The Girl at Central/Chapter 4

HEN I come to the next day I can't make my story plain if I only tell what I saw and heard. I didn't even pick up the most important message in the tragedy. It came at half-past nine that night through the Corona Exchange and was sent from a pay station so there was no record of it, only Jack Reddy's word—but I'm going too fast; that belongs later.

What I've got to do is to piece things together as I got them from the gossip in the village, from the inquest, and from the New York papers. All I ask of you is to remember that I'm up against a stunt that's new to me and that I'm trying to get it over as clear as I can.

The best way is for me to put down first Sylvia's movements on that tragic Sunday.

About five in the afternoon Sylvia and Mrs. Fowler had tea in the library. When that was over—about half-past—Sylvia went away, saying she was going to her room to write letters, and her mother retired to hers for the nap she always took before dinner. What happened between then and the time when Mrs. Fowler sent the message to the Doctor I heard from Anne Hennessey. It was this way:

They had dinner late at Mapleshade—half-past seven—and when Sylvia didn't come down Mrs. Fowler sent up Harper to call her. He came back saying she wasn't in her room, and Mrs. Fowler, getting uneasy, went up herself, sending Harper to find Virginie Dupont. It wasn't long before they discovered that neither Sylvia nor Virginie were in the house.

When she realized this Mrs. Fowler was terribly upset. Sylvia's room was in confusion, the bureau drawers pulled out, the closet doors open. Anne not being there, Harper, who was scared at Mrs. Fowler's excitement, called Nora Magee, the chambermaid. She was a smart girl and saw pretty quickly that Sylvia had evidently left. The toilet things were gone from the dresser; the jewelry case was open and empty, only for a few old pieces of no great value. It was part of Nora's job to do up the room and she knew where Sylvia's Hudson seal coat hung in one of the closets. A glance showed her that was gone, also a gold-fitted bag that the Doctor had given his stepdaughter on her birthday.

All the servants knew of the quarreling and its cause and while Mrs. Fowler was moaning and hunting about helplessly, Nora went to the desk and opened it. There, lying careless as if it had been thrown in in a hurry, was Jack Reddy's letter. She gave a glance at it and handed it to Mrs. Fowler. With the letter in her hand Mrs. Fowler ran downstairs and telephoned to the Doctor.

The poor lady was in a terrible way and when Anne got back she had to sit with her, trying to quiet her till the Doctor came back. That wasn't till nearly two in the morning, when he reached home, dead beat, saying he'd come round the turnpike from the Riven Rock Road and seen no sign of either Sylvia or Jack Reddy.

No one at Mapleshade saw Sylvia leave the house, no one in Longwood saw her pass through the village, yet, two and a half hours from the time she had made the date with Mr. Reddy, she was seen again, over a hundred miles from her home, in the last place anyone would have expected to find her.

Way up on the turnpike, two miles from Cresset's Crossing, there's a sort of roadhouse where the farm hands spend their evenings and automobilists stop for drinks and gasoline. It's got a shady reputation, being frequented by a rough class of people and once there was a dago—a laborer on Cresset's Farm—killed there in a drunken row. It's called the Wayside Arbor, which doesn't fit, sounding innocent and rural, though in the back there is a trellis with grapes growing over it and tables set out under it in warm weather.

At this season it's a dreary looking spot, an old frame cottage a few yards back from the road, with a broken-down piazza and a door painted green leading into the bar. Along the top of the piazza goes the sign "Wayside Arbor," with advertisements for some kind of beer at each end of it, and in the window there's more advertisements for whisky and crackers and soft drinks. Nailed to one of the piazza posts is a public telephone sign standing out very prominent.

At the time of the Hesketh mystery I'd only seen it once, one day in the summer when I was out in a hired car with Mrs. Galway and two gentlemen friends from New York. We'd been to Bloomington by train and were motoring back and stopped to get some beer. But we ladies, not liking the looks of the place, wouldn't go in and had our beer brought out to us by the proprietor, Jake Hines, a tough-looking customer in a shirt without a collar and one of his suspenders broken.

It's very lonesome round there. The nearest house is Cresset's, a half mile away across the fields. Back of it and all round is Cresset's land, some of it planted in crops and then strips of woods, making the country in summer look lovely with the dark and the light green.

Sunday evening there were only two people in the Wayside Arbor bar, Hines and his servant, Tecla Rabine, a Bohemian woman. Mrs. Hines was upstairs in the room above in bed with a cold. There was a fire burning in the stove, as a good many of Hines's customers were the dagoes that work at Cresset's and the other farms and they liked the place warm. Hines was reading the paper and Tecla Rabine was cleaning up the bar before she went upstairs, she having a toothache and wanting to get off to bed.

At the inquest Hines swore that he heard no sound of a car or of wheels—which, he said, he would have noticed, as that generally meant business—when there was a step on the piazza, the door opened and a lady came in. He didn't know who she was but saw right off she wasn't the kind that you'd expect to see in his place. She had on a long dark fur coat, a close-fitting plush hat with a Shetland veil pushed up round the brim, and looked pale, and, he thought, scared. It was Sylvia Hesketh, but he didn't know that till afterward.

She asked him right off if she could use his telephone and he pointed to the booth in the corner. She went in and closed the door and Hines stepped to the window and looked out to see if there was a car or a carriage that he hadn't heard, the mud making the road soft. But there was nothing there. Before he was through looking he heard the booth door open and turning back saw her come out. He said she wasn't five minutes sending her message.

That telephone message was the most mysterious one in the case. It was transmitted through the Corona Exchange to Firehill and there was no one in the world who heard it but Jack Reddy. I'm going to put it down here, copied from the newspaper reports of the inquest:

That was all. Before he could ask her a question she'd disconnected. And, naturally, he made no effort to find out where the call had come from, being in such a hurry to get to her—Sylvia who was in trouble and wanted him to come.

When she came out of the booth she carried a small purse in her hand and Hines then noticed that she had only one glove on—the left—and that her right hand was scratched in several places. Thinking she looked cold he asked her if she would have something to drink and she said no, then pushed back her cuff and looked at a bracelet watch set in diamonds and sapphires that she wore on her wrist.

"Twenty minutes to ten," she said. "I'll wait here for a little while if you don't mind."

She went over to the stove, pulled up a chair and sat down, spreading her hands out to the heat, and when they were warm, opening her coat collar, and turning it back from her neck. Both Hines and Tecla Rabine noticed that her feet were muddy and that there were twigs and dead leaves caught in the edge of her skirt. As she didn't seem inclined to say anything, Hines, who admitted that he was ready to burst with curiosity, began to question her, trying to find out where she'd come from and what she was waiting for.

"You come a long way, I guess," he said.

She just nodded.

"From Bloomington maybe?" he asked.

"No, the other direction—toward Longwood."

"Car broken down?" he said next, and she answered sort of indifferent,

"Yes, it's down the road."

"Maybe I might go and lend a hand," he suggested and she answered quick to that:

"No, it's not necessary. They can fix it themselves," then she added, after a minute, "I've telephoned for someone to come for me and if the car's really broken we can tow it back."

That seemed so straight and natural that Hines began to get less curious, still he wanted to know who she was and tried to find out.

"You come a long ride if you come from Longwood," he said.

But he didn't get any satisfaction, for she answered:

"Is it a long way there?"

"About a hundred and eighteen miles by the turnpike—a good bit shorter by the Firehill Road, but that's pretty bad after these rains.

"Most of the roads are bad, I suppose," she said, as if she wasn't thinking of her words.

They were silent for a bit, then he tried again:

"What's broke in your auto?"

And she answered that sharp as if he annoyed her and she was setting him back in his place:

"My good man, I haven't the least idea. That's the chauffeur's business, not mine."

He asked her some more questions but he couldn't get anything out of her. He said she treated him sort of haughty as if she wanted him to stop. So after a while he said no more, but sat by the bar pretending to read his paper. Tecla Rabine came and went, tidying up for the night and none of them said a word.

A little before ten she got up and buttoned her coat, saying she was going. Hines was surprised and asked her if she wouldn't wait there for the auto, and she said no, she'd walk up the road and meet it.

He asked her which way it was coming and she said: "By the Firehill Road. How far is that from here?"

He told her about a quarter of a mile and she answered that she'd just about time to get there and catch it as it came into the turnpike.

Hines urged her to stay but she said no, she was cramped with sitting and needed a little walk; it was early yet and there was nothing to be afraid of. She bid him good night very cordial and pleasant and went out.

He stood in the doorway watching her as far as he could see, then told Tecla, whose toothache was bad, to go to bed. After she'd gone he locked up, went upstairs to his wife and told her about the strange lady. His wife said he'd done wrong to let her go, it wasn't right for a person like that to be alone on such a solitary road, especially with some of the farm hands, queer foreigners, no better than animals.

She worked upon his feelings till she got him nervous and he was going to get a lantern and start out when he heard the sound of an auto horn in the distance. He stepped to the window and watched and presently saw a big car with one lamp dark coming at a great clip down from the Firehill Road direction. The moon had come out a short while before, so that if he'd looked he could have seen the people in the car, but supposing it was the one the lady was waiting for, he turned from the window, and, thinking no more about it, went to bed.

Before he was off to sleep he heard another auto horn and the whirr of a car passing. He couldn't say how long after this was, as he was half asleep.

How long he'd slept he didn't know—it really was between four and five in the morning—when he was roused by a great battering at the door and a sound of voices. He jumped up just as he was, ran to the window and opened it. There in the road he could see plain—the clouds were gone, the moon sailing clear and high—a motor and some people all talking very excited, and one voice, a woman's, saying over and over, "Oh, how horrible—how horrible!"

He took them for a party of merry-makers, half drunk and wanting more, and called down fierce and savage:

"What in thunder are you doing there?"

One of them, a man standing on the steps of the piazza, looked up at him and said:

"There's a murdered woman up the road here, that's all."

As he ran to the place with the men—there were two of them—they told him how they were on a motor trip with their wives and that night were going from Bloomington to Huntley. The moon being so fine they were going slow, otherwise they never would have found the body, which was lying by the roadside. A pile of brushwood had been thrown over it, but one hand had fallen out beyond the branches and one of the women had seen it, white in the moonlight.

They had unfastened an auto lamp and it was standing on the ground beside her. Hines lifted it and looked at her. She lay partly on her side, her coat loosely drawn round her. The right arm was flung out as if when the body stiffened it might have slipped down from a position across the chest. As he held the lantern close he saw below the hat, pulled down on her head, with the torn rags of veil still clinging to it, a thin line of blood running down to where the pearl necklace rested, untouched, round her throat.

It was Sylvia Hesketh, her skull fractured by a blow that had cracked her head like an egg shell.