The Case of Jennie Brice (serial, Everybody's)/Part 4
[PART IV]
Conclusion
CHAPTER XV
After twenty-four hours' deliberation, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. It was a first-degree verdict. Mr. Howell's unsupported word had lost out against a scar.
Contrary to my expectation, Mr. Holcombe was not jubilant over the verdict. He came into the dining-room that night and stood by the window, looking out into the yard.
“It isn't logical,” he said. “In view of Howell's testimony, it's ridiculous! Heaven help us under this jury system, anyhow! Look at the facts! Howell knows the woman: he sees her on Monday morning, and puts her on a train out of town. Very well: she was alive on Monday. We know where she was on Tuesday and Wednesday. Anyhow, during those days her gem of a husband was in jail. He was freed Thursday night, and from that time on until his rearrest on the following Tuesday, I had him under observation every moment. He left the jail Thursday night, and on Saturday the body floated in at Sewickley. 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 I see,” he said mildly. “Two women have been fool enough to have names tattooed over their hearts. No woman ever thought enough of me to have my name put on her.”
“I hope not,” I retorted. Mr. Reynolds's first name is Zachariah.
But, as Mr. Holcombe said, all that had been proven was that Jennie Brice was dead, probably murdered. He could not understand the defense letting the case go to the jury without their putting more stress on Mr. Howell's story. But we were to understand that soon, and many other things. Mr. Holcombe told me that evening of learning from John Bellows of the tattoed name on Jennie Brice and of how, after an almost 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 regalia in boxes, and having his picture in the newspapers in different outlandish costumes. Mr. Pitman used to say that man, being denied his natural love for barbaric adornment in his every-day clothing, took to the different fraternities as an excuse for decking himself out. But this has nothing to do with the door-bell.
It was old Isaac. He had a basket in his hand, and he stepped into the hall and placed it on the floor.
“Evening, Miss Bess,” he said. “Can you see a bit of company to-night?”
“I can always see you,” I replied. But he had not meant himself. He stepped to the door and, opening it, beckoned to some one across the street. 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 moments of the old man's life—thus to see his Miss Bess and Alma's child together.
“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'm so afraid for him!” She had quite forgotten Isaac.
I turned to the school-teacher's room and opened the door.
“The woman who belongs here is out at a lecture,” I said. “Come in here, Ikkie, and I'll find the evening paper for you.”
“'Ikkie'!” said Lida, and stood staring at me.
“The lady heah and I is old friends,” Isaac said, with his splendid manner. “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.”
IT ISN'T LOGICAL, IN VIEW OF HOWELL'S TESTIMONY, IT'S RIDICULOUS. HEAVEN HELP US UNDER THIS JURY SYSTEM, ANYHOW!”
Fortunately, like all the young, her own affairs engrossed her. She was flushed with the prospect of meeting her lover, tremulous over what the evening might bring. The middle-aged woman who had come hack to the hurry of the old town, and who, pushed back into an eddy of the flood district, could only watch the activity and the life from behind a “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 the dining-room, kissed her quietly. He had an air of resolve, a sort of grim determination, that was a relief from the half-frantic look he had worn before. He asked to have Mr. Holcombe brought down, and so behold us all, four of us, sitting around the table—Mr. Holcombe with his note-book, I with my mending, and the boy with one of Lida's hands frankly under his on the red table-cloth.
“I want to tell all of you the whole story,” he began. “To-morrow I shall go to the district attorney and confess, but—I want you all to have 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 money and time”
Lida did not speak, but she drew her chair closer, and put her other hand 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 the Thursday before that, I met you, Mr. Holcombe, in a restaurant in Pittsburgh. Do you remember?”
Mr. Holcombe nodded.
“We were talking of crime, and I said no man should be hanged on purely circumstantial evidence. You affirmed that a well-linked chain of circumstantial evidence could properly hang a man. We had a long argument, in which I was worsted. There was a third man at the table—Bronson, the business manager of the Liberty Theatre.”
“Who sided with you,” put in Mr. Holcombe, “and whose views I refused to entertain, because, as publicity man for a theatre, he dealt in fiction rather than in fact.”
“Precisely. You may recall, Mr. Holcombe, that you offered to hang any man we would name, given a proper chain of circumstantial evidence against him?”
“Yes.”
“After you left, Bronson spoke to me. He said business at the theatre was bad, and complained of the way the papers used, or would not use, his stuff. He said the Liberty Theatre had not had a proper deal, and that he was tempted to go over and bang one of the company on the head, and so get a little free advertising.
“I said he ought to be able to fake a good story; but he maintained that 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. I remember saying that nothing but a railroad wreck or a murder hit the public very hard these days, and that I didn't feel like wrecking the Pennsylvania 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 some advertising for the theatre. We need it, that's sure.'
“I laughed it off, and we separated. But at two o'clock Bronson called me up again. I met him in his office at the theatre, and he told me that Jennie Brice, who was out of the cast that week, had asked for a week's vacation. She had heard of a farm at a town called Horner, and she wanted to go there to rest.
“'Now the idea is this,' he said. 'She's living with her husband, and he has threatened her life more than once. It would be easy enough to frame up something to look as if he'd made away with her. We'd get a week of excitement, more advertising than we'd ordinarily get in a year; 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 came just then, and was considerable help. It made a good setting. I went to my city editor, and got an assignment to interview Ladley about this play of his. Then Bronson and I went together to see the Ladleys on Sunday morning, and as they needed money they agreed. But Ladley insisted on fifty dollars a week extra if he had to go to jail. We promised it, but we did not intend to let things go as far as that.
“In the Ladleys' room that Sunday morning, we worked it all out. The hardest 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 to quarrel with his wife that afternoon—although I don't believe they needed to be asked to do it—and I suggested also the shoe or slipper, to be found floating around.”
“Just a moment,” said Mr. Holcombe, busy with his note-book. “Did you suggest 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 on that—said he didn't mind the rest, but he'd be hanged if he was going to slash himself. But, as it happened, he cut his wrist while cutting the 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 say he 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 at first, but none of us owned one. Mrs. Ladley undertook to get a knife from Mrs. Pitman's kitchen, and to leave it around, not in full view, but where it could be found.”
HE TELEPHONED ME AND ASKED ME TO COME HERE. OH, MRS. Pitman, I'M SO AFRAID FOR HIM!”
“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 to add any interesting details that might occur to him. The idea, of course, was to give the police plenty to work on, and just when they thought they had it all, and when the theatre had had a lot of booming, and I had got a good story, to produce Jennie Brice, safe and well. We were not to appear in it at all. It would have worked perfectly, but we forgot to count on one thing—Jennie Brice hated her husband.”
“Not really hated him!” cried Lida.
“Hated him. She is letting him hang. She could save him by coming forward now, and she won't do it. She is hiding so he will go to the gallows.”
There was a pause at that. It seemed too incredible, too inhuman.
“Then, early that Monday morning, you smuggled Jennie Brice out of the city?”
“Yes. That was the only thing we bungled. We fixed the hour a little too late, and I was seen by Miss Harvey's uncle, walking across the bridge 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. “One of your own axioms, sir,” he said. “Do the natural thing; upset the customary order of events as little as possible. Jennie Brice went to the train, because that was where she wanted to go. But as Ladley was to protest that his wife had left town, and as the police would be searching for a solitary woman, I went with her. We went in a leisurely manner. I bought her a magazine and a morning paper, asked the conductor to fix her window, and, in general, acted the devoted husband seeing his wife off on a trip. I even”—he smiled—“I even promised 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 have seen little boys who have broken a window show the same relief after telling about it.
“For a day or two Bronson and I sat back, enjoying the stir-up. Things turned out as we had expected. Business boomed at the theatre. I got a good story, and some few kind words from my city editor. Then—the explosion came. I got a letter from Jennie Brice saying she was going away, and that we need not try to find her. I went to Horner, but I had lost track of her completely. Even then, we did not believe things as bad as they turned out to be. We thought she was giving us a bad time, but that she would show up.
“Ladley was in a blue funk for a time. Bronson and I went to him. We told him how the thing had slipped up. We didn't want to go to the police and confess if we could help it. Finally, he agreed to stick it out until she was found, at a hundred dollars a week. It took all we could beg, borrow, and steal. But now—we have to come out with the story anyhow.”
Mr. Holcombe sat up and closed his note-book with a snap. “I'm not so sure of that,” he said impressively. “I wonder if you realize, young man, that, having provided a perfect defense for this man Ladley, you provided him with every possible inducement to make away with his wife? Secure in your coming forward at the last minute and confessing the hoax to save him, was there anything he might not have dared with impunity?”
“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 Isaac sound asleep in her cozy corner, set up such a screaming for the police that our meeting broke up. Nor would Mr. Holcombe explain any further.
CHAPTER XVI
Mr. Holcombe was up very early the next morning. I heard him moving around at five o'clock, and at six he banged at my door and demanded to know at what time the neighborhood rose: he had been up for an hour and there were no signs of life. He was more cheerful after he had had a cup of coffee, commented on Lida's beauty, and said that Howell was a lucky chap.
“That is what worries me, Mr. Holcombe,” I said. “I am helping the affair 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 great deal out of life.”
“Perhaps you're better off: if you had married and lost your wife—” I was thinking of Mr. Pitman.
“Not at all,” he said with emphasis. “It's better to have married and lost, 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 he needs her. I am nearly sixty.”
I was rather startled, and I almost dropped the fried potatoes. But the next moment he had got out his note-book and was going over the items again. “Pillow slip,” he said, “knife broken, onyx clock—wouldn't think so much of the clock if he hadn't been so damnably anxious to hide the key—the discrepancy in time as revealed by the trial—yes, it is as clear as a bell. Mrs. Pitman, does that Maguire woman next door sleep all day?”
“TO-MORROW I SHALL GO TO THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY AND CONFESS, BUT—WANT YOU ALL TO HAVE IT FIRST!”
“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 in hand. “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 anything that 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 of every man needing a wife, and I'm afraid I had already decided to take him if he offered, and to put the school-teacher out and have a real parlor 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 work a typewriter?” he asked.
What with the surprise, I was a little sharp. “I don't play any instrument except an egg-beater,” I replied shortly, and went on clearing the table.
“I wonder—do you remember about the village idiot and the horse? But of course you do, Mrs. Pitman; you are a woman of imagination. Don't you think you could be Alice Murray for a few moments? Now think—you are a stenographer with theatrical ambitions: you meet an actor and you 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 on the stage, perhaps in this new play, and some day he is going to marry you.”
“Is that what he promised the girl?”
“According to some letters her mother found, yes. The actor is married, but he tells you he will divorce his wife; you are to wait for him, and in the meantime he wants you near him, away from the office, 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 little bitterness. I had been a pretty girl, but work and worry
“Now you are going to New York very soon, and in the meantime you have cut yourself off from all your people. You have no 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 a man, and hiding, I would hide as near him as possible. I'd be likely to get a window that could see his going out and coming in, a place so near that he could come often to see me.”
“Bravo!” he exclaimed. “Of course, with your present wisdom and experience, you would do nothing so foolish. But this girl was in her teens; she was not very far away, for he probably saw her that Sunday afternoon, when he was out for only an hour or so. And as the going was slow that day, and he had much to tell and explain, I figure she was not far off. Probably in this very neighborhood.”
Mr. Holcombe went out shortly after that, and during the remainder of that morning I saw him at intervals, going from house to house along Union Street, making short excursions into side thoroughfares, coming back again and taking up his door bell ringing with unflagging energy. I watched him off and on for two hours. At the end of that time he came back flushed and excited.
“I found the house,” he said, wiping his glasses. “She was there, all right, 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 take Jennie Brice out of the city that morning. He took Alice Murray, veiled and in Jennie Brice's clothing.”
“Well, that is five years ago. Five times since then the Allegheny River, from being a mild and inoffensive stream, carrying a few boats and a great deal of sewage, has become a raging destroyer, and has filled our hearts with fear and our cellars with mud. Five times since then Molly Maguire has appropriated all that the flood carried from my premises to hers, and five times have I lifted my carpets and moved Mr. 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 body floating 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 was drowned. They dragged the river for his body, but they did not find him. But they found something—an onyx clock, with the tattered remnant of a muslin pillow-slip wrapped around it. It only bore out the story as we had known it for five years.
The Murray girl had lived long enough to make a statement to the police, although Mr. Holcombe only learned this later. On the statement being shown to Ladley in the jail, and his learning of the girl's death, he collapsed. He confessed before he was hanged, and his confession, 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, and would have been glad to get rid of her in any way possible. He had not intended to kill her, however. He had planned to elope with the Murray girl, and, awaiting an opportunity, had persuaded her to leave home, and to take a room near my house.
Here he had visited her daily, while his wife was at the theatre.
They had planned to go to New York together on Monday, March the fifth. On Sunday, the fourth, however, Mr. Bronson and Mr. Howell had made their curious proposition. When he accepted, Philip Ladley maintained that he meant only to carry out the plan as suggested. But the temptation was too strong for him. That night, while his wife slept, he had strangled her.
I believe he was frantic with fear, after he had done it. Then it occurred to him that if he made the body unrecognizable, he would be safe enough. On that quiet Sunday night, when Mr. Reynolds reported all peaceful in the Ladley room, he had cut off the poor wretch's head and 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 wife incurred to enable her to marry him was the means of his undoing. He insisted, and I believe he was telling the truth, that he did not know of the scar: that is, his wife had never told him of it, and had been able to conceal it. He thought she had probably used paraffin in some way.
In his final statement, written with great care and no little literary finish, he told the story in detail: of arranging the clues as Mr. Howell and Mr. Bronson had suggested; of going out in the boat, with the body, covered with a fur coat, in the bottom of the skiff; of throwing it into the current above the Ninth Street bridge, and of seeing the fur coat fall from the boat and carried beyond his reach; and, in endeavoring to recover it, of being carried far out in the current; of disposing of the head near the Seventh Street bridge; of going to a drug-store, as per the Howell instructions, and of coming home at four o'clock, to find me at the head of the stairs.
Several points of confusion remained. One had been caused by Temple Hope's refusal to admit that the dress and hat that figured in the case were to be used by her the next week at the theatre. Mr. Ladley insisted that this was the case, and that on that Sunday afternoon his wife had requested him to take them to Miss Hope; that they had quarreled as to whether they should be packed in a box or in the brown valise, and that he had visited Alice Murray instead. It was on the way there that the idea of finally getting rid of Jennie Brice came to him. And a way—using the black-and-white striped dress of the dispute.
Another point of confusion had been the dismantling of his room that Monday night, some time between the visit of Temple Hope and the return of Mr. Holcombe. This was to secure the scrap of paper containing the list of clues as suggested by Mr. Howell, a clue that might 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 she was to leave town on an early train the next morning, going as his wife; that he wished her to wear the black-and-white dress and hat, for reasons that he would explain later, and to be heavily veiled; that to the young man who would put her on the train, and who had seen Jennie Brice only once, she was to be Jennie Brice; to say as little as possible and not to raise her veil. Her further instructions were simple: to go to the place at Horner where Jennie Brice had planned to go, but to use the name of “Bellows” there. And after she had been there for a day or two, to go as quietly as possible to New York. He gave her the address of a boarding-house where he could write her, and where he would join her later.
He reasoned in this way: That as Alice Murray was to impersonate Jennie Brice, and Jennie Brice hiding from her husband, she would naturally discard her name. The name “Bellows” had been hers by a previous marriage and she might easily resume it. Thus, to establish his innocence, he had not only the evidence of Howell and Bronson that the whole thing was a gigantic hoax; he had the evidence of Howell that he had started Jennie Brice to Horner that Monday morning, the evidence that she had reached Horner, had there assumed an incognito, as Mr. Pitman would say, and had later disappeared from there, maliciously concealing herself to work his undoing.
In all probability, he would have gone free, the richer by a hundred dollars for each week of his imprisonment, but for two things: the flood, which had brought opportunity to his door, had brought Mr. Holcombe to feed Peter, the dog. And the same flood, which should have carried the headless body as far as Cairo, or even farther on down the Mississippi, had rejected it in an eddy below a clay bluff at Sewickley, with its pitiful covering washed from the scar.
Well, it is all over now. Mr. Ladley is dead, and Alice Murray, and even Peter lies in the yard. Mr. Reynolds made a small wooden cross over Peter's grave, and carved “Till we meet again,” on it. I dare say the next flood will find it in Molly Maguire's kitchen.
Mr. Howell and Lida are married. Mr. Howell inherited some money, I believe, and what with that and Lida declaring she would either marry him 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, in lavender chiffon and rose point lace. She has not improved with age, has Alma. But Lida—Lida, under my mother's wedding veil, with her eyes like stars, seeing no one in the church in all that throng but the boy who waited at the end of the long aisle—I wanted to run out and claim her, my own blood, my more than child.
I sat down and covered my face. And from the pew behind me some one leaned 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's bouquet that she had sent me, and a bottle of champagne from the wedding supper. I had not tasted champagne for twenty years!
That is all of the story. On summer afternoons sometimes, when the house is hot, I go to the park and sit. I used to take Peter, but now he is dead. I like to see Lida's little boy: the nurse knows me by sight, and lets me talk to the child. He can say “Peter” quite plainly. But he does not call Alma “Grandmother.” The nurse says she does not like it. He calls her “Nana.”
Lida does not forget me. Especially at flood-times, she always comes to see if I am comfortable. The other day she brought me, with apologies, the chiffon gown her mother had worn at her wedding. Alma had never worn it but once, and now she was too stout for it. I took it; 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 the gas meter; and besides, with Peter dead, I need a man in the house all the time. The flood district is none too orderly. And then, when I have a wedding dress laid away and a bottle of good wine, it seems a pity not to use them.
I think I shall do it.
THE END