by Jojo Moyes
“Not me.” She shook her head.
“No?” He pondered this, his lower lip pushed out in exaggerated thought. “She seems pretty sure there was a packhorse librarian up there. You telling me then it was one of these other ladies that day, Miss O’Hare?”
She gazed around her then, a trapped animal.
“You think maybe I should be talking to one of these girls instead? Think maybe one of them is capable of murder? How about you, Kathleen Bligh? Or maybe this nice English lady? Van Cleve Junior’s wife, yes?”
Alice lifted her chin.
“Or you—what’s your name, girl?”
“Sophia Kenworth.”
“Soph-i-a Ken-worth.” He said nothing about the color of her skin, but rolled the syllables around extra slowly so that they felt loaded.
The room had grown very still. Sophia stared at the edge of her desk, her jaw tight, unblinking.
“No,” Margery said, into the silence. “I know for a fact it was none of these women. I think maybe it was a robber. Or a ’shiner. You know how it can be up there on the mountains. All sorts going on.”
“All sorts going on. That’s true enough. But, you know, seems mighty odd that in a county stacked full of knives and guns, axes and coshes, that the weapon of choice for your neighborhood hillbilly robber would be . . .” he paused, as if to recall it properly “. . . a fabric-bound first edition of Little Women.”
At the dismay that flickered, unchecked, across her face, something in the sheriff relaxed, like a man sighing with pleasure after a big meal. He squared his shoulders, pushed his neck back into his collar. “Margery O’Hare, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Clem McCullough. Men, take her in.”
* * *
• • •
After that, Sophia told William that evening, all hell broke loose. Alice flew at the man like a woman possessed, shouting and hollering, hurling books at him until the officer threatened to arrest her, too, and Frederick Guisler had to wrap both his arms around her to stop her fighting. Beth was yelling at them that they had it all wrong, that they didn’t know what they were talking about. Kathleen just looked silent and shocked, shaking her head, and little Izzy burst into tears, kept crying, “But you can’t do this! She’s having a baby!” Fred had run for his car and driven fast as he could to tell Sven Gustavsson, and Sven had come back white as a sheet, trying to get them to tell him what the heck was going on. And all the while Margery O’Hare had been silent as a ghost, allowing herself to be led past the crowd of onlookers, into the back of the police Buick, her head down and one hand over her belly.
William digested this and shook his head. His overalls were thick with black dirt where he was still trying to clean up the house, and when he ran his hand over the back of his head he left an oily black trace of it on his skin.
“What you think?” he asked his sister. “You think she did murder someone?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I know Margery ain’t a murderer but . . . there was something off, something she wasn’t saying.” She looked up at him. “I do know one thing, though. If Van Cleve has any say in this, he’s going to make her chances of getting out of it a whole lot smaller.”
* * *
• • •
Sven sat that night in Margery’s kitchen and told Alice and Fred the whole story. The incident on the mountain ridge, how she had believed McCullough would come after her in revenge, how he had sat out on the porch for two long, cold nights with the rifle across his knees and Bluey at his feet until both were reassured that McCullough had surely slunk back to his falling-down cabin, probably with a sore head and too drunk to remember what the hell he had even done.
“But you have to tell the sheriff!” Alice said. “That means it was self-defense!”
“You think that’s going to help her?” said Fred. “The moment she says she slammed that book into him, they’ll treat it as a confession. She’ll get manslaughter at best. The smartest thing she can do just now is sit tight and hope they don’t have enough evidence to keep her in jail.”
Bail had been set at $25,000—a sum nobody around there could get close to. “It’s the same sum they posted for Henry H. Denhardt, and he point-blank shot his own fiancée.”
“Yup, except being a man, he had friends in high places who could post it for him.”
Nancy Stone had apparently wept when she heard what the sheriff’s men had done with her testimony. She had made her way down the mountain that evening—the first time she had done so in two years—banged on the door of the sheriff’s office and demanded that they let her retell her story. “I said it all wrong!” she said, and cursed, through her missing teeth. “I didn’t know you was gonna arrest Margery! Why, that girl has done nothing but good for me and my sister—for this town, hang you, and that’s how you’re going to repay her?”
There had indeed been a murmur of unease around town at the news of the arrest. But murder was murder, and the McCulloughs and the O’Hares had been the death of each other for generations so far back that nobody could even remember how it all started, just like the Cahills and the Rogersons, and the two branches of the Campbell family. No, Margery O’Hare had always been an odd one, contrary since she could walk, and that was just the way these things went sometimes. She could certainly be cold-hearted too—why, didn’t she sit stone-faced at her own daddy’s funeral without shedding a tear? It didn’t take long for the endless seesaw of public opinion to begin to wonder whether maybe there was something of the devil in her after all.
* * *
• • •
Down in the low-lying little town of Baileyville, deep in the southeastern reaches of Kentucky, the light disappeared slowly behind the hills and not long after, in little houses along Main Street and dotted among the mountains and hollers, the oil lamps flickered and went out, one by one. Dogs called to each other, their howls bouncing off the hillsides, to be scolded by exhausted owners. Babies cried and were, sometimes, comforted. Old people lost themselves in memories of better times and younger ones in the comforts of each other’s bodies, hummed along to the wireless or the distant playing of somebody else’s fiddle.
Kathleen Bligh, high in her cabin, pulled her sleeping children close, their soft, yeasty heads like bookmarks on each side of her, and thought of a husband with shoulders like a bison and a touch so tender it could make her weep happy tears.
Three miles northwest in a big house on a manicured lawn, Mrs. Brady tried to read another chapter of her book while her daughter sang muffled scales in her bedroom. She put the book down with a sigh, saddened by the way life never quite turned out how you hoped it would, and wondered how she was going to explain this one to Mrs. Nofcier.
Across from the church, Beth Pinker sat reading an atlas on her family’s back porch and smoking her grandmother’s pipe, thinking about all the people she would like to hurt, Geoffrey Van Cleve being high on that particular list.
In a cabin that should have had Margery O’Hare in the heart of it, two people sat sleepless on each side of a rough-hewn door, trying to work out a route to a different outcome, their thoughts like a Chinese puzzle, and a solid knot of anxiety too huge and weighty pressing down upon each of them.
And a few miles away, Margery sat on the floor with her back against the wall of the cell and tried to fight the rising panic that kept pushing up from her chest, like a choking tide. Across the hall two men—a drunk from out of state and a habitual thief whose face she could recall but not name—called obscenities at her, and the deputy, a fair man who was troubled that there were no segregated facilities for women (he could barely remember the last time a woman was kept overnight in Baileyville Jail, let alone a pregnant one), had strung up a sheet across half the bars to shield her a little. But she could still hear them, and smell the sour scents of urine and sweat, and all the while they knew she was there, and this l
ent the confines of the little jail an intimacy that was disturbing and discomfiting to the point where, exhausted as she was, she knew no sleep would come.
She would have been more comfortable on the mattress, especially as the baby was now of a size where it seemed to press down on unexpected parts of her, but the mattress was stained and full of chiggers and she had sat there for a full five minutes before she had started to itch.
You want to peel back that curtain there, girl? I’ll show you something that will get you to sleep.
You cut it out, Dwayne Froggatt.
Just having a little fun, Deputy. You know she likes it. Written all over her waistline, ain’t it?
McCullough had come for her after all, his loaded weapon his own bloodied body, her library book a written confession on his chest. He had followed her back down that mountain as surely as if he’d done it with a loaded gun in his hand.
She tried to think of what she could say in mitigation; she hadn’t known she had hurt him. She had been afraid. She had simply been trying to do her job. She was a woman, just minding her business. But she wasn’t stupid. She knew how it looked. Nancy, without knowing it, had sealed her fate by placing her up there, library book in hand.
Margery O’Hare pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath, feeling the panic begin to rise again. Through the bars she could see the blue-mauve of encroaching night, hear the distant birdcall that marked the dying embers of the day. And as the dark fell she felt the walls press in on her, the ceiling lowering, and she screwed her eyes shut.
“I can’t stay here. I can’t,” she said softly. “I can’t be in here.”
You whispering to me, girl? Want me to sing you a lullaby?
Pull back that curtain. Go on. Just for Daddy.
A burst of drunken laughter.
“I can’t stay in here.” Her breath bunched and gathered in her chest, her knuckles whitened and the cell began to swim, the floor rising as the panic built.
And then the baby shifted inside her, once, twice, as if telling her that she was not alone, that nothing was to be gained from this, and Margery let out a half-sob, placed her hands on her belly and closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath, waiting until the terror had passed.
TWENTY
“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?”
“Yes.”
“All like ours?”
“I don’t know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted.”
“Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one?”
“A blighted one.”
• THOMAS HARDY, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Word had got round by morning, and a few folk took the trouble to walk down to the library and say how crazy the whole thing was, that they didn’t believe ill of Margery and that it was a darn shame the police were treating her so. But a whole lot more didn’t, and Alice felt those whispered discussions all the way from their little cabin by Split Creek. She covered her own anxiety with activity. She sent Sven home, promising him she would look after the hens and the mule, and Sven, having enough sensitivity to know that it would not be good for them to be seen sleeping under the same roof, agreed. Though both knew he would probably be back by nightfall, unable to sit alone with his fears.
“I know how everything runs,” she said, shoveling an egg and four slices of bacon that would remain untouched onto his plate. “Been here long enough. Margery will be out in a blink. And I’ll take her over some fresh clothes to the jailhouse in the meantime.”
“That jail’s no place for a woman,” he said quietly.
“Well, we’ll have her out in no time.”
She sent the librarians out on their normal routes that morning, checking the ledgers and helping load the saddlebags. Nobody questioned her authority, as if they were just grateful to have someone taking charge. Beth and Kathleen asked her to convey their good wishes. And then she locked the library, climbed onto Spirit, with the bag of Margery’s fresh clothes, and rode over to the jail under a clear, brisk sky.
“Good morning,” she said to the jailer, a thin man with a weary look, whose huge ring of keys threatened to bring down his trousers. “I’ve come to bring Margery O’Hare a change of clothes.”
He looked her up and down and sniffed, his nose wrinkling. “You got your slip?”
“A slip of what?”
“From the sheriff. Allowing you to see the prisoner.”
“I don’t have a slip.”
“Then you don’t get in.” He blew his nose noisily into a handkerchief.
Alice stood for a moment, color prickling her cheeks. Then she straightened her shoulders. “Sir. You are holding a woman who is heavy with child in the most unsanitary of circumstances. The very least I would expect you to do is to allow her a change of clothes. What kind of a gentleman are you?”
He had the grace to look a little discomfited.
“What is it? You think I’m going to smuggle her in a metal file? A gun, perhaps? She’s a woman with child. Here, Officer. Let me show you what I’m planning to hand over to the poor girl. There, a fresh cotton blouse. And here, some wool stockings. You want to go through the bag? You can check, a fresh set of undergarments—”
“All right, all right,” said the jailer, holding up a palm. “Put ’em back in the bag. You get ten minutes, okay? And next time I want a slip.”
“Of course. Thank you so much, Officer. That’s very kind of you.”
Alice tried to maintain this air of confidence as she followed him down the steps into the confines of the holding area. The jailer opened a heavy metal gate, his keys rattling, flicked through them until he found another, and opened another gate onto a small corridor, which was lined with four cells. The air was stale and foul down there, and the only light was a sliver from a narrow horizontal window at the top of each cell. As her eyes adjusted to the light she saw shadowy movement in the cells at the left.
“Hers is the one on the right with the sheet on it,” he said, and turned to leave, locking the gate and checking it with a rattle, so that her heart rattled with it against her ribs.
“Well, hello, pretty girl,” said a male voice from the shadows.
She didn’t look at him.
“Margery?” she whispered, walking up to the bars. There was a silence, then she saw the sheet pull back a few inches and Margery stared back from the other side. She was pale, her eyes shadowed. Behind her stood a narrow bunk with a lumpen, stained mattress, and a metal pot in the corner of the room. As Alice stood, something scuttled across the floor.
“Are you . . . all right?” She tried not to let her face reveal her shock.
“I’m fine.”
“I brought you some things. Thought you might like a change of clothes. I’ll bring you more tomorrow. Here.” She began to pull the items from the bag, one by one, feeding them through the bars. “There’s a bar of soap, and a toothbrush, and I—well, I brought you my bottle of scent. I thought you might like to feel . . .” She faltered. The idea seemed ridiculous now.
“You got something for me there, pretty girl? I’m real lonesome over here.”
She turned her back, away from him. “Anyway.” She lowered her voice. “There’s some cornbread and an apple in the leg of your drawers. I wasn’t sure whether they’d feed you. Everything is fine at home. I’ve fed Charley and the hens and you’re not to worry about anything. It will all be just as you like when you get home.”
“Where’s Sven?”
“He had to go to work. But he’s coming by later.”
“He okay?”
“He’s a little shaken up, actually. Everybody is.”
“Hey! Hey, come over here! I wanna show you something!”
Alice leaned forwar
d, so that her forehead touched the bars of the cell door. “He told us what happened. With the McCullough man.”
Margery closed her eyes for a minute. Her fingers looped around a bar and tightened briefly. “I never set out to hurt no one, Alice.” Margery’s voice cracked.
“Of course you didn’t. You did what anyone would have done.” Alice was firm. “Anyone with half a brain. It’s called self-defense.”
“Hey! Hey! Stop your yammering and come over here, girl. You got something for me, huh? Cos I got something for you.”
Alice turned, her face a fury, and placed her hands on her hips. “Oh, do shut up! I’m trying to talk to my friend! For goodness’ sake!”
There was a brief silence, and then, from the other cell, a whinny of laughter. “Yeah, do shut up! She’s tryin’ to talk to her friend!”
The two men immediately began arguing among themselves, their voices lifting as the air turned blue.
“I can’t stay in here,” Margery said quietly.
Alice was shaken by how Margery looked after only one night in this place, as if all the fight had seeped out of her. “Well, we’re going to work this out. You are not on your own, and we are not going to let anything happen to you.”
Margery looked at her with weary eyes. She set her mouth in a thin line, as if she were stopping herself from speaking.
Alice placed her fingers over Margery’s, trying to grip her hand. “It will all sort itself out. You just try to rest, and eat something, and I’ll be back tomorrow.”
It seemed to take Margery a minute to register what she was saying. She nodded, shifted her gaze to Alice, and then, with a hand on her belly, she moved back to the floor, where she slid slowly down the wall and sat down.
Alice rapped on the metal lock until she had the guard’s attention. He rose heavily from his chair and let her out, closing the gate and eyeing the sheet behind her, from which Margery’s shoulder was just visible.