The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

  “Tell you what, Mrs. Peters, why don’t you take the quilt in with you? It might take up her mind.”

  “Why, I think that’s a real nice idea, Mrs. Hale,” agreed the sheriff’s wife, as if she too were glad to come into the atmosphere of a simple kindness. “There couldn’t possibly be any objection to that, could there? Now, just what will I take? I wonder if her patches are in here—and her things?”

  They turned to the sewing basket.

  “Here’s some red,” said Mrs. Hale, bringing out a roll of cloth. Underneath that was a box. “Here, maybe her scissors are in here—and her things.” She held it up. “What a pretty box! I’ll warrant that was something she had a long time ago—when she was a girl.”

  She held it in her hand a moment; then, with a little sigh, opened it.

  Instantly her hand went to her nose.

  “Why—!”

  Mrs. Peters drew nearer—then turned away.

  “There’s something wrapped up in this piece of silk,” faltered Mrs. Hale.

  “This isn’t her scissors,” said Mrs. Peters, in a shrinking voice.

  Her hand not steady, Mrs. Hale raised the piece of silk. “Oh, Mrs. Peters!” she cried. “It’s—”

  Mrs. Peters bent closer.

  “It’s the bird,” she whispered.

  “But, Mrs. Peters!” cried Mrs. Hale. “Look at it! Its neck—look at its neck! It’s all—other side to.”

  She held the box away from her.

  The sheriff’s wife again bent closer.

  “Somebody wrung its neck,” said she, in a voice that was slow and deep.

  And then again the eyes of the two women met—this time clung together in a look of dawning comprehension, of growing horror. Mrs. Peters looked from the dead bird to the broken door of the cage. Again their eyes met. And just then there was a sound at the outside door. Mrs. Hale slipped the box under the quilt pieces in the basket, and sank into the chair before it. Mrs. Peters stood holding to the table. The county attorney and the sheriff came in from outside.

  “Well, ladies,” said the county attorney, as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries, “have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?”

  “We think,” began the sheriff’s wife in a flurried voice, “that she was going to—knot it.”

  He was too preoccupied to notice the change that came in her voice on that last.

  “Well, that’s very interesting, I’m sure,” he said tolerantly. He caught sight of the bird-cage.

  “Has the bird flown?”

  “We think the cat got it,” said Mrs. Hale in a voice curiously even.

  He was walking up and down, as if thinking something out.

  “Is there a cat?” he asked absently.

  Mrs. Hale shot a look up at the sheriff’s wife.

  “Well, not now,” said Mrs. Peters. “They’re superstitious, you know; they leave.”

  She sank into her chair.

  The county attorney did not heed her. “No sign at all of anyone having come in from the outside,” he said to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted conversation. “Their own rope. Now let’s go upstairs again and go over it, piece by piece. It would have to have been someone who knew just the—”

  The stair door closed behind them and their voices were lost.

  The two women sat motionless, not looking at each other, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back. When they spoke now it was as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but as if they could not help saying it.

  “She liked the bird,” said Martha Hale, low and slowly. “She was going to bury it in that pretty box.”

  When I was a girl,” said Mrs. Peters, under her breath, “my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—before I could get there—” She covered her face an instant. “If they hadn’t held me back I would have—” She caught herself, looked upstairs where footsteps were heard, and finished weakly— “hurt him.”

  Then they sat without speaking or moving.

  “I wonder how it would seem,” Mrs. Hale at last began, as if feeling her way over strange ground—“never to have had any children around?” Her eyes made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what that kitchen had meant through all the years “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird,” she said after that—“a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too.” Her voice tightened.

  Mrs. Peters moved uneasily.

  “Of course we don’t know who killed the bird.”

  “I knew John Wright,” was Mrs. Hale’s answer.

  “It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife. “Killing a man while he slept—slipping a thing round his neck that choked the life out of him.”

  Mrs. Hale’s hand went out to the bird cage.

  “We don’t know who killed him,” whispered Mrs. Peters wildly. “We don’t know.”

  Mrs. Hale had not moved. “If there had been years and years of—nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful—still—after the bird was still.”

  It was as if something within her not herself had spoken, and it found in Mrs. Peters something she did not know as herself.

  “I know what stillness is,” she said, in a queer, monotonous voice. “When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died—after he was two years old—and me with no other then—”

  Mrs. Hale stirred.

  “How soon do you suppose they’ll be through looking for the evidence?”

  “I know what stillness is,” repeated Mrs. Peters, in just that same way. Then she too pulled back. “The law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale,” she said in her tight little way.

  “I wish you’d seen Minnie Foster,” was the answer, “when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and stood up there in the choir and sang.”

  The picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could bear.

  “Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while!” she cried. “That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?”

  “We mustn’t take on,” said Mrs. Peters, with a frightened look toward the stairs.

  “I might ’a’ known she needed help! I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing! If it weren’t—why do you and I understand? Why do we know—what we know this minute?”

  She dashed her hand across her eyes. Then, seeing the jar of fruit on the table she reached for it and choked out:

  “If I was you I wouldn’t tell her her fruit was gone! Tell her it ain’t. Tell her it’s all right—all of it. Here—take this in to prove it to her! She—she may never know whether it was broke or not.”

  She turned away.

  Mrs. Peters reached out for the bottle of fruit as if she were glad to take it—as if touching a familiar thing, having something to do, could keep her from something else. She got up, looked about for something to wrap the fruit in, took a petticoat from the pile of clothes she had brought from the front room, and nervously started winding that round the bottle.

  “My!” she began, in a high, false voice, “it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a—dead canary.” She hurried over that. “As if that could have anything to do with—with— My, wouldn’t they laugh?”

  Footsteps were heard on the stairs.

  “Maybe they would,” muttered Mrs. Hale—“maybe they wouldn’t.”

  “No, Peters,” said the county attorney incisively; “it’s all perfectly clear, except the reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing—something to show. Something to make a story about. A thing that would connect up with this clumsy way of doing it.”

  In a covert way Mrs. Hale loo
ked at Mrs. Peters. Mrs. Peters was looking at her. Quickly they looked away from each other. The outer door opened and Mr. Hale came in.

  “I’ve got the team round now,” he said. “Pretty cold out there.”

  “I’m going to stay here awhile by myself,” the county attorney suddenly announced. “You can send Frank out for me, can’t you?” he asked the sheriff. “I want to go over everything. I’m not satisfied we can’t do better.”

  Again, for one brief moment, the two women’s eyes found one another.

  The sheriff came up to the table.

  “Did you want to see what Mrs. Peters was going to take in?”

  The county attorney picked up the apron. He laughed.

  “Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out.”

  Mrs. Hale’s hand was on the sewing basket in which the box was concealed. She felt that she ought to take her hand off the basket. She did not seem able to. He picked up one of the quilt blocks which she had piled on to cover the box. Her eyes felt like fire. She had a feeling that if he took up the basket she would snatch it from him.

  But he did not take it up. With another little laugh, he turned away, saying:

  “No, Mrs. Peters doesn’t need supervising. For that matter, a sheriff’s wife is married to the law. Ever think of it that way, Mrs. Peters?”

  Mrs. Peters was standing beside the table. Mrs. Hale shot a look up at her; but she could not see her face. Mrs. Peters had turned away. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.

  “Not—just that way,” she said.

  “Married to the law!” chuckled Mrs. Peters’ husband. He moved toward the door into the front room, and said to the county attorney:

  “I just want you to come in here a minute, George. We ought to take a look at these windows.”

  “Oh—windows,” said the county attorney scoffingly.

  “We’ll be right out, Mr. Hale,” said the sheriff to the farmer, who was still waiting by the door.

  Hale went to look after the horses. The sheriff followed the county attorney into the other room. Again—for one final moment—the two women were alone in that kitchen.

  Martha Hale sprang up, her hands tight together, looking at that other woman, with whom it rested. At first she could not see her eyes, for the sheriff’s wife had not turned back since she turned away at that suggestion of being married to the law. But now Mrs. Hale made her turn back. Her eyes made her turn back. Slowly, unwillingly, Mrs. Peters turned her head until her eyes met the eyes of the other woman. There was a moment when they held each other in a steady, burning look in which there was no evasion or flinching. Then Martha Hale’s eyes pointed the way to the basket in which was hidden the thing that would make certain the conviction of the other woman—that woman who was not there and yet who had been there with them all through that hour.

  For a moment Mrs. Peters did not move. And then she did it. With a rush forward, she threw back the quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put it in her handbag. It was too big. Desperately she opened it, started to take the bird out. But there she broke—she could not touch the bird. She stood there helpless, foolish.

  There was the sound of a knob turning in the inner door. Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff’s wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as the sheriff and the county attorney came back into the kitchen.

  “Well, Henry,” said the county attorney facetiously, “at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to—what is it you call it, ladies?”

  Mrs. Hale’s hand was against the pocket of her coat.

  “We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson.”

  THE DONNINGTON AFFAIR, by G.K. Chesterton and Max Pemberton

  It was natural, of course, that we should think of calling in expert opinion on the tragedy; or, at least, something subtler than the passing policeman. But I could think of few people or none whom it would be useful to consult thus privately. I remembered an investigator who had taken some interest in Southby’s original trouble; merely because I remembered the curious surname of Shrike; but report told me that he had since grown rich and retired, and was now yachting inaccessibly among the Pacific Islands.

  My old friend Brown, the Roman priest at Cobhole, who had often given me good advice in small problems, had wired that he feared he could not come down, even for an hour. He merely added—what, I confess, I thought inconsequent—that the key might be found in the sentence, that “Mester was the cheeriest soul possible.”

  Superintendent Matthews still carries weight with any considering person who has actually talked to him; but he is naturally in most cases officially reticent, and in some cases officially slow.

  Sir Borrow seemed stricken rigid by this final tragedy; a thing pardonable enough in a very old man who, whatever his faults, had never had anything but tragedy upon tragedy out of his own blood and name.

  Wellman can be trusted with anything up to the Crown jewels; but not with an idea. Harriet is far too good a woman to be a good detective. So I was left with my unsatisfied appetite for expert advice. I think the others shared it to some extent; I think we wished a man different from all of us would walk into the room, a man of the world outside us, a man of wider experience, a man of experience so wide—if it were possible—that he should know even one case that was like our own. Certainly none of us had the wildest suspicion of who the man would be.

  I have explained that when poor Evelyn’s body was found it was clad in a dressing-gown, as if she had been suddenly summoned from her room, and the door of the Priest’s Room stood open. Acting on I know not what impulse, I had closed it to; and, so far as I know, it was not opened again till it was opened from within. I confess that for me that opening was terrible.

  Sir Borrow, Wellman, and I were alone in the chamber of slaughter. At least we were alone till a total stranger strolled into the room, without even pulling the peaked cap off his head. He was a sturdy man, stained with travel, especially as regards his leggings, which were loaded with clay and slime of innumerable ditches. But he was entirely unconcerned, which is more than I was. For, despite his extra dirt and his extra impudence, I recognised him as the fugitive convict, Mester, whose letter I had so foolishly passed on to his fellow convict. He entered the room with his hands in his pockets, and whistling. Then the whistling ceased, and he said:

  “You seem to have shut the door again. I suppose you know it’s not easy to open again on this side.”

  Through the broken window which gave upon the garden I could see Superintendent Matthews standing passively among the shrubs, with his broad back to the house. I walked to the window, and also whistled, but in a far more practical spirit. And yet, I know not why I should call it practical, for the superintendent, who must have heard me, did not turn his head, nor so much as shift a shoulder.

  “I shouldn’t worry poor old Matthews,” said the man in the peaked cap in a friendly tone, “he is one of the best men in the service, and he must be awfully tired. I expect I can answer nearly all the questions that he could.” And he relighted a cigarette.

  “Mr. Mester,” I replied with some heat, “I was sending for the superintendent to arrest you!”

  “Quite so,” he answered, throwing his wax match out of the window. “Well, he won’t!”

  He was gazing at me with a grave stolidity. And yet I fancy that the gravity of his full face had less effect on me than the large, indifferent back of the policeman.

  The man called Mester resumed.

  “I mean that my position here may not be quite what you suppose. It’s true enough I assisted the young fellow to escape; but I don’t imagine you know why I did it. It is an old rule in our profession—”

  Before he could finish I had uttered a cry.

  “Stop!” I cried out. “Who is that behind the door?”

  I could see, by the very movement of Mester’s mouth, that he was just about to answer, “What door?” But before the lips could move he als
o was answered. And from behind the sealed door of the secret chamber came the noise of something that was alive, if it were not human, or was moving, if it were not alive.

  “What is in the Priest’s Room?” I cried, and looked round for something with which to break down the door. I had half lifted the piece of jagged iron bar for the purpose. And then the horrid part it had played in that night overwhelmed me, and I fell against the door and beat on it with feeble hands, only repeating, “What is in the Priest’s Room?” It was the awful fact that a voice, obscure but human, answered from behind the closed door, “The Priest!”

  The heavy door was opened very slowly, apparently pushed by a hand no stronger than my own. The same voice which had said “The Priest,” said in rather simpler tones, “Whom else did you expect?” The door swung out slowly to the full compass of its hinges, and revealed the black silhouette of a stumpy, apologetic person, with a big hat and a bad umbrella. He was in every way a very unromantic and inappropriate person to be in the Priest’s Room, save in the accidental detail of being a priest.

  He walked straight up to me before I could cry: “You have come, after all!”

  He shook my hand, and, before he dropped it, looked at me with a steady and singular expression, sad, and yet rather serious than sad. I can only say it was the face we wear at the funeral of one dear as a friend, not that we wear by the deathbed of any directly dear to us.

  “I can at least congratulate you,” said Father Brown.

  I think I put my hand wildly through my hair. I am sure I answered:

  “And what is there in this nightmare on which I can be congratulated?”

  He answered me with the same solid face:

  “On the innocence of the woman who will be your wife.”

  “No one,” I cried indignantly, “has attempted to connect her with the matter.”

  He nodded gravely, as if in assent.

  “That was the danger, doubtless,” he said with a slight sigh, “but she’s all right now, thank God. Isn’t she?” And as if to give the last touch to the topsyturvydom, he turned to ask his question of the man in the peaked cap.