“Oh, and Marble,” Windsor went on, “I appreciate your loyalty. The way you persisted! It just had to be Curry, you never once swerved from it! How are you going to like having your name on the door as Assistant to Larsen?”
Marble cleared his throat. “I don’t mind,” he said.
“Marble had it pegged right from the beginning,” said Larsen, almost genial under the glow of Windsor’s praise. “Marble told me right along that it was an ice-cold case.”
“In more ways than one,” said Windsor.
In the background Faith Gentry stepped out of the house. A new look appeared on Windsor’s face.
“This here case is due to warm up as of now,” said Assistant Details Inspector Marble jovially.
MURDER—EARLY AMERICAN
Originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Nov. 1958
Of Elizabeth’s life, fourteen years had been spent in England and the last six in Massachusetts Bay Colony, where she was bonds-woman to the ugly Mrs. Parsons. The entire twenty years were as nothing, however, up to the bleak December day of the murder. She would begin to count her life only from that moment, a time barely two weeks before the year 1700.
The day itself began for her when she returned in fading twilight from the post-master in the village. She scurried into the house before the lash of a windy snow that had just started. The stableman could have gone for the mail on horseback, but Mrs. Parsons would have raised scanty orange eyebrows at the idea of sparing Elizabeth. A bonded servant-woman was there to be used. Had the girl not cost her good money in pounds sterling? Indeed. Elizabeth herself could not protest a walk of four miles in such weather. Her mean boots were thick, if shapeless; and covered as she was by an ancient wool cloak of her mistress’s, she had felt the chill only in her slim fingers and straight little nose. Indignities far worse than a cold walk over frozen ground had been her lot during her servitude. In any event, she now foresaw such a quick end to her troubles that she would have done double the distance without complaint, and danced the whole way.
She came back none the worse for her walk than with an appetite greater than she had any hope of satisfying. Since she could not expect food until her mistress was hungry, Elizabeth hastened dutifully to the upper sitting room to give Mrs. Parsons the letter she had brought with her.
“From my nephew, is it?” the old woman asked eagerly.
“It is in his hand,” said Elizabeth, making a show of scanning the rude scrawl as if for the first time.
“If virtue were measured by learning, my nephew Charles would be a scamp indeed,” Mrs. Parsons said indulgently. She began to open the letter, ruminating meanwhile, “But he’s a kind, brave man, is Charles. He’s no great genius, to be sure, but not a booby either.”
“Oh, to be sure!” Elizabeth exclaimed on cue. “And so fine-looking besides!”
Mrs. Parsons turned quizzical green eyes on her. “And how would you know?”
“Have you forgotten Philadelphia, Ma’am?” Elizabeth asked.
“Philadelphia! Four years gone! And you caught but a look at him then,” Mrs. Parsons said, dismissing a glimpse whose significance might have saved her life had she understood it.
The sight of Charles Braceridge had been for Elizabeth a peep into a future which for the first time held hope. She had meant from that moment to be Mrs. Charles Braceridge, and to step into the old woman’s shoes. She often held her pretty head the higher for that dream. It would be she, Elizabeth, to whom the whaling captains came to make their reports. It would be she the agents consulted all the way from the Boston wharves. Ah, tomorrow tasted sweet to her!
And now perhaps tomorrow had come at last! She waited almost breathlessly to hear what her proposed husband had to write of his plans. On him depended his aunt’s life—or rather, her death.
“He left New York on the packet as long ago as two weeks,” Mrs. Parsons burst out. Elizabeth began a hasty calculation.
“Bless me!” Mrs. Parsons went on, reading with difficulty. “It does seem as if the man means to come tonight! He writes so poor it is hard to make it out, but it does seem—” She handed the letter to Elizabeth, saying complacently, “I’m glad I had you taught to read. Now you can read it for me and you never would have been able to, you know,” she concluded with her customary affection for the obvious, and her tendency to be repetitious, “had I not had you taught.”
Elizabeth automatically gave the thanks that Mrs. Parsons waited for even as she skimmed rapidly through the atrociously written letter. “He must have been in Boston these three days at least,” she said. “He spends his time choosing a horse and waiting for full moonlight to make the ride. Make sure, Ma’am, you shall see him tonight.”
“I quite dote on Charles,” Mrs. Parsons said fondly. “He’s a comfortable fellow, not one of your great minds to rattle a woman. I mean to have him stay long, this time. He will try to please me. He always does.” She looked out at the snow. “But the storm may hold him back.”
“It would not have been snowing when he set out,” Elizabeth remarked. “We shall have our answer if the snow stops soon,” she added, more to herself than to her mistress. Although it was a fateful thing she said, there was nothing ominous in her tones, for if a lifetime beginning in miserable poverty and reaching until now no higher than bonded servitude had taught her nothing else, it had allowed her unbounded practice in dissimulation. She could, and did, sound only commonly interested.
She busied herself now with preparations for the evening meal. Mrs. Parsons was always served in this little sitting-room on the second floor, for she was too fat and too indolent to bother going below. Here she was kept warm with a great fire heaped high with pine logs. Now that it was night the room shone bright with the clear light from whale-tallow candles.
The house within was served by three women. Each had her duties, and Elizabeth’s were to do everything which the others did not. Of the three, she was the only indentured servant. She would not be free for some months yet. The cook and the maid were freedwomen, working for wages, but Elizabeth had long since given over envying them since she did not mean to be always a servant, paid or otherwise. Meanwhile she was the candle-maker and did the boots and laid all the fires and cleaned all the silver. She had a turn for fine needlework, and did all Mrs. Parsons’ sewing so that her mistress, with the luck which so often attends those least in need of it, was exquisitely dressed on a pittance.
Elizabeth heaped more logs on the fire, and set the table for one. Although she ate all her meals here too, she did not go to table. It was her mistress’s whim to feed her as one does a pet dog, tossing scraps and bits of food as the notion took her. The women below envied Elizabeth for her share of all the dainties that were sent up to that little sitting-room. They could not know how it galled her to be fed as if she were less than human, nor by how much she would have preferred the rough kitchen fare. Now she caught a biscuit that Mrs. Parsons tossed her, and as always it turned to straw before she took her first bite. Tonight, though, she could remind herself that the time for such humiliations grew short. He will undoubtedly come tonight, she promised herself, and kept stealing looks out of the window. She was made happy—long before the last morsel of food flew her way the snow had ended and the moon rode high.
“This will be the night, mark me,” Mrs. Parsons said prophetically.
She indicated that she had finished her meal, so Elizabeth had no choice but to be finished too, and set about clearing the table.
Mrs. Parsons laid before Elizabeth a plan replete with all her customary selfishness. “You will stay awake to welcome my nephew,” she announced. “Be it dawn, he must find at least one soul stirring when he comes.”
“It would be most inhospitable otherwise,” Elizabeth agreed. Indeed, it was quite part of her own plans that she be the one to greet Charles Braceridge when he arrived.
After a proper period spent in marveling at Mrs. Parson’s ceaseless care for the comfort of others, Elizabet
h found an opening to ask, “May I suggest, Ma’am—”
Mrs. Parsons bridled. “You suggest? You, Elizabeth?”
“Only this, Ma’am,” Elizabeth said hastily. “Might it not be wise for me to lie down upon my bed for a short while, and thus be better able to stay awake no matter how long?”
Mrs. Parsons considered this. She twisted it about and squeezed it into a different shape until at length it came from her lips as a suggestion of her very own: “I will have you rest, so that you may be fit for a wakeful night.” She considered further, and added bountifully, “Go to your rest, then—fancy, Elizabeth, I permit you to do nothing until it is time for you to bring me my wine and water.”
Elizabeth, who had been desperate for this little time to herself, gave a very sincere thank you, Ma’am to her mistress, and ran lightly up the steps to her attic. Here she stayed only long enough to take up, with a quick, loving motion, a silken gown which hung concealed beneath Elizabeth’s only other work dress, a grey cotton rag of a dress. Now she made her way down on cautious tiptoe, past the door of the sitting-room, and once safely past, all the way down to the kitchen.
“I am to wake all night,” she announced to Anne, the maid, and Jane, the cook. “The nephew comes, and I am to wait up for him, so she says I may rest. If I choose to finish my gown as I rest, I am sure there is no harm in it.” She moved close to the single candle. “It is only until time for her wine and water.”
“Then it’s little enough rest you’ll have,” Jane said, looking at the candle. “She’ll be calling for her drink before this is burned half way. Better than a sand-glass to tell time by is that one with her eating and her drinking.”
Anne said innocently, “I often think, what is the great difference in our persons, bar age and size, of course. Here she cannot sleep but she has her night-time drink of wine, just so, mixed with water, just so—but I lay me down with naught to lull me, and sleep sound. And she must have servants to wait on her, and I do very well for myself. And all that. I do study it often, and I can see no sense in it.”
“It need make no sense!” Jane said sharply. “It is so, and must be so!”
Elizabeth worked silently on the handsome gown. She had hurried with her sewing since there had been a first hint of Charles’s coming, but her free times were so few that here it was, the very eve of his arrival, and she with the hem only half done. Now, however, she stitched to such good purpose that in very good time she was able to declare, with a satisfaction the others could not guess at, “Done!”
“Done,” said Jane, “and all ready to hang its life away in an attic.”
“Oh, but it is so beautiful!” Anne exclaimed kindly. “I am sure if you searched the whole world you could find no color better suited to Elizabeth’s dark hair and dark eyes than that sweet lavender.”
“And the mistress that strict I don’t dare think what will happen when she learns what you have done,” Jane warned! “Forever telling of being nobility herself, and must be waited on hand and foot like a queen! You mark me, Elizabeth! You will suffer for it when you are found out. There was an innkeeper’s wife put in the stock for dressing too fine—last summer ’twas. I would not put it past the mistress, if she finds out.”
“I have hopes she will not find out,” Elizabeth said calmly. She went into the dining-room for the goblet and the wine, and mixed her mistress’s even potion. With the goblet in one hand, and the gown draped over her other arm, she walked up the stairs again. One stop only she made, to set the wine and water noiselessly on a table by the sitting-room door. Then, passing the dangerous door, still on delicate tip-toe, she went up the stairs to the attic slowly, softly.
At the top of the stairs she counted herself safe—almost safe! The door below was flung open, and Mrs. Parsons called crossly, “Elizabeth! Eliz—oh, there you are, and about time! Here I’ve been sitting—what have you there, Elizabeth? What is that you carry, I say?”
For a moment Elizabeth felt as one turned to ice. She was so torn, on one side pulled towards dashing headlong to the safety of her attic, and on the other forced by habit into obedience to the mistress she had never denied, that she could do no more than stand rigid until the blood began to move in her veins again.
“Oh—Ma’am,” Elizabeth said as soon as she could bring the words out; after only a breath’s more hesitation she turned and went back down to the sitting-room. This was not the way she’d planned it, but as she walked she asked herself, what matter so slight a change? She had hoped to see Anne and Jane safely abed before killing their mistress. Now she might have to hasten the moment. If it must be done now, it could be done safely.
The old woman’s eyes were fixed on the gown. “You are to tell me at once what you have there?” she commanded.
“A gown, Ma’am, that I was able to fashion—all because of your kindness to me.”
Mrs. Parsons’s full share of this kindness could be summed up in the act of her giving Elizabeth a ripped and aging cast-off of watered-silk.
“Bring it closer, you vain, giddy girl!” Mrs. Parsons said jealously. “Have you spoiled that fine silk?”
Elizabeth obediently approached into the bright circle of candlelight.
“Well, to be sure!” Mrs. Parsons exclaimed in unwilling admiration as she examined the fine work. She lingered over it grudgingly, as if she sought a special something. Elizabeth, who knew her mistress as well as she knew the coarse black stuff of the gown she herself wore at this moment, gave her what she sought: “It is your doing, Ma’am. It is all your doing. You taught me my needlework so patiently.”
It was happily ventured. Mrs. Parsons accepted it uncritically. “Many’s the weary hour I spent over you,” she recalled contentedly, although she herself could sew nothing more complicated than a simple cross-stitch, and that none too well.
Mrs. Parsons did not give up the gown, but held it jealously. Elizabeth could see that the old woman knew full well that with her great bulk she would not fit more than half herself into it, yet she would not give it up.
“Well, it is a very pretty bit of work,” she granted finally, “although to be sure I don’t know when you’ll wear it. I would not have you dress too fine. You are no Mistress Eliza, you know. You must never forget your place.”
“La, Ma’am!” Elizabeth protested. It amused her to invent reasons for having fashioned the gown as she waited for Mrs. Parsons to surrender it. Until it was safe in her hands once more, Elizabeth would not know if she must do her work now, or could wait until later, as she had originally planned. “La, Ma’am, I did not dream of wearing it!”
“Did you not, then?” Mrs. Parsons asked, with a face full of curiosity.
“It was only to show you how valuable I may yet be to you as a seamstress. My time will be put up in six months, Ma’am. I cannot forget that.”
“No, I dare say,” Mrs. Parsons granted. “I don’t know another bonds-woman ever to be treated so well. Never been lashed! Eating the very same foods as your mistress!”
Again she fingered and pulled at the dainty fabric. “But did you think I was going to turn you off with two shillings and a pair of stout boots? You may stay, Elizabeth. You are a willing, industrious girl, and you may stay. But you must not think to be above yourself. You must not think of wearing silks and being as fine as your mistress. No, Elizabeth, though you have been treated kinder than many an own daughter, I will not have you think to be above yourself!”
“Oh, Ma’am!” Elizabeth protested humbly.
“Well, then. Since you remember your place. You may stay on, and receive the same superior treatment, and continue to eat from my table! There, girl, what say you to that?”
“Thank you, Ma’am,” Elizabeth replied.
She did not like the way Mrs. Parsons clung to the gown. The old woman plotted something—ah, here it came at last! “So you have turned out this handsome gown for me,” she remarked carelessly. “Nicely made, of the finest silk. Unfortunately I cannot wear it myself, Eliza
beth. The color—so flattering to me—I received many compliments, you will recall, when I wore the dress before you cut it up and remade it—still, the color is too lively now for my quiet way of life. But you must go and fetch Anne—Anne will know, her sister is cook at the Sedgwicks, and I am sure she will know if Hitty Sedgwick is come back from New York. I have long wished her to meet Charles, and were they to meet while she wears this gown—! Fetch Ann, do. I must know if Hitty is home.”
Here was the end for Mrs. Parsons! Hitty Sedgwick indeed!
“Certainly, Ma’am,” Elizabeth said politely. As if it were a matter of course she took the gown from her mistress and draped it on a sofa, safely across the room so it would not be blood-spattered.
Then she walked to the fireplace, taking up the poker as if to stir the fire. Mrs. Parsons busied herself with some of her useless needlework. Elizabeth calmly raised the poker high over her head and brought it down with such force as to strike Mrs. Parsons dead with the single blow. She had determined to kill the old woman on the eve of her nephew’s arrival so that Charles would be in charge when the murder was discovered. He was a dull, persuadable man, and very like him was Mr. Curtis, the Magistrate. She intended to let poor Charles and Mr. Curtis bungle it between them. And now it was done.
She looked herself over carefully. None of the considerable spurt of blood had come near touching her. She replaced the poker, picked up her lovely silk, and went with it up to her attic. Here she sat quietly, listening to the sounds of Anne and Jane as they went to the room next to hers which they shared. It took only a short time before Jane’s hearty snores reached her; she knew Anne too would be sound asleep—as the younger woman had said, she needed no wine to lull her to sleep.
Now Elizabeth dressed in her handsome gown and quietly went down to the kitchen. Here the first candle still burned, although it was very low. Cautiously, so as to protect her gown from ashes, she added logs and stirred the old fire. Only when it was burning well did she pause to take a light from it, and by the glow of the single candle, added to the flickering light of the fire, she looked down at herself. Her gown came quite to the floor, and so hid her boots. What a joy not to be able to see them!
The 2nd Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK ™: Ruth Chessman Page 5