The bodies had been discovered by Mrs. Poindexter’s chauffeur, McPhearson Jones, when he returned for his mistress at four-thirty, and waited, in the drive, for a good half-hour: this being approximately the time that young Leroy Craven, badly shaken from his ordeal in the marsh, was all breathlessly trying to explain what he had seen to his doubting parents. Police were summoned: a young patrolman ventured into the rectory, and, seeing the gravity of the situation, retreated at once, to report the news to the central precinct: and, within a short space of time, a sizable contingent of police officers had arrived, all somber and apprehensive. Indeed, so overcome was Orrin Wick when he first examined the butchery (as he called it), he forgot numerous elementary principles of his trade: allowed persons as dazed as he to wander about, and track up the residence with bloody footprints: failed to check the building to see if the murderer was still there, or what doors and windows were locked, or unlocked, or had been forced: failed to order an immediate check of the neighborhood: failed even to check the cellar,—where, as it turned out, poor Mrs. Harwich lay unconscious, having been pushed down the cellar stairs by the murderer, and locked up in the dark. So disoriented was Mr. Wick, and so irresolute his officers, being taken up, in particular, with the mocking array of hearts strewn about the study, it was only with the sudden arrival of Miss Thérèse Kilgarvan that thought was given to the minister’s missing wife, at last discovered bound, and gagged, and herself insensible, in an upstairs room; and it was only by way of the keen-eyed McPhearson Jones that a badly soiled black broadcloth cap, later identified as belonging to Jabez Dovekie, was discovered on a cemetery path,—and saved from the clutches of the rabid souvenir-seekers.
(It was unfortunate that Mrs. Poindexter’s chauffeur could provide police with no information, regarding suspicious persons approaching the rectory that afternoon: for, as chance would have it, on this most fateful of days Mrs. Poindexter had bade him run errands for her downtown, while she visited an hour with Reverend Bunting,—as she was wont to do, of late, one or two afternoons a week.)
It was afterward charged against police that there had been an unconscionable delay in informing members of the victims’ families: for Miss Thérèse Kilgarvan had merely “heard news,”—and inordinately confused and cruel news, indeed—regarding a veritable bloodbath at the church; and the Poindexter children learned of their mother’s rumored death while at their riding lessons, at the Sandusky Hunt Club. As for Ellery Poindexter,—it soon developed, all surprisingly, that no one knew where he was: for he had been missing, it seems, since midmorning. (According to servants, Mr. Poindexter had left St. Bride’s at approximately ten o’clock in the morning, having breakfasted late, as he often did, and alone: it had been understood that he would drop by his Hazelwitt office,—for Mr. Poindexter had been, for a few years, a practicing lawyer, while the Law amused him, and he still “kept his oar in” the trade—and then dine with an associate at one, at the Corinthian Club. So far as the club manager knew, however, no such engagement had been planned; and Ellery Poindexter must have dined elsewhere. At Hazelwit Square, it was believed he had spent the day at St. Bride’s, suffering from one of his asthma attacks; at St. Bride’s, it was believed he had planned to be away the entire afternoon, and very likely into the evening.)
Albeit the coarser element amongst the townsfolk already whispered of Reverend Bunting’s “love nest,” and a cuckolded husband’s revenge, not one of Orrin Wick’s officers, and certainly not Orrin Wick himself, did, for an instant, imagine that the distinguished Ellery Poindexter might be the murderer: for he was known to be a gentleman of the highest breeding; his family had lived in Winterthurn since before the Revolution; if possessed of a heavy, saturnine, somewhat ironical countenance, and shadowed, or even clouded, eyes,—if given, as rumor would have it, to a whimsical sort of speculation in railroad and grain stock, and a more explicit sort of gambling at one or another of his clubs,—why, it was nonetheless the case that Mr. Poindexter was a gentleman: and whoever had killed the Buntings, and Amanda Poindexter, and had so cruelly abused poor Perdita, was naught but a beast.
WITHIN AN HOUR or two of the discovery of the bodies, then, it was very nearly a foregone conclusion that Jabez Dovekie, who had been harassing the Bunting household for a fortnight, and had, so Mrs. Harwich insisted, even threatened Reverend Bunting with bodily harm, must be the ax murderer: for it would have been a simple matter for the brute to take up the gardener’s ax from out a nearby toolshed: and no extraordinary effort for him to wield it as lethally as he had, being a giant of a fellow, at least six feet five inches tall, and weighing nearly two hundred forty pounds; and possessed of a mercurial temper, greatly exacerbated by drinking. (The church sexton, Henry Harder, informed police that, when drunk, Dovekie was known to abuse his wife and children; and had acquired a considerable reputation as a scabrous personality, in his West Railroad Street neighborhood.)
Under Dr. Hatch’s efficient ministrations, Mrs. Harwich, discreetly removed to Jewett Cottage, began to revive; and at once berated Jabez Dovekie as a monster and a beast, and now a murderer, of the most despicable sort. Though she had not actually glimpsed him in the rectory that day, she had no doubt but that the assailant was he, and no one else: stealing up noiselessly behind her, as she was about to descend the cellar stairs,—striking her between the shoulder blades with what must have been the blunt edge of the ax head,—causing her to pitch head first down the stairs, into the darkness, with no concern as to whether she had injured herself seriously, or no,—and then locking the door behind her, and leaving her moaning with pain. Ah, what a mercy it was, Mrs. Harwich said, that she had fainted, and was spared hearing the shrieks and screams of the victims overhead,—which, in truth, she did hear, as if in a dream, and at a distance. “It is he, Dovekie,—it is he, only he, the murderer,” the distraught woman said, with surprising vehemence, “for he has long wished harm to Reverend Bunting, and has gazed with salacious eyes upon his wife—!”
Shortly thereafter, Leroy Craven’s father brought him shy and abashèd to the police, to tell his disjointed story: with the near-miraculous result that the murder weapon, which might not otherwise have been found, was dredged up from the pond within thirty minutes; and readily identified as having been taken from the Buntings’ gardener’s shed. It was a remarkable thing, Orrin Wick thought, how precisely matters were falling into place: for, despite some negligible contradictions amongst the witnesses, it looked to be an open-and-shut case, as the expression goes,—an unspeakably savage act of murder, yet most likely unpremeditated.
Thus, a warrant was duly sworn for the arrest of Jabez Dovekie; and a manhunt loosely organized, consisting of police officers, and sheriff’s men, and volunteers from the community (amongst them a goodly contingent of members of the Brethren of Jericho,—though they did not officially identify themselves as such). The ramshackle Dovekie house on the west end of town was searched, not, I am afraid, with an excess of courtesy, though it soon became evident that the wanted man was nowhere in the vicinity; and his frightened wife and children knew naught of his whereabouts. Mrs. Dovekie was a short, obese, poorly groomed woman of middle years, her flesh marred by fading bruises, and her expression altogether stunned: she pleaded with the men, as they tossed things about, and slammed doors, and overturned pieces of furniture, that she had no idea where Jabez was;—he had been drinking for two or three days, and hadn’t been home to eat or sleep: he had a bad temper, she said, now in tears, and cringing, but he meant no harm,—he was a good man except when he drank, but he meant no harm.
Shown the black broadcloth cap, Mrs. Dovekie stared at it for some painful moments, as if she knew,—ah, she knew!—what it portended: but at last she admitted that it belonged to her husband: and then inquired, all ingenuously, where it had been found.
DOUBTLESS THE READER has been wondering this while, What has become of Perdita?—a question very much to the point; yet one not readily to be answered. For the experience suffered by the min
ister’s wife was so very curious,—nay, perverse and inexplicable—it has never been understood, or satisfactorily analyzed, to this day.
Though his heart had long hardened against Perdita Kilgarvan, his faithless cousin, and his yet more faithless belovèd,—though he did not love her any longer, and felt no more concern for her than he would for any woman in her horrendous circumstances,—yet Xavier Kilgarvan was discountenanced, as the reader may well imagine, when, arriving in Winterthurn City as he had been bade to do by the mysterious telegram, he was greeted with a wild diversity of “news”: that the distinguished Episcopal minister Harmon Bunting and his family had been hacked to death, by a madman, that very afternoon; that Reverend Bunting and a “lady love” had been surprised by the lady’s husband, and hacked to death,—and the Reverend’s innocent wife “despoiled”; that a gang of Anarchists had forced entry into Grace Church, and butchered the minister, his wife, and his elderly mother; that three innocent persons had been slaughtered by a madman with an ax,—or four, or five; that Mrs. Bunting, the minister’s young wife, had been murdered in her bed and in her bridal gown, by her husband and his mistress,—this woman being none other than Mrs. Ellery Poindexter, of all upstanding citizens!
It had long been the canny detective’s habit to display not a whit of the emotion he felt,—whether alarm, or dismay, or incredulity, or frank childlike curiosity—so, hearing such extraordinary reports, told him by Pullman porters, cab drivers, and the like, within ten minutes of his arrival in Winterthurn City, Xavier Kilgarvan responded by asking a few subdued questions and keeping to himself the tumult of his thoughts and his droll observation that, knowing the fantastical permutations “news” of this sort invariably takes, it was hardly likely that Mrs. Perdita Bunting had been wearing her bridal gown that day. “That, assuredly,” the detective thought, “is sheer phantasmagoria.”
NONETHELESS, THIS ECCENTRIC DETAIL happens to be true: for when, at last, Thérèse, and Chief of Police Orrin Wick, and one or two of his officers, entered Perdita’s enshadowed bedroom,—after the unconscionable delay, of which I have spoken—it was to find the cruel-used young woman bound by her wrists and ankles (the twine wrapped around her ankles so very tight, it left red marks in her tender flesh,—while, mercifully, the twine about her wrists had been less forcibly secured, and had, in truth, been worked loose),—and gagged, with a strip of torn linen—and thrown, as it were, across her tumbled bed, attired in the selfsame bridal gown, of oyster-white raw silk, in which, many years before, she had been wed: the gown being now so soaked in blood, the skirt in particular, and the bodice of pearls and satin ribands so hideously splashed, that it was not to be wondered, Thérèse and the others thought that Perdita too had been murdered!—and not, instead, the victim of an assault so vicious and so shameful, it might have been more merciful for her (thus tongues would wag) had, indeed, she died by the same hand that had struck down her belovèd Harmon.
Quickly Thérèse removed the linen gag from her poor sister’s mouth, and undid the ties that bound her wrists and ankles; yet, even so, Perdita was but half-conscious that help had come to her, and that she was no longer in danger,—that, indeed, it was her own sister Thérèse, bareheaded and in the simply cut light woolen suit in which she taught, now kneeling beside her. Ah, how piteous it was to see!—the stricken woman weeping, and raving, and begging not to be killed; struggling with her very rescuer; pitching herself in a paroxysm of terror from side to side on the rumpled bed, her loosed tresses wild about her, and ah! the bloodstained silken gown so very close to slipping off one bare shoulder, Thérèse was obliged to tug it hurriedly back in place, for modesty’s sake. “Sister! Sister! It is I, Thérèse!” she cried. “Pray do not be so distressed,—you will not be harmed further!”
Yet Perdita blindly struggled, as if it were a nightmare that gripped her, and not Thérèse: begging not to be killed,—pleading for mercy,—then again, pleading for death, that her shame might die with her.
“For Harmon will not,—ah, Harmon cannot—love me again as his undefiled wife.”—Thus the delirious woman murmured, while the men stared, and backed away from the bed; and Thérèse essayed to restrain her by seizing her wrists, and repeating that she would not be further harmed,—her assailant was gone,—she was now in safe hands,—the police were here,—all would be well, with God’s blessing.
These intelligent calming words Perdita seemed to hear, and, for a space of some panting seconds, she ceased her frantic struggle: her great dark eyes widening yet further, to reveal a rim of white: and her gleaming chestnut-brown hair,—so strikingly threaded, these past several years, with silvery-gray—spread about her on the disordered bed linen. Then, an infelicitous movement, it may have been, on the part of Mr. Wick, roused her again to terror, that her assailant had returned: and, all accidentally, poor Thérèse received a sharp blow to the face. “Perdita, sister, please calm yourself: you will not be harmed! The police are here, Dr. Hatch has been summoned, no one will hurt you”—thus Thérèse fairly begged, while the hysterical woman sobbed, and panted, and wrenched her head violently from side to side.
Yet, even at so extreme a juncture, in her stained and torn finery, and having suffered, it seemed, the most shameful ignominy known to Woman, Perdita could not fail to strike the disinterested masculine eye as beautiful,—indeed, as ravishing: the which sight had so immediate an effect upon the gentlemen, the kindly Orrin Wick in particular, that it is no exaggeration to say they succumbed to an emotion equivalent to love,—in its most vaporous, romantic, and insubstantial guise. For, in her writhing distress, in her seemingly excruciating terror, was Perdita Bunting, née Kilgarvan, not a most wondrous creature, withal?—possessed, like Lilith, of a beauty both unearthly and greedy; blessed with a luxuriant head of hair, and great stark staring eyes, and a mouth that boasted both voluptuousness and icy chastity; her comely female form, squirming eel-like before their gaping eyes, given the greater power of enchantment, as it were, by the brutal contrast it afforded with the chopped and yet-bleeding bodies of the victims, but a floor away—?
(Herewith, I should add, in haste, that Orrin Wick was, at this time in his lengthy and honorable career, still a youngish man, of about forty-five years of age: devoted to his wife of twenty years, and his three children,—including an eighteen-year-old son, Orrin, Jr., of whom he was inordinately proud: an upstanding Christian gentleman, belonging to the First Methodist Church of Winterthurn City: and, in his arduous profession, the more prized for his diligence, probity, and congenial character, in that he lacked more “glamorous” qualities of the sort wantonly assigned to policemen by the sensationalist press. In stating that Mr. Wick had succumbed to so ill-defined an emotion as love, I am, of course, not suggesting that he knew he had done so,—or that the disheveled minister’s wife, now widowed, could have had the slightest awareness of what transpired.)
Thus, Thérèse gripped her sister hard, and even embraced her, to assuage her fears; and the stricken woman, in a somewhat lowered voice, though still sobbing, spoke of a demon,—a monster, a brute with blazing eyes and white-glaring teeth,—who had stolen up behind her and taken her by surprise, as she stood in her chemise, about to wash her hair, unassisted, as, by happenstance, her Nell had been called away that morning, to come quickly to her ailing mother’s home in Mt. Sweetwater. Gloating and laughing in an untrammeled bestial manner, this cowardly assailant,—whose face, alas, Perdita could not glimpse—gripped her in an instant, with no mind for her pleadings for mercy: and, jeering at her shame and terror, boasted that he had “exacted his revenge” downstairs, and would now “balance the accounts” by way of her: to subject her to an ignominy of which (so the panting woman whispered with tight-shut eyes) it is not possible to speak in decent discourse.
“Suffice it to say, he had his way with me,—‘his way’ being most loathsome and contemptible,” Perdita said. “And such was my distress, and the confusion of the moment, I could not fully see his face, but had only an impression of gl
aring eyes, and grinning overlarge white teeth, and hair inclined toward red, I believe,—red grizzled with gray—a personage who seemed familiar to me, yet, ah!—most unfamiliar, most alien, most monstrous!” She paused, lying now motionless, as if all struggle,—indeed, all strength—had drained from her slender limbs; and opened her sorrowful eyes; and, speaking to Thérèse alone, as if, for the moment, not wishing to acknowledge the presence of the abashèd gentlemen, she said: “He then forced on my limp body, I know not why, my very own bridal gown,—this raiment of happier and more innocent days,—ah, Thérèse, I know not why, save that he was a madman, and chortled of revenge!—forced the gown on me, taking no mind for how it ripped and tore,—for how the delicate pearl buttons snapped off, in his brute fingers, and,—and—from somewhere, I know not where,—did he return downstairs, leaving me insensible here?—I know not where,—dear God, my thoughts are shattered,—from somewhere he dipped his hands in blood,—the blood, he bragged, of my belovèd Harmon,—and this blood, Thérèse, the monster wiped on my dress, to despoil its purity forever, and to ‘baptize’ me, as his demon logic would have it, as his bride.”
Mysteries of Winterthurn Page 50