The thing I’m saving for the bottom of this page is—it’s my murder! I got that out of Uncle John. What do you know! What do you know! I was in my tree house that very night!
I’m just faintly remembering how I got whisked out of here so fast, that time. I never did know why. Holy cats! Eight years old. I’m asleep in a tree and a murder takes place right under me! And I never even knew it! They didn’t tell me! They didn’t even ask me a single question! A fine thing! A real murder in my own life, and I can’t remember even one thing about it!
The lawyer paused. The doctor stirred, looked through the door. Three raised heads queried him. He said, “Nothing. It may be a good while yet before she is conscious. Don’t…worry.”
Selby turned to stare blindly at the lamp. “My sister should never—should never have left her with me. I had no business—no business to tell her a word about it.”
“You thought she’d be scared away from the widow?”
“I suppose so.”
The Chief said, “Now, wait a minute. The girl puts down in there that she couldn’t remember even one thing about the killing? But that makes no sense at all.”
“That’s the July twenty-third entry,” said Russell. “Here is July twenty-fifth. Let’s see.”
I couldn’t stand it—I just can’t think about anything else but my murder. I had to find out more. This afternoon I had tea with the widow. I don’t think she’s wicked at all. She’s very sad, actually. She was in the garden again. I just know she was conscious of me, on Uncle John’s side of the hedge, all day yesterday. Today, finally, she spoke to me. So I went around and leeched onto her.
(N.B. Practice getting the “saids” in)
Nervously, she said, “I hope your Uncle won’t be angry.”
I said, pretending to blurt, “Oh, Mrs. Corcoran, Uncle John told me about the awful thing that happened to your husband. And to think I was right up in my tree house. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said, looking pretty tense. “It was long ago, and there is no need. I’m sorry he spoke of it.”
“Oh, I made him,” said I. “And now when I think that for all I know, I might have seen and heard exactly what happened, and the only trouble is, I was so little, I can’t remember—it just about makes me wild!”
She looked at me in a funny way. I thought she was going to blurt, “Oh, if only you could remember…” But actually, she said, “If you would like more cake please help yourself.”
“It’s too bad it’s a mystery,” I said (cried). “Why couldn’t they solve it? Don’t you wish they could solve it? Maybe it’s not too late.”
She looked startled. (N.B. What happens to eyes, anyhow, to make the whites show more? Observe.)
“I wish you would tell me the details,” I said. “Couldn’t they find out anything?”
“No, no. My dear, I don’t think we had better talk about it at all. It’s not the sort of thing a sweet child ought to be brooding about,” she said.
I was desperate. “Mrs. Corcoran, the other day I thought better of you. Because you didn’t laugh, for instance, when I mentioned that I used to be a tomboy, years ago. Most older people would have laughed. I’ll never understand why. Obviously, I’m quite different and seven years has made a big change, and why it’s so funny if I know that, I cannot see.” She was leaning back and feeling surprised, I judged. “So don’t disappoint me now and think of me as an eight-year-old child,” I said, “when I may have the freshest eye and be the open-mindedest person around.”
She nibbled her lips. She wasn’t offended. I think she’s very intelligent and responding.
“I’m going to brood and you can’t stop that,” I told her. “I just wish I could help. I’ve been thinking that maybe if I tried I could remember.”
“Oh, no. No, my dear. Thank you,” she said. “I know you would like to help. But you were only eight at that time. I don’t suppose, then or now, anyone would believe you.”
“And now I’m only fifteen,” I said crossly, “and nobody will tell me.”
She said sweetly. “You’re rather an extraordinary fifteen, my dear. If I tell you about it, Meredith, and you see how hopeless it is, do you think perhaps then you can let it rest?”
I said I thought so. (What a lie!)
“Harry, my husband, was often late getting home, so that night,” she said, “I wasn’t at all worried. I simply went to bed, as usual, and to sleep. Something woke me. I don’t know what. My window was open. It was very warm, full summer. I lay in my bed, listening. There used to be a big elm out there beside my walk. It got the disease all the elms are getting, and it had to be cut down and taken away. But that night I could see its leaf patterns on the wall, that the moon always used to make at night, and the leaves moving gently. There was a full moon, I remember. A lovely quiet summer night.” (N.B. She’s pretty good with a mood.)
“I had been awakened, yet I could hear nothing, until I heard the shot. It paralyzed me. I lay back stiff and scared. Harry didn’t…cry out. I heard nothing more for a while. Then I thought I heard shrubs rustling. When I finally pulled myself to the window, your Uncle John was there.” She stopped and I had to poke her up to go on.
“Your Uncle was forcing his way through the hedge, which was low, then. And I saw Harry lying on our little stoop. I ran to my bedroom door and my maid was standing in the hall, quite frightened, and we ran down. Your Uncle told me that Harry was…not alive. (N.B. Pretty delicate diction.) He was calling the doctor and the police from my phone. I sat down trembling on a chair in the hall. I remember, now, that as your Uncle started out of the house again, he seemed to recall where you were and went running to his garage for a ladder to get you down.”
“Darn it,” I said.
She knew what I meant, because she said right away, “You couldn’t remember—you must have been sleepy. Perhaps you didn’t really wake up.”
“I suppose so,” said I disgustedly. “Go on.”
“Well, the police came very quickly—Chief Barker himself. And of course, Doctor Coles. They did find the gun, caught in the hedge. They never traced it. There weren’t any fingerprints anywhere. And no footprints in that dry weather. So they never found out…” She pulled herself together. “And that, my dear, is all.” She started drinking her tea, looking very severe with herself.
I said, “There never was a trial?”
“There was never anyone to try.”
“Not you, Mrs. Corcoran?”
“No one accused me,” she said, smiling faintly. But her eyes were so sad.
“They did, though,” I said, kind of mad. “They sentenced you, too.”
“Dear girl,” she said very seriously, “You mustn’t make a heroine of me. Chief Barker and Doctor Coles…and your Uncle John, too, I’m sure…tried as helpfully as they could to clear it all up, but they never could find out who, or even why. You see? So…” She was getting pretty flustery.
“So the wind begins to blow against you,” I said, mad as the dickens. “Or how come the hedge? Why does Uncle John tell me not to come here? What makes him think you’re so wicked?”
“Does he?” she said, “I am not wicked, Meredith. Neither am I a saint. I’m human.”
I always thought that was a corny saying. But it’s effective. It makes you feel for whoever says it, as if they had admitted something just awful that you wouldn’t admit, either—unless, of course, you were trapped.
“Harry and I were not always harmonious,” she said. “Few couples are. He drank a good bit. Many men do. I suppose the neighbors noticed. Some of them, in fact, used to feel quite sorry for me. I…” Her face was real bitter, but she has a quick hunching way of pulling herself together. “…shouldn’t be saying these things to you. Why do I forget you are so young? I shouldn’t. Forgive me
, and don’t be upset.”
“Not me,” I told her. “I’m pretty detached. And don’t forget my eye is fresh. I can see the trouble. There isn’t anybody else to suspect. You need…”
“No, no. No more. I had no right to talk to you. And you’d better not come again. It is not I, my dear. I like you very much. I would love to see you often. But—”
I said, “I think Uncle John is a stuffy old stinker. To bend the way the wind blows. But I don’t have to!”
“Yes, you do,” she said, kind of fixing me with her eye. “It’s not nice, Meredith, to be this side of the hedge. Now, please, never question your Uncle John’s behavior.” She was getting very upset. “You must…truly, you must…believe me…when I say…I think he meant…to be very kind…at that time.” She spaced it like that, taking breaths in between.
“But that mean old hedge, for the whole town to see. It makes me mad!” I said.
She fixed me, again. She said very fast almost like whispering, “Perhaps it was I, Meredith, who let the hedge grow.”
Naturally, my mouth opened, but before I got anything out she said, loudly, “It was best. There, now…”
(N.B. Yep. I was really disappointed. How I hate it when people say, “There, now.” Implying that they know a million things more than me. And I better be comforted. I’m not. I’m irritated. It means they want to stop talking to me, and that’s all.)
“It’s all so old,” she continued in that phony petting-the-kitty kind of way. “And nothing will change it. Let it rest. Thank you for coming and thank you for being open-minded. But go away now, Meredith, and promise me not to think about it any more.”
I fixed her with my eye. I said, “Thank you very much for the lovely cake.”
But I’m not angry. I feel too sorry for her. Besides, she let out hints enough and I should have caught on. Well, I didn’t, then. But after the session I had with Uncle John…Are they ever dumb!
We had finished dinner when I decided to see what more I could pry out of him. I said, “If Harry Corcoran was a drinking man he was probably drunk the night he got shot.”
Uncle John nearly knocked his coffee over. “How do you know he was a drinking man?” roared he. “Have you been gossiping with Mrs. Jewell?” (Mrs. Jewell is the housekeeper. Vocabulary about one hundred words.)
“Oh, no, I haven’t. Was he?”
“Who?”
“Harry Corcoran?”
“What?”
“Drunk?”
“So they say,” bites Uncle John, cracking his teeth together, “Now, Meredith—”
“Where were you at the time of the murder?” chirped I.
(N.B. Nope. Got to learn to use the “saids.” They’re neutraller.)
“Meredith, I wish you—”
“I know what you wish, but I wish you’d tell me. Aw, come on, Uncle John. My own murder! Maybe if I had all the facts, I’d stop thinking so much about it. Don’t you see that?”
(N.B. False. The more you know about anything the more interesting it gets. But he didn’t notice.)
“I told you the facts,” he said (muttered?), “and I wish I had kept my big mouth shut. Your mother will skin me alive. How the devil did I get into this?”
(N.B. I thought this was an improvement. He’s usually so darned stuffy when he talks to me.)
“You didn’t tell me any details. Please, Uncle John…” I really nagged him. I don’t think he’s had much practice defending himself, because finally, stuffy as anything, he talked.
“Very well. I’ll tell you the details as far as I know them. Then I shall expect to hear no more about it.”
“I know,” said I. True. I knew what he expected. I didn’t really promise anything. But he’s not very analytical. “Okay. Pretend you’re on the witness stand. Where were you at the time?”
“I was, as it happened…[N.B. Stuffy! Phrase adds nothing. Of course it happened.]…in the library that night working late on some accounts. It was nearly one in the morning, I believe…[N.B. Of course he believes, or he wouldn’t say so]…when I heard Harry Corcoran whistling as he walked by in the street.”
“What tune?”
“What?” (I started to repeat but he didn’t need it. Lots of people make you repeat a question they heard quite well just so they can take a minute to figure out the answer.) “Oh, that Danny Boy song. Favorite of his. That’s how I knew who it was. He was coming along from the end of town, past this house—”
“Was that usual?”
“It was neither usual nor unusual,” said Uncle John crossly. “It’s merely a detail.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“The next thing I noticed was the shot.”
“You were paralyzed?”
“What?” He just about glared at me. “Yes, momentarily. Then I ran out my side door and pushed through the hedge and found him there on his own doorstep…uh…”
“Not living,” I said delicately.
He gave me another nasty look. “Now, that’s all there was to it.”
“That’s not all! What did you do then? Didn’t you even look for the murderer?”
“I saw nobody around. I realized there might be somebody concealed, of course. So I picked up his key from where it had fallen on the stoop—”
“The Corcorans’ door was locked?”
“It was locked and I unlocked it and went inside to the phone. As I was phoning, Mrs. Corcoran and her maid came downstairs. I called Chief Barker and Doctor Coles.”
“Yes, I know. And then you ran to get the ladder and pulled me down out of my tree. Okay. But you’re leaving things out, Uncle John. You are deliberately being barren. You don’t give any atmosphere at all. What was Mrs. Corcoran’s emotional state?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Uncle John with his nose in a sniffing position, “and if I had, it would not be a fact.”
I pounced. “You think she did it?”
He pulled his chin practically to the back of his neck. “I wish you would not say that. I have little right to speculate and none to make a judgment. There was no evidence.”
“But you did pass judgment. You told me she was a certain kind of—”
“Meredith, I know only one fact. Your mother would not like this at all. In any case, I will not discuss Mrs. Corcoran’s character with you. I must insist you take my word for it. There is no way….” He kind of held his forehead.
“Uncle John, who let the hedge grow?”
“What? The hedge belongs to me.”
“That ain’t the way I heared it,” said stupid I.
So he pounced. “Where have you been hearing things? Who told you Harry Corcoran was a drinking man? Where have you been, Meredith?”
So I confessed. No use writing down the blasting I got. It was the usual. Bunch of stuff about my elders wanting no harm to come to me, things not understood in my philosophy, mysterious evils that I wot not of, and all that sort of stuff. Why doesn’t he tell me plain out that it’s none of my business?
Well, I don’t think it’s evil. I think it’s foolishness. I think that Uncle John’s too sticky and stuffy to tell me…(Probably thinks I never heard of s-blank-x)…is that he used to be romantic about the pretty lady next door. Probably Uncle John saw a lot of Harry’s drunken comings-home and heard plenty of the disharmonizing. Probably he is one neighbor who felt sorry for her. Wonder if they were in love and said so. I doubt it. Probably they just cast glances at each other over the hedge and said nothing. That would be just like Uncle John.
Anyhow, when somebody shoots Harry Corcoran in the back, the widow gets it into her head that Uncle John did it. After all, she heard things—rustling bushes—looked out, and there he was. But gosh, even if she felt romantic about him too, she’d draw the line at murder!
But of course, Uncle John didn’t do it. He thinks she did. He knows she was unhappy with Harry. But he draws the line at murder, too. So these dopes, what do they do? They have no “right” to pass “judgment” or “accuse” anybody. They pull themselves in, with the hedge between. All these years, with their very own suspicions proving that neither one could have done it…Probably if they’d had sense enough to speak out and have a big argument, they could have got married and been happy long ago.
Oh, how ridiculous! How pitiful! And oh, that I was born to put it right! (N.B. Who said that?)
The lawyer put the book down. John Selby groaned. “I had no idea…no idea what she had in her head. I knew she was bright…”
“Bright, yes,” said Doctor Coles, “but that kid’s so insufferably condescending!”
“You wouldn’t like it even if she guessed right,” said Russell thoughtfully. “The girl’s got a hard way to go. She’ll be lonely.”
“Thought she was smart, all right,” growled Barker. “Wasn’t as smart as she thought. She was wrong, I take it?”
Selby didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on the lawyer’s face.
“You shouldn’t blame her for being wrong,” Russell murmured. “She’s not yet equipped to understand a lot of things. But she is compelled to try. There’s her intelligent curiosity fighting a way past some clichés, but the phrase ‘feel romantic’ is flat, for her, and without shading.”
“I still can’t see what happened,” Barker broke in to complain. “Never mind the shading. Go ahead—if there’s more of it.”
“Yes, there’s more. We come to July twenty-sixth—yesterday.” Russell began to read once more.
I’ve figured. I know exactly how to do it. I’ll say I can remember! I’ll tell them that when I was up in my tree that night the shot or something woke me, and I saw a stranger running away…
“So she made it up! Told a story!” Chief Barker slapped his thigh. “But…now wait a minute…you believed her, Selby?”
“I believed her,” her uncle sighed.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 136