her respect for afamily Bible is greater than her respect for me.
I spent the evening there, Miss Emily's cat on the divan, and themysterious confession lying before me under the lamp. At night thevariation between it and her note to me concerning the house seemed morepronounced. The note looked more like a clumsy imitation of Miss Emily'sown hand. Or--perhaps this is nearer--as if, after writing in a certainway for sixty years, she had tried to change her style.
All my logic ended in one conclusion. She must have known the confessionwas there. Therefore the chances were that she had placed it there. Butit was not so simple as that.
Both crime and confession indicated a degree of impulse that Miss Emilydid not possess. I have entirely failed with my picture of Miss Emily ifthe word violence can be associated with her in any way. Miss Emilywas a temple, clean swept, cold, and empty. She never acted on impulse.Every action, almost every word, seemed the result of thought anddeliberation.
Yet, if I could believe my eyes, five years before she had killed awoman in this very house. Possibly in the very room in which I was thensitting.
I find, on looking back, that the terror must have left me that day.It had, for so many weeks, been so much a part of my daily life thatI would have missed it had it not been for this new and engrossinginterest. I remember that the long French windows of the libraryreflected the room like mirrors against the darkness outside, and thatonce I thought I saw a shadowy movement in one of them, as though afigure moved behind me. But when I turned sharply there was no onethere, and Maggie proved to be, as usual after nine o'clock, shut awayupstairs.
I was not terrified. And indeed the fear never returned. In allthe course of my investigations, I was never again a victim of theunreasoning fright of those earlier days.
My difficulty was that I was asked to believe the unbelievable. It wasimpossible to reconstruct in that quiet house a scene of violence. Itwas equally impossible, in view, for instance, of that calm and filialinscription in the history of Bolivar County, to connect Miss Emily withit. She had killed a woman, forsooth! Miss Emily, of the baby afghans,of the weary peddler, of that quiet seat in the church.
Yet I knew now that Miss Emily knew of the confession; knew, at least,of something concealed in that corner of the rear hall which housed thetelephone. Had she by chance an enemy who would have done this thing?But to suspect Miss Emily of an enemy was as absurd as to suspect her ofa crime.
I was completely at a loss when I put out the lights and prepared toclose the house. As I glanced back along the hall, I could not helpwondering if the telephone, having given up its secret, would continueits nocturnal alarms. As I stood there, I heard the low growl of thunderand the patter of rain against the windows. Partly out of loneliness,partly out of bravado, I went back to the telephone and tried to callWillie. But the line was out of order.
I slept badly. Shortly after I returned I heard a door slammingrepeatedly, which I knew meant an open window somewhere. I got up andwent into the hall. There was a cold air coming from somewhere below.But as I stood there it ceased. The door above stopped slamming, andsilence reigned again.
Maggie roused me early. The morning sunlight was just creeping into theroom, and the air was still cool with the night and fresh-washed by thestorm.
"Miss Agnes," she demanded, standing over me, "did you let the cat outlast night?"
"I brought him in before I went to bed."
"Humph!" said Maggie. "And did I or did I not wash the doorstepyesterday?"
"You ought to know. You said you did."
"Miss Agnes," Maggie said, "that woman was in this house last night. Youcan see her footprints as plain as day on the doorstep. And what's more,she stole the cat and let out your mother's Paisley shawl."
Which statements, corrected, proved to be true. My old Paisley shawl wasgone from the hallrack, and unquestionably the cat had been on the backdoorstep that morning along with the milk bottles. Moreover, one of myfresh candles had been lighted, but had burned for only a moment or two.
That day I had a second visit from young Martin Sprague. The telephonewas in working order again, having unaccountably recovered, and I wasusing it when he came. He watched me quizzically from a position by thenewelpost, as I rang off.
"I was calling Miss Emily Benton," I explained, "but she is ill."
"Still troubled with telephobia?"
"I have other things to worry me, Martin," I said gravely, and let himinto the library.
There I made a clean breast of everything I omitted nothing. The fear,the strange ringing of the telephone bell; the gasping breathing over itthe night before; Miss Emily's visit to it. And, at last, the discovery.
He took the paper when I offered it to him, and examined it carefully bya window. Then he stood looking out and whistling reflectively. At lasthe turned back to the room.
"It's an unusual story," he said. "But if you'll give me a little timeI'll explain it to you. In the first place, let go of the materialthings for a moment, and let's deal with minds and emotions. You're asensitive person, Miss Agnes. You catch a lot of impressions that passmost people by. And, first of all, you've been catching fright from twosources."
"Two sources?"
"Two. Maggie is one. She hates the country. She is afraid of old houses.And she sees in this house only the ghosts of people who have diedhere."
"I pay no attention to Maggie's fears."
"You only think that. But to go further--you have been receiving wavesof apprehension from another source--from the little lady, Miss Emily."
"Then you think--"
"Hold on," he said smiling. "I think she wrote that confession. Yes.As a matter of fact, I'm quite sure she did. And she has establisheda system of espionage on you by means of the telephone. If you haddiscovered the confession, she knew that there would be a change in yourvoice, in your manner. If you answered very quickly, as though you hadbeen near the instrument, perhaps in the very act of discovering thepaper--don't you get it? And can't you see how her terror affected youeven over the wire? Don't you think that, if thought can travel untolddistances, fear can? Of course."
"But, Martin!" I exclaimed. "Little Miss Emily a murderess."
He threw up his hands.
"Certainly not," he said. "You're a shrewd woman, Miss Agnes. Do youknow that a certain type of woman frequently confesses to a crime shenever committed, or had any chance of committing? Look at the policerecords--confessions of women as to crimes they could only have heardof through the newspapers! I would like to wager that if we had thenewspapers of that date that came into this house, we would find aparticularly atrocious and mysterious murder being featured--the murderof a woman."
"You do not know her," I maintained doggedly. And drew, as best I could,a sketch of Miss Emily, while he listened attentively.
"A pure neurasthenic type," was his comment. "Older than usual, but thatis accountable by the sheltered life she has led. The little Miss Emilyis still at heart a girl. And a hysterical girl."
"She has had enough trouble to develop her."
"Trouble! Has she ever had a genuine emotion? Look at this house. Shenursed an old father in it, a bedridden mother, a paretic brother, whenshe should have been having children. Don't you see it, Miss Agnes? Allher emotions have had to be mental. Failing them outside, she providedthem for herself. This--" he tapped the paper in his hand--"this isone."
I had heard of people confessing to crimes they had never committed, andat the time Martin Sprague at least partly convinced me. He was so sureof himself. And when, that afternoon, he telephoned me from the city tosay that he was mailing out some old newspapers, I knew quite well whathe had found.
"I've thought of something else, Miss Agnes," he said. "If you'll lookit up you will probably find that the little lady had had either a shocksometime before that, or a long pull of nursing. Something, anyhow, toset her nervous system to going in the wrong direction."
Late that afternoon, as it happened, I was enabled to learn somethingof this
from a visiting neighbor, and once again I was forced toacknowledge that he might be right.
The neighbors had not been over cordial. I had gathered, from the first,the impression that the members of the Reverend Samuel Thaddeus Benton'scongregation did not fancy an interloper among the sacred relics ofthe historian of Bolivar County. And I had a corroboration of thatimpression from my visitor of that afternoon, a Mrs. Graves.
"I've been slow in coming, Miss Blakiston," she said, seating herselfprimly. "I don't suppose you can understand, but this has always beenthe Benton place, and it seems strange to us to see new faces here."
I replied, with some asperity, that I had not been anxious to take thehouse, but that Miss