Afternoon Tea Mysteries Vol Three Page 5

  “And yet,” said he, with the gallantry of a young politician, “for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?”

  The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went to the sink and began washing his hands. He turned to wipe them on the roller towel—whirled it for a cleaner place.

  “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?”

  He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the sink.

  “There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm,” said Mrs. Hale stiffly.

  “To be sure. And yet”—with a little bow to her—“I know there are some Dickson County farm-houses that do not have such roller towels.” He gave it a pull to expose its full length again.

  “Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.”

  “Ah, loyal to your sex, I see,” he laughed. He stopped and gave her a keen look. “But you and Mrs. Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too.”

  Martha Hale shook her head.

  “I’ve seen little enough of her of late years. I’ve not been in this house—it’s more than a year.”

  “And why was that? You didn’t like her?”

  “I liked her well enough,” she replied with spirit. “Farmers’ wives have their hands full, Mr. Henderson. And then—” She looked around the kitchen.

  “Yes?” he encouraged.

  “It never seemed a very cheerful place,” said she, more to herself than to him.

  “No,” he agreed; “I don’t think any one would call it cheerful. I shouldn’t say she had the home-making instinct.”

  “Well, I don’t know as Wright had, either,” she muttered.

  “You mean they didn’t get on very well?” he was quick to ask.

  “No; I don’t mean anything,” she answered, with decision. As she turned a little away from him, she added: “But I don’t think a place would be any the cheerfuler for John Wright’s bein’ in it.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs. Hale,” he said. “I’m anxious to get the lay of things upstairs now.”

  He moved toward the stair door, followed by the two men.

  “I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does’ll be all right?” the sheriff inquired. “She was to take in some clothes for her, you know—and a few little things. We left in such a hurry yesterday.”

  The county attorney looked at the two women whom they were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.

  “Yes—Mrs. Peters,” he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff’s wife. “Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us,” he said, in a manner of entrusting responsibility. “And keep your eye out, Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the motive—and that’s the thing we need.”

  Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a show man getting ready for a pleasantry.

  “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door.

  The women stood motionless and silent, listening to the footsteps, first upon the stairs, then in the room above them.

  Then, as if releasing herself from something strange, Mrs. Hale began to arrange the dirty pans under the sink, which the county attorney’s disdainful push of the foot had deranged.

  “I’d hate to have men comin’ into my kitchen,” she said testily—“snoopin’ round and criticizin’.”

  “Of course it’s no more than their duty,” said the sheriff’s wife, in her manner of timid acquiescence.

  “Duty’s all right,” replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; “but I guess that deputy sheriff that come out to make the fire might have got a little of this on.” She gave the roller towel a pull. “Wish I’d thought of that sooner! Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked up, when she had to come away in such a hurry.”

  She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not “slicked up.” Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag—half full.

  Mrs. Hale moved toward it.

  “She was putting this in there,” she said to herself—slowly.

  She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home—half sifted, half not sifted. She had been interrupted, and had left things half done. What had interrupted Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done? She made a move as if to finish it,—unfinished things always bothered her,—and then she glanced around and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching her—and she didn’t want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she had got of work begun and then—for some reason—not finished.

  “It’s a shame about her fruit,” she said, and walked toward the cupboard that the county attorney had opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: “I wonder if it’s all gone.”

  It was a sorry enough looking sight, but “Here’s one that’s all right,” she said at last. She held it toward the light. “This is cherries, too.” She looked again. “I declare I believe that’s the only one.”

  With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to the sink, and wiped off the bottle.

  “She’ll feel awful bad, after all her hard work in the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer.”

  She set the bottle on the table, and, with another sigh, started to sit down in the rocker. But she did not sit down. Something kept her from sitting down in that chair. She straightened—stepped back, and, half turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman who had sat there “pleatin’ at her apron.”

  The thin voice of the sheriff’s wife broke in upon her: “I must be getting those things from the front room closet.” She opened the door into the other room, started in, stepped back. “You coming with me, Mrs. Hale?” she asked nervously. “You—you could help me get them.”

  They were soon back—the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a thing to linger in.

  “My!” said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the table and hurrying to the stove.

  Mrs. Hale stood examining the clothes the woman who was being detained in town had said she wanted.

  “Wright was close!” she exclaimed, holding up a shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making over. “I think maybe that’s why she kept so much to herself. I s’pose she felt she couldn’t do her part; and then, you don’t enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively—when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. But that—oh, that was twenty years ago.”

  With a carefulness in which there was something tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them at one corner of the table. She looked up at Mrs. Peters, and there was something in the other woman’s look that irritated her.

  “She don’t care,” she said to herself. “Much difference it makes to her whether Minnie Foster had pretty clothes when she was a girl.”

  Then she looked again, and she wasn’t so sure; in fact, she hadn’t at any time been perfectly sure about Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into things.

  “This all you was to take in?” asked Mrs. Hale.

  “No,” said the sheriff’s wife; “she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want,” she ventured in her nervous little way, “for there’s not much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her feel more natural. If you’re used to wearing an apron—. She said they were in the bottom drawer of this cupboard. Yes—here they are. And then her little shawl that always hung on the stair door.”

  She took the small gray shawl from behind the door leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.

  Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the other woman.

  “Mrs. Peters!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hale?”

  “Do you think
she—did it?”

  A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters’ eyes.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, in a voice that seemed to shrink away from the subject.

  “Well, I don’t think she did,” affirmed Mrs. Hale stoutly. “Asking for an apron, and her little shawl. Worryin’ about her fruit.”

  “Mr. Peters says—” Footsteps were heard in the room above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in a lowered voice: “Mr. Peters says—it looks bad for her. Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he’s going to make fun of her saying she didn’t—wake up.”

  For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, “Well, I guess John Wright didn’t wake up—when they was slippin’ that rope under his neck,” she muttered.

  “No, it’s strange,” breathed Mrs. Peters. “They think it was such a—funny way to kill a man.”

  She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh, abruptly stopped.

  “That’s just what Mr. Hale said,” said Mrs. Hale, in a resolutely natural voice. “There was a gun in the house. He says that’s what he can’t understand.”

  “Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a motive. Something to show anger—or sudden feeling.”

  “Well, I don’t see any signs of anger around here,” said Mrs. Hale. “I don’t—”

  She stopped. It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly she moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun—and not finished.

  After a moment she stepped back, and said, in that manner of releasing herself:

  “Wonder how they’re finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little more red up up there. You know,”—she paused, and feeling gathered,—“it seems kind of sneaking: locking her up in town and coming out here to get her own house to turn against her!”

  “But, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife, “the law is the law.”

  “I s’pose ’tis,” answered Mrs. Hale shortly.

  She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up she said aggressively:

  “The law is the law—and a bad stove is a bad stove. How’d you like to cook on this?”—pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven—and the thought of her never going over to see Minnie Foster—.

  She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: “A person gets discouraged—and loses heart.”

  The sheriff’s wife had looked from the stove to the sink—to the pail of water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for evidence against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in the eyes of the sheriff’s wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it was gently:

  “Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We’ll not feel them when we go out.”

  Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, “Why, she was piecing a quilt,” and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.

  Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks out on the table.

  “It’s log-cabin pattern,” she said, putting several of them together. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:

  “Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?”

  The sheriff threw up his hands.

  “They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!”

  There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming of hands over the stove, and then the county attorney said briskly:

  “Well, let’s go right out to the barn and get that cleared up.”

  “I don’t see as there’s anything so strange,” Mrs. Hale said resentfully, after the outside door had closed on the three men—“our taking up our time with little things while we’re waiting for them to get the evidence. I don’t see as it’s anything to laugh about.”

  “Of course they’ve got awful important things on their minds,” said the sheriff’s wife apologetically.

  They returned to an inspection of the block for the quilt. Mrs. Hale was looking at the fine, even sewing, and preoccupied with thoughts of the woman who had done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff’s wife say, in a queer tone:

  “Why, look at this one.”

  She turned to take the block held out to her.

  “The sewing,” said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way. “All the rest of them have been so nice and even—but—this one. Why, it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!”

  Their eyes met—something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other. A moment Mrs. Hale sat there, her hands folded over that sewing which was so unlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had pulled a knot and drawn the threads.

  “Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?” asked the sheriff’s wife, startled.

  “Just pulling out a stitch or two that’s not sewed very good,” said Mrs. Hale mildly.

  “I don’t think we ought to touch things,” Mrs. Peters said, a little helplessly.

  “I’ll just finish up this end,” answered Mrs. Hale, still in that mild, matter-of-fact fashion.

  She threaded a needle and started to replace bad sewing with good. For a little while she sewed in silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she heard:

  “Mrs. Hale!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Peters?”

  “What do you suppose she was so—nervous about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing a thing not important enough to spend much time on. “I don’t know as she was—nervous. I sew awful queer sometimes when I’m just tired.”

  She cut a thread, and out of the corner of her eye looked up at Mrs. Peters. The small, lean face of the sheriff’s wife seemed to have tightened up. Her eyes had that look of peering into something. But next moment she moved, and said in her thin, indecisive way:

  “Well, I must get those clothes wrapped. They may be through sooner than we think. I wonder where I could find a piece of paper—and string.”

  “In that cupboard, maybe,” suggested Mrs. Hale, after a glance around.

  One piece of the crazy sewing remained unripped. Mrs. Peters’ back turned, Martha Hale now scrutinized that piece, compared it with the dainty, accurate sewing of the other blocks. The difference was startling. Holding this block made her feel queer, as if the distracted thoughts of the woman who had perhaps turned to it to try and quiet herself were communicating themselves to her.

  Mrs. Peters’ voice roused her.

  “Here’s a bird-cage,” she said. “Did she have a bird, Mrs. Hale?”

  “Why, I don’t know whether she did or not.” She turned to look at the cage Mrs. Peter was holding up. “I’ve not been here in so long.” She sighed. “There was a man round last year selling canaries cheap—but I don’t know as she took one. Maybe she did. She used to sing real pretty herself.”

  Mrs. Peters looked around the kitchen.

  “Seems kind of funny to think of a bird here.” She half laughed—an attempt to put up a barrier. “But she must have had one—or why would she have a cage? I wonder what happened to it.”

  “I suppose maybe the cat got it,” suggested Mrs. Hale, resuming her sewing.

  “No; she didn’t have a cat. She’s got that feeling some p
eople have about cats—being afraid of them. When they brought her to our house yesterday, my cat got in the room, and she was real upset and asked me to take it out.”

  “My sister Bessie was like that,” laughed Mrs. Hale.

  The sheriff’s wife did not reply. The silence made Mrs. Hale turn round. Mrs. Peters was examining the bird-cage.

  “Look at this door,” she said slowly. “It’s broke. One hinge has been pulled apart.”

  Mrs. Hale came nearer.

  “Looks as if some one must have been—rough with it.”

  Again their eyes met—startled, questioning, apprehensive. For a moment neither spoke nor stirred. Then Mrs. Hale, turning away, said brusquely:

  “If they’re going to find any evidence, I wish they’d be about it. I don’t like this place.”

  “But I’m awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale.” Mrs. Peters put the bird-cage on the table and sat down. “It would be lonesome for me—sitting here alone.”

  “Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” agreed Mrs. Hale, a certain determined naturalness in her voice. She had picked up the sewing, but now it dropped in her lap, and she murmured in a different voice: “But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here. I wish—I had.”

  “But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale. Your house—and your children.”

  “I could’ve come,” retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. “I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful—and that’s why I ought to have come. I”—she looked around—“I’ve never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lonesome place, and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes. I can see now—” She did not put it into words.

  “Well, you mustn’t reproach yourself,” counseled Mrs. Peters. “Somehow, we just don’t see how it is with other folks till—something comes up.”

  “Not having children makes less work,” mused Mrs. Hale, after a silence, “but it makes a quiet house—and Wright out to work all day—and no company when he did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs. Peters?”