My little birdies had told me that Beryl Wainwright was something of a holy relic, being the oldest local survivor of the Lost Cause. There was an old man in town who might qualify as such a relic too, only nobody had knowed any of his people and his memory was so full of holes, it was hard to credit anything he said.
Lucretia was Beryl’s half-sister, born of her father’s postbellum second marriage to a woman hardly older than Beryl. The shortage of men after 1865 had led to some peculiar mismatches in age and social standing. The second wife didn’t outlast Lucretia’s arrival by much.
When they were younger, I hear, both sisters sang in the Methodist Church choir and held office in the local chapter of the DAR. But the past few years the sisters had kept to themselves for the most part because Beryl was now deaf as a fence post and Lucretia had nerves. But they got along, what with the colored woman and the telephone, which Dr. McQuinney used regularly to reassure Miss Lucretia that Miss Beryl could live forever. And they had occasional visits from other old ladies and whichever of the old ladies’ grandchildren could be bribed to come along. The sisters took frequent walks into town, a distance of about three miles. I asked Miss Wainwright about their perambulations.
“I’m not so fond of walking as my sister is, Mr. Stickley. But Dr. McQuinney says the exercise is beneficial for us, so I occasionally accompany her. She sets a leisurely pace for herself, of course. I don’t discourage her. Oh, I’ve mildly protested from time to time, on those days when her knee is stiff enough to require the aid of a walking cane. But she will have her way. Sometimes Iris—that’s our colored girl—goes with her as far as the other side of the trestle bridge and lends her an arm to help her descend the path that leads from there to the county road. She could go directly down our drive, of course, but she admires the view from the bridge, with the willows and the creek and all.”
“Nonetheless, Miss Wainwright, three miles to town and back seems right arduous for an elderly lady.”
“Oh, it’s not quite the expedition it sounds. When Big Sister gets to the main road, one of our kindly neighbors often stops to offer her a ride the rest of the way. And she never walks back. Why, the postal delivery man, Gus Murchison, practically considers her part of his route. Weather permitting, she goes to the train depot and checks the schedules to see if there are any changes.”
She leaned toward me and lowered her voice—though I don’t have no idea why, since we was talking about a sedated deaf woman. “She said something once that gave me the idea she thinks—only in passing, mind you—that she’s checking the war casualty lists they used to post there when she was a girl. Oh, she’s still sharp as a tack. I just mean that sometimes the very old can mix up the past and the present in equal parts. Time doesn’t dilute old memories as much as we might expect, Mr. Stickley.”
Or might hope, I thought.
“She checks that schedule religiously. I bought her a lovely little Gallet quarter-repeater pocket watch. She pushes a tiny button and the prettiest little chimes tell her the time. So even if she loses track of—oh my, I made a little joke, didn’t I?—she can avoid being on that bridge if a train is almost due. She attaches the watch to her pince-nez chain.”
“A chiming pocket watch? I understood she was hard of hearing.”
Miss Wainwright laughed a not-displeasing laugh and patted my sleeve.
“Hard of hearing? I’d say impossible of hearing was a fitter description. No, I suppose she doesn’t actually hear the chimes, but she can distinguish the vibrations that represent the hour and quarter hour. When one sense fails, the others compensate sometimes, they say.”
“How do the two of you communicate, Miss Wainwright?”
“We communicate through hand gestures and little notes. And she is capable of some lip-reading if she puts her mind to it. But she can still talk, believe me, and makes her wishes known.”
“And day before yesterday? The day of the unfortunate accident on the bridge?”
“Perfectly awful, wasn’t it? I shudder just to think! Well, let’s see. She set out as usual, about nine o’clock. I had wound her watch for her, same as always. By afternoon her fingers are fairly nimble, but they’re not too cooperative in the morning. She went on her way, in a fine mood because her jonquils are starting to flaunt their pretty yellow frocks. The weather was lovely, if you recall.”
“What time did she get home?”
“In time for lunch, same as always. About twelve-thirty. I think her appetite would keep her punctual even if the pocket watch failed.”
“And did she make mention of seeing anything unusual when she come home?”
“Why, no. She did seem a bit more tuckered out than usual, but, Mr. Stickley, my poor sister is over eighty. I can hardly expect her to be lively as a cricket every day.”
As if on cue, a specter in a rustling black dress crept into the doorway, a look of guarded surprise on a shriveled face pierced by two dark glaring eyes. Before Lucretia Wainwright could rise to greet her sister, the specter disappeared and could be heard rustling and mumbling her way down an unseen hall. But she’d been in view long enough for me to see the trembling, clawlike left hand gripping the door molding. A stump the size of a candle end held the space where a ring finger should be.
“Please forgive my sister, Mr. Stickley. She’s not herself today and, frankly, doesn’t enjoy making new acquaintances much anymore.”
“Nothing to apologize for. I won’t impose no further, Miss Wainwright. Excepting one thing. Did y’all know Mr. Farley, the, uh, victim?”
“I do seem to recall meeting him at the train depot one afternoon last fall. It must have been in connection with his business. Yes, that’s it. A member of my Sunday school class, Beatrice McKay, had recommended Mr. Farley’s shoes highly and took the opportunity to introduce us. But Big Sister and I special-order our shoes from Atlanta, as Mrs. McKay should know very well, so that was the extent of my association with Mr. Farley. A nice-looking young man, I do recall that. From the Great Lakes area, wasn’t he? I’ve heard that those lakes freeze so solid in the winter that people can actually take horse-drawn sleigh rides all the way across.”
Once I’d made my adieus and heard the door close at my back, I had the urge to fly down those steps like a schoolboy fleeing the truant officer. The millpond! But I stifled that impulse when I saw the colored woman, Iris, heading toward the house with a Baby Moses–sized basket of laundry riding on her hip.
She stopped but did not speak or smile when I blocked her path at a nonthreatening distance.
“Fine day, ain’t it? Been with the Wainwrights long . . . Iris, is it?” I fished a fresh double square of Oceanic cut plug from my coat pocket and passed it to her. She palmed it in a flash and secreted it in the folds of her apron. Then she smiled.
“Yes, sir. Iris Washington. My people been with the Wainwrights for three generations. The others all died or moved away. Mr. Ellington Wainwright—their papa—was already an old man and Miss Beryl middle-aged when I come on to work regular.”
“I was wondering, Iris. It’s too delicate a thing to bring up to the ladies directly, but I am curious. How did Miss Beryl lose that finger?”
“Miss Beryl’s life been one sorrow after another, the worst of it heaped on ’fore Miss Lucretia and me even knowed her. And it ain’t really ‘Miss.’ She done married twice. One husband kilt in the first year of the war, one kilt in the last. Two babies too. One born already dead, and one dead from the whooping cough. I never knowed any of their names. She be ‘Mr. Wainwright’s older daughter’ so long, people forget she was ever Missus Somebody. After Mr. Ellington Wainwright died, people just slipped back into calling both of the sisters ‘Miss.’ As to that finger . . . Miss Lucretia told me, serious as judgment, that it was cut off by a renegade Yankee soldier when Miss Beryl couldn’t pull off her diamond wedding ring quick enough to suit him.”
I must have recoiled, first from the story itself, and then from the eerie cackle she followed it with.
“Folks can’t believe everything they hear, Mr. Stickley. Seems like everywhere I go, I hear some variation of that old story ’bout a Yankee cutting off a lady’s finger to get her ring. Sometimes a old lady. Sometimes a young lady. Makes me sorta ponder. I expect a lot of ladies who never held a ax afore in they life learned to chop wood the hard way during the war. Gutting a chicken can be tricky the first few times too.”
“But she is missing a finger, Iris.”
“That so. Sure is.” She sighed and shifted Moses to her other hip. “More sad stories done come out of that war than come out of the Book of Job.” A slow sweet smile brought a broken picket fence of teeth into view. “But she do all right, Mr. Stickley. They never hungry. And Miss Beryl, she got her flower garden and her Victrola. She can’t hear it no more, but she still wind it up and hug it tight to feel the vibrations. Most days she need a cane to walk any distance, but she still get around pretty good. She got more to keep her content than some old folks.”
“And Miss Lucretia? What’s she got?”
“Why, I guess she got Miss Beryl to take care of. ’Fore that she had old Mr. Wainwright to take care of.”
“Is Miss Lucretia really a ‘Miss’?”
“Far as I know. Never heard nothing different.”
“Thank you, Iris. One more thing. Were you here yesterday morning when Miss Beryl went out?”
“No, sir. Was helping my husband set out tobacco. All day. Same as every year.”
She shifted the basket with a noisy groan, to indicate I was making a nuisance of myself, and I let her pass.
I half expected Miss Haseltine Polk not to put in an appearance at the millpond, but I’d come prepared. I’d bought two box lunches at the train depot from Mrs. Beasley’s cousin Lydianna, who sold them every morning from a table set up on the platform for that purpose. Each box contained two pieces of fried chicken—one white meat, one dark—a biscuit; an apple; a hard-boiled egg; a slice of layer cake; and a little twist of paper that held a spoonful of salt. To be truthful, I oftentimes bought two box lunches and finished them both off by myself. I wasn’t always sure I’d have more than a can of porky beans on hand for supper. My wild-hare work hours meant my meals were mostly movable feasts.
But there she was, her cape thrown back to reveal a green-striped dress with a dark green sailor collar and flyaway cuffs. Seeing her hatless hair was a revelation. Our picnic, laid out on a cloth as white as those memorable stockings, proved a banquet. Miss Haseltine Polk had brung homemade pimento cheese sandwiches on bread thin and translucent as magnolia petals. She’d brung pickled tomatoes and okra and boiled peanuts and squares of toasted pound cake spread with fig preserves. Instead of having to resort to the jug of stale water in my saddle kit, we were able to refresh ourselves from a washed-out vinegar jar she’d filled with delicious lip-puckering lemonade. Gumbo got a cow hock.
Afterwards, I come as close to trying to kiss that woman as I ever come to doing anything risky. But I reckoned, at that juncture, the odds of offending her were about equal to the odds of pleasing her and decided to wait for better odds.
We talked about all kinds of things. My one-armed grandfather coming down out of Missouri after the war. Me being one of five children, two of which was twins. We talked about her deciding to be a nurse after going with her suffragette aunt to hear Clara Barton talk on providing relief for refugees from the Galveston hurricane. I learned that she had three sisters and knowed how to ride a velocipede and had delivered a baby with six fingers on each hand. I ain’t never been so captivated by the finer points of somebody else’s life. Even without the kissing, I went home a happy man.
The next day I got a message that Miss Beryl Wainwright had died during the night and would I come over. I headed out there as soon as I could get a shave and put on a clean shirt. If I had expected Miss Lucretia to be beside herself with grief, I would have been mighty disappointed. I don’t mean to say she was skipping around the yard exactly, but she had a demeanor more fitting for the undertaker, Mr. Penrose, than the grieving next of kin. Her black get-up—moiré taffeta trimmed in silk braid, Miss Polk told me afterwards—was so picture-perfect, I wondered if Miss Lucretia hadn’t set it aside some time ago, anticipating the day she’d put it on.
She took me upstairs and gestured me into the room where Miss Beryl was laid out in bed, looking like an unconvincing waxwork. The little shriveled face peeked out of a ribbon-trimmed night bonnet. Both were propped up on a ruffled bolster. The rest of Miss Beryl was concealed by linens smooth as boiled frosting. Them piercing eyes would pierce no more.
I heared a creak and a rustle and a thump, thump, and realized Miss Haseltine Polk had beat me there or, from the tired circles under her eyes, had sat a deathwatch with Miss Lucretia most of the night. She was sitting in a rocking chair, nearly invisible in a gloomy corner. Gumbo was sprawled at her feet. That explained why the Wainwrights’ elderly dogs was whining and laying low under the porch.
I nodded at Miss Polk, then turned back to the deceased, where I stood, head respectfully bowed, for several seconds. I hoped to give the impression I was meditating on the fleeting nature of mortal coils. I had no idea what to say or do next.
Miss Wainwright took the problem out of my hands by stepping between me and Miss Polk, blocking our view of Miss Beryl’s frilly remains.
“I’m so glad y’all have been kind enough to come and offer me comfort. You see, there’s something heavy on my heart and I wish to unburden myself.” As Miss Lucretia looked about as heavyhearted as a flying squirrel, I was curious as to what this burden might be. She waved for Miss Polk and me to follow her out of the room, touching her finger to her lips as if Miss Beryl’s hearing had miraculously returned at her soul’s passing. She led us downstairs to a more formal parlor than the one my muddy boots had been tolerated in earlier, and swooped her hand over the two pink velvet chairs me and Miss Polk was meant to sit in. She herself sat on a shiny horsehair loveseat.
Miss Lucretia arranged all that moiré taffeta in a black puddle around herself like she was fixing to sit for a portrait painting.
“I hardly know how to begin,” she chirped. “You see, last night, before she fell into her final stupor, my sister confided in me a secret so terrible, I feel it is my duty to impart it to you, Mr. Stickley, as an official representative of the law, and to you, Miss Polk, as my sister’s and my succoring angel and confidante this past year.”
Terrible secret? A love child disposed of in the wishing well? A third crazy sister in the attic? Falsified DAR papers? I don’t think even Diviner Dave could have guessed what was coming next.
“My sister was responsible for Mr. Farley’s death.”
I thought of the little ribbon-trimmed mummy lying in the bed upstairs and had to repress a smile.
“She struck him with her cane and she watched him fall off that bridge to his death and didn’t regret it for one minute.”
Miss Haseltine Polk found her vocal cords afore I found mine. “B-u-ut, why on earth would she do such a thing, Miss Wainwright?”
“Mr. Farley must have heard the train coming and seen my sister crossing the bridge, walking on the tracks. When she didn’t respond to his shouts of warning, he ran up onto the bridge and tried to pull her to safety.”
Miss Polk gave a little gasp of realization. “Oh, dear! Poor Miss Beryl! I guess she mistook Mr. Farley’s intentions, running at her like that. Scared her out of her wits, like as not.”
Miss Lucretia Wainwright smiled an unwholesome smile. “She knew what she was doing, all right.”
“Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“Oh, she mightn’t have meant to kill him. Although I wouldn’t have put it past her.”
“Kill Reynard Farley! But why? She hardly knew him!”
“She knew where he came from. That was enough. I’m not sure how she got wind of it. Maybe reading Beatrice McKay’s lips. But she forbade me to take even the smallest peek at his shoes.”
“Where he
came from? Do you mean to say . . .” I felt a cold epiphany creeping up my neck like a big wolf spider. “Michigan, ma’am?”
Miss Lucretia shrugged off my simplemindedness. “Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine. Take your pick. Up north.”
Miss Haseltine Polk seen where this was going too. She slumped down beside Miss Lucretia, half on the loveseat, half on the floor. She took Miss Lucretia’s forearm in both her hands. Whether to shush her or to embolden her to keep on talking, I cannot say. But Miss Lucretia kept on talking.
“When Big Sister turned around and saw who it was had laid his hands on her, she struck out with her cane like she thought she was Nathan Bedford Forrest at Shiloh.”
“Do you mean to say . . .”
“Mr. Stickley, you do repeat yourself! I’d never have guessed she was physically up to such a thing. She must have summoned every ounce of strength left in her poor, frail body. Knocked him right up against the trestle railing, she said. ‘I’d rather be hit by a train,’ she shrieked at him, ‘than be touched by a Yankee.’ Those were her very words.
“I suppose he was concussed. Stunned, at the very least. He lost his balance, she said, and then made the mistake of turning his back on her, trying to retrieve his hat, and she did him another. He went all rubbery and kind of slithered over the railing, she said. I always did contend those low railings were a safety hazard. When the train did finally cross the trestle bridge, Big Sister was holding on to an upright beam, barely out of harm’s way, looking down at the creek bed where her eternal foe lay vanquished at last.”
The Best American Mystery Stories 2014 Page 38