The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime by Michael Sims

Author:Michael Sims
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Published: 2010-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER V

The Evidence Points to One

Monday night.—The detective came as I expected. I was up as soon as it was light, and he came across the dewy fields, with his Cyclopædia under his arm. He had stolen out from Phœbe Dole’s back door.

He had me bring my father’s pistol; then he bade me come with him out into the back yard. “Now, fire it,” he said, thrusting the pistol into my hands. As I have said before, the charge was still in the barrel.

“I shall arouse the neighbourhood,” I said.

“Fire it,” he ordered.

I tried; I pulled the trigger as hard as I could.

“I can’t do it,” I said.

“And you are a reasonably strong woman, too, aren’t you?”

I said I had been considered so. Oh, how much I heard about the strength of my poor woman’s arms, and their ability to strike that murderous weapon home!

Mr. Dix took the pistol himself, and drew a little at the trigger.

“I could do it,” he said, “but I won’t. It would arouse the neighbourhood.”

“This is more evidence against me,” I said despairingly. “The murderer had tried to fire the pistol and failed.”

“It is more evidence against the murderer,” said Mr. Dix.

We went into the house, where he examined my box of clues long and carefully. Looking at the ring, he asked whether there was a jeweller in this village, and I said there was not. I told him that my father oftener went on business to Acton, ten miles away, than elsewhere.

He examined very carefully the button which I had found in the closet, and then asked to see my father’s wardrobe. That was soon done. Beside the suit in which father was laid away there was one other complete one in the closet in his room. Besides that, there were in this closet two overcoats, an old black frock coat, a pair of pepper-and-salt trousers, and two black vests. Mr. Dix examined all the buttons; not one was missing. There was still another old suit in the closet off the kitchen. This was examined, and no button found wanting.

“What did your father do for work the day before he died?” he then asked.

I reflected and said that he had unpacked some stores which had come down from Vermont, and done some work out in the garden.

“What did he wear?”

“I think he wore the pepper-and-salt trousers and the black vest. He wore no coat, while at work.”

Mr. Dix went quietly back to father’s room and his closet, I following. He took out the grey trousers and the black vest, and examined them closely.

“What did he wear to protect these?” he asked.

“Why, he wore overalls!” I said at once. As I spoke I remembered seeing father go around the path to the yard, with those blue overalls drawn up high under his arms.

“Where are they?”

“Weren’t they in the kitchen closet?”

“No.”

We looked again, however, in the kitchen closet; we searched the shed thoroughly. The cat came in through her little door, as we stood there, and brushed around our feet.

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