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The Case of Jennie Brice, a novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart |
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Chapter 9 |
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_ CHAPTER IX The coroner held an inquest over the headless body the next day, Tuesday. Mr. Graves telephoned me in the morning, and I went to the morgue with him. I do not like the morgue, although some of my neighbors pay it weekly visits. It is by way of excursion, like nickelodeons or watching the circus put up its tents. I have heard them threaten the children that if they misbehaved they would not be taken to the morgue that week! I failed to identify the body. How could I? It had been a tall woman, probably five feet eight, and I thought the nails looked like those of Jennie Brice. The thumb-nail of one was broken short off. I told Mr. Graves about her speaking of a broken nail, but he shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. There was a curious scar over the heart, and he was making a sketch of it. It reached from the center of the chest for about six inches across the left breast, a narrow thin line that one could hardly see. It was shaped like this: I felt sure that Jennie Brice had had no such scar, and Mr. Graves thought as I did. Temple Hope, called to the inquest, said she had never heard of one, and Mr. Ladley himself, at the inquest, swore that his wife had had nothing of the sort. I was watching him, and I did not think he was lying. And yet--the hand was very like Jennie Brice's. It was all bewildering. Mr. Ladley's testimoney at the inquest was disappointing. He was cool and collected: said he had no reason to believe that his wife was dead, and less reason to think she had been drowned; she had left him in a rage, and if she found out that by hiding she was putting him in an unpleasant position, she would probably hide indefinitely. To the disappointment of everybody, the identity of the woman remained a mystery. No one with such a scar was missing. A small woman of my own age, a Mrs. Murray, whose daughter, a stenographer, had disappeared, attended the inquest. But her daughter had had no such scar, and had worn her nails short, because of using the typewriter. Alice Murray was the missing girl's name. Her mother sat beside me, and cried most of the time. One thing was brought out at the inquest: the body had been thrown into the river _after_ death. There was no water in the lungs. The verdict was "death by the hands of some person or persons unknown." Mr. Holcombe was not satisfied. In some way or other he had got permission to attend the autopsy, and had brought away a tracing of the scar. All the way home in the street-car he stared at the drawing, holding first one eye shut and then the other. But, like the coroner, he got nowhere. He folded the paper and put it in his note-book. "None the less, Mrs. Pitman," he said, "that is the body of Jennie Brice; her husband killed her, probably by strangling her; he took the body out in the boat and dropped it into the swollen river above the Ninth Street bridge." "Why do you think he strangled her?" "There was no mark on the body, and no poison was found." "Then if he strangled her, where did the blood come from?" "I didn't limit myself to strangulation," he said irritably. "He may have cut her throat." "Or brained her with my onyx clock," I added with a sigh. For I missed the clock more and more. He went down in his pockets and brought up a key. "I'd forgotten this," he said. "It shows you were right--that the clock was there when the Ladleys took the room. I found this in the yard this morning." It was when I got home from the inquest that I found old Isaac's basket waiting. I am not a crying woman, but I could hardly see my mother's picture for tears.--Well, after all, that is not the Brice story. I am not writing the sordid tragedy of my life. That was on Tuesday. Jennie Brice had been missing nine days. In all that time, although she was cast for the piece at the theater that week, no one there had heard from her. Her relatives had had no word. She had gone away, if she had gone, on a cold March night, in a striped black and white dress with a red collar, and a red and black hat, without her fur coat, which she had worn all winter. She had gone very early in the morning, or during the night. How had she gone? Mr. Ladley said he had rowed her to Federal Street at half after six and had brought the boat back. After they had quarreled violently all night, and when she was leaving him, wouldn't he have allowed her to take herself away? Besides, the police had found no trace of her on an early train. And then at daylight, between five and six, my own brother had seen a woman with Mr. Howell, a woman who might have been Jennie Brice. But if it was, why did not Mr. Howell say so? Mr. Ladley claimed she was hiding, in revenge. But Jennie Brice was not that sort of woman; there was something big about her, something that is found often in large women--a lack of spite. She was not petty or malicious. Her faults, like her virtues, were for all to see. In spite of the failure to identify the body, Mr. Ladley was arrested that night, Tuesday, and this time it was for murder. I know now that the police were taking long chances. They had no strong motive for the crime. As Mr. Holcombe said, they had provocation, but not motive, which is different. They had opportunity, and they had a lot of straggling links of clues, which in the total made a fair chain of circumstantial evidence. But that was all. That is the way the case stood on Tuesday night, March the thirteenth. Mr. Ladley was taken away at nine o'clock. He was perfectly cool, asked me to help him pack a suit case, and whistled while it was being done. He requested to be allowed to walk to the jail, and went quietly, with a detective on one side and I think a sheriff's officer on the other. Just before he left, he asked for a word or two with me, and when he paid his bill up to date, and gave me an extra dollar for taking care of Peter, I was almost overcome. He took the manuscript of his play with him, and I remember his asking if he could have any typing done in the jail. I had never seen a man arrested for murder before, but I think he was probably the coolest suspect the officers had ever seen. They hardly knew what to make of it. Mr. Reynolds and I had a cup of tea after all the excitement, and were sitting at the dining-room table drinking it, when the bell rang. It was Mr. Howell! He half staggered into the hall when I opened the door, and was for going into the parlor bedroom without a word. "Mr. Ladley's gone, if you want him," I said. I thought his face cleared. "Gone!" he said. "Where?" "To jail." He did not reply at once. He stood there, tapping the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other. He was dirty and unshaven. His clothes looked as if he had been sleeping in them. "So they've got him!" he muttered finally, and turning, was about to go out the front door without another word, but I caught his arm. "You're sick, Mr. Howell," I said. "You'd better not go out just yet." "Oh, I'm all right." He took his handkerchief out and wiped his face. I saw that his hands were shaking. "Come back and have a cup of tea, and a slice of home-made bread." He hesitated and looked at his watch. "I'll do it, Mrs. Pitman," he said. "I suppose I'd better throw a little fuel into this engine of mine. It's been going hard for several days." He ate like a wolf. I cut half a loaf into slices for him, and he drank the rest of the tea. Mr. Reynolds creaked up to bed and left him still eating, and me still cutting and spreading. Now that I had a chance to see him, I was shocked. The rims of his eyes were red, his collar was black, and his hair hung over his forehead. But when he finally sat back and looked at me, his color was better. "So they've canned him!" he said. "Time enough, too," said I. He leaned forward and put both his elbows on the table. "Mrs. Pitman," he said earnestly, "I don't like him any more than you do. But he never killed that woman." "Somebody killed her." "How do you know? How do you know she is dead?" Well, I didn't, of course--I only felt it. "The police haven't even proved a crime. They can't hold a man for a supposititious murder." "Perhaps they can't but they're doing it," I retorted. "If the woman's alive, she won't let him hang." "I'm not so sure of that," he said heavily, and got up. He looked in the little mirror over the sideboard, and brushed back his hair. "I look bad enough," he said, "but I feel worse. Well, you've saved my life, Mrs. Pitman. Thank you." "How is my--how is Miss Harvey?" I asked, as we started out. He turned and smiled at me in his boyish way. "The best ever!" he said. "I haven't seen her for days, and it seems like centuries. She--she is the only girl in the world for me, Mrs. Pitman, although I--" He stopped and drew a long breath. "She is beautiful, isn't she?" "Very beautiful," I answered. "Her mother was always--" "Her mother!" He looked at me curiously. "I knew her mother years ago," I said, putting the best face on my mistake that I could. "Then I'll remember you to her, if she ever allows me to see her again. Just now I'm _persona non grata_." "If you'll do the kindly thing, Mr. Howell," I said, "you'll _forget_ me to her." He looked into my eyes and then thrust out his hand. "All right," he said. "I'll not ask any questions. I guess there are some curious stories hidden in these old houses." Peter hobbled to the front door with him. He had not gone so far as the parlor once while Mr. Ladley was in the house. * * * * * They had had a sale of spring flowers at the store that day, and Mr. Reynolds had brought me a pot of white tulips. That night I hung my mother's picture over the mantel in the dining-room, and put the tulips beneath it. It gave me a feeling of comfort; I had never seen my mother's grave, or put flowers on it. _ |
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