The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  It became the duty of the worthy magistrate, to commit, in the course of that very day, our respected friend, Caleb Rumley, Esq., deputy-sheriff of the county of——to the same capacious tenement which Dr. Rivington had lately inhabited; he, with the consent of the judge, being more safely disposed of in the prison of his own house. A bill was immediately found by the Grand Jury, and the trial of the real murderer came on shortly after. For a long time he obstinately denied any knowledge of the death of Silversight; but as proofs after proofs were disclosed against him, he first became doggedly silent, then greatly intimidated, and at last made a full disclosure of his crime. He was found guilty, and executed on the same gallows that had been erected for our calumniated hero.

  The sickness of Catharine Wentworth was long and severe; but our friend Charles was her physician, and the reader will not wonder that it yielded at last to his skill. The Christian parent of our hero had been condemned, at different periods of her life, to drink deeply of the cup of affliction, and she had bowed with a noble humility to the decree of heaven; it was thence she now derived support in this more trying hour of joy. Spring had gone forth, warbling with her thousand voices of delight, over these wide-extended prairies, and the flowers had sprung into a beautiful existence at her call, when the hand of the blushing Catharine, herself a lovelier flower, was bestowed in marriage on the transported Charles Rivington. Never did there stand before the holy man, a happier, a more affectionate pair. Their hearts had been tried—severely tried; they had been weighed in the balance, and not found wanting. The house of Mr. Wentworth was the scene of their union; and, on the same evening, and by the same hand that had bound her dear “Mister Charles” to his blooming bride, our little Irish friend Judy was united to the worthy Buckhorn, who had been prevailed upon, reluctantly, to lay aside his hunting shirt and leather leggings on the joyful occasion. The evening glided rapidly away, urged along by tales of mirth, and song, and jest; and it was observed, that though Charles and Catharine took but little share in the rattling conversation of the hour, they appeared to enjoy the scene with happiness that admitted of no increase. Indeed, often did the tender blue eyes of the beautiful bride become suffused with crystal drops of joy, as she raised them in thankfulness to her heavenly Father, who had conducted them safely through all the perils of the past, and at last brought them together under the shelter of his love.

  “The whole trouble come out of your being so kind, Dr. Rivington,” said the manly, though, in his new suit, rather awkward-looking Buckhorn; “it was all of your kindness to offer to bring out my plaguy rifle. If it hadn’t been for that, suspicion wouldn’t a lighted on you at all.”

  “Now hould your tongue, Jimmy dear,” answered his loquacious little wife; “I thought so myself, till Mister Charles explained it to me, and then I found out how ’twas the wisdom of the Almighty put it into his head to carry your gun; for how would you iver got on the true scent, if the big bullet hadn’t a tould ye for sartain that it was niver the small-bored rifle that kilt him. No, blessed be his name, that made then, as he always will, goodness its own reward, and put it into the heart of my dear, kind master, to carry out a great clumsy gun, to an old ranger like you, Buckhorn. And, under heaven, the cause of all our present happiness, take my word for it, is THE RIFLE.”

  1834

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

  Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe

  In the years before Edgar Allan Poe clearly defined the detective story, most mysteries generally were known as “riddle stories,” and few authors wrote them as well as the one frequently ranked at or near the top of every list of the greatest American novelists, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (born Hathorne) (1804–1864). He endowed most of his major work with classic elements of mystery, superstition, allegory, horror, and the supernatural, and the present story is no exception.

  Born in Salem, Massachusetts, the great-grandson of a judge in the Salem witch trials, Hawthorne was extremely solitary as a child, a state that endured throughout most of his life. His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850), is filled with such fantastic elements as a great glowing A in the sky and another apparently burned into the chest of the cowardly minister. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) also contains numerous, if nuanced, overtones of gothic fantasy, including a well in which the water turns foul when an injustice is done, the hereditary curse of a wizard, a skeleton with a missing hand, and a portrait that seems to change expressions. In his short stories, especially those collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837; expanded in 1842), Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), and The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852), otherworldly creatures such as ghosts, demons, witches, and so on abound, though they are often rationalized or made to seem as no more than entities in dreams. In his finest short story, “Young Goodman Brown,” the title character encounters a witch, a coven attended by virtually everyone he knows, and the Devil himself—or in fact he encounters no one but has either fantasized the episode or dreamed it; Hawthorne does not resolve whether it really occurred, leaving it to the reader to decide. While he is not normally thought of as a master of humor, some of the scenes in “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe,” as well as those in other stories, are so broad as to be downright slapstick.

  “Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe” was first published in the December 1834 issue of New England Magazine; it was first collected in Twice-Told Tales (Boston: American Stationers Co., John B. Russell, 1837).

  ***

  A YOUNG FELLOW, a tobacco pedlar by trade, was on his way from Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the village of Parker’s Falls, on Salmon River. He had a neat little cart, painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each side panel, and an Indian chief, holding a pipe and a golden tobacco stalk, on the rear. The pedlar drove a smart little mare, and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none the worse liked by the Yankees; who, as I have heard them say, would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smoking tobacco in his stock; knowing well that the country lasses of New England are generally great performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedlar was inquisitive, and something of a tattler, always itching to hear the news, and anxious to tell it again.

  After an early breakfast at Morristown, the tobacco pedlar, whose name was Dominicus Pike, had travelled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods, without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare. It being nearly seven o’clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper. An opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a sunglass, he looked up, and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill, at the foot of which the pedlar had stopped his green cart. Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick, and travelled with a weary, yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the freshness of the morning, but had footed it all night, and meant to do the same all day.

  “Good morning, mister,” said Dominicus, when within speaking distance. “You go a pretty good jog. What’s the latest news at Parker’s Falls?”

  The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker’s Falls, which, as being the limit of his own day’s journey, the pedlar had naturally mentioned in his inquiry.

  “Well, then,” rejoined Dominicus Pike, “let’s have the latest news where you did come from. I’m not particular about Parker’s Falls. Any place will answer.”

  Being thus importuned, the traveler—who was as ill looking a fellow as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods—appeared to hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news, or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mounting on the step of the cart, he whispered in the ear o
f Dominicus, though he might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him.

  “I do remember one little trifle of news,” said he. “Old Mr. Higginbotham, of Kimballton, was murdered in his orchard, at eight o’clock last night, by an Irishman and a nigger. They strung him up to the branch of a St. Michael’s pear tree, where nobody would find him till the morning.”

  As soon as this horrible intelligence was communicated, the stranger betook himself to his journey again, with more speed than ever, not even turning his head when Dominicus invited him to smoke a Spanish cigar and relate all the particulars. The pedlar whistled to his mare and went up the hill, pondering on the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham, whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him many a bunch of long nines, and a great deal of pigtail, lady’s twist, and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which the news had spread. Kimballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a straight line; the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o’clock the preceding night; yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham’s own family had but just discovered his corpse, hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree. The stranger on foot must have worn seven-league boots to travel at such a rate.

  “Ill news flies fast, they say,” thought Dominicus Pike; “but this beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the President’s Message.”

  The difficulty was solved by supposing that the narrator had made a mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence; so that our friend did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and country store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He found himself invariably the first bearer of the intelligence, and was so pestered with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline, till it became quite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece of corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader; and a former clerk of his, to whom Dominicus related the facts, testified that the old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about nightfall, with the money and valuable papers of the store in his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham’s catastrophe, hinting, what the pedlar had discovered in his own dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as close as a vice. His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping school in Kimballton.

  What with telling the news for the public good, and driving bargains for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put up at a tavern, about five miles short of Parker’s Falls. After supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated himself in the bar room, and went through the story of the murder, which had grown so fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer, who had arrived on horseback a short time before, and was now seated in a corner, smoking his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair right in front of Dominicus, and stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest tobacco smoke the pedlar had ever smelt.

  “Will you make affidavit,” demanded he, in the tone of a country justice taking an examination, “that old Squire Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last, and found hanging on his great pear tree yesterday morning?”

  “I tell the story as I heard it, mister,” answered Dominicus, dropping his half-burnt cigar; “I don’t say that I saw the thing done. So I can’t take my oath that he was murdered exactly in that way.”

  “But I can take mine,” said the farmer, “that if Squire Higginbotham was murdered night before last, I drank a glass of bitters with his ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his store, as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a little business for him on the road. He didn’t seem to know any more about his own murder than I did.”

  “Why, then it can’t be a fact!” exclaimed Dominicus Pike.

  “I guess he’d have mentioned, if it was,” said the old farmer; and he removed his chair back to the corner, leaving Dominicus quite down in the mouth.

  Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higginbotham! The pedlar had no heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself with a glass of gin and water, and went to bed, where, all night long, he dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree. To avoid the old farmer (whom he so detested that his suspension would have pleased him better than Mr. Higginbotham’s), Dominicus rose in the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart, and trotted swiftly away towards Parker’s Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy road, and the pleasant summer dawn revived his spirits, and might have encouraged him to repeat the old story, had there been anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox team, light wagon, chaise, horseman, nor foot traveler, till, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a bundle over his shoulder, on the end of a stick.

  “Good morning, mister,” said the pedlar, reining in his mare. “If you come from Kimballton or that neighborhood, may be you can tell me the real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. Was the old fellow actually murdered two or three nights ago, by an Irishman and a nigger?”

  Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to observe, at first, that the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden question, the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus replied: “No! no! There was no colored man! It was an Irishman that hanged him last night, at eight o’clock. I came away at seven! His folks can’t have looked for him in the orchard yet.”

  Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he interrupted himself, and though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace which would have kept the pedlar’s mare on a smart trot. Dominicus stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it, in all its circumstances, on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham’s corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the mulatto, at above thirty miles’ distance, to know that he was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the unfortunate man was hanged at all? These ambiguous circumstances, with the stranger’s surprise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice in the murder; since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated.

  “But let the poor devil go,” thought the pedlar. “I don’t want his black blood on my head; and hanging the nigger wouldn’t unhang Mr. Higginbotham. Unhang the old gentleman! It’s a sin, I know; but I should hate to have him come to life a second time, and give me the lie!”

  With these meditations, Dominicus Pike drove into the street of Parker’s Falls, which, as every body knows, is as thriving a village as three cotton factories and a slitting mill can make it. The machinery was not in motion, and but a few of the shop doors unbarred, when he alighted in the stable yard of the tavern, and made it his first business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His second duty, of course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham’s catastrophe to the hostler. He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too positive as to the date of the direful fact, and also to be uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto, or by the son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate it on his own authority, or that of any one person; but mentioned it as a report generally diffused.

  The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker’s Falls as any citizen of the place, being part owner of the slitting mill, and a considerable stockholder in the cotton factories. The inhabitants felt their own prosperity interested in his fate. Such was the excitement, that the Parker’s Falls Gazette anticipated it
s regular day of publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and a column of double pica emphasized with capitals, and headed HORRID MURDER OF MR. HIGGINBOTHAM! Among other dreadful details, the printed account described the mark of the cord round the dead man’s neck, and stated the number of thousand dollars of which he had been robbed; there was much pathos also about the affliction of his niece, who had gone from one fainting fit to another, ever since her uncle was found hanging on the St. Michael’s pear tree with his pockets inside out. The village poet likewise commemorated the young lady’s grief in seventeen stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and, in consideration of Mr. Higginbotham’s claims on the town, determined to issue handbills, offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of his murderers, and the recovery of the stolen property.

  Meanwhile, the whole population of Parker’s Falls, consisting of shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding houses, factory girls, millmen, and schoolboys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible loquacity as more than compensated for the silence of the cotton machines, which refrained from their usual din out of respect to the deceased. Had Mr. Higginbotham cared about posthumous renown, his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult. Our friend Dominicus, in his vanity of heart, forgot his intended precautions, and mounting on the town pump, announced himself as the bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a sensation. He immediately became the great man of the moment, and had just begun a new edition of the narrative, with a voice like a field preacher, when the mail stage drove into the village street. It had travelled all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton, at three in the morning.