The Truth about Belle Gunness

by Lillian de la Torre

  It was none of his business, however. He fenced the front, and went in for his money. He found Mrs. Gunness in her corset cover and skirt. She coolly finished dressing, then paid him off. He admired the house, and she obligingly showed him through.

  The double door of carved wood panels led from the wide front porch directly into the large living room. Behind that was the dining room, with its upright piano and large center table.

  Mattie Altic had furnished six of the rooms as bedrooms, the two off the living room and dining room and the four that opened off a central hall upstairs. The bedsteads were handsome, with old-fashioned carved walnut headboards, or newfangled brass tubing and knobs. Each had its puffy quilt, patchwork or flowered. Every bedroom had its marble-topped walnut stand with basin and pitcher, and its kerosene lamp.

  There was nothing remarkable about the basement. Mrs. Gunness took her visitor down by a trap door at the back. Down there she had her tubs and wringer, and some battered furniture, a long bench, a table, and some rickety chairs.

  The kitchen was at the back, under the hired man’s room in the frame addition. It was provided with a pump, a wood-burning stove with its warming oven on top, a center table covered with oilcloth, and a large wall cupboard holding china dishes, kettles, and a flour bin.

  “I do my own baking,” said Mrs. Gunness.

  Young Pahrman was not invited to sample her fare, but he heard from those who had that she could put out a good chicken dinner, and her cakes were delectable.

  Now the Gunness house and the people in it had been swept away in a blaze of flame, and only a burning curiosity remained. People looked at the picture in the paper and sharpened their memories of the family in the picture.

  Everybody had admired the way Mrs. Gunness was bringing up her children. They were growing up bright and well behaved. If they got obstreperous, a single glance from Belle’s piercing blue eyes was enough to quell them. Mrs. Gunness sent them to the Quaker school and to Sunday school, and bought them a pony and cart to take them there from the lonely McClung Road. When Christmastime came, she made the holidays happy for them in the Norwegian manner. The house would be redolent of good things, lutfisk and sweet Norwegian puddings, and the big tree between the dining-room windows would sparkle with bright ornaments that had come all the way from Norway. It seemed that for all of them, the Gunness farm was a happy place.

  When it came to remembering Mrs. Gunness, people remembered her very variously. Some remembered a homely old farm wife who couldn’t speak English plain, talking along in a high singsong voice: “Ja, Yennie, Laphams got quar-teened from smallpicks.” Some pictured a figure of fun, 280 pounds of flesh that billowed and jiggled as she walked along, driving the cows barefooted or going to town in shawl and old black fascinator, or sloshing in manure at country sales in a man’s fur coat and gum boots. Those were the ones who saw her unlaced.

  When Belle was laced tight and dressed to match, it was a different story. Belle lived in the time of the corn-fed politician and the billowy beauty. In those days men aspired to the imposing bulk of Mr. William Howard Taft, who was about to be elected President of the United States. If they couldn’t attain it, they pretended it by wearing bulging Prince Albert coats and peg-top pants and hair combed into a bush. Ladies whose façades were not naturally as full and flowing as Belle’s stuffed their corset covers with ruffles and wore droop-fronted shirtwaists on top of that. Everybody aspired to well-fed jowls. Belle Gunness was right in style. She had a forty-six-inch bust, fifty-four-inch hips, and a wasp waist that would pull in to thirty-seven inches. When she donned her ruffled silks and put her diamonds in her ears, men thought her well worth a second glance. Sitting in the back pew at church, she attracted so many glances from the roving-eyed young fellows that the ushers finally asked her to take a front seat. There even the minister found her worth a look.

  Belle had a way of winning and holding people’s glances. Perhaps it was the way she used her brilliant blue eyes. She would look up sideways under lowered brows, or, talking along with veiled lids, she would suddenly pop them open to give the listener the full stare of that intense blue. There were men who found those eyes irresistible. Ray Lamphere was not by any means the first.

  Belle fascinated her farm hands. True, they tended to be pretty dubby little fellows, but still, after Gunness died, the neighbors thought that one of them was surely going to become the new master of the farm and its widowed owner. There was, an elderly Swede who got so stuck on Belle that when neighbor men joshed her, he sent them threatening letters. There was a slow-talking Norwegian named Peter Colson, who planned to take her West and start up a cattle ranch. But nothing came of either affair. Poor Mrs. Gunness, year in and year out, seemed to have no luck at all in her affairs of the heart. All her farm hands seemed to blow hot and cold, and finally resigned or took French leave, sometimes abandoning their work half done for Belle to finish.

  After a few years of such treatment, Belle ceased romancing her hired men. She entertained suitors from out of town. She would introduce them around. At Lower’s store she produced a husband from Minnesota. Her friends were made acquainted with a black-mustached fiancé from Geneva, Wisconsin, and later with an intended bridegroom who had a red mustache and a cattle ranch in South Dakota.

  None of these matches seemed to take. Belle still ran the farm unassisted. Sometimes she did the chores herself, dressed in a man’s coat and boots. Odd-job men came and went. Brogiski, the poor Pole from over the way, would do heavy work like digging the pits for rubbish disposal. Neighbor boys ran errands or chopped off the head of the Sunday chicken. Belle was fond of animals, and did not like to do or see any butchering. When the boy was ready with the ax, she would throw her apron over her head and run for the house in a hurry.

  In the fall of 1906, Belle found a new farm hand. She hired Emil Greening, a square-cut, common-sensical, happy young fellow of nineteen. Emil is the only person who lived in that house and is alive today to tell about it. He says it was a pleasant place. The food was good, the bed was comfortable, the work was agreeable, and Jennie was there. Jennie was sixteen, with deep-blue eyes and a yellow pompadour, a shy smile and a sweet, low voice.

  With Jennie to look at, Emil wasted very little attention on his employer. Mrs. Gunness behaved pleasantly and paid him regularly, and that was enough. Sometimes she would ask Emil to go and sleep at his parents’ home in town, so that some out-of-town visitor might have his bed. Emil was agreeable. He saw these follows come with indifference, and he saw them go with indifference, if it happened that they came or went during working hours.

  Emil was wrapped up in Jennie. They were together, talking happily for hours on end, in the barn at the chores or out in the autumn meadows. In the evening, Emil’s brother Fred might drop in, and then under Fred’s nimble fingers “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” would make the old piano talk. Mrs. Gunness might be there, sitting at the big dining table writing long letters in Norwegian, but she didn’t bother anybody. It was a happy time of music and sunshine for the boy and girl.

  Other fellows courted Jennie, too. There was a pleasant-faced young electrician from town, and the boy across the way was beginning to cast sheep’s eyes across the McClung Road. But Emil and Jennie had an understanding. They spent a cloudless autumn together.

  It was too good to last. Mrs. Gunness announced that Jennie must prepare to go away to college. Jennie didn’t want to leave Emil, but she had to. She promised to write to him, and he promised to stay at the farm and wait for her return.

  She went suddenly, without saying good-by. “She thought it would be easier that way,” Belle told. Emil.

  Emil was hurt. He was more hurt when Jennie didn’t write to him. Sometimes Belle would give him a brief message, crying over an open letter in her hand; but it wasn’t the same thing.

  If Jennie won’t keep her promise, why should I keep mine? he thought resentfully.

  He got tired of the farm without Jennie, and soon he left
. He went all the way out to New Mexico. There he homesteaded, and married, and had two pretty daughters, and there he lives today. He still remembers Jennie.

  Mrs. Gunness was left in the lurch again. A dapper old fellow with a pointed beard appeared around the place for a while, but no wedding bells ensued. Belle was still on the lookout for a man.

  One day in June she stopped a nice-looking man on the street.

  “You’re Ray Lamphere,” she said. “I’ve been watching you.”

  Ray Lamphere was a wiry young fellow in his thirties, with brown eyes and curly brown hair and a silky brown waterfall mustache curving down over a mouth that was pretty and weak. He was an odd-job carpenter by trade, and a good one—when he was sober. Drunk or sober, he was never very bright.

  Ray was on the loose. His father, Squire William Lamphere, former justice of the peace, was a rheumy old toper who had drunk away his money, his respectable social position, and his happy home. Ray’s mother had waited only to marry off her four daughters before she gave the pot-valiant Squire his walking papers. When the home broke up, Ray lived for a while with a sister in Minnesota. There he fell deeply in love. It didn’t work out. He came back to La Porte disappointed and ready for anything.

  Now Belle Gunness stood before him, as tall as he, her brilliant blue eyes holding him.

  “I’ve been watching you,” said Belle. “I want you to come and work for me.”

  Ray went. At the farm Mrs. Gunness showed him his room. It was the room in the wooden addition, reached by the staircase going up from the kitchen entry. Ray began work on the porch flooring.

  That night there was a hearty, tasty supper, the kind Belle knew how to cook. Then Ray mounted to his new quarters. The iron bedstead creaked as he settled down to sleep.

  Soon the profound quiet and dark of the countryside enveloped the farm.

  In a few minutes there was a sound at the door that separated Ray’s room from Belle’s part of the house, and then the door creaked open. Ray sat up. The door closed softly, and a figure in white moved noiselessly across the floor.

  Ray realized it was his new employer. Her heavy reddish hair hung loose, and she wore a long white nightgown adorned with embroidery and insertion. She smelled of perfume.

  Ray was not alarmed, and he had no need to be. The dim figure in white meant him no harm. If he was puzzled, he was not puzzled long. With calm directness, this extraordinary woman lay down beside him and drew him to her ample breast. She stayed with him until the early dawn began to whiten.

  During the hours of that summer night, the mature Norsewoman bound the lonesome young man to her with bonds that in the face of hell and horror he was never quite able to break. She had some quality, some skill that fascinated and satisfied him. His good upbringing and his minimum of common sense were completely forgotten under that strange spell.

  What allure drew men like Ray to that homely, middle-aged farm woman? It is possible to guess. Her very maturity was part of the spell. It is women, not girls, that inspire the lasting passions; Cleopatra was over fifty when Mark Antony thought the world well lost for her sake. To a lonely man with an urge to be mothered, to return to the security of the womb, such a woman may represent the safety of fulfillment without any of its responsibilities. Belle was deep and calm and full of certainty, and she gave herself freely in the dark, when she chose, with a catlike, soothing purr.

  When light began to return and she slipped out of Ray’s arms, she left a man hopelessly enthralled. Night after night she returned, and the enchantment deepened.

  By day, Ray went about his chores in a happy trance. When he met his cronies in town, he bragged of his conquest. He displayed gifts that his mistress had given him, a suit of clothes, a silver watch. He boasted that he was going to marry her. He bragged that he was married to her. Everything was milk and honey at the farm.

  Too soon, alas, the honey soured and the milk began to curdle. Ray was besotted in love, and insanely jealous, and he didn’t like sharing Belle’s attention with gentlemen visitors.

  One day before Christmas, 1907, Mrs. Gunness appeared at Oberreich’s department store with a man in tow, and bought a wedding ring. Ray began to be observed in saloons, muttering dark things into his glass.

  The wedding-ring man disappeared from the scene, and Ray felt better. Then early in January another visitor appeared at the farm, and Ray felt a great deal worse.

  This man was big and broad and genial, a well-to-do Norse rancher from South Dakota, wearing a gray fur coat down to his shins and a wide Western hat. When this man arrived, Belle told Ray to go sleep in the barn so the guest could have his room.

  A black storm of jealousy burst in Ray’s head. He began to make trouble. He was heard in saloons breathing brimstone against “the big Swede.” He told the police that the fellow was wanted for murder in South Dakota. The Sheriff’s office soon discovered that this was a lie.

  Things came to a head on January 14. Mrs. Gunness sent her hired man away from the farm on an errand. He was to go over to Michigan City, twelve miles away, and fetch a horse that was being sent by her cousin, Mr. Moo.

  There was three inches of snow on the ground. Ray hitched a fast horse to the cutter and started out in the cold. He picked up a friend to keep him company, a brewery-wagon driver named John Rye.

  John Rye noticed Ray’s restless, morose abstraction. The jealousy that had started when he had to give up his room to the visitor was rapidly getting out of control. What was Belle planning to do with the handsome stranger behind her lover’s back?

  When Lamphere and Rye got to Michigan City, there was no horse. Ray stabled the cutter, and they killed an hour or so in a bar. Then Ray tried to distract his mind at a vaudeville show. It was no use. At eight P.M., without a word of explanation, he hustled his companion onto the interurban car and returned to La Porte. Ray sat in surly silence until they approached the icehouse switch, just downhill from the Gunness farm.

  “I’m getting off. Ray announced.

  “Oh, come off it!” said his friend impatiently.

  “I’m getting off.’ I’m going over and see what the old woman is doing. I’ll see you later at the saloon.”

  Out of the frosted car window Rye saw Lamphere cutting across the snowy hill to the farm.

  A couple of hours later Ray came into the saloon. His eyes were wild and his thirst seemed unquenchable. He said nothing that made any sense.

  The next morning he turned up in Michigan City. Mr. Moo’s horse had not materialized. He drove the cutter back to the farm.

  What did Ray Lamphere see when he spied on his mistress and “the big Swede”? Whatever it was, it widened the breach beyond mending. The visitor was soon out of the picture, but Ray, beside himself, continued to misbehave. In a black mood he kept on with the chores, but he refused to sleep with Belle, or even under her roof. Infuriated by his erratic behavior, Mrs. Gunness discharged him on February 3. Still talking wildly, Ray went off to work and sleep at William Slater’s farm.

  Mrs. Gunness looked around for another farm hand. She hired Joe Maxson, a worried little sandy chap who kept himself to himself. Joe’s idea of a good time was to have money in the bank, and read the newspapers, and scrape out “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” on his little fiddle. He didn’t interest Belle and she didn’t interest him. As long as she paid him regularly, Joe was perfectly satisfied with his job.

  Still Ray couldn’t let Belle alone. He kept up his drinking and his reckless talk, and he kept going back to the farm. Belle was furious. She tried to get Ray arrested for stealing the silver watch, but Sheriff Smutzer would not believe he had stolen it.

  Failing at that, Belle had Ray hauled up for trespass. He was fined, and he went right on trespassing. Belle had his sanity questioned. They found him sane, and he went right on trespassing. Four times that spring Mrs. Gunness hauled him into court.

  The fourth time was Saturday, April 25. That time, Ray’s lawyer was on hand to look after Ray. Wirt Worden was a good man
for an unstable chap like Ray. He had a keen mind under his thick blond thatch, and a kind heart beat in his broad chest. Half amused at the little fellow’s stormy affair with the big farm woman, Worden produced an alibi, and Ray got off.

  On Monday, April 27, Belle in her turn went to a lawyer, Mr. M. E. Leliter. She was crying. She wanted to make her will.

  “That Lamphere,” she said. “I’m afraid he’ll burn the house down over my ears.”

  “Why, Mrs. Gunness,” said Mr. Leliter, “if you are so bothered by this fellow Lamphere, all you have to do is fill him full of buckshot.”

  “Oh, no,” said Belle, “I couldn’t do that!”

  The lawyer shrugged, and took down the terms of the will. Belle’s property was to go to the three children; if they should die before they could inherit, the property was to go to the Norwegian Orphan Home.

  “Is that the legal name of the home?”

  “I don’t know,” said Belle.

  “Then I’ll find out and put it in before you sign.”

  “No,” said Belle stubbornly. “Write it now. There’s no time to wait.”

  So Leliter wrote it, and Belle signed it, and went back to the farm.

  There was no time to wait. That night the farmhouse burned to the ground.

  3. The Evidence in the Hog Lot

  Ray Lamphere had not run away. He was working then at John Wheatbrook’s farm, and that’s where Deputy Leroy Marr found him. He took him in. That evening the prosecutor came around to the jail to question the suspect.

  Prosecutor Ralph N. Smith was a slim, handsome man with a deceptively sleepy look in his fine blue eyes. His long thin face wore a quiet smile. He was keen and witty in court, and reserved elsewhere. The press, despairing of ever pumping him, had dubbed him “Silent” Smith.

  Smith listened to what Ray had to say, and decided the law was on the right track.

  They gave Ray the night to think things over. The next day Sheriff Smutzer took him to the morgue and suddenly confronted him with the hideous charred remains.