery door; then she turned swiftly, and plungedinto the street.

  Twenty minutes later, every man, woman, and child in Stillwaterknew that old Mr. Shackford had been murdered.

  Mary Hennessey had to tell her story a hundred times during themorning, for each minute brought to Michael's tenement a freshlistener hungry for the details at first hand.

  "How was it, Molly? Tell a body, dear!"

  "Don't be asking me!" cried Molly, pressing her palms to her eyesas if to shut out the sight, but taking all the while a secret creepysatisfaction in living the scene over again. "It was kinder dark inthe other room, and there he was, laying in his night-gownd, with hisface turned towards me, so, looking mighty severe-like, jest as if hewas a-going to say, 'It's late with the milk ye are, ye hussy!'--away he had of spaking."

  "But he didn't spake, Molly darlin'?"

  "Niver a word. He was stone dead, don't you see. It was that stillyou could hear me heart beat, saving there wasn't a drop of beat init. I let go the can, sure, and then I backed out, with me eye on 'imall the while, afeard to death that he would up and spake themwords."

  "The pore child! for the likes of her to be wakin' up a murtheredman in the mornin'!"

  There was little or no work done that day in Stillwater outsidethe mills, and they were not running full handed. A number of menfrom the Miantowona Iron Works and Slocum's Yard--Slocum employedsome seventy or eighty hands--lounged about the streets in theirblouses, or stood in knots in front of the tavern, smoking short claypipes. Not an urchin put in an appearance at the small red brickbuilding on the turnpike. Mr. Pinkham, the school-master, waited anhour for the recusants, then turned the key in the lock and wenthome.

  Dragged-looking women, with dishcloth or dustpan in hand, stood indoor-ways or leaned from windows, talking in subdued voices withneighbors on the curb-stone. In a hundred far-away cities the news ofthe suburban tragedy had already been read and forgotten; but herethe horror stayed.

  There was a constantly changing crowd gathered in front of thehouse in Welch's Court. An inquest was being held in the roomadjoining the kitchen. The court, which ended at the gate of thecottage, was fringed for several yards on each side by rows ofsqualid, wondering children, who understood it that Coroner Whiddenwas literally to sit on the dead body,--Mr. Whidden, a limp,inoffensive little man, who would not have dared to sit down on afly. He had passed, pallid and perspiring, to the scene of hisperfunctory duties.

  The result of the investigation was awaited with feverishimpatience by the people outside. Mr. Shackford had not been apopular man; he had been a hard, avaricious, passionate man, holdinghis own way remorselessly. He had been the reverse of popular, but hehad long been a prominent character in Stillwater, because of hiswealth, his endless lawsuits, and his eccentricity, an illustrationof which was his persistence in living entirely alone in the isolatedand dreary old house, that was henceforth to be inhabited by hisshadow. Not his shadow alone, however, for it was now remembered thatthe premises were already held in fee by another phantasmal tenant.At a period long anterior to this, one Lydia Sloper, a widow, haddied an unexplained death under that same roof. The coincidencestruck deeply into the imaginative portion of Stillwater. "The WidowSloper and old Shackford have made a match of it," remarked a localhumorist, in a grimmer vain than customary. Two ghosts had now set uphousekeeping, as it were, in the stricken mansion, and what might notbe looked for in the way of spectral progeny!

  It appeared to the crowd in the lane that the jury wereunconscionably long in arriving at a decision, and when the decisionwas at length reached it gave but moderate satisfaction. After aspendthrift waste of judicial mind the jury had decided that "thedeath of Lemuel Shackford was caused by a blow on the left temple,inflicted with some instrument not discoverable, in the hands of someperson or persons unknown."

  "We knew that before," grumbled a voice in the crowd, when, torelieve public suspense, Lawyer Perkins--a long, lank man, withstringy black hair--announced the verdict from the doorstep.

  The theory of suicide had obtained momentary credence early in themorning, and one or two still clung to it with the tenacity thatcharacterizes persons who entertain few ideas. To accept this theoryit was necessary to believe that Mr. Shackford had ingeniously hiddenthe weapon after striking himself dead with a single blow. No, it wasnot suicide. So far from intending to take his own life, Mr.Shackford, it appeared, had made rather careful preparations to livethat day. The breakfast-table had been laid over night, the coalsleft ready for kindling in the Franklin stove, and a kettle, filledwith water to be heated for his tea or coffee, stood on the hearth.

  Two facts had sharply demonstrated themselves: first, that Mr.Shackford had been murdered; and, second, that the spur to the crimehad been the possession of a sum of money, which the deceased wassupposed to keep in a strong-box in his bedroom. The padlock had beenwrenched open, and the less valuable contents of the chest, chieflypapers, scattered over the carpet. A memorandum among the papersseemed to specify the respective sums in notes and gold that had beendeposited in the box. A document of some kind had been torn intominute pieces and thrown into the waste-basket. On close scrutiny aword or two here and there revealed the fact that the document was ofa legal character. The fragments were put into an envelope and givenin charge of Mr. Shackford's lawyer, who placed seals on that and onthe drawers of an escritoire which stood in the corner and containedother manuscript.

  The instrument with which the fatal blow had been dealt--for theautopsy showed that there had been but one blow--was not only notdiscoverable, but the fashion of it defied conjecture. The shape ofthe wound did not indicate the use of any implement known to thejurors, several of whom were skilled machinists. The wound was aninch and three quarters in length and very deep at the extremities;in the middle in scarcely penetrated to the cranium. So peculiar acut could not have been produced with the claw part of a hammer,because the claw is always curved, and the incision was straight. Aflat claw, such as is used in opening packing-cases, was suggested. Acollection of the several sizes manufactured was procured, but nonecorresponded with the wound; they were either too wide or too narrow.Moreover, the cut was as thin as the blade of a case-knife.

  "That was never done by any tool in these parts," declaredStevens, the foreman of the finishing shop at Slocum's.

  The assassin or assassins had entered by the scullery door, thesimple fastening of which, a hook and staple, had been broken. Therewere footprints in the soft clay path leading from the side gate tothe stone step; but Mary Hennessey had so confused and obliteratedthe outlines that now it was impossible accurately to me
asure them. Ahalf-burned match was found under the sink,--evidently thrown thereby the burglars. It was of a kind known as the safety-match, whichcan be ignited only by friction on a strip of chemically preparedpaper glued to the box. As no box of this description was discovered,and as all the other matches in the house were of a different make,the charred splinter was preserved. The most minute examinationfailed to show more than this. The last time Mr. Shackford had beenseen alive was at six o'clock the previous evening.

  Who had done the deed?

  Tramps! answered Stillwater, with one voice, though Stillwater laysomewhat out of the natural highway, and the tramp--that bitterblossom of civilization whose seed was blown to us from overseas--was not then so common by the New England roadsides as hebecame five or six years later. But it was intolerable not to have atheory; it was that or none, for conjecture turned to no one in thevillage. To be sure, Mr. Shackford had been in litigation withseveral of the corporations, and had had legal quarrels with morethan one of his neighbors; but Mr. Shackford had never beenvictorious in any of these contests, and the incentive of revenge waswanting to explain the crime. Besides, it was so clearly robbery.

  Though the gathering around the Shackford house had reduced itselfto half a dozen idlers, and the less frequented streets had resumedtheir normal aspect of dullness, there was a strange, electricquality in the atmosphere. The community was in that state ofsuppressed agitation and suspicion which no word adequatelydescribes. The slightest circumstance would have swayed it to thebelief in any man's guilt; and, indeed, there were men in Stillwaterquite capable of disposing of a fellow-creature for a much smallerreward than Mr. Shackford had held out. In spite of the tramp theory,a harmless tin-peddler, who had not passed through the place forweeks, was dragged from his glittering cart that afternoon, as hedrove smilingly into town, and would have been roughly handled if Mr.Richard Shackford, a cousin of the deceased, had not interfered.

  As the day wore on, the excitement deepened in intensity, thoughthe expression of it became nearly reticent. It was noticed that thelamps throughout the village were lighted an hour earlier than usual.A sense of insecurity settled upon Stillwater with the fallingtwilight,--that nameless apprehension which is possibly more tryingto the nerves than tangible danger. When a man is smitteninexplicably, as if by a bodiless hand stretched out of acloud,--when the red slayer vanishes like a mist and leaves nofaintest trace of his identity,--the mystery shrouding the deedpresently becomes more appalling than the deed itself. There issomething paralyzing in the thought of an invisible hand somewhereready to strike at your life, or at some life dearer than your own.Whose hand, and where is it? Perhaps it passes you your coffee atbreakfast; perhaps you have hired it to shovel the snow off yoursidewalk; perhaps it has brushed against you in the crowd; or may beyou have dropped a coin into the fearful palm at a street corner. Ah,the terrible unseen hand that stabs your imagination,--this immortalpart of you which is a hundred times more sensitive than your poorperishable body!

  In the midst of situations the most solemn and tragic there oftenfalls a light purely farcical in its incongruity. Such a gleam wasunconsciously projected upon the present crisis by Mr. Bodge, betterknown in the village as Father Bodge. Mr. Bodge was stone deaf,naturally stupid, and had been nearly moribund for thirty years withasthma. Just before night-fall he had crawled, in his bewildered,wheezy fashion, down to the tavern, where he found a somber crowd inthe bar-room. Mr. Bodge ordered his mug of beer, and sat sipping it,glancing meditatively from time to time over the pewter rim at themute assembly. Suddenly he broke out: "S'pose you've heerd that oldShackford's ben murdered."

  So the sun went down on Stillwater. Again the great wall of pinesand hemlocks made a gloom against the sky. The moon rose from behindthe tree-tops, frosting their ragged edges, and then sweeping up tothe zenith hung serenely above the world, as if there were never acrime, or a tear, or a heart-break in it all.