The Girl at Central/Chapter 16

T was a long ride to Cresset's Crossing, first on the main line to the Junction and then just time to make a close connection with the branch line to the Crossing.

It was three when we reached there and started out to walk to Cresset's Farm. There'd been rain the day before and the road was muddy, with water standing here and there in the ruts. The weather was still overcast, the sky covered with clouds, heavy and leaden colored. It was cold, a raw, piercing air, and we walked fast, I—careful of my new dress—picking my steps on the edge of the road and Babbitts tramping along in the mud beside me.

I'd never been up there at that season and I thought it was a gloomy, lonesome spot. The land rolled away with fences creeping across it like gray snakes. Here and there were clumps of woods, purplish against the sky, and between them the brown stretches of plowed land, that in the springtime would be green with the grain. Now, under those dark, low-hanging clouds with the naked trees and the bare, empty fields, it looked forlorn and dreary. It was as still as a picture, not a thing moving, but one man, someways off, walking along the top of a hill. You could see him like a silhouette, going slow, with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, and a bit of red round his neck. When he got to the highest point he stopped and looked down on the road. He couldn't see us—the trees interfered—and he seemed, as Babbitts said, like the spirit of the landscape—sort of desolate and lonely, plodding along there, solitary and slow, between the earth and the sky. Then presently even he was gone, disappearing over the brow of the hill.

When we passed the Riven Rock Road and I could see the Firehill one, making a curving line through the country beyond, I had a creepy feeling, thinking of what had happened there eight weeks ago.

"Where's the place?" I said, almost in a whisper, and Babbitts pointed ahead with his cane.

"A little further on, where the bushes grow thick there."

Right along from the station, clumps and bunches of small trees had edged the way like a hedge. After we passed the Riven Rock Road they grew thicker, making a sort of shrubbery higher than our heads. I remembered that just before the murder men had been cutting these for brushwood and even now we passed piles of branches, dry and dead, with little leaves clinging to them like brown rags. Where the Firehill Road ran into the turnpike the growth was tangled and close, almost a small wood.

It wasn't far beyond that Babbitts pointed out the place. There was an edge of shriveled grass and on this she had been found with the branches piled over her. He drew with his cane where she had lain between the trees and the road.

"You can see just how the murderer worked," he said. "He attacked Miss Hesketh here, burst out of the darkness on her and killed her with one blow—you remember there was no sign either about her or the surroundings of a struggle—and almost immediately heard the Doctor's auto horn. We can place that by the scream the Bohemian woman heard."

"Do you think he was there when the Doctor passed?" I asked.

"Of course he was. He hadn't had time to arrange the body. That was done after the Doctor had gone by—done after the moon came out. Reddy said it was as bright as day when he got there. By that brightness the murderer did the work of concealment."

I stepped back into the mud and looked down to where the Firehill Road entered the turnpike a few yards farther on.

"He must have heard Mr. Reddy's horn before the car came in sight. By that time he had probably finished and stolen away."

"I don't think so," said Babbitts. "He couldn't have done it without some noise and Reddy, who was listening and watching for Sylvia, was positive there wasn't a sound. That human devil was back among the bushes when Reddy's car came round the turn. And he must have stayed there—afraid to move—watching Reddy, first as he waited, then as he slowly ran back and forth. God, what a situation—one man looking for the woman he loved, her murderer hidden a few yards from him, and between them both her dead body!"

I seemed to see it: the road bathed in moonlight, the murderer huddled down in the black shadow, and Reddy in the car looking now this way and now that, expecting her to come. How terribly still it must have been, not a sound except the rustling of the withered leaves. I could imagine the light from the racer's lamps, shooting out in two long yellow rays, showing every rut and ridge, so that that grim watching face had to draw down lower still in the darkness of the underbrush. Did he know who Reddy was waiting for? What did he feel when the auto moved and one swerve sideways would have sent those yellow rays over the heap of branches on the grass? As Babbitts said, he must have been afraid to move, must have cowered there and seen the racer glide away and then come back; and still bent behind the network of twigs have watched the man at the wheel, as he looked up and down the road, waited and listened, every now and then sounding the horn, that broke into the silence like a weird, hollow cry.

"Oh, come on," I said suddenly, seizing Babbitts' arm. "Let's go up to Cresset's where it's bright and cheerful."

We had a lovely time at Cresset's. My, but they were a nice family! Farmer Cresset, a big, kind, jolly man and his two sons, splendid, sun-burned chaps, and his little daughter, as fresh as a peach and as shy as a kitten. I loved them all, and Mrs. Cresset best. She made me think of my mother, not that she looked like her, but I guess because she had something about her that's about all women who've had families they loved.

They gave us tea and cake and they joked Babbitts good and hard about coming out there and pretending to be a tourist.

"Never mind, son," Farmer Cresset said, "you got it out of the old woman. I couldn't make her tell; seemed like she thought she'd be arrested for the crime if she up and confessed about that feller."

It was getting on for evening when we left to go to the Wayside Arbor. We'd planned to have our supper there and then go back by the branch line, catching a train at the Crossing at eight-thirty. The Cressets were real sorry to have us go, especially there.

"It ain't a nice place," said Mrs. Cresset, as she kissed me good-bye, "but we're hoping to see it cleared out soon. Tom's stirring Heaven and earth to get Hines' license revoked."

"I guess Heaven's lending a hand," said the farmer, "for I hear Hines' business is bad since the fatality. We've a lot of foreign labor round here and they're mighty superstitious and are giving his place the go-by."

It was dark when we saw the lights of the Wayside Arbor, shining out across the road. We'd expected a moon to light us home, but the clouds, though they weren't as thick as they had been, were all broken up into little bits over the sky, like Heaven was paved with them.

The Arbor was quiet as we stepped up and opened the bar door, and there, just like on the night of the murder, was Hines, sitting by the stove reading a newspaper. He jumped up quick and greeted us very cordial and you could see he was glad to get a customer. He sure was a tough looking specimen with a gray stubble all over his chin, and a dirty sweater hanging open over a dirtier shirt that had no collar and was fastened with a fake gold button that left a black mark on his neck. If I thought his looks were bad that day in the summer I thought they were worse now, for he seemed more down and dispirited than he was then.

We asked him if we could have supper and he went out, calling to Mrs. Hines, and we could hear someone clattering down the stairs and then a whispering going on in the hall. When he came back he said they'd get us a cold lunch, but they didn't keep a great deal on hand, seeing as how they hadn't much call for meals at that season.

You could see that was true. I never was in such a miserable, poverty-stricken hole. Leaving Babbitts talking to Hines in the bar, I went back into the dining-room, a long, shabby place that crossed the rear of the house. It was as dingy as the rest of it, with the paper all smudged and peeling off the walls and worn bits of carpet laid over the board floor. At the back two long windows looked out on the garden. Glancing through these I could see the arch of the arbor, with the wet shining on the tables and a few withered leaves trembling on the vines.

When I turned back to the room I got a queer kind of scare—a thing I would have laughed at anywhere else, but in that house on that night it turned me creepy. There was a long, old-fashioned mirror on the opposite wall with a crack going straight across the middle of it. As I caught my reflection in it, I raised my head, wanting to get the effect of my new hat, and it brought the crack exactly across my neck. Believe me I jumped and then stood staring, for it looked just as if my throat was cut! Then I moved away from it, pulling up my collar, ashamed of myself but all the same keeping out of range of the mirror.

In the bar I could hear the voices of Babbitts and Hines, Hines droning on like a person who's complaining. From behind a door at the far end of the room came a noise of crockery and pans and then a woman's voice, peevish and scolding, and another woman's answering back. I don't think I ever was in a place that got on my nerves so and what with the cold of the room—it was like a barn with no steam and the stove not lit—I sat all hunched up in my coat thinking of Sylvia Hesketh coming there for shelter!

Suddenly the door at the end of the room opened and Mrs. Hines came in. She was the match of it all, with her red nose and her little watery eyes and her shoes dropping off at every step so you could hear the heels rapping on the boards where the carpet stopped. She began talking in a whining voice, and as she set the table, told me how the business had gone off, and they didn't know what they were going to do.

Her hands, all chapped and full of knots like twigs, smoothed out the cloth and put on the china so listless it made you tired to look at them. It was better talking to her than sitting dumb with no company but dismal thoughts, so I encouraged her and between her trailings into the kitchen and her trailings out I heard all about their affairs.

For a while after the murder they'd done a lot of business—it made me sort of shrivel up to see she didn't mind that; anything that brought trade was all the same to her—but now, nothing was doing. Only a few automobiles stopped there and the farmhands had dropped off, so their custom hardly counted. And Tecla Rabine, the Bohemian servant, who was a first-class girl, if she did have grouchy spells, had got so slack she'd have to be fired, and she, Mrs. Hines, didn't see how she was to get another one what with the low wages and the lonesomeness.

She trailed off into the kitchen again and I could hear her snapping at someone and that other woman's voice growling back. I supposed it was Tecla Rabine, though it didn't sound like her, my memory of her at the inquest being of a fat, good-natured thing that wouldn't have growled at anybody. And then the door was opened with one swift kick and Tecla came in, carrying a plate of bread in one hand and a platter with ham on it in the other. She didn't look grouchy at all, but gave me that broad, silly sort of smile I remembered and put the things down on the table!

"Well, Tecla," I asked for something to say, "how are you getting on?"

"Ach!" she answered disgusted, and pounded over the creaky floor to a cupboard out of which she took some dishes. "Me? I get out. What for do I stay? No luck here, no money. Who comes—nobody. Everything goes on the blink."

She put the things on the table and then stood looking at me, squinting up her little eyes and with her big body, in a dirty white blouse and a skirt that didn't meet it at the waist, slouched up against the table.

"I heard business was bad," I said, and thought that in spite of her being such a coarse, fat animal, she was rosy and healthy looking, which was more than you could say for the other two.

"What do I get?" she said, spreading out her great red hands, "not a thing. Maybe five, ten cents. Every long time maybe a quarter. Since that lady gets killed all goes bad. The dagoes say 'evil eye.' They walk round the house that way," she made a half-circle in the air with her arm, "looking at it afraid. Me, too, I don't like it."

"It sure is awful dismal," I agreed.

"No good," she said. "Last year this time all the room full—to-night—one man"—she held up a finger in the air—"one only man, and he have lost what makes us to laugh. When I see him, I say, 'Hein, Tito, good luck now you come. Make the bear to dance.' And he says this way"—she hunched up her shoulders and pushed out her hands the way the Guineas do—"'Oh, Gawda, there is no more bear; he makes dead long time.'"

"Bear?" I said, and then I remembered. "You mean the one that went round with the acrobats. It's dead, is it?"

Tecla nodded.

"Gone dead in the country. And he says he starve now with no bear to get pennies. The boss says we all starve, and gave him a drink and cheese and bread. Ach!"—she shook her head, as if the loss of the bear was the last straw—"I no can stand it—nothing doing, no money, no more laughs—I quit."

I didn't blame her. If you gave me two hundred a month I wouldn't have stayed there.

Just then Babbitts came in and we began our supper; cold ham and stale bread and coffee that I know was the morning's heated over. Tecla went into the kitchen and I said to him, low and guarded:

"What's Hines been saying to you?"

He answered in the same key:

"Oh, putting up a hard luck story. Cresset needn't bother. He wants to pull up stakes and go West."

"Will they let him?"

"That's one of the things he's been talking about. He says if he makes a move it'll look suspicious, and if he stays he'll be ruined. He certainly is up against it."

I shot a glance from the kitchen to the bar door and then leaned across the table, almost whispering:

"I don't see that our investigations have got us anything but a bad supper."

"Neither do I," he whispered back. "The place looks like a stage setting for The Bandits' Den, but the people don't impress me that way at all."

The kitchen door swung back and Mrs. Hines came in with a pumpkin pie that tasted like it was baked for Thanksgiving. She hovered round, fussing about us and joining in the conversation. You could see she was hungry for someone to talk to. Both she and her husband impressed me that way, as if they were most crazy with the dreariness of the place, and were ready to fasten on anybody who'd speak civil to them and listen to their troubles.

Before we left, Babbitts went into the bar to settle up and I, remembering Tecla's complaints, called her in from the kitchen and fished a quarter out of my new purse. She was as pleased as a child, grinning all over, and wanting to shake hands with me, which I hated but couldn't avoid.

When we were once more in the road I gave a gasp of relief. I felt as if I'd crept out from under a shadow, that was gradually sinking into me, down to the marrow of my bones. The night was cold, but a different kind; fresh and clear, the smell of the damp fields in the air, and the country quiet and peaceful.

We had a good two miles before us and stepped out lively. It was dark; the clouds mottled over the sky; and in one place, where the moon was hidden, a little brightness showing through the cracks. Babbitts said he thought they'd break and that we'd have the moonlight on our way back.

All around us the landscape stretched black and still. When you got accustomed to it, you could see the outlines of the hills against the sky, one darkness set against another, and the line of the road showing faint between the edgings of bushes. We couldn't hear anything but our own footsteps, soft and padding because of the mud, and off and on the rustling of the twigs as I brushed against them. I don't remember ever being out on a quieter night, and there was something lovely and soothing about it after that horrible house.

We hadn't gone far—about ten minutes, I should think—when I suddenly clasped my wrist and felt that my purse was gone. I had taken it off to give Tecla the quarter and I remember I'd laid it on the supper table when she made me shake hands.

"Oh dear!" I said, stopping short. "What shall I do—I've left my purse there."

Babbitts stared at me through the dark.

"At Hines'?"

"Yes, on the supper table. And it's new, I'd only just bought it. Oh, I can't lose it."

"You needn't. We've time, but you'll have to hit up the pace. Come on quick—that's not just the place I'd select to leave a purse in."

He turned to go but I stood still. I hated going back there and it was lovely walking slowly along through the sharp chill air and the peaceful night.

"You go," I said, coaxing. "I'll saunter on and you can catch me up."

"Don't you mind being alone? Aren't you afraid?"

"Afraid?" I gave a laugh. "I'm much more afraid in that queer joint. Besides, I can't go as fast as you can and whatever happens we've got to catch that train."

"If you don't mind that's the best plan. I'll run both ways."

"Then hustle and I'll walk on slowly. But come whether you find the purse or not, for that's the last train to the Junction to-night, and we mustn't lose it."

"Right you are, and we won't lose anything, the train or the purse. I'll make it a rush order. Go slow till I come."

He turned and went off at a run and I walked on. At first I could hear the thud of his feet quite plainly and then the sound was suddenly deadened and I knew he was on the moist turf by the roadside. The silence closed down around me like a black curtain that seemed to be shutting me off from the rest of the world. I walked on slowly, gathering my skirts up from the wet and the twigs, as noiseless as a shadow in the dark of the trees.

I don't know how much further I went, but not very far because I could just make out the line of the Firehill Road curving down between the fields, when I heard behind me a fitful, stealthy rustling in the bushes.