by Leslie Ford
(“If you want a drink of water, I’ll get you one from the house” Marshall had said to me.)
“It’s just decoration,” John said. “The Restoration goes in for wells and smoke houses. I expect that’s why Miss Melusina’s refurbished hers—tourist season’s just started.”
They still didn’t believe me. If a lady can ever be said to snort, I snorted at that…if indeed I hadn’t, in the last day or so, entirely ceased to be a lady. Certainly no one had ever before presumed to tell me to keep my shirt on.
Sergeant Priddy looked at me—a shade less patronizing than he had been. I suppose there’s something impressive about tenacious and determined conviction. He put out his hands and took hold of the well chain. It squeaked a little salutation, and then began its thin song as he drew it, hand over hand, around the black pulley wheel in the little peaked wisteria-festooned belfry. Deep below in the old well we heard the clupaclupaclup of the oaken bucket in the cool water at the bottom, and the splash drip-drip-drip as it came above the surface.
Sergeant Priddy drew steadily. He waited. Something of my own suspense seemed to communicate itself to them. I told myself that the blood—if there had been blood—would all be gone, it would never show on the ancient moss-covered bucket that had been submerged in the well.
Sergeant Priddy leaned over, peering down. I heard suddenly a deep “Plop!” as something fell… and it wasn’t the bucket, for the chain was still heavy in Sergeant Priddy’s hands and the next thing we knew it was out, full of water, there in front of us. Sergeant Priddy swung it over onto the washboard, and looked at John Crabtree.
“Something fell off,” he said. They looked at me.
There was something too ridiculously ironic in the gleam of triumph I realized was in my faded blue eyes. Heaven knows I didn’t dream what a bitter backhanded triumph it was to appear to be. And I have no doubt Melusina was entirely right in saying I revealed my true colors as a vulgar curiosity seeker and the commonest poor white trash, staying out there the way I did for almost an hour, watching them work.
They brought an old oyster rake from the cellar and lashed a pruning hook from the toolshed to it. Doctor Yardley came out, and Bill Haines, who must have been in the house with him. The watchman from the Palace, who’d helped bring Marshall’s body in, was there, and a couple of colored gardeners from the Palace gardens, and old Nance the Yardleys’ outdoor man. And me—and after they’d worked half an hour or so Faith crept out and slipped her hand in mine, and stood beside me, bewildered and distrait, not daring to ask what none of us could have told her anyway.
It wasn’t until Sergeant Priddy had sent old Nance around to the colored school in Nicholson Street to get his great-grandson that they got anywhere, actually. Then they emptied the water from the bucket and put the boy in it, explained about the rakes and all, and lowered him, dubious and putty-colored, down the narrow shaft, Sergeant Priddy and Mr. John Carter Crabtree and old Nance and the Palace watchman and the two colored gardeners all shouting contrary directions down after him. Then suddenly the rope that John Crabtree held gave a jerk in his hands, and Sergeant Priddy started pulling the boy up again by the rope attached to the cradle they’d made for the bucket, slowly so as not to disturb the balance of the oyster rake lashed to the pruning hook.
And finally the shaved kinky head appeared, paled to the color of old chocolate bonbons after a summer in a showcase, and Sergeant Priddy seized the handle of the pruning hook, toppled the boy and the bucket out onto the ground with less than scant ceremony indeed, and began drawing carefully on the hook. Then they unlashed that, leaving him only the rake.
And I wasn’t the only one there who was breathless now, as the long handle came up and up, never ending, it seemed, until at last it did end, almost abruptly, as if we’d all expected it to go on forever, never revealing its secret… and its secret lay, wet and astonishing, across the wooden moss-hung teeth.
We all stood motionless, staring stupidly, the whole lot of us… all except Captain Callowhill the ballistics expert from Newport News. He gave a sharp excited snarl—like a terrier spying a rat—and sprang forward, his eyes bright as buttons.
“What did I tell you, Priddy!” he shouted.
He picked up the old bell-mouthed pistol lying balanced on the teeth of the rake. All my life before I’d seen it balanced on the gun rack above the old iron chest in the cellar at Yardley Hall.
Faith’s fingers tightened on mine. I glanced at Doctor Yardley. His white delicate face was shocked a little, his body taut, as if he’d been rocked back on his heels and had balanced himself again quickly so nobody would notice.
I looked at Bill Haines. His face had gone the color of old parchment, the cigarette half-way to his lips must have been burning his fingers. It still stayed there, motionless.
“I told you the fellow was shot from inside the room, with some kind of a contraption rigged up to make it look like a shotgun was used,” Captain Callowhill said. “And here we are. Get hold of that girl—she knows plenty.”
I heard Faith gasp.
Bill Haines took a quick step forward. “You’re crazy, all of you.”
His voice was hard and clear.
“It was that shotgun. I ought to know—I killed Seymour.”
John Crabtree smiled. Faith’s fingernails biting into my hand went perfectly dead. It was all I could do to hold myself up, much less her. I saw her raise her eyes desperately, imploring, to her father. Peyton Yardley straightened his tall stooped figure.
“I think we need counsel, all of us, John,” he said very quietly. “I suggest you dismiss this crew and come inside a moment.”
CHAPTER 26
At the door of the library Doctor Yardley turned around to me.
“Will you and Faith wait in the parlor, please, Lucy,” he said, and when Faith gave a little cry of protest he put his arm around her trembling shoulders and said, very gently, “For just a few minutes, child.”
The rest of them, John Crabtree and Sergeant Priddy, and Captain Callowhill with the old bell-mouthed pistol in his hands, and Bill Haines, his blue eyes a mixture of all the unhappy tragic things life holds, followed Peyton Yardley into the panelled library. They closed the door. Faith and I went into the darkened parlor, heavy with the complicated perfume of fresh roses and peonies and potpourri and old damask draperies and polished mahogany and rosewood.
I sat down in the short Chippendale sofa with its cherry-red brocatelle faded and worn on the arms and across the back. Faith opened one of the inside shutters and stood by the window, looking out into the rose garden through the screen of crape myrtles toward the Palace. After a long time she came slowly back and drew up a little round needlepoint stool. She sat down and leaned her head wearily against my knees.
“It’s dreadful to say, Cousin Lucy,” she said softly. “But I’m glad Marshall didn’t…do it himself. I couldn’t understand it—he seemed so happy, even after Father talked to both of us, after everybody left, and I made Father see…the way it was, and that I’d be happiest that way. That’s why it seemed so awful, as if Marshall hadn’t believed me, and thought I was just being noble, and he’d rather be dead than have me that way. I couldn’t have stood it, Cousin Lucy.”
“I know, lamb.”
“He was always so good, all my life,” she whispered. She was silent a long time, rocking her bright head back and forth against my knees as if it ached too profoundly to rest.
The door to the library opened. In the mirror under the Empire side table in front of the door I could see Doctor Yardley’s quiet feet come out and turn up the stairs, and Sergeant Priddy’s black leather puttees come after him and turn out the door. It was very strange. I never knew I could recognize so many people by their legs and feet, reflected from the knees down… and that was all I could see of them in the plate glass backing of the heavy ornate table. I was glad Faith’s back was to it, thou
gh I doubt if she’d have noticed it, she was so absorbed in her own misery. She didn’t even notice the involuntary start that jarred my body as I heard steps on the stairs and saw her father’s feet appear again, and beside them, the full black skirt and rusty black kid slippers of her Aunt Melusina as they paused at the door and went in, closing it after them.
“It doesn’t seem real, any of it,” Faith whispered.
I patted her slim dark shoulder gently.
“Maybe it isn’t, Faith,” I murmured.
She raised her head, listening. “Who’s that?”
“Never mind, dearest,” I said.
She rested her head against my knee again like a tired child. In the mirror I saw Sergeant Priddy’s black puttees again, and a pair of twinkling feet in high-heeled brown and white pumps, and two slim elegant legs and an inch or so of dark red spun silk. Why was Ruth Napier here, I wondered anxiously? And why those knife-creased white palm beach trousers above a pair of white buckskin brogues?—Mr. Talbot Seymour was as buoyant and snappy from the knees down as he was from there up. I could almost see his gay white smile and sleek curly black hair.
The library door opened, and they went in, Sergeant Priddy holding the door for them. In a moment another pair of feet appeared, quiet, discreet feet. George Luton’s feet; I’d seen them neatly together on the faded lilies and roses of my parlor rug. Then I heard more people outside, and saw Sergeant Priddy’s black puttees go to meet them.
“I know Bill says he killed Mason because he thinks I did it,” Faith’s voice was far away, down there at my knees.
“Hush, honey,” I whispered. I was frightened at all these people going into the library, with Faith left outside. In the crystal-clear mirror I saw the wide swish of sprigged muslin, and two little black square-toed feet with square buckles on them, and a flash of white cotton stocking. For a moment I thought maybe the ghost of a colonial Lady Anne had come back in broad daylight, until I saw a pair of brown shoes and a grey worsted trouser leg, and Sergeant Priddy again.
My hand on Faith’s shoulder turned cold. Why had Hugh Taswell come with Hallie?
I closed my eyes. They were all in there—everybody who’d been connected with Mason Seymour for the last few days…everybody except Marshall Yardley, and he was asleep upstairs, and Faith, secure there for the moment against my knee. Then some one else came. There was another pair of black leather puttees in the hall. Sergeant Priddy’s were shabby and worn beside them. They disappeared almost instantly, and in a moment another and slower pair of feet appeared, feet I didn’t know, in polished brown shoes under a fine light English tweed. They went through the library door too.
“I would have liked to marry Bill, Cousin Lucy,” Faith said softly. “Now I’ll just grow old here in Yardley Hall, like Aunt Melusina…”
Then her voice raised poignantly. “No—not like Aunt Melusina…like you, and father.”
“Oh, no, Faith!” I cried. “Not like us—not wasted, like us!”
And the door opened again, and Sergeant Priddy’s feet came across the dingy lovely old hall and into our door.
“Miss Lucy—will you all come now?”
It was odd, and rather terrifying, going into that embattled room, with Faith’s cold fingers gripped in mine. Doctor Yardley was at his table, John Crabtree on one side of him, Melusina on the other. I caught my breath as I saw her. She’d changed so extraordinarily since last night—too extraordinarily for me to believe at once, seeing her suddenly that way. Her snowy hair, carefully waved, was piled loosely on her head the way she dresses it on special occasions. She had on her best black gown with the high lace collar closely covering her thin neck. She really looked quite regal, and handsomer than I’d ever seen her, even on days when she was pouring tea, or showing Yardley Hall off to the few especially selected Garden pilgrims from the North. That should have told me something, but it didn’t; it just made me think she’d gone quietly insane, primping while Rome burned.
Then I turned to find a chair, and saw, sitting just behind Bill, his arm resting, affectionate and reassuring, around his shoulders, a tall bony man with thick grey hair and beetling grey brows in a craggy, rugged sunburned face. And I stopped dead.
“It must be me, not Melusina, that’s gone insane,” I thought. “Or is it?”
He rose and bowed, and smiled, a quick amused smile that I’d forgotten years and years and years ago. And there was no doubt about it now… Melusina’s Great Sacrifice had come back to Williamsburg. Summers Baldwin, economic royalist and son of the livery stable on Buttermilk Hill, had returned to the house where he’d had his ears soundly boxed under the magnolias, forty-four years ago.
I looked at Melusina. Maybe it wasn’t rouge on her cheeks, or belladonna in her eyes. She smiled, ever so faintly triumphant. The great man might send his harum-scarum unhouse-broken ward to me, but he himself came to Yardley Hall…that was very much the gist of Melusina’s smile.
I said, “Touché,” though not out loud, and sat down with Faith in the seat Sergeant Priddy pushed forward. I found, pleasantly, that I didn’t mind that at all—that all I felt was a vast relief that now Bill would be safe whatever happened: the last of the Haineses might not get his girl, but at least he wouldn’t end in the electric chair.
He hadn’t looked at me, or at Faith, and Faith hadn’t looked at him. Of the rest of them, Ruth Napier and Talbot Seymour were sitting together in the window seat beyond the faded old globe, Ruth distraught under her lacquered perfect finish, Talbot Seymour confident and a little bored, as if he wished they’d get on with it so he could settle things and get back North in time for the spring meetings. You ought to look grateful, my friend, I thought; if it hadn’t been for the courteous old gentleman behind the table, you’d be hunting a job instead of driving your cousin’s car and looking so impatiently at his platinum watch on your wrist.
Luton, discreetly by the window into the garden, edged a little nearer it as the shift necessitated by Faith’s and my entry brought Hallie and Hugh Taswell closer to him. Poor Hallie, I thought; her letters were still at my house. No wonder she looked scared to death. And yet in some way she also looked awfully to me as if she’d managed to convince Hugh it was his neglect and his get-together dinners in Richmond, and no doubt his secretary, that had been the cause of her wretched escapade.
John Crabtree wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
“There’s been a lot of talk goin’ around,” he said, in that slow ambling voice of his. “I thought I’d get you all together, and tell you where we’re goin’, in this case.—You can hear anythin’, in a town like this, if you want to listen. Why, people are sayin’ all kinds of things. That Mr. Talbot Seymour here, for instance, hot-footed it to Williamsburg the minute he heard his cousin was goin’ to get married, because he was scared he’d have to go to work.”
I thought Mr. Talbot Seymour looked a little startled, to say the least.
“I don’t know why people figure work would be distasteful to Mr. Talbot, now, but that’s what they’re sayin’. Others are sayin’ Mr. Talbot Seymour didn’t have anythin’ to do with it, it was Mr. Luton.”
The valet by the window turned the color of a green peach. I thought he edged a little closer to the gardens.
“Some of ‘em are sayin’ it was Miss Lucy and Mr. Haines together, because it was Miss Lucy’s shotgun we found in the Canal. But everybody with a lick of sense knows Miss Lucy would be scared to go around at night with a gun on her. And there’s still a lot of people are sayin’ Marshall Yardley did it, and then killed himself. But Marshall didn’t kill himself. I guess last night’s about the only night in his life Marshall wouldn’t have wanted to die.”
Faith’s hand in mine trembled, and I pressed it closer to my side, steadying it.
“Marshall didn’t shoot himself. Somebody else shot him. And some people are sayin’ it was Doctor Yardley himself, because he
didn’t want his daughter to marry either Mason Seymour or her own cousin. And there’s some are sayin’ it was Miss Melusina, because her plans were upset, and she was afraid if Faith didn’t marry Mr. Seymour, she’d have to sell Yardley Hall. People think Miss Melusina would sell her own soul to keep Yardley Hall, and after she’d found out her brother had destroyed Mason Seymour’s second will, she had to kill her own nephew so he wouldn’t marry Faith, so Faith could marry somebody who could save the hall…”
Melusina’s face had gone the color of the shrivelled inside of a blanched almond skin. Faith shrank closer to my side. I could have slain John Crabtree. He didn’t know about Bill, of course, and Bill, his eyes dreadfully unhappy, his lips tight, hunched farther down in his seat, staring at the floor.
“It’s pretty generally believed around town that Miss Melusina’s the least bit fanatical about Yardley Hall,” John Crabtree said slowly. “But if people stopped to think about it, I don’t think they’d go as far as holdin’ Miss Melusina would go out of her way—even if she decided she was goin’ to kill anybody—as to make it look as if Miss Lucy did it.”
“Oh, wouldn’t she just,” I thought. Then I saw the tiny twinkle in John Crabtree’s eyes, and I was rather ashamed of myself, all of a sudden.
“The point is, unfortunately, that that’s exactly what somebody was tryin’ to do. Especially at first. Somebody that knew Miss Lucy had a shotgun and knew, I expect, that Miss Lucy’s about as fanatical about Faith as Miss Melusina is about Yardley Hall.”
I looked quickly around the room for the old pistol. It was nowhere in sight. So it had been the shotgun, after all. They probably thought by now that I’d put the pistol down the well myself.
“I don’t expect they’d figured that a natural like Mr. Haines was goin’ to barge in, shout from the housetops that somebody ought to trade Seymour for a yellow dog and shoot it, and then track cockroach powder all over town, and finally just up and say ‘It was me all the time.’”