CHAPTER XXXI.The Session EndsIt seemed to me that, when Sam’s pipe hit the floor, it made a noise like doom cracking. We all sat still as stones. I suppose it could not have been more than a minute, but it seemed a long time before John left Danny’s side and went and picked up the pipe and handed it to Sam.“It’s all right, dad,” he said.“Not by a damn sight, it’s not all right,” Sam came back to his senses vigorously. “But it is interesting—this thing. It is getting interesting, anyway. Let me see—— If I had got Chad to help me—and I could have, by telling him it was some joke or other I had on hand—I could have sneaked out of the barn, met her and killed her, during that hour. When could I have got the body upstairs, though? That’s the first missing link. My reason for killing her would be another, but——”“Say! See here, dad,” John cut in.“You shut up, son. We are waiting to hear the rest of what Danny has to say. Come, Danny, can you supply either of those missing links?”“No,” she said, and sighed. It was easy to see that she was plumb tuckered out. “No, of course I can’t.”“If,” Sam went on, seemingly talking entirely to himself, “if I’d hurried like blazes, I might have done the deed, and carried her into the house during the time I was absent from the barn. I’d have had to pass Mary in the kitchen—I’d have been bound to sneak in the back way—but, if I asked her not to, more than likely Mary wouldn’t tell on me. Or, I might have had a hireling (that’s what they call them, isn’t it? There’s another word, something like—marmot—no, never mind.) on the outside, who would have toted the body in for me, while we were at supper.”Written out, that sounds as if Sam had been trying to be comical. He was not at all. He was sitting there, speaking his thoughts for all to hear, making out a case against himself, cool as Christmas. For my part, I had heard enough of it.“Sam, you look here——” I began.“You shut up, too, Mary,” Sam said.Mrs. Ricker spoke. She had her say out. Nobody, not even Sam, would any more think of telling Mrs. Ricker to shut up, than they would think of telling any other dumb object, that suddenly started to talk, to shut up. Leading a life of silence, I thought, certainly did have its advantages, at times.“I think,” Mrs. Ricker said, “that the girl herself probably killed her sister. If Sam’s pipe ashes were on the bag, she put them there, afterwards, to make trouble for him.”Sam said, “Shucks!”I thought John would be the first to speak. I was mistaken.It was Danny herself who said, “Make her talk, now, Uncle Sam. Don’t wait for her turn. I—can’t bear it. Make her talk now, and give her reasons for saying such a cruel, wicked, lying thing.”“Mrs. Ricker,” Sam put the question very solemnly, “have you any reasons for making this accusation?”“My only reason is, that I believe it.”“Don’t beat around the bush. Why do you believe it?”“I have a feeling that she is guilty.”“This,” Sam said, sternly, “is no time for feeling, nor for quibbling. You made a serious accusation—straight out. I want your reason, or reasons, for making it, and I want them just as straight.”“I have no reasons,” Mrs. Ricker said. “That is why I suspect her.”“Ah-ah-ah! Women!” Sam said; and the way he said it, it was the blackest oath he had used that day.I looked at Danny. I had not been feeling any too kindly toward her, for the past few minutes; but, just the same, seeing her there, white and pitiful, with her hands caught up to her throat, and with the echo of Sam’s last blasphemy still in my ears, I had a woman feeling toward her. I knew then, as I know now, that Danielle Canneziano could no more have killed Gaby than she could have created her.“I think,” I said, talking fast to keep Sam from shutting me up before I could get anything said, “that if, in suspicioning an innocent girl like Danny, Mrs. Ricker is simply drawing on her woman’s instinct, she’d better pass it up, for the present, and listen to some plain sexless sense.“Gaby came downstairs at four. Danny called after her, right then; so Danny was in the house right then. Gaby went to the rabbit hutch and stopped long enough to give Martha the bracelet. Almost as soon as Martha was in the house with the bracelet, Danny was downstairs with us, cool, collected, and undisturbed. Now suppose, as an idiot suggested this morning, that Gaby had come straight back into the house. I guess everyone would agree that it would take her five minutes to get back upstairs. That would leave Danny not more than ten minutes to kill her, and to come downstairs, as I’ve said, collected and undisturbed. Come to think of it, Gaby could not have talked to Martha and got to the attic stairway in any five minutes. At the widest figuring, that leaves Danny about five minutes——”As I had been fearing he would, Sam stopped me. “That’s all right, too, Mary. But there is no need to draw so long a bow. No need to count minutes on Danny. The note in Gaby’s bag fixes her innocence better than all the minutes on the clock could.”“No, it does not,” Mrs. Ricker said. “Gaby knew that she had reason to fear an enemy. She probably found that out from the code letter. She may never have suspected that the enemy was her own sister.”“I wish I knew,” Sam said, giving Mrs. Ricker a long look, “what you are getting at, Mrs. Ricker. I’d give that,” Sam dangled out his right hand, “to know what any one of you was getting at. You, for instance, know that Danny did not kill her sister. I think that Hand knows that John didn’t do it—maybe not. I’m beginning to suspect him of honesty in this; but a damn mistaken honesty, at that. I think that John knows that Chad is as innocent as—as—a new born babe, as Mary says. I think Danny would have to be pretty hard put to it, before she’d invent that story about my pipe ashes——”“Dad,” John said, and high time he was saying something, “Dan didn’t invent any story. I know that she was clear off about the pipe ashes, and I think she shouldn’t have made such a mistake. Since they couldn’t have been there, she couldn’t have seen them. But Danny doesn’t lie. She thought she saw the ashes there, or she would not have said so.”“All right, son,” Sam conceded. “I’d a heap rather think that than not. But, see here, did anyone else think they saw my pipe ashes around there?”I looked into my own blue voile lap. I imagined I could feel Hubert Hand’s eyes boring into me. My face burned. I could feel the waves of red going up into my scalp and spreading out around my ears. I prayed a quick, private prayer to the Lord. But I have learned, through the years, that trying to instruct the Lord, through the pretense of prayer, is a supreme impudence that he usually punishes pretty promptly. My face burned hotter than ever. I raised my eyes. Sam was staring straight at me.“Mary,” he said, “you found the body. Did you see pipe ashes there, then?”My only excuse is, that it takes longer than a minute or two minutes to betray a person who has been your best friend for twenty-five years.I said, “No.”“I am going to ask you to swear to that. Somebody get the Bible.”Nobody moved.“You haven’t made any of the others swear to anything,” I said.“I haven’t caught any of the others in what I was sure was a direct and deliberate lie.”I felt weaker than filtered water. It is one thing to tell a lie, offhand into the free air. I haven’t much use for a person who can’t do that, when absolutely necessary. It is another thing to put your hand on the Good Book and swear to a lie. I knew that I could not do it.“Martha,” Sam said, “run and get the Bible for dad.”Martha seemed to be sound asleep again. I did not notice anything queer about her appearance. Mrs. Ricker must have noticed something queer. She jumped to her feet and dashed across the room to where Martha was lying. A shriek went piercing through the house, splintering the air into quivering bits of agony.Everyone has wakened from sleep, cold with the sweating terror of some hideous nightmare, but with only the vaguest impressions of its detail. So it is with me, and that nightmare hour. I can not reconstruct it. It remains, yet, in my mind as nothing but a horror of confusions.We all ran about. I know that there was telephoning. That some of us made desperate attempts with restoratives. I remember Sam’s crying, with his face uncovered, like a child. I can hear him saying that he had given her the sleeping powder, had forced it upon her. I can hear, plainest of all, Mrs. Ricker’s voice, with all the pent up passions of years breaking forth in torrents of heartbreak.“My baby. My baby girl. My darling. Mother’s life. Mother’s heart. Speak to mother. My lamb. My baby . . .”Her voice again, but cruel now, as she shrieks at Hubert Hand. “Stand there, you beast! Stand there, dry eyed and look at your dead daughter. The child you deserted. The child you ignored——”I remember the feeling of the fresh air as I walked beside Sam, who was carrying Martha, out of the house. I think that it was John who explained to me that the doctor, who had left Telko, was going to meet us on the road, in order to save time. We must have walked slowly, but I can not rid myself of the impression of Mrs. Ricker, running beside us. I remember her scream, when—futile, unnecessary horror—Sam stumbled with his burden as he went to step into the sedan.As the car went dashing away, I remember looking out of its windows at the house—the great structure, with its wide expanses and its towers; and it seemed to me that it looked like some monster, crouching there in the green; some grim, horrible monster, waiting for its victims. Three of us had been caught in its clutches. Were any of us to escape?
It seemed to me that, when Sam’s pipe hit the floor, it made a noise like doom cracking. We all sat still as stones. I suppose it could not have been more than a minute, but it seemed a long time before John left Danny’s side and went and picked up the pipe and handed it to Sam.
“It’s all right, dad,” he said.
“Not by a damn sight, it’s not all right,” Sam came back to his senses vigorously. “But it is interesting—this thing. It is getting interesting, anyway. Let me see—— If I had got Chad to help me—and I could have, by telling him it was some joke or other I had on hand—I could have sneaked out of the barn, met her and killed her, during that hour. When could I have got the body upstairs, though? That’s the first missing link. My reason for killing her would be another, but——”
“Say! See here, dad,” John cut in.
“You shut up, son. We are waiting to hear the rest of what Danny has to say. Come, Danny, can you supply either of those missing links?”
“No,” she said, and sighed. It was easy to see that she was plumb tuckered out. “No, of course I can’t.”
“If,” Sam went on, seemingly talking entirely to himself, “if I’d hurried like blazes, I might have done the deed, and carried her into the house during the time I was absent from the barn. I’d have had to pass Mary in the kitchen—I’d have been bound to sneak in the back way—but, if I asked her not to, more than likely Mary wouldn’t tell on me. Or, I might have had a hireling (that’s what they call them, isn’t it? There’s another word, something like—marmot—no, never mind.) on the outside, who would have toted the body in for me, while we were at supper.”
Written out, that sounds as if Sam had been trying to be comical. He was not at all. He was sitting there, speaking his thoughts for all to hear, making out a case against himself, cool as Christmas. For my part, I had heard enough of it.
“Sam, you look here——” I began.
“You shut up, too, Mary,” Sam said.
Mrs. Ricker spoke. She had her say out. Nobody, not even Sam, would any more think of telling Mrs. Ricker to shut up, than they would think of telling any other dumb object, that suddenly started to talk, to shut up. Leading a life of silence, I thought, certainly did have its advantages, at times.
“I think,” Mrs. Ricker said, “that the girl herself probably killed her sister. If Sam’s pipe ashes were on the bag, she put them there, afterwards, to make trouble for him.”
Sam said, “Shucks!”
I thought John would be the first to speak. I was mistaken.
It was Danny herself who said, “Make her talk, now, Uncle Sam. Don’t wait for her turn. I—can’t bear it. Make her talk now, and give her reasons for saying such a cruel, wicked, lying thing.”
“Mrs. Ricker,” Sam put the question very solemnly, “have you any reasons for making this accusation?”
“My only reason is, that I believe it.”
“Don’t beat around the bush. Why do you believe it?”
“I have a feeling that she is guilty.”
“This,” Sam said, sternly, “is no time for feeling, nor for quibbling. You made a serious accusation—straight out. I want your reason, or reasons, for making it, and I want them just as straight.”
“I have no reasons,” Mrs. Ricker said. “That is why I suspect her.”
“Ah-ah-ah! Women!” Sam said; and the way he said it, it was the blackest oath he had used that day.
I looked at Danny. I had not been feeling any too kindly toward her, for the past few minutes; but, just the same, seeing her there, white and pitiful, with her hands caught up to her throat, and with the echo of Sam’s last blasphemy still in my ears, I had a woman feeling toward her. I knew then, as I know now, that Danielle Canneziano could no more have killed Gaby than she could have created her.
“I think,” I said, talking fast to keep Sam from shutting me up before I could get anything said, “that if, in suspicioning an innocent girl like Danny, Mrs. Ricker is simply drawing on her woman’s instinct, she’d better pass it up, for the present, and listen to some plain sexless sense.
“Gaby came downstairs at four. Danny called after her, right then; so Danny was in the house right then. Gaby went to the rabbit hutch and stopped long enough to give Martha the bracelet. Almost as soon as Martha was in the house with the bracelet, Danny was downstairs with us, cool, collected, and undisturbed. Now suppose, as an idiot suggested this morning, that Gaby had come straight back into the house. I guess everyone would agree that it would take her five minutes to get back upstairs. That would leave Danny not more than ten minutes to kill her, and to come downstairs, as I’ve said, collected and undisturbed. Come to think of it, Gaby could not have talked to Martha and got to the attic stairway in any five minutes. At the widest figuring, that leaves Danny about five minutes——”
As I had been fearing he would, Sam stopped me. “That’s all right, too, Mary. But there is no need to draw so long a bow. No need to count minutes on Danny. The note in Gaby’s bag fixes her innocence better than all the minutes on the clock could.”
“No, it does not,” Mrs. Ricker said. “Gaby knew that she had reason to fear an enemy. She probably found that out from the code letter. She may never have suspected that the enemy was her own sister.”
“I wish I knew,” Sam said, giving Mrs. Ricker a long look, “what you are getting at, Mrs. Ricker. I’d give that,” Sam dangled out his right hand, “to know what any one of you was getting at. You, for instance, know that Danny did not kill her sister. I think that Hand knows that John didn’t do it—maybe not. I’m beginning to suspect him of honesty in this; but a damn mistaken honesty, at that. I think that John knows that Chad is as innocent as—as—a new born babe, as Mary says. I think Danny would have to be pretty hard put to it, before she’d invent that story about my pipe ashes——”
“Dad,” John said, and high time he was saying something, “Dan didn’t invent any story. I know that she was clear off about the pipe ashes, and I think she shouldn’t have made such a mistake. Since they couldn’t have been there, she couldn’t have seen them. But Danny doesn’t lie. She thought she saw the ashes there, or she would not have said so.”
“All right, son,” Sam conceded. “I’d a heap rather think that than not. But, see here, did anyone else think they saw my pipe ashes around there?”
I looked into my own blue voile lap. I imagined I could feel Hubert Hand’s eyes boring into me. My face burned. I could feel the waves of red going up into my scalp and spreading out around my ears. I prayed a quick, private prayer to the Lord. But I have learned, through the years, that trying to instruct the Lord, through the pretense of prayer, is a supreme impudence that he usually punishes pretty promptly. My face burned hotter than ever. I raised my eyes. Sam was staring straight at me.
“Mary,” he said, “you found the body. Did you see pipe ashes there, then?”
My only excuse is, that it takes longer than a minute or two minutes to betray a person who has been your best friend for twenty-five years.
I said, “No.”
“I am going to ask you to swear to that. Somebody get the Bible.”
Nobody moved.
“You haven’t made any of the others swear to anything,” I said.
“I haven’t caught any of the others in what I was sure was a direct and deliberate lie.”
I felt weaker than filtered water. It is one thing to tell a lie, offhand into the free air. I haven’t much use for a person who can’t do that, when absolutely necessary. It is another thing to put your hand on the Good Book and swear to a lie. I knew that I could not do it.
“Martha,” Sam said, “run and get the Bible for dad.”
Martha seemed to be sound asleep again. I did not notice anything queer about her appearance. Mrs. Ricker must have noticed something queer. She jumped to her feet and dashed across the room to where Martha was lying. A shriek went piercing through the house, splintering the air into quivering bits of agony.
Everyone has wakened from sleep, cold with the sweating terror of some hideous nightmare, but with only the vaguest impressions of its detail. So it is with me, and that nightmare hour. I can not reconstruct it. It remains, yet, in my mind as nothing but a horror of confusions.
We all ran about. I know that there was telephoning. That some of us made desperate attempts with restoratives. I remember Sam’s crying, with his face uncovered, like a child. I can hear him saying that he had given her the sleeping powder, had forced it upon her. I can hear, plainest of all, Mrs. Ricker’s voice, with all the pent up passions of years breaking forth in torrents of heartbreak.
“My baby. My baby girl. My darling. Mother’s life. Mother’s heart. Speak to mother. My lamb. My baby . . .”
Her voice again, but cruel now, as she shrieks at Hubert Hand. “Stand there, you beast! Stand there, dry eyed and look at your dead daughter. The child you deserted. The child you ignored——”
I remember the feeling of the fresh air as I walked beside Sam, who was carrying Martha, out of the house. I think that it was John who explained to me that the doctor, who had left Telko, was going to meet us on the road, in order to save time. We must have walked slowly, but I can not rid myself of the impression of Mrs. Ricker, running beside us. I remember her scream, when—futile, unnecessary horror—Sam stumbled with his burden as he went to step into the sedan.
As the car went dashing away, I remember looking out of its windows at the house—the great structure, with its wide expanses and its towers; and it seemed to me that it looked like some monster, crouching there in the green; some grim, horrible monster, waiting for its victims. Three of us had been caught in its clutches. Were any of us to escape?