Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  Mr. Shumate took the letter, handed it to the clerk. ‘This should be marked,’ he said. He spoke to Quinton. ‘That is all.’

  Quinton waited, and Mr. Pettingill approached the witness stand. ‘By the way, Brother Quinton,’ he remarked. ‘You said, when you were telling about giving her the hamper, that you and Ellen were friends. Pretty good friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How friendly were you?’

  ‘We were engaged to be married.’

  Ruth looked quickly at Mrs. Parkins. Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks blazing.

  ‘When was that?’ Pettingill asked.

  ‘We became engaged immediately after her father’s death.’ Quinton’s face was white, his tones like ice.

  ‘What happened to break it up?’

  ‘She decided to marry Mr. Harland.’

  ‘You mean she was still engaged to you when she went to New Mexico?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she let you know she was going to marry Mr. Harland?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Invite you to the wedding?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you go to New Mexico?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To the wedding?’

  ‘They were married and gone before I got there.’

  Mr. Pettingill nodded contentedly and sat down. Quinton left the stand. He consulted for a moment with the Attorney General, then addressed the court.

  ‘We call Joseph Catterson,’ he said.

  – VII –

  As Mr. Catterson came in from the corridor, a sigh, as though each spectator had been holding his breath, rose from the crowded courtroom. The chemist was a frail-seeming man with timid fair hair thin across his scalp, and pale eyes behind his spectacles; and as though forever afraid of contradiction if he said too much, he spoke in compressed sentences as compact as his own formulae. Ruth, still half-stunned by Ellen’s letter, heard Quinton, prolonging the suspense, elaborate his early inquiries, making Mr. Catterson describe his professional qualifications, the circumstances under which the lunch basket was delivered to him, the procedure he followed in opening it, the objects it contained. Eventually Mr. Catterson came to the point; to that envelope in which he said a small quantity of sugar had been found.

  Quinton echoed: ‘Sugar?’

  ‘My assumption.’ The chemist’s clipped sentences were like bullets.

  ‘Was that assumption correct?’

  ‘No. I tested — your suggestion — for arsenic. I. . .’

  ‘Describe those tests,’ Quinton interrupted, and Catterson did so. ‘What did those tests reveal?’ Quinton asked, when he was done, and the chemist answered:

  ‘Assumption wrong. Apparent sugar tested sixty per cent arsenic.’

  Quinton nodded. ‘Do you remember another occasion, a few days later, when I came to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell the jury what happened.’

  ‘You delivered sealed parcel. Contents: bottle half-full of white powder.’

  ‘I show you a bottle.’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘What did you then do?’

  ‘Called Mr. Norton — your suggestion — to test for fingerprints. Then analyzed contents.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Arsenic. Pure.’

  Quinton waited a moment, then turned toward Pettingill. ‘You may inquire,’ he said; but Pettingill shook his head, and the chemist left the stand.

  Norton, the fingerprint expert, followed him. He was a calm, heavy man with an absurdly large and dark mustache, like a defiant gesture at an unfriendly world. There were fingerprints on the bottle, he said, and he had compared them with the fingerprints of the prisoner, found them identical. He produced photographic copies, duly marked, of the fingerprints on the bottle and of Ruth’s, and they were put in evidence. But when his testimony was done, him too Mr. Pettingill allowed to go unquestioned.

  And court adjourned for the day.

  Ruth, when Mrs. Sayward touched her shoulder to summon her to rise, wished she need not leave Harland, for his cheek was drawn, his eyes sunken with fatigue. She said in a low tone: ‘It’s all right, darling. Sleep well. You’ll be fine tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll see you tonight,’ he promised. ‘Mr. Pettingill and I.’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t come, Dick. It’s too hard for you. Get Leick and go for a drive out into the country somewhere.’ And when he would have protested, she urged: ‘Please. I’m a lot more worried about you than I am about myself.’ She appealed to Mr. Pettingill. ‘Make him be sensible. I’m all right. You don’t even need to come yourself unless you want to.’

  The lawyer said agreeably: ‘Probably I won’t. I think it much better for you to sleep, rest as much as you can. The State expects to close by noon tomorrow, and I will at once put you on the stand.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Quinton made his effect today. We will make ours tomorrow. I shall keep you on the stand, in my hands, till the hour for adjournment.’

  Harland asked despairingly: ‘Does she have to take the stand?’

  ‘Oh I want to, Richard,’ she assured him, and laughed almost gaily. ‘It will be my first chance to answer back, you know.’

  But when she was alone in her narrow cell in the jail above the town, her courage for a while deserted her. She knew well enough the damning effect which Ellen’s letter, read aloud in that crowded court, must have had; and she had seen the flying pencils of the reporters, seen them after court crowd around Quinton to seek copies. For a while a deep anger at Ellen burned in her; at Ellen whose whole life had served herself and none other, who now in her death had sought to do an irreparable injury. She remembered that Ellen too had suffered, loving Harland as she did, knowing him irrevocably lost to her. It was always easy for Ruth to find excuses for others, and she could have forgiven Ellen the injury to herself; but she could not forgive her for hurting Harland so grievously.

  – VIII –

  Quinton’s first witness that second morning was Mrs. Freeman, who had been for many years at once housekeeper and cook in the Bar Harbor home. Compressed into shiny black, a little red in the face from tight lacing and from excitement, she was during Quinton’s first inquiries so nervous that her voice broke like an adolescent’s, shrill and piping. Quinton, till she was more at ease, made her answer questions completely unimportant, about her winters at home, her family, her husband. Only when she was reassured did he lead her to speak of her long service with Professor and Mrs. Berent. By that time, becoming sure of herself, she was answering almost indignantly, as though resenting this waste of time on matters so familiar.

  ‘Mrs. Berent is now dead?’ Quinton suggested.

  ‘Of course she is!’

  ‘And did her death end your employment by the Barent family?’

  ‘It did not! Whenever Miss Ruth is there she always sends for me.’

  ‘Was the big house kept open?’

  ‘She lives in it summers, but she’s had her father’s study fixed over for a cottage in case she ever rented the big house. She wanted to, but she never did.’

  ‘Did Mr. and Mrs. Harland ever visit her there?’

  ‘Yes, they did.’

  ‘Do you remember an occasion during that visit when they planned a picnic, took lunch, went away for the day.’

  Mrs. Freeman’s voice, when she realized that Quinton had come at last to the point, rose to a squeak, so that she had to stop and start again. ‘It was the time — That was the day Ellen died.’

  ‘Who prepared the picnic lunch on that occasion? If you remember.’

  ‘I’ll remember everything that happened that day, long as I live!’

  ‘Suppose you tell us, in your own way,’ he suggested; and she took a deep breath.

  ‘Well,’ she began, and smacked her lips, ‘Well, Miss Ruth told me the day before that they’d all be away for lunch, and that morning she came out to the kitchen with a lunch basket.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Quinton sug
gested. ‘Is this the basket?’

  ‘That’s it,’ she agreed. ‘So she told me to make coffee, and some bread and butter sandwiches, and she got some of my chocolate doughnuts and wrapped them up in oiled paper, and she’d had me make some potato salad, and I wrapped up the sandwiches, and filled the thermos bottles, and she packed the things in the basket.’

  ‘Did she put in anything you haven’t mentioned?’

  ‘Worcestershire sauce and mustard and butter and lemons for a tamale sauce she always made for lobsters.’

  ‘Any other seasoning?’

  ‘There was salt and pepper shakers in the basket, and she put some sugar in an envelope for Miss Ellen’s coffee.’

  ‘Did you see her put the sugar in the envelope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell us what happened?’

  ‘Why she just fetched an envelope and poured some sugar into it. Dipped it up with a scoop, out of the firkin.’

  ‘What kind of an envelope?’

  ‘One from the desk in the library, kind of gray, about so square.’ She illustrated with her hands.

  ‘Like this?’ Quinton asked, showing her the envelope which he had led Mr. Catterson to identify.

  ‘That’s the same kind. It’s the same one for all I know.’

  ‘What did she do with it, after she’d put the sugar in?’

  ‘She put it in the hamper.’

  ‘Did she seal the envelope?’

  ‘Yes, I mind she did.’

  ‘Lick the flap?’

  ‘No, just wet her finger and ran it along on the glued part.’

  Ruth, her wits alert, understood what was in Quinton’s mind, caught the suggestion that her failure to lick the flap was a precaution against getting even a few grains of arsenic on her tongue; and she was about to whisper to Mr. Pettingill, but Quinton’s next question checked her.

  ‘Now, Mrs. Freeman, do you remember Professor Berent?’

  ‘I’ll say I do!’

  ‘Do you know whether he had a hobby?’

  ‘You mean collecting bird skins and stuffing them?’

  Quinton nodded. ‘Do you know how he preserved the skins?’

  ‘He’d put arsenic on them.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I’ve seen him and Miss Ellen working at it, down at his shop on the rocks by the shore below the house. He had bottles of arsenic there.’

  ‘What did it look like?’

  ‘Like flour, or fine sugar.’

  ‘Do you remember a day last June when I came to you?’

  ‘The time you asked me questions, same as now?’

  ‘A later occasion.’

  ‘When Mrs. Parkins and the fat man came with you?’

  ‘Deputy Hatch, yes.’

  ‘Yes, I remember that day all right.’

  ‘Tell the jury what happened on that occasion.’

  ‘Why, I had a key to the house, and you had a search warrant, and I went and let you in.’

  ‘Did you go with us through the house?’

  ‘I’ll say’t I did!’ She tossed her head.

  ‘Do you remember our taking anything away?’

  ‘You pried out a piece of the baseboard in Miss Ruth’s room and took a bottle from behind it.’

  ‘This bottle?’

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘Had you seen it before?’

  ‘It had bath salts in it, first time I saw it. Miss Ruth had it in her bathroom.’

  ‘Had you known there was a hiding place behind the baseboard?’

  ‘No.’

  Quinton considered, stepped back. ‘I think that’s all,’ he said.

  Mr. Pettingill spoke in a low tone to Ruth beside him. ‘Was that the way it happened? Packing the lunch, I mean?’

  She nodded. ‘Except that Ellen reminded me about the sugar.’

  ‘Did Mrs. Freeman hear her?’

  ‘I think so. Ellen came into the kitchen.’

  ‘Did you wet the flap of the envelope as she described?’

  ‘Yes. I always did that. I hate the taste of the mucilage. We had a glass roller — one of the kind that picks up water when you revolve it — on the library desk to wet envelopes and stamps.’

  ‘I judge you used granulated sugar.’

  ‘Yes. Mrs. Freeman couldn’t find the lump.’

  Pettingill nodded and stood up. ‘Well, Mrs. Freeman, I guess we’ve got that all straight,’ he said. ‘Only I was wondering, did Miss Ruth always pack the lunch baskets for these picnics?’

  ‘Either she did or I did.’

  ‘Not Miss Ellen?’

  ‘Ellen never came fussing around the kitchen.

  ‘Never? Didn’t she come into the kitchen that morning?’

  Mrs. Freeman said in a quicker fashion, as though suddenly interested: ‘Why yes, I mind she did. She was in the kitchen when I came downstairs.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘I always get down at seven sharp.’

  ‘You found her in the kitchen so early?’

  ‘Yes. She had a kettle on to boil, and she was looking for the coffee. She said Mr. Harland was down on the shore and she wanted to make some for him.’

  Ruth listened intently. That Ellen should have gone to the kitchen so early was almost incredible, and Mr. Pettingill seemed to guess this, for he remarked:

  ‘You said Ellen never came fussing around the kitchen. Did finding her there that morning surprise you?’

  ‘I’ll say’t it did! First time in her life she ever set out to do anything like that in my kitchen.’

  ‘Where was she when you came down?’

  ‘In the pantry looking for the coffee. It was right in front of her eyes, but she couldn’t find it.’

  ‘Did she come into the kitchen again later that morning?’

  ‘Why yes, come to think of it, she did. When Ruth was packing the lunch, she came in and offered to help. I had to laugh. She never helped Ruth do anything in her life.’

  ‘Her offer was so unusual that you noticed it?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Did she help?’

  ‘No, the job was mostly all done by then.’

  ‘Make any suggestions, did she?’

  ‘Why — ’ She hesitated, thinking back. ‘Yes, she reminded Ruth not to forget the sugar.’

  ‘Was it in response to that suggestion that Miss Ruth fetched the envelope?’

  ‘Yes, I guess ’twas.’

  ‘Did Ellen see her do it?’

  ‘Yes, because I mind she kind of teased Ruth for using one of the special envelopes marked with the name they called the house. Grayledges, it was! Ellen said Ruth was extravagant, using up the envelopes, and Ruth said there were more envelopes than there was paper, and she’d have to use them up or else throw them away.’

  ‘So there were other such envelopes in the house?’

  ‘Yes, sir, plenty of them!’

  ‘Could you tell one of them from another?’

  ‘Not unless there was writing on it.’

  ‘Where were they kept?’

  ‘In the desk in the library.’

  ‘Was it a part of your work to dust the library?’

  ‘Sometimes I did it, but Ruth did it too. She was always a help around the house.’

  ‘Did you sometimes dust the desk?’

  ‘Whenever I did the library, I did.’

  ‘What kind of desk was it?’

  ‘Flat-topped, only with pigeonholes along the back.’

  ‘Do you remember the desk furnishings, the things on top of the desk?’

  ‘Well, I sh’d say I did! I had to move’em every time I dusted it. There was paper and envelopes in the pigeonholes, and some post cards, and most generally some letters stuck away; and there was a glass inkwell, with a glass ball for a stopper, big as an egg; and pens in a tray; and a little glass box they kept stamps in; and there was a ground-glass thing like a rolling pin set on a little pan that had water in it — they used it to wet
stamps with — and there was a blotter on a rocker like the rocker on a rocking chair, and a big blotter to write on.’

  ‘A roller to wet stamps with? Why didn’t they just lick them?’

  ‘Mrs. Berent hated the taste of the glue, and the others the same.’

  ‘I see. Now you said Ruth scooped up some sugar out of the firkin. Why didn’t she use lump sugar?’

  Mrs. Freeman, reluctant to admit any flaw in her housekeeping, exclaimed: ‘Somebody’d hidden it.’

  Ruth was by this word electrified into new attention. She had forgotten the missing lump sugar, seeing in the fact of its disappearance no importance. But you couldn’t mix powdered arsenic with lump sugar without detection, and Ellen would have known that!

  ‘Hidden it?’ Mr. Pettingill echoed. ‘That must have annoyed you.’

  ‘I’ll say’t it did!’

  ‘When had you last seen it?’

  ‘I’d used up the last of a box two days before that, so I ordered two boxes and they came the day before. I put them on the pantry shelf, and that morning they were gone. The place where they’d been was empty.’

  ‘Wasn’t there any in the sugar bowl?’

  ‘No. Ruth went to get some and came back and said the bowl was empty; and it was, too. I looked myself, because it had been half-full the night before.’

  Ruth, remembering, understanding to the full the malignant deliberation with which Ellen had acted, was physically sick, feeling waves of nausea in her cheeks and throat. She swallowed hard, and Mr. Pettingill went calmly on:

  ‘Did you ever find those two boxes of sugar? The ones that were missing.’

  Mrs. Freeman nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, the next spring when I cleaned the pantry they were in behind the flour barrel, in the bottom cupboard.’

  ‘They couldn’t have got there by accident?’

  ‘I’ll say they couldn’t! They were stuffed in out of sight, so you couldn’t see them without you moved the barrel. Whoever put them there had to get down on their hands and knees and reach around behind the barrel.’

  Mr. Pettingill shook his head. ‘Too bad. Well now, Mrs. Freeman,’ he asked. ‘Did you notice what Miss Ellen wore that day?’

  ‘She wore a print,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘Sort of pale yellow, with flowers on it.’