CHAPTER XXXIII.Another Confession“Before I came to the Desert Moon——” she began, but Hubert Hand stopped her.“Never mind, Ollie. No need confessing, as you say, any of that. Sam knows all about us. He’d guessed it, or most of it, years ago. I’ve just now told him the rest. It is all right with him. I mean—he realizes it’s all long past. He thinks, as I do, that the best thing we can do is to forget it; and, as he says, keep on living straight and decent.”“Do you know all of our story?” Mrs. Ricker lifted her faded eyes to Sam.“Enough,” Sam sort of sighed it. “I don’t care about details. All but—I was kind of wondering what became of the brown-eyed baby, named Vera, who the papers from the orphanage were made out for.”“I found her a home with the mother and father of one of the nurses in the hospital. They thought that she was my own child. They loved her, and were kind to her. Until she died, during the influenza epidemic in San Francisco, in 1918, I sent half of my salary to them, for her, each month.”“I always knew you were a good woman,” Sam said. “Now what do you say we forget it, let by-gones be by-gones?”“No,” said Mrs. Ricker. “Martha did not kill Gaby, as you think she did, Sam. I killed her.”Sam dropped his pipe.There was another one of those dead, awful silences.“The guilt,” Mrs. Ricker went on, “is entirely mine. All of my life I have been cursed with an abnormal jealousy, and with the violent temper that usually accompanies such jealousy. Martha, you all know, possessed both of these traits—a heritage from her mother—without the balancing power of an adult mind.” She turned to Hubert Hand. “Have you told about Nina Ziegelman?”“No,” he spoke sharply. “I wouldn’t, Ollie. No need——”“But I would,” she said, and continued, more rapidly. “About four months before Martha was born a woman named Nina Ziegelman betrayed us—Hubert and me. I had given her a confidence, and she betrayed it. When I found what she had done I went to her hotel room and tried to kill her. I did not succeed. I shot her; but she recovered. For many reasons, of their own, she and her friends proffered no charges against me. I went free. But I had marked Martha for murder. She was powerless against it; as powerless as she would have been against any evil physical inheritance. She can’t be blamed. No one could dare blame her for that. It was I, who planted those seeds of violence, jealousy, hatred, and murderous intent, who killed Gabrielle. Martha was only the helpless instrument.”I was sorry that there was eagerness, mixed with the pity in John’s voice, as he asked, “Did Martha tell you that she committed the murder?”“No. Other parental heritages of hers were a lying tongue, and slyness. She persisted in her denials, to me. But it is all so evident.“Gabrielle joined Martha at the rabbit hutch. You know how one sits down on one’s heels to peer in at the rabbits in the low hutch. I think Gaby must have been squatting, so, when Martha jumped at her and overpowered her. Martha was strong, you know. Her hands were very strong. You remember, Mary, how she could open fruit jars that neither you nor I could budge? She had hated Gaby ever since Gaby had come. Martha had said to me, dozens of times, that someday she thought she would kill Gaby.“The marks on her throat, I thought, and so did the coroner, looked as if she had been caught by someone who had been standing behind her. Seized unawares, it would not take long to strangle a person. Martha must have done it in two or three minutes. She took the bracelet then, rolled the body under the clump of berry bushes, right there, and came straight into the house.“She showed no feeling of guilt, because she had none. At that moment, we should all have suspected something. We should have known that girl would not, suddenly, have given Martha the bracelet. Later, she told you about it, didn’t she, Sam? And you left Chad in the barn, to hoodwink Hubert, and came up and hid the body for her?”“By God, I did not,” Sam said.“No need to deny it, now, Sam,” she said. “It was the deed of a good man. Martha was never responsible—but courts might not have understood. Now we will all shield her—keep her secret. Chad’s confession will satisfy the world. Danny must know, I suppose; but no one else need ever know——”“But I tell you——” Sam shouted.I don’t know how, without raising her voice, she made it sound through his shouting, and silence it, but she did. “Sam—don’t. Why can’t we be honest, now, among ourselves? You see, I know that both you and Martha were on those stairs when the body was put there——”My thoughts jumped out into words. “Chad must have known it, too. He must have decided that he’d rather die than betray either Sam or Martha.”“He might have thought it,” Sam said, with a lack of emphasis that edged stupidity. “He could not have known it. It is not true.”“Mrs. Ricker,” John questioned, “what makes you think that dad and Martha had both been on the stairs?”“Sam’s pipe ashes were strewn about. And there was an old tatting shuttle, with which I had been trying to teach Martha to tat, that morning. She had it in her pocket. It must have dropped out. I think that Mary tried to clean the pipe ashes away. They were gone when I saw the body the second time. I should have tried to do it, but I didn’t think. I had no time. I was frantic with fear.“Wait,” she answered our looks and our exclamations of astonishment. “I will explain. Martha and I, as you know, were alone here in the house while the rest of you were out looking for Gaby. Martha was sleepy. I was worried about her sleeping so much, and tried all sorts of ways to keep her awake until bed time. I kept sending her out to look at the sky, to see whether a storm was coming to spoil her fireworks. She would run out, and right in again, to curl on the davenport and try to sleep. Finally, though, she stayed outside, for a long time. But for Sam’s pipe ashes, I would think that then she had managed to drag the body upstairs by herself. Still—though I believe that she did have strength enough to move the body, I do not believe that she would have had wits enough.“When the wind rose, I looked first for Martha. I called her several times before she answered. Finally she came around the house from the direction of the rabbit hutch, again. Surely, you must have noticed, as I did, that she had seemed strangely excited during all the late afternoon and early evening. At the time, I thought it was because she had been given the monkey charm, and because she was to have the fireworks.“But, when we were alone, she talked very foolishly—even for her. She began with it again, when she had answered my call. She kept insisting that soon we were all going to be surprised about something; something very nice, that had to do with Chad—but she would never, never tell what it was. As a rule, I should not have paid any attention to such talk. But, for some reason, her excitement, and her insistence about a surprise, disturbed me. I spent some minutes quizzing her. I even tried to bribe her. I could get nothing from her but further talk about the nice surprise.“At last I gave it up, and ran upstairs to begin closing the house against the storm. I thought I’d begin with the attic, and come down through the house. I tried the attic door. It was locked, and the key was missing. I was alarmed. Possibly, because we were all disturbed concerning Gaby’s absence; and possibly, because inside doors are so seldom locked here. I remembered the old skeleton key hanging in the broom closet. I ran down and got it.“I opened the door. I saw the body. I touched it—and knew, even before I saw the tatting shuttle there, and the beaded bag, covered with Sam’s pipe ashes. I snatched the shuttle and hid it in my dress. At that instant, through the open window at the end of the hall, I heard your voices, as you ran up the road from the garage to escape the rain. I shut the door, locked it, and ran downstairs. Do you know, when I met you, I had that key in my hand?“Mary came up to me to help me close the French windows. I did not think. I had a wild desire to rid myself of that key. I was determined to protect Martha, at any cost. Mary’s pocket was hanging like an open bag, right below me. I dropped the key into it. It was a frightful mistake. If I had kept it, and thrown it away, everyone in the house would have been exonerated. It was, as you know, the one link that connected this household with the crime. That is, after Mary had cleaned away the pipe ashes. The little fleck or two of them, which Danny saw, might have fallen there days before——”“Mary,” Sam questioned, “were my pipe ashes on the bag? Did you stop to clean them off, before you gave the alarm?”“Yes, they were, Sam. Yes, I did.”“Then,” Sam said, “whoever put the body there, put the pipe ashes there to throw suspicion on me; and whoever it was, knew my habits, too. He must have put the tatting shuttle there, as well, for good measure. Does anyone of you think that Martha would have had the wits to save ashes out of my pipe and put them on the bag? I tell you, that would take an amount of logic, of reasoning, that Martha could no more have managed than a kitten could.”“Chad!” John almost sang it, in his eagerness. “He was wise enough, and fool enough. His one idea was to protect Martha. He helped her get the body up there, between seven and eight o’clock, and he put the ashes there to shield her. I said fool enough. But, come to think of it, he knew what he was doing. He was protecting her with the one person in the house who could not have done it; with the one person that no Nevada jury would convict. Then, he turned around and shielded dad with his death and his written confession. From start to finish, it works out, plain as day. Gosh! Say—it is terrible. Gosh—horrible! Think of it—— But, thank God, it is cleared up, anyway.”“ ‘Cleared up,anyway’ is right,” Sam said, and looked around at all of us, pityingly, like he’d look at a litter of sickly puppies.
“Before I came to the Desert Moon——” she began, but Hubert Hand stopped her.
“Never mind, Ollie. No need confessing, as you say, any of that. Sam knows all about us. He’d guessed it, or most of it, years ago. I’ve just now told him the rest. It is all right with him. I mean—he realizes it’s all long past. He thinks, as I do, that the best thing we can do is to forget it; and, as he says, keep on living straight and decent.”
“Do you know all of our story?” Mrs. Ricker lifted her faded eyes to Sam.
“Enough,” Sam sort of sighed it. “I don’t care about details. All but—I was kind of wondering what became of the brown-eyed baby, named Vera, who the papers from the orphanage were made out for.”
“I found her a home with the mother and father of one of the nurses in the hospital. They thought that she was my own child. They loved her, and were kind to her. Until she died, during the influenza epidemic in San Francisco, in 1918, I sent half of my salary to them, for her, each month.”
“I always knew you were a good woman,” Sam said. “Now what do you say we forget it, let by-gones be by-gones?”
“No,” said Mrs. Ricker. “Martha did not kill Gaby, as you think she did, Sam. I killed her.”
Sam dropped his pipe.
There was another one of those dead, awful silences.
“The guilt,” Mrs. Ricker went on, “is entirely mine. All of my life I have been cursed with an abnormal jealousy, and with the violent temper that usually accompanies such jealousy. Martha, you all know, possessed both of these traits—a heritage from her mother—without the balancing power of an adult mind.” She turned to Hubert Hand. “Have you told about Nina Ziegelman?”
“No,” he spoke sharply. “I wouldn’t, Ollie. No need——”
“But I would,” she said, and continued, more rapidly. “About four months before Martha was born a woman named Nina Ziegelman betrayed us—Hubert and me. I had given her a confidence, and she betrayed it. When I found what she had done I went to her hotel room and tried to kill her. I did not succeed. I shot her; but she recovered. For many reasons, of their own, she and her friends proffered no charges against me. I went free. But I had marked Martha for murder. She was powerless against it; as powerless as she would have been against any evil physical inheritance. She can’t be blamed. No one could dare blame her for that. It was I, who planted those seeds of violence, jealousy, hatred, and murderous intent, who killed Gabrielle. Martha was only the helpless instrument.”
I was sorry that there was eagerness, mixed with the pity in John’s voice, as he asked, “Did Martha tell you that she committed the murder?”
“No. Other parental heritages of hers were a lying tongue, and slyness. She persisted in her denials, to me. But it is all so evident.
“Gabrielle joined Martha at the rabbit hutch. You know how one sits down on one’s heels to peer in at the rabbits in the low hutch. I think Gaby must have been squatting, so, when Martha jumped at her and overpowered her. Martha was strong, you know. Her hands were very strong. You remember, Mary, how she could open fruit jars that neither you nor I could budge? She had hated Gaby ever since Gaby had come. Martha had said to me, dozens of times, that someday she thought she would kill Gaby.
“The marks on her throat, I thought, and so did the coroner, looked as if she had been caught by someone who had been standing behind her. Seized unawares, it would not take long to strangle a person. Martha must have done it in two or three minutes. She took the bracelet then, rolled the body under the clump of berry bushes, right there, and came straight into the house.
“She showed no feeling of guilt, because she had none. At that moment, we should all have suspected something. We should have known that girl would not, suddenly, have given Martha the bracelet. Later, she told you about it, didn’t she, Sam? And you left Chad in the barn, to hoodwink Hubert, and came up and hid the body for her?”
“By God, I did not,” Sam said.
“No need to deny it, now, Sam,” she said. “It was the deed of a good man. Martha was never responsible—but courts might not have understood. Now we will all shield her—keep her secret. Chad’s confession will satisfy the world. Danny must know, I suppose; but no one else need ever know——”
“But I tell you——” Sam shouted.
I don’t know how, without raising her voice, she made it sound through his shouting, and silence it, but she did. “Sam—don’t. Why can’t we be honest, now, among ourselves? You see, I know that both you and Martha were on those stairs when the body was put there——”
My thoughts jumped out into words. “Chad must have known it, too. He must have decided that he’d rather die than betray either Sam or Martha.”
“He might have thought it,” Sam said, with a lack of emphasis that edged stupidity. “He could not have known it. It is not true.”
“Mrs. Ricker,” John questioned, “what makes you think that dad and Martha had both been on the stairs?”
“Sam’s pipe ashes were strewn about. And there was an old tatting shuttle, with which I had been trying to teach Martha to tat, that morning. She had it in her pocket. It must have dropped out. I think that Mary tried to clean the pipe ashes away. They were gone when I saw the body the second time. I should have tried to do it, but I didn’t think. I had no time. I was frantic with fear.
“Wait,” she answered our looks and our exclamations of astonishment. “I will explain. Martha and I, as you know, were alone here in the house while the rest of you were out looking for Gaby. Martha was sleepy. I was worried about her sleeping so much, and tried all sorts of ways to keep her awake until bed time. I kept sending her out to look at the sky, to see whether a storm was coming to spoil her fireworks. She would run out, and right in again, to curl on the davenport and try to sleep. Finally, though, she stayed outside, for a long time. But for Sam’s pipe ashes, I would think that then she had managed to drag the body upstairs by herself. Still—though I believe that she did have strength enough to move the body, I do not believe that she would have had wits enough.
“When the wind rose, I looked first for Martha. I called her several times before she answered. Finally she came around the house from the direction of the rabbit hutch, again. Surely, you must have noticed, as I did, that she had seemed strangely excited during all the late afternoon and early evening. At the time, I thought it was because she had been given the monkey charm, and because she was to have the fireworks.
“But, when we were alone, she talked very foolishly—even for her. She began with it again, when she had answered my call. She kept insisting that soon we were all going to be surprised about something; something very nice, that had to do with Chad—but she would never, never tell what it was. As a rule, I should not have paid any attention to such talk. But, for some reason, her excitement, and her insistence about a surprise, disturbed me. I spent some minutes quizzing her. I even tried to bribe her. I could get nothing from her but further talk about the nice surprise.
“At last I gave it up, and ran upstairs to begin closing the house against the storm. I thought I’d begin with the attic, and come down through the house. I tried the attic door. It was locked, and the key was missing. I was alarmed. Possibly, because we were all disturbed concerning Gaby’s absence; and possibly, because inside doors are so seldom locked here. I remembered the old skeleton key hanging in the broom closet. I ran down and got it.
“I opened the door. I saw the body. I touched it—and knew, even before I saw the tatting shuttle there, and the beaded bag, covered with Sam’s pipe ashes. I snatched the shuttle and hid it in my dress. At that instant, through the open window at the end of the hall, I heard your voices, as you ran up the road from the garage to escape the rain. I shut the door, locked it, and ran downstairs. Do you know, when I met you, I had that key in my hand?
“Mary came up to me to help me close the French windows. I did not think. I had a wild desire to rid myself of that key. I was determined to protect Martha, at any cost. Mary’s pocket was hanging like an open bag, right below me. I dropped the key into it. It was a frightful mistake. If I had kept it, and thrown it away, everyone in the house would have been exonerated. It was, as you know, the one link that connected this household with the crime. That is, after Mary had cleaned away the pipe ashes. The little fleck or two of them, which Danny saw, might have fallen there days before——”
“Mary,” Sam questioned, “were my pipe ashes on the bag? Did you stop to clean them off, before you gave the alarm?”
“Yes, they were, Sam. Yes, I did.”
“Then,” Sam said, “whoever put the body there, put the pipe ashes there to throw suspicion on me; and whoever it was, knew my habits, too. He must have put the tatting shuttle there, as well, for good measure. Does anyone of you think that Martha would have had the wits to save ashes out of my pipe and put them on the bag? I tell you, that would take an amount of logic, of reasoning, that Martha could no more have managed than a kitten could.”
“Chad!” John almost sang it, in his eagerness. “He was wise enough, and fool enough. His one idea was to protect Martha. He helped her get the body up there, between seven and eight o’clock, and he put the ashes there to shield her. I said fool enough. But, come to think of it, he knew what he was doing. He was protecting her with the one person in the house who could not have done it; with the one person that no Nevada jury would convict. Then, he turned around and shielded dad with his death and his written confession. From start to finish, it works out, plain as day. Gosh! Say—it is terrible. Gosh—horrible! Think of it—— But, thank God, it is cleared up, anyway.”
“ ‘Cleared up,anyway’ is right,” Sam said, and looked around at all of us, pityingly, like he’d look at a litter of sickly puppies.