Leave Her to Heaven

by Ben Ames Williams

  He smiled at her. ‘It’s all right.’ Quinton and Attorney General Shumate were talking together in low tones, and he watched them as a boxer during the interval between rounds watches his opponent. Ruth’s hand pressed his arm, and he touched it lightly, and felt Roger Pryde’s scrutiny, and turned to look at the reporters, thinking that tomorrow every newspaper in every city would headline his testimony, strip him naked to the shameful winds. The Attorney General left the courtroom, and Quinton spoke to Mrs. Parkins, and she made rapid notes of what he said.

  When the. brief recess was done and Harland crossed to resume his place in the witness box, Mr. Pettingill had not returned from the corridor; but at once he did so. Quinton came to face Harland again. He spoke quietly and with complete composure.

  ‘Well, Mr. Harland,’ he said. ‘Your statement opens a new field of inquiry. We will go back to the time of your brother’s death. That occurred when?’

  ‘He drowned in the lake at Back of the Moon, in August, a little over a year after Ellen and I were married.’

  ‘He was how old?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘He was an invalid?’

  ‘He had had infantile, and his legs were weak and shrunken.’

  ‘Could he swim?’

  ‘He was a strong swimmer. He had swum across the lake that summer.’

  ‘At what time of day did his death occur?’

  ‘Early afternoon.’

  ‘Who was at your camp that day?’

  ‘Ellen, Danny and myself.’

  ‘Where was Leick?’

  ‘He had gone to town for supplies.’

  ‘Let us take things in order. Begin with breakfast. After breakfast, what did you do?’

  ‘I went to work in my study over the boathouse.’

  ‘Did you see Ellen or Danny during the morning?’

  ‘I heard them row away up the lake.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘How long did you work?’

  ‘Till I was tired. We seldom knew the time at Back of the Moon.’ Harland was at last serene.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I finished work and climbed the hill to camp, found no one there. I remembered that they had gone out on the lake, so I went on to the hilltop above camp. You could see most of the lake from there.’

  ‘Did you see them?’

  ‘I saw the skiff, about half a mile away. I took the binoculars we kept at the lookout and focussed on the skiff.’

  He hesitated, and Quinton prompted: ‘Go on. What did you see?’

  ‘I saw Ellen sitting in the skiff. Danny was floundering in the water about twenty feet from the skiff, obviously in distress. She made no move to help him. I saw him go under. She let him drown.’ He was surprised that he could speak so steadily; held himself under an iron control.

  ‘Could Ellen swim?’

  ‘She was an excellent swimmer, better than I.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I ran down to the boathouse. We had an outboard motorboat, a fast one. I took it and raced up the pond to come to them. It’s a mile or so. They were just west of a long narrow point of land that runs out into the pond. There’s a ledge on the east side of that point. I knew it was there, but I forgot it, ran hard on to it. I was thrown out, cut my head. I waded and swam ashore and ran across the point.’ He waited for no prompting now. ‘I saw Ellen diving for Danny. The skiff was drifting away across the pond. I took off my clothes and helped her dive for him, but the water was too deep for me to get to the bottom, most of the time. She finally got him, brought him to the surface.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I took him ashore and tried to resuscitate him, but he was dead.’

  ‘What did she do, while you were doing this?’

  ‘She swam after the skiff and brought it back and we took Danny home to camp.’

  ‘You said, before recess, that she — ’ He looked at a bit of paper in his hand. ‘That she had sent an innocent child to actual death. What did you mean by that?’

  ‘Danny had tried to swim the length of the pond. She went along in, the skiff to help him out of the water if he tired. He caught a cramp and she let him drown.’

  ‘Yet you say you found her trying to rescue him?’

  ‘I saw her let him sink without trying to help him.’

  ‘But she tried to rescue him. It was she who actually brought his body to the surface.’

  ‘She deliberately let him drown.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told me so.’

  ‘At the time?’

  ‘No, months later.’

  ‘Did you accuse her at the time?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘At first the shock stunned me. I had loved her completely, and to find her capable of murdering my brother was like being hit on the head. Then before I reached the point of being able to talk at all, she told me she was going to have a baby. After that, for the baby’s sake, I couldn’t say anything. I never told her I knew the truth till after our baby died.’

  ‘If she let Danny drown, she must have had a reason.’

  ‘She hated sharing me with him, didn’t want him living with us. She had often urged me to send him away somewhere so she and I could be alone.’

  ‘Did you report her act to the authorities?’

  ‘No. I protected her. I couldn’t accuse my wife of murder. Certainly not with a baby coming. I made up a lie to tell Leick and everyone else, to explain his death. I said Danny had been running the motorboat and that he fell out and that it cut circles till it ran ashore on that ledge. I said Ellen and I had been swimming on the beach at the west end of the pond and had seen it happen.’

  ‘You say now that that was a lie.’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Did Leick believe you?’

  ‘As far as I know. I was afraid he might find my tracks on the point and know that it was I who had wrecked the motorboat, so I went up early next morning — we’d sent him out to Joe Severin’s the night before — and smoothed my tracks, so he couldn’t find them and know I was lying.’

  Quinton asked quietly: ‘In other words, you not only failed to report Ellen’s crime; you also lied to protect her, and you concealed evidence which would have revealed her guilt.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are aware that you thus become an accessory after the fact to this crime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr. Harland, are you also an accessory, before or after the fact, to the murder of Ellen?’

  Harland flushed under this abrupt attack, but he held his voice steady. He said quietly: ‘Ellen was not murdered. She committed suicide.’

  ‘And you say that she caused Danny’s death, and that you destroyed the evidence of her crime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Quinton turned away. ‘You may have him, Mr. Pettingill,’ he said in drawling scorn.

  Mr. Pettingill rose, came slowly nearer Harland. ‘Well now, Mr. Harland,’ he said. ‘You told Brother Quinton that Ellen had urged you to send Danny away so that you and she could be alone.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where did she want you to send him?’

  ‘She wanted me to leave him at Warm Springs for the summer while we came to Back of the Moon.’

  ‘Did she make any other attempt to get rid of him?’

  ‘On the way north, we stopped in Boston. She asked me to leave him there with Mrs. Huston; and later she asked me to leave him at Bar Harbor with Ruth.’

  ‘What was your reply?’

  ‘I said Danny was our joint responsibility; that he would either come with us or we would stay with him.’

  ‘I see. And now you say that when she saw a chance to let him drown and thus be rid of him forever, she seized it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. Now we’ll just get back to the point again for a minute, keep the record straight. Brother Quinto
n asked you whether you thought Ellen capable of planning suicide and plotting to have her sister blamed for it, and you answered yes. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He asked you why you believed her capable of such a thing and you said because she’d let your brother drown. Correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Referring to that hour in the canyon when you first declared your love, what did she say?’

  ‘She said: “I will never let you go.”’

  ‘And now she reaches back from the grave to punish you through Ruth for escaping her.’ Quinton rose with an angry haste, but Mr. Pettingill said easily: ‘That is all.’ He turned away, Quinton made a contemptuous. gesture, and Harland, trembling with the reaction from his ordeal, left the stand.

  – VIII –

  For a moment after Harland sat down, the courtroom rustled and whispered. Then with a glance at the clock, Mr. Pettingill said:

  ‘Well, Your Honor, we’ve time for one more witness before adjournment. This evidence has just come to my knowledge. It won’t take five minutes. I’ll call Leick Thorne.’

  When Leick took the stand, Harland forced himself to pay attention, wondering what was to come; and Mr. Pettingill began:

  ‘Now, Leick, you’ve already told the, jury about that shore picnic the day Ellen died, but we’ll go back to it again. Do you recall anything you haven’t told before that might be important?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Suppose you just go ahead and tell us what it is.’

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ Leick explained. ‘When she finished eating . . .’

  ‘By “she” you mean whom?’

  Leick said shortly: ‘Ellen.’ He began again. ‘When she finished eating, she had some napkins — paper napkins — that she hadn’t used, and she rolled them up in a tight roll and threw them into the fire.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The outside of the roll begun to burn, and I happened to watch it. After a while a jet of smoke begun to come out of it, maybe three-four inches long and half as thick as a lead pencil. Then the smoke turned to flame, and then some black stuff like tar begun to drip out of the hole the flame was coming out of, and drip down into the fire; and it burned too, in the ashes, sizzling like tar, till it all burned out.’

  ‘Did you know what caused this?’

  ‘No, sir. They were all talking and laughing and I was listening and watching the fire, and I noticed it, and thought it was a funny way for paper to burn . . .’

  ‘Brother Quinton would rather you didn’t tell us what you thought. But describe what you saw once more, if you please.’

  ‘Well, it was just like I said,’ Leick repeated. ‘She twisted up some paper napkins in a sort of roll . . .’

  ‘How big was the roll?’

  ‘Oh, maybe an inch thick and six inches long.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘And she threw it into the fire. It lit crossways on a couple pieces of driftwood, and the twisted ends caught fire, and the outside of the paper begun to burn, and then this jet of smoke came out, puffing straight out, steady; and then this black stuff like melted tar — only it was more brown than black — begun to drip out of the hole, and drip into the hot coals, and it caught fire, and kept burning till it all burned out.’

  ‘Had you ever seen anything like that before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like it since?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today.’

  ‘Under what circumstances?’

  ‘Why, last night I got to thinking about the picnic — — ’

  ‘Never mind what you were thinking. What did you do or see?’

  ‘Well, I went down to the shore here and built a fire, near as I could about as hot as the fire we had that day. I’d bought some paper napkins and borrowed half a cup of sugar, or maybe a little less, and an envelope from the post office. I put the sugar in the envelope and wrapped it in the paper napkins, to look as near as I could like the bundle she threw in the fire, the same size and shape and all; and I put it on the fire as near as I could in the same sort of place.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Leick. ‘It behaved just the same as that rolled-up bundle she threw on the fire at my place that day. Same smoke, same flames — only there was two jets this time — and the same black stuff running out and burning in the ashes.’

  Mr. Pettingill turned to Mr. Quinton. ‘That is all,’ he said.

  Harland, with a strong exultation, understood the significance of this testimony. If Ellen committed suicide by substituting for the envelope Ruth had prepared another containing arsenic as well as sugar, then she must somehow have disposed of the original envelope. Leick’s story tended to show how she had done so; and he wondered whether Quinton would recognize this fact. But Quinton faced Leick almost casually.

  ‘You’re an old friend of Mr. Harland’s, aren’t you?’

  ‘Guess’t you could say so.’

  ‘Any time he or Mrs. Harland was in trouble, you’d do anything you could to help them, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I sure would. They’re fine people.’

  ‘You’d even remember things that never happened, wouldn’t you?’

  Leick drawled: ‘Don’t see how I could remember them if they didn’t happen.’

  ‘Invent them, then?’

  ‘If I was smart enough, I might,’ Leick assented.

  Quinton nodded. ‘I thought so. That’s all.’

  – IX –

  Harland was so jubilant over Leick’s testimony that he almost forgot what he himself had that afternoon endured. When court rose, he saw in Mr. Pettingill’s eyes unconcealed satisfaction.

  ‘You can sleep soundly tonight, Mrs. Harland,’ the lawyer assured her. ‘We’ll go to the jury tomorrow, and tomorrow night you’ll be free.’

  ‘I’m a lot more worried about Dick than about myself,‘ she confessed, and she said to Harland: ‘That was terrible for you. I know how you hated it. You’d protected her so loyally.’

  Before he could speak, Mrs. Sayward touched Ruth’s arm. ‘Time to go, ma’am,’ she said in her brisk, cheerful tones. ‘They can come see you tonight if they want.’

  ‘We’ll let you sleep,’ Mr. Pettingill told her. ‘Sleep with a mind at ease.’

  Ruth pressed Harland’s hand and turned away, but from the door her eyes sought his. Then he and Roger Pryde and Pettingill went back to the hotel together, and they gathered in Mr. Pettingill’s room. The big man was in high humor, producing a bottle and glasses.

  ‘I think the time has come to pour a small libation,’ he announced. ‘The war’s over!’ He filled the glasses and said: ‘Well, here’s to Leick!’

  They drank, and Roger remarked: ‘Queer, though, that he didn’t think of that before.’

  Mr. Pettingill looked at Harland. ‘Would he lie for you?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Harland admitted. ‘He’d do anything he could for me, I think.’

  The big man rubbed his chin. He spoke in an explanatory tone to Roger Pryde. ‘Leick says he didn’t know this might be important till last night. He heard me say that if Ellen switched envelopes at the picnic she’d have to get rid of Ruth’s somehow, so he started thinking back, trying to figure out how she could have disposed of it; and he remembered the queer way those napkins burned. But he didn’t say anything to me till he’d tried that experiment of his, to see if the sugar in Ruth’s envelope would have acted like that.’ He added honestly: ‘That’s his story and I couldn’t shake him. I tried. You notice Quinton didn’t even try.’

  ‘I’d hate to think we were using perjured testimony,’ Roger confessed, and he asked: ‘Why didn’t Quinton go at him harder?’

  ‘He didn’t dare,’ Mr. Pettingill explained. ‘If he tried to shake Leick and failed, it would hurt; so he dismissed him as briefly and contemptuously as possible.’ He added: ‘If Leick’s lyin
g, he’s damned clever about it.’

  Harland said thoughtfully: ‘I’m sure he’s always known what happened to Danny. He was different toward Ellen after that day. On the river trip he never let her out of his sight, and I saw him watching her at the picnic. But if he’s lying about this, no one will ever know it.’

  ‘If he’s lying, I don’t want to know it,’ Mr. Pettingill cheerfully admitted, and he rumbled mirthfully at his own thought. ‘I’d like to follow Brother Quinton tonight, watch him try that experiment himself,’ he said. ‘He’ll be wrapping up sugar parcels’ and throwing them into fires till daylight.’

  ‘Does sugar really burn that way?’ Roger asked.

  Pettingill said frankly: ‘I don’t know.’

  Harland remembered one of those fragments of fact with which a novelist’s mind is stored. ‘I know there’s a trick, lighting a lump of sugar with a match,’ he said. ‘You can’t do it unless you touch the corner of the lump of sugar with cigarette ashes. A chemist friend of mine told me. He says the ashes act as a catalyst.’

  The waiter came with their dinner; and since Mr. Pettingill preferred to eat in silence — he was as valiant a trencherman as Deputy Hatch — they talked little till they were done. Then when the table had been cleared, the big man filled his pipe.

  ‘Well, we’ve got our case won,’ he said. ‘Everything Quinton will argue that Ruth did, we’ll show Ellen could have done just as well. But we’re one jump ahead of him. We say Ellen fixed up an envelope containing arsenic, exchanged it in her pocket for Ruth’s envelope containing sugar, put the arsenic in her coffee, put her envelope back in the basket, wrapped Ruth’s envelope in paper napkins and threw it into the fire.’

  Roger, his misgivings forgotten, cried: ‘And that settles it.’

  ‘That settles it,’ Mr. Pettingill agreed. ‘Brother Quinton will claim Leick is lying because he likes Mr. Harland; but the jury will believe Leick, and they’ll believe Mr. Harland’s story about Danny.’ He looked at Harland with a sympathetic eye. ‘As I said to Brother Quinton when he admitted stealing the hamper, no one would testify to a thing like that unless it was true. Not many men would have had the courage to do it, Mr. Harland.

  ‘But the jury will believe you, and they’ll decide Ellen was a bad woman and that Ruth’s a good one. They’ll find her not guilty. That’s sure as rain.’