EQMM, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He heard Lydia behind him. “Have Arthur's boy run for the constable,” he shouted without turning around. “Quickly, woman!"

  As soon as he heard the door close, Bidwell struggled to untie the rope, but he couldn't seem to get his fingers working. Instead, he ran to let down the ladder. Lantern in hand, he descended into the mine, with its familiar odor of cold, damp, urine, and metal, and made his way over the worn and irregular bedrock to the shoemaker's body. It seemed only a matter of minutes before he heard the voice of the constable and the rattle and creak of the metal treads as the heavy guardian of the law descended, but that was just the pressure of his emotions. He'd had time, Bidwell discovered later, to convey the last of the shoemaker's money to his own pocket.

  "A bad business,” said the constable, wheezing a little from his exertions and picking his way carefully over the wet and uneven stone.

  "I blame myself,” said Bidwell. “We have fever and we'd raised the sick men's bedding. Somehow Fuller was able to reattach the rope."

  "He was destined for the rope one way or the other,” said the constable, who took a dim view of human frailty and seemed to accept Bidwell's account without question. While the constable examined the body, Bidwell coiled the rope to hide the partially cut end and fetched a stretcher.

  Bringing Fuller's body to the surface was a miserable job, because rigor had set in, and there was much blood. The constable's chief contribution was to overweight the ladder, so that Bidwell had to keep a sharp eye on the support bolts. In the end, even Lydia had to lend a hand, the other prisoners being too feverish and ill to help.

  A bad thing, that, Bidwell knew. Handling the smashed corpse was not something she'd easily forget, and now that it had happened—he didn't admit exactly what “it” was even to himself—the sooner the matter was closed, the better.

  Of course, there was the business of the rope. All the time they struggled to keep the corpse from tumbling back down, Bidwell worried about the rope. Surely the constable would ask about rotten cords and the cost of decent hemp and notice how half the rope was frayed and half severed? But when they finally got the stretcher up into the prison office, the gasping constable seemed fully occupied with the unusual excitement. He shouted orders to Arthur, the under jailer, and Arthur's boy, and forgot himself so far as to command both Bidwell and Lydia.

  Bidwell cared only that the constable avoid awkward questions; Lydia answered back smartly, though she looked rather sick. Certainly the fall had made a mess of the shoemaker.

  "Hard to replace,” Bidwell said as a distraction. “God have mercy on him, he was a good worker."

  The constable harrumphed, indicating either assent or dissent—he was a politician to the depth of his soul—but Lydia said, “The mills of God grind exceedingly fine,” which was true, if presumptuous. She looked straight at Bid-well as she spoke, which was unnerving, especially when he discovered later that she'd had the presence of mind to remove the last few feet of rope.

  Later that day, he looked around discreetly for the evidence, but found no trace of it and dared not ask. To ask would be to draw attention to the importance of that piece of hemp and to his anxiety. Perhaps fortunately for Bidwell, there was much to be done before the shoemaker could be laid in the local potter's field. For one thing, Lydia proposed a small cross with Fuller's name and dates carved into it.

  "Quite unnecessary,” Bidwell said.

  "He was in our custody,” his lady replied with a significant look.

  So that was another hour in the carpenter's shop, supervising a still-shaky and semiliterate thief's efforts to construct a monument. The shoemaker had been in the ground a week before Bidwell felt he could make a real search. He went through the garden shed, Lydia's domain, and tore up the now-vacant hospital beds, and poked about in the big wood-burning stove for any remnants. Nothing.

  Still, as far as he knew, he was in the clear. Chad Fuller's death was declared “misadventure while trying to escape from lawful confinement.” Bidwell's only worry should have been to conceal the shoemaker's pitiful fortune, a task that proved harder than he'd anticipated, because Lydia, who had never showed much interest in personal adornment, suddenly seemed to have developed little wants, more or less expensive.

  Not many days after the internment, she needed new Sunday boots.

  "What's wrong with your old ones?” Bidwell asked, though he had complained that the reddish leather was too bright for the Sabbath.

  "They've gone in the sole,” she said. “And the shoemaker isn't here to mend them."

  Bidwell wanted to say they'd have a shoemaker soon enough, but there was something about the way she mentioned Fuller that unsettled him, and he opened his purse.

  Next, there was a chair she fancied. “You know I do a lot of sewing in the evening,” she said, “and really the jailer's wife should have something better than one of those old rush-bottomed things from the shoemaker's shop."

  Though it had actually come from the carpenter's bench, Bidwell did not want to argue anything concerning the shoemaker, and an order for a fine upholstered chair went off to Hartford.

  It was the same when the peddler passed with a length of green silk. “To match my low shoes,” she said.

  Bidwell wanted to say it matched her greedy eyes, but by that time he did not dare. Unlike the blockheaded constable, she had guessed, and now, Bidwell feared, she would make him pay, waste his work and his profit and grind him up like the proverbial mills of—he could not finish the thought. He had been led into temptation and this was the result: gnawing anxiety and mounting expense.

  Worse, he thought, watching her a few nights later as she sewed up a fine new dress, he had betrayed himself. Had he dared say they hadn't the money, had he held firm that there was none, she might have come to doubt her own conclusions. Might, though he had to admit to himself that Lydia rarely altered her mind. His readiness to buy for her—so unlike his usual fiscal caution—had betrayed him.

  Well, there would be no more such treats. None. When she asked the next time, for some new pots and pans the peddler had from Boston, Bidwell shook his head. Place not your trust in earthly things, he said. Lydia gave him a long look without saying anything, and Bidwell congratulated himself that he had spoken just in time.

  But in the next few days she grew quiet, spreading a silence through the apartment which Bidwell soon found more unsettling than her former chatter. More than once, he thought he heard the tap-tapping of the shoemaker's hammer behind her knitting needles, and daily he found himself opening the shoemaker's leather purse and counting out the money, before hiding it away again somewhere in the prison.

  That he'd had to spend part of it troubled him, that he had it at all troubled him more, but that he might in some way lose it troubled him most. He had moments when he thought that if he could drop the shoemaker's coins down the well, he might be saved, and he went as far as to lean over and study the black circle of water late one night. But no, for then it would all have been for nothing, the darkness on the dark stones, the fragment of rope, this anxiety.

  Bidwell began to lose his genial ways, to shout at the prisoners, to curse Lydia, to be short with Arthur, and to ignore his active, useful boy. He grew agitated whenever he saw the prisoners talking together (what might the subject be?) and he grew to hate any sound of hammering. It seemed to him that they must all know, or at least suspect, and that, like Lydia, they were just waiting for any slip that would expose his guilt.

  As a result, he became secretive, spending hours in the depths of the old mine, hiding and moving and hiding again his store of money. He favored the punishment cells, right at the back of the main shaft, where no daylight ever entered, where his lantern smoked and cast tall shadows on the low stone ceiling, where a man might fall asleep and wake to believe he was in his own tomb.

  Every time Lydia was out—working in the garden or hanging out the wash or visiting a neighbor—he went through the apartment, searching for the tell-tale end of
rope. Surely, she had burned it, as a good wife would, but Bidwell wasn't entirely sure she was a good wife. And if she wasn't, why would she keep it? Perhaps to threaten him if one day he should refuse her something. At first he feared that, and then the idea made him hopeful. Let her do it: He would take the rope from her and put it in the fire.

  With that in mind, Bidwell attempted to provoke his wife. He let himself be irritable, not very hard when she carried the sound of the shoemaker's hammer within her silences. He criticized her and made unreasonable demands, but Lydia was not drawn. She said yes or no and never answered back, so that he found himself shouting loud enough to carry across the prison and threatening any inmate who showed signs of listening.

  Then one summer day, he had to ride several miles to inspect some timber needed for the new mine shaft he planned in lieu of the shoemaker's shop. No skilled artisan had arrived at the prison, and Bidwell had made no attempt to have another prisoner trained, feeling the tapping from the shop, and even the smell of tanned leather, would be unendurable.

  When he returned in the early afternoon he found their apartment empty. Lydia was not in the garden either, nor busy in the wash house. He walked out to the gate and looked up and down the road, knowing she sometimes stopped by a neighbor's or visited the farmer's wife, who had a new baby. Still, she should be home by now. There was no dinner ready; laundry had been left hanging out on the lines; Bidwell began to have an anxious feeling.

  He went into their room and looked in her trunk. No green silk dress. No fine low shoes. What had she done? He remembered passing a peddler's wagon on his way out. Could she have persuaded him to take her on to the stage? Not likely—peddlers didn't look for trouble. But, as money is the root of all evil, might she have bribed him? Might she?

  With what? He kept her short, and even careful as she was, she'd not have saved much from the household, unless—Bidwell gave a cry of grief and fear. Could she have found his store, when he had been unable to find the rope? With her always underfoot in the apartment, he'd had to search a few moments at a time, while she would have had plenty of opportunity when he'd been out in the sheds, down in the mine, away seeing to the thousand and one things that needed doing.

  He grabbed a lantern and ran to the ladder, his breath coming in gasps. Down the iron rungs, the rust sticking on his damp palms, to reach the little well of light where the prisoners bivouacked like soldiers with their bedding, lamps, and bags of tobacco, with Ben's penny whistle, Pete's whittling. Heart pounding, Bidwell moved across the damp, sloping floor, past the first exploratory workings of the new shaft, to the punishment cell.

  He had kept his store in this area of the mine for some time, correctly guessing that the prisoners had no desire to go anywhere near the dark cavern, and further protecting his money by moving it obsessively from one well-concealed cranny to another. He'd shifted the leather bag so many times that when he put his hand into the narrow opening just inside the cell door and found the cavity empty, he was not too surprised.

  Of course, inside this time. There were a variety of places. He mustn't panic: Seek and ye shall find! Bidwell stumbled inside the cell, patting the wall, running his frantic fingers into this hiding place and that, shifting a loose piece of rock here, and digging through the dirt and rubble there. It couldn't be gone, it couldn't be. Lydia never descended the ladder. Never. And as for the prisoners—if one of them had found it, he'd soon have it back. No, wait! He realized that he'd gotten turned around. He'd hidden his purse on the left, not the right-hand side and forgotten it in the foolishness of the moment.

  Bidwell lifted the lantern and confidently put his hand into the hiding place, but once again found no purse, no jingle of coins. Nothing but a tapping which was surely water dripping somewhere. Surely.

  His store was here. It had to be. Bidwell circled the cell again and then, desperate, entered the worked-out shaft, holding the lantern high overhead. He searched along the floor, along the walls, then back, checking the support posts. Nothing, nothing but the tapping which was only water dripping. Only.

  Back once again to the cell. He had been too hasty the first time, Bidwell thought. The purse had perhaps slipped further down in a crack. The rock was alive, as the old miners said, always shifting and changing and trying to thrust up into the daylight like the evidence of things done.

  Don't think about that! His hand was once again in the opening near the door. There was something, he felt something with the very tips of his fingers and nearly wept with relief. He'd have to get up higher, though. He needed some sort of stepstool. Hadn't he seen a bench? A seat? The carpenter had surely made one for himself.

  How foolish to have given up so easily, to have despaired so quickly! Bidwell climbed the slope of the bedrock toward the faint light and the prisoners’ belongings. Was that a stool? A bench? Yes. A good piece of timber went into it, and Bidwell thought he would have a talk with Pete about making furniture for his own use. He started back down the slope, where, overbalanced by the heavy bench, he slipped twice on the damp rock; the second time, he dropped the lantern, which bounced and went out.

  But though he should have gone back, Bidwell was now in too much suspense. He felt his way along the wall, down to the fitting of the heavily barred door, across the opening to the latch on the other side. He found the crack, touched the contents within, and quickly set down the bench and climbed upon it.

  Steadying himself against the rock, he reached up on tiptoes and pushed his hand far down into the fissure in the stone, where he touched something too rough and prickly to be his purse. And too long, much too long. With a cry of horror, Bidwell drew out the rope and threw it away like a snake, the very serpent of the Garden, upsetting as he did so the bench and tumbling down onto the rock floor with one leg bent under him.

  It was several moments, maybe longer, before he came to himself, his chest and shoulders aching and his right leg on fire. Lydia had taken his store and left the rope, the same, the very same, and everything he'd risked had been for nothing, for worse than nothing, for he could not shift his leg. He shouted for help, called for Arthur, commanded Pete and Ben to come to the ladder.

  No response. They were not listening, or perhaps they did not hear him over the sound of their work, which merged in his ears with the steady tap-tapping in the darkness, the tapping which he had thought was water dripping, but which he now knew was the shoemaker's hammer.

  (c) 2008 by Janice Law

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  "Don't be influenced by the evidence. Make up your own mind."

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  ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Vol. 132, No. 6. Whole No. 808, December 2008. ISSN 0013-6328, USPS 523-610. Dell GST# R123054108. Published monthly except for combined March/ April and September/ October double issues by Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications. 1-year subscription $55.90 in U.S. and possessions, in all other countries $65.90 (GST included in Canada), payable in advance in U.S. funds. Subscription orders and mail regarding subscriptions should be sent to Ellery Queen, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855, or call. 800-220-7443. Editorial Offices, 475 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10016. Executive Office, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and additional mailing offices. Canadian postage paid at Montreal, Quebec, Canada Post International Publications Mail, Product Sales Agreement No. 40012460. (c)2008 Dell Magazines, a division of Crosstown Publications, all rights reserved. Dell is a trademark registered in the U.S. Patent Office. Protection secured under the Universal Copyright Convention and the Pan American Copyright convention. ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE(R) is the registered trademark of Ellery Queen. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855. In Canada return to Quebecor St. Jean, 800 Blvd. Industrial, St. Jean, Quebec J3B 8G4. For back issues, send your check for $5.50 (U.S. funds) to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Suite SM-100, 6 Prowitt St., Norwalk, CT 06855-1220. Please specify the issue you are ordering. Add
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  2008 EQMM READERS AWARD BALLOT

  Don't forget to vote for our 24th annual Readers Award! Return this original ballot to: The Editors, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Dell Magazines, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. (No copies accepted.) To refresh your memory of the year's stories, please visit our Web site, www.themysteryplace.com, where an index for 2008 is provided. If you still can't recall the title of a favorite story, please summarize the plot in the space provided. Please vote only for new fiction. Reprints are not eligible. Winners will be announced in the May 2009 issue. For early results, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope with your ballot.

  My first selection for the 2008 EQMM Readers Award is:

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  My third selection is:

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