Sherlock's Sisters

by Nick Rennison

  At about five o’clock I awoke and got up. Father always wanted his breakfast at six o’clock, and I had to prepare it now.

  When father and I were alone, he always built the fire in the kitchen stove, but that morning I did not hear him stirring as usual, and I fancied that he must be so out of temper with me, that he would not build the fire.

  I went to my closet for a dark blue calico dress which I wore to do housework in. It had hung there during all the school term.

  As I took it off the hook, my attention was caught by something strange about the dress I had worn the night before. This dress was made of thin summer silk; it was green in colour, sprinkled over with white rings. It had been my best dress for two summers, but now I was wearing it on hot afternoons at home, for it was the coolest dress I had. The night before, too, I had thought of the possibility of Henry’s driving over from Digby and passing the house. He had done this sometimes during the last summer vacation, and I wished to look my best if he did.

  As I took down the calico dress I saw what seemed to be a stain on the green silk. I threw on the calico hastily, and then took the green silk and carried it over to the window. It was covered with spots – horrible great splashes and streaks down the front. The right sleeve, too, was stained, and all the stains were wet.

  ‘What have I got on my dress?’ said I.

  It looked like blood. Then I smelled of it, and it was sickening in my nostrils, but I was not sure what the smell of blood was like. I thought I must have got the stains by some accident the night before.

  ‘If that is blood on my dress,’ I said, ‘I must do something to get it off at once, or the dress will be ruined.’

  It came to my mind that I had been told that bloodstains had been removed from cloth by an application of flour paste on the wrong side. I took my green silk, and ran down the back stairs, which lead – having a door at the foot – directly into the kitchen.

  There was no fire in the kitchen stove, as I had thought. Everything was very solitary and still, except for the ticking of the clock on the shelf. When I crossed the kitchen to the pantry, however, the cat mewed to be let in from the shed. She had a little door of her own by which she could enter or leave the shed at will, an aperture just large enough for her Maltese body to pass at ease beside the shed door. It had a little lid, too, hung upon a leathern hinge. On my way I let the cat in; then I went into the pantry and got a bowl of flour. This I mixed with water into a stiff paste, and applied to the under surface of the stains on my dress. I then hung the dress up to dry in the dark end of a closet leading out of the kitchen, which contained some old clothes of father’s.

  Then I made up the fire in the kitchen stove. I made coffee, baked biscuits, and poached some eggs for breakfast.

  Then I opened the door into the sitting-room and called, ‘Father, breakfast is ready’. Suddenly I started. There was a red stain on the inside of the sitting-room door. My heart began to beat in my ears. ‘Father!’ I called out. ‘Father!’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Father!’ I called again, as loud as I could scream. ‘Why don’t you speak? What is the matter?’

  The door of his bedroom stood open. I had a feeling that I saw a red reflection in there. I gathered myself together and went across the sitting-room to father’s bedroom door. His little looking-glass hung over his bureau opposite his bed, which was reflected in it.

  That was the first thing I saw, when I reached the door. I could see father in the looking-glass and the bed. Father was dead there; he had been murdered in the night.

  * * * * * *

  I think I must have fainted away, for presently I found myself on the floor, and for a minute I could not remember what had happened. Then I remembered, and an awful, unreasoning terror seized me. ‘I must lock all the doors quick,’ I thought; ‘quick, or the murderer will come back.’

  I tried to get up, but I could not stand. I sank down again. I had to crawl out of the room on my hands and knees.

  I went first to the front door; it was locked with a key and a bolt. I went next to the north door, and that was locked with a key and bolt. I went to the north shed door, and that was bolted. Then I went to the little-used east door in the shed, beside which the cat had her little passage-way, and that was fastened with an iron hook. It has no latch.

  The whole house was fastened on the inside. The thought struck me like an icy hand, ‘The murderer is in this house!’ I rose to my feet then; I unhooked that door, and ran out of the house, and out of the yard, as for my life.

  I took the road to the village. The first house, where Phoebe Dole and Maria Woods live, is across a wide field from ours. I did not intend to stop there, for they were only women, and could do nothing; but seeing Phoebe looking out of the window, I ran into the yard.

  She opened the window.

  ‘What is it?’ said she. ‘What is the matter, Sarah Fairbanks?’

  Maria Woods came and leaned over her shoulder. Her face looked almost as white as her hair, and her blue eyes were dilated. My face must have frightened her.

  ‘Father – father is murdered in his bed!’ I said.

  There was a scream, and Maria Woods’s face disappeared from over Phoebe Dole’s shoulder – she had fainted. I do not know whether Phoebe looked paler – she is always very pale – but I saw in her black eyes a look which I shall never forget. I think she began to suspect me at that moment.

  Phoebe glanced back at Maria, but she asked me another question.

  ‘Has he had words with anybody?’ said she.

  ‘Only with Rufus,’ I said; ‘but Rufus is gone.’

  Phoebe turned away from the window to attend to Maria, and I ran on to the village.

  A hundred people can testify what I did next – can tell how I called for the doctor and the deputy sheriff; how I went back to my own home with the horror-stricken crowd; how they flocked in and looked at poor father; but only the doctor touched him, very carefully, to see if he were quite dead; how the coroner came, and all the rest.

  The pistol was in the bed beside father, but it had not been fired; the charge was still in the barrel. It was bloodstained, and there was one bruise on father’s head which might have been inflicted by the pistol, used as a club. But the wound which caused his death was in his breast, and made evidently by some cutting instrument, though the cut was not a clean one; the weapon must have been dull.

  They searched the house, lest the murderer should be hidden away. I heard Rufus Bennett’s name whispered by one and another. Everybody seemed to know that he and father had had words the night before; I could not understand how, because I had told nobody except Phoebe Dole, who had had no time to spread the news, and I was sure that no one else had spoken of it.

  They looked in the closet where my green silk dress hung, and pushed it aside to be sure nobody was concealed behind it, but they did not notice anything wrong about it. It was dark in the closet, and besides, they did not look for anything like that until later.

  All these people – the deputy sheriff, and afterwards the high sheriff, and other out-of-town officers, for whom they had telegraphed, and the neighbours – all hunted their own suspicion, and that was Rufus Bennett. All believed he had come back, and killed my father. They fitted all the facts to that belief. They made him do the deed with a long, slender screwdriver, which he had recently borrowed from one of the neighbours and had not returned. They made his fingermarks, which were still on my father’s throat, fit the red prints of the sitting-room door. They made sure that he had returned and stolen into the house by the east door shed, while father and I sat on the doorsteps the evening before; that he had hidden himself away, perhaps in that very closet where my dress hung, and afterwards stolen out and killed my father, and then escaped.

  They were not shaken when I told them that every door was bolted and barred that morning. They themselves f
ound all the windows fastened down, except a few which were open on account of the heat, and even these last were raised only the width of the sash, and fastened with sticks, so that they could be raised no higher. Father was very cautious about fastening the house, for he sometimes had considerable sums of money by him. The officers saw all these difficulties in the way, but they fitted them somehow to their theory, and two deputy sheriffs were at once sent to apprehend Rufus.

  They had not begun to suspect me then, and not the slightest watch was kept on my movements. The neighbours were very kind, and did everything to help me, relieving me altogether of all those last offices – in this case so much sadder than usual.

  An inquest was held, and I told freely all I knew, except about the bloodstains on my dress. I hardly knew why I kept that back. I had no feeling then that I might have done the deed myself, and I could not bear to convict myself, if I was innocent.

  Two of the neighbours, Mrs Holmes and Mrs Adams, remained with me all that day. Towards evening, when there were very few in the house, they went into the parlour to put it in order for the funeral, and I sat down alone in the kitchen. As I sat there by the window I thought of my green silk dress, and wondered if the stains were out. I went to the closet and brought the dress out to the light. The spots and streaks had almost disappeared. I took the dress out into the shed, and scraped off the flour paste, which was quite dry; I swept up the paste, burned it in the stove, took the dress upstairs to my own closet, and hung it in its old place. Neighbours remained with me all night.

  At three o’clock in the afternoon of the next day, which was Thursday, I went over to Phoebe Dole’s to see about a black dress to wear at the funeral. The neighbours had urged me to have my black silk dress altered a little, and trimmed with crape.

  I found only Maria Woods at home. When she saw me she gave a little scream, and began to cry. She looked as if she had already been weeping for hours. Her blue eyes were bloodshot.

  ‘Phoebe’s gone over to – Mrs Whitney’s to – try on her dress,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I want to get my black silk dress fixed a little,’ said I.

  ‘She’ll be home – pretty soon,’ said Maria.

  I laid my dress on the sofa and sat down. Nobody ever consults Maria about a dress. She sews well, but Phoebe does all the planning.

  Maria Woods continued to sob like a child, holding her little soaked handkerchief over her face. Her shoulders heaved. As for me, I felt like a stone; I could not weep.

  ‘Oh,’ she gasped out finally, ‘I knew – I knew! I told Phoebe – I knew just how it would be, I – knew!’

  I roused myself at that.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said I.

  ‘When Phoebe came home Tuesday night and said she heard your father and Rufus Bennett having words, I knew how it would be,’ she choked out. ‘I knew he had a dreadful temper.’

  ‘Did Phoebe Dole know Tuesday night that father and Rufus Bennett had words?’ said I.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maria Woods.

  ‘How did she know?’

  ‘She was going through your yard, the short cut to Mrs Ormsby’s, to carry her brown alpaca dress home. She came right home and told me; and she overheard them.’

  ‘Have you spoken of it to anybody but me?’ said I.

  Maria said she didn’t know; she might have done so. Then she remembered hearing Phoebe herself speak of it to Harriet Sargent when she came in to try on her dress. It was easy to see how people knew about it.

  I did not say any more, but I thought it was strange that Phoebe Dole had asked me if father had had words with anybody when she knew it all the time.

  Phoebe came in before long. I tried on my dress, and she made her plan about the alterations, and the trimming. I made no suggestions. I did not care how it was done, but if I had cared it would have made no difference. Phoebe always does things her own way. All the women in the village are in a manner under Phoebe Dole’s thumb. The garments are visible proofs of her force of will.

  While she was taking up my black silk on the shoulder seams, Phoebe Dole said, ‘Let me see – you had a green silk made at Digby three summers ago, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ said she, ‘why don’t you have it dyed black? Those thin silks dye quite nice. It would make you a good dress.’

  I scarcely replied, and then she offered to dye it for me herself. She had a recipe which she used with great success. I thought it was very kind of her, but did not say whether I would accept her offer or not. I could not fix my mind upon anything but the awful trouble I was in.

  ‘I’ll come over and get it tomorrow morning,’ said Phoebe.

  I thanked her. I thought of the stains, and then my mind seemed to wander again to the one subject. All the time Maria Woods sat weeping. Finally Phoebe turned to her with impatience.

  ‘If you can’t keep calmer, you’d better go upstairs, Maria,’ said she. ‘You’ll make Sarah sick. Look at her! She doesn’t give way – and think of the reason she’s got.’

  ‘I’ve got reason, too,’ Maria broke out; then, with a piteous shriek, ‘Oh, I’ve got reason.’

  ‘Maria Woods, go out of the room!’ said Phoebe. Her sharpness made me jump, half dazed as I was.

  Maria got up without a word, and went out of the room, bending almost double with convulsive sobs.

  ‘She’s been dreadfully worked up over your father’s death,’ said Phoebe calmly, going on with the fitting. ‘She’s terribly nervous. Sometimes I have to be real sharp with her, for her own good.’

  I nodded. Maria Woods has always been considered a sweet, weakly, dependent woman, and Phoebe Dole is undoubtedly very fond of her. She has seemed to shield her, and take care of her nearly all her life. The two have lived together since they were young girls.

  Phoebe is tall, and very pale and thin; but she never had a day’s illness. She is plain, yet there is a kind of severe goodness and faithfulness about her colourless face, with the smooth bands of white hair over her ears.

  I went home as soon as my dress was fitted. That evening Henry Ellis came over to see me. I do not need to go into details concerning that visit. It seemed enough to say that he tendered the fullest sympathy and protection, and I accepted them. I cried a little, for the first time, and he soothed and comforted me.

  Henry had driven over from Digby and tied his horse in the yard. At ten o’clock he bade me goodnight on the doorstep, and was just turning his buggy around, when Mrs Adams came running to the door.

  ‘Is this yours?’ said she, and she held out a knot of yellow ribbon.

  ‘Why, that’s the ribbon you have around your whip, Henry,’ said I.

  He looked at it.

  ‘So it is,’ he said. ‘I must have dropped it.’ He put it into his pocket and drove away.

  ‘He didn’t drop that ribbon tonight!’ said Mrs Adams. ‘I found it Wednesday morning out in the yard. I thought I remembered seeing him have a yellow ribbon on his whip.’

  * * * * * *

  When Mrs Adams told me she had picked up Henry’s whip-ribbon Wednesday morning, I said nothing, but thought that Henry must have driven over Tuesday evening after all, and even come up into the yard, although the house was shut up, and I in bed, to get a little nearer to me. I felt conscience-stricken, because I could not help a thrill of happiness, when my father lay dead in the house.

  My father was buried as privately and as quietly as we could bring it about. But it was a terrible ordeal. Meantime word came from Vermont that Rufus Bennett had been arrested on his farm. He was perfectly willing to come back with the officers, and indeed, had not the slightest trouble in proving that he was at his home in Vermont when the murder took place. He proved by several witnesses that he was out of the state long before my father and I sat on the steps together that evening, and that he proceeded directly to his home
as fast as the train and stagecoach could carry him.

  The screwdriver with which the deed was supposed to have been committed was found, by the neighbour from whom it had been borrowed, in his wife’s bureau drawer. It had been returned, and she had used it to put a picture-hook in her chamber. Bennett was discharged and returned to Vermont.

  Then Mrs Adams told of the finding of the yellow ribbon from Henry Ellis’s whip, and he was arrested, since he was held to have a motive for putting my father out of the world. Father’s opposition to our marriage was well known, and Henry was suspected also of having had an eye to his money. It was found, indeed, that my father had more money than I had known myself.

  Henry owned to having driven into the yard that night, and to having missed the ribbon from his whip on his return; but one of the hostlers in the livery stables in Digby, where he kept his horse and buggy, came forward and testified to finding the yellow ribbon in the carriage-room that Tuesday night before Henry returned from his drive. There were two yellow ribbons in evidence, therefore, and the one produced by the hostler seemed to fit Henry’s whip-stock the more exactly.

  Moreover, nearly the exact minute of the murder was claimed to be proved by the post-mortem examination; and by the testimony of the stableman as to the hour of Henry’s return and the speed of his horse, he was further cleared of suspicion; for, if the opinion of the medical experts was correct, Henry must have returned to the livery stable too soon to have committed the murder.

  He was discharged, at any rate, although suspicion still clung to him. Many people believe now in his guilt – those who do not, believe in mine; and some believe we were accomplices.

  After Henry’s discharge, I was arrested. There was no one else left to accuse. There must be a motive for the murder; I was the only person left with a motive. Unlike the others, who were discharged after preliminary examination, I was held to the grand jury and taken to Dedham, where I spent four weeks in jail, awaiting the meeting of the grand jury.