Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (26 page)

"Cornelia Ord," I wrote. And let the name stand for contemplation.

One could build a case against Cornelia. Motive and opportunity. Well acquainted with the house. A family intimate. And she could have been there.

And yet? For a Cornelia Ord the cellarway ambush seemed out of character. A formidable woman. A stubborn soul. Probably would have held a grudge for two hundred years—as a matter of principle. But contrive a cunning mousetrap? Strike from concealment? Furtiveness is not consistent with the type of stubborn formidability that saves a mans biscuits for 17 years.

Nor did Cornelia seem the type to plant decoy evidence in an effort to incriminate an innocent man. That is the device of a scorpion mind, of a poisoner and back-stabber. Cornelia may have been determined and unforgiving. Mulishness is not a synonym of craft. Bent on execution, Cornelia would have probably told you off, and clouted you in the face with a flatiron.

The fact remained: she could have gone back to the house; she could have been on the crime scene that evening. Reluctantly I left her on the list of possible suspects.

"Walter Jones."

I had been able to learn little about the orphan boy. Ed had mentioned him only in passing.

Walter was thirteen years old. Was he a young thirteen or an old thirteen? The age differential in boys of thirteen could be important. A boy of thirteen could be mostly child. A boy of thirteen could be part man. And in a place like Quahog Point of the Gaslight Era, a boy of thirteen could be worked like a man. And kicked around like a man.

Earnest Bridewell may or may not have brutalized his mother. But a country squire who bickers over buying his ward a suit sounds like a nasty scrooge, and the evidence to this was in his own scrapbook. Then he headed his household in a day when spare the rod and spoil was a shibboleth which gave many a martinent a chance to exercise a temper. All of winch suggests rough treatment for Walter Jones.

An oppressed boy can become as dangerous as an oppressed Choctaw. Goaded by miseries fancied or real—perhaps if only deprived of a coveted corduroy suit—the boy may rebel like an adult, or a whole Colony of adults.

But whereas a Colony of adults may raise an ideological flag (Taxation Without Representation is Tyranny!) the barefoot boy, incoherent, may seek redress in primitive terms of "getting even." Boy-like, he might dream up a savage ambush, complete with a scalping. It would not be beyond his man-child cunning to invent a decoy contrivance with a bag of shot. Destroy the old lady and place the blame on Earnest. A dandy way to kill two birds with one stone.

The record is unclear. But apparently Walter was on the scene of the crime soon after Abby Bridewell's body came to light. Where was he while it lay in the dark? He stated that he'd gone straight to bed the previous evening after attending a movie. His statement went unquestioned. Seemingly it occurred to no one that the boy could have climbed out of bed five minutes after he climbed in.

But Walter Jones had piped up as a friendly witness for the defense. On the stand he could have ruined Earnest Bridewell. Instead, he ruined Bertha Smeizer's adverse testimony. This performance scarcely accorded with any boyish desire to "get even," much less cover a murder.

Of course, the youngster's testimony could have been bought. On the face of it, bribery seemed likely. Yet the fact that he was probably a suborned witness did not rule him out as a savage who could have scalped Old Abby. So I did not cross off Walter Jones.

"Hobart Cudworth," I wrote, relieved to be done for the moment with Walter.

Here was a party to conjure with. I had pictured him as a straw-chewing clodhopper. It now occurred to me that the portrait had been evoked by the term "hired man" and by his name. Cudworth.

But the point is that names are not character indicators. Cudworth could have been a handsome stripling, as tall, lean and athletic as a pole-vaulter named Arrowsmith. Or he could have been as rolypoly as Santa Claus and as sloppy as a shirttail.

Fat or lean, handsome or homely, Abby Bridewell's hired man had to be analyzed by the record alone. What were the recorded facts concerning Cudworth?

He was born a "Pointer." (That came out at the trial.)

He had not been very long in the Bridewell employ.

Had apparently done his work efficiently enough to satisfy an exacting taskmistress and her splenetic elder son.

On the evening of April 11 had accompanied young Walter Jones to the picture show.

Had returned with the said boy and, like him, had gone straight to bed.

We next hear from Cudworth at six-thirty the following morning. He states that at that hour he was in the kitchen, performing a routine chore. While engaged in this task he noticed the cellar door standing ajar. He went to the cellar door. And at that juncture (to my way of thinking) Cudworth's story invited suspicion.

He looked down the cellarway. Why? Your normal reaction on seeing a door casually ajar is to walk over casually and close it. If, as he implied, he had no reason to expect someone down there, what caused the hired man to peer down into the darkness?

Looking down, he spied the body. To do so, he must have held a lamp, for at that hour of the morning the kitchen windows would have been gray and the cellar-hole black as pitch. So a casual

glance would not have sufficed. Lamp in hand, he must have deliberately peered.

Spying Mrs. Bridewell's body at the foot of the steps, he called down to her. What did he call? "Mrs. Bridewell, are you all right?" Or: "Mrs. Bridewell, what's the matter?" No, he testified that he merely called her name. But it seems inane to call down anything at all to an old lady sprawled prostrate at the foot of steep, stone steps.

When she failed to answer, Cudworth did not go down the steps. Instead, he bolted from the house and "went for help." Surely this was an odd reaction. One might think the man, seeing the old lady lying there, would have gone down to her aid. Well, the yokel may have panicked. But then—

Going for help, he went all the way to the other side of town. Bypassing nextdoor neighbors. Ignoring Dr. Hatfield's down the road (extraordinary on the face of it). Footracing more than a mile to the home of the one "Pointer" least likely to give a damn about Old Abby's welfare. In the hour of dire emergency Cud-worth goes for Earnest Bridewell instead of the family doctor.

Of course, Cudworth may have been a handsome rattlebrain. Or he may have been a loutish dolt. He could have been something else, however. As no one else immediately involved in the case, Cudworth enjoyed a clear field of opportunity.

He lived in the house. He knew its appointments. He was there on the night of the killing—in domicile with the old lady and a thirteen-year-old boy.

Like Walter Jones, Hobart Cudworth could have climbed from his bed five minutes after he climbed into it. Had he so desired, he could have prowled the downstairs rooms from eleven P.M. to six A.M. In this respect, he had a considerable advantage over Walter. As hired man, Cudworth could have fabricated some reasonable excuse for being up and about after bedtime. On some pretext or other, he could have summoned Abby Bridewell to a midnight ambush.

Or suppose he arises at five A.M. with murder in mind. He is there in the kitchen when Abby comes down for an early break-

fast. With an appetite for pickled pears, she goes down to the cellar. Now is Cudworth's chance. A weapon? As handy as a chunk of kindling wood. And what bludgeon could have been more easily disposed of?

After the deed is done and the stove properly stoked, Cudworth makes a quick search for a decoy weapon. Ah, the shot-bag stained with pheasant blood! Now to pin the job on nasty Earnest. He catfoots upstairs to tuck the bag under Earnest's mattress.

That Cudworth had little use for Earnest Bridewell was apparent in the hired mans courtroom testimony. He did not overdo it. He said that the Senator swore at poor Abby "a little." And: "He throwed her down and bruised her up." Violence, yes. But perhaps no more than one might expect of a squire exasperated by his mother. Delivered in this tone of restraint, Cudworth's testimony doubly damned the accused. A witness who knows how to insinuate nuances is nobody's simpleton.

However, a simple question weakened the case against Hobart Cudworth. Mainly, why? To what end would he have slain Abby Bridewell?

Surface facts left the hired man without a patent murder incentive. Robbery? Nothing was stolen. Vengeance? But Cudworth was not "bound out." A tyrannized hired man usually quits before the yoke drives him to homicide.

Cudworth stood to gain nothing tangible by Abby's demise. In fact, it cost him his job.

However, he could have been ordered to carry the pitcher to the well once too often. He could have revolted against a single reprimand or against lumpy oatmeal. He could have nursed a spite acquired when he wore kneepants. Because of such imponderables and the uncertainties of human thermodynamics, I left the hired man on my suspect-list. I rated him "maximum opportunity, minimum motive."

"Lionel Bridewell" I wrote finally. Underlining the name.

I liked Lionel as a suspect. I liked him a lot. It seemed to me that much of Lionel could go on the discredit side of the ledger. No need to review in detail the obvious motive and character

factors. Incentive: total inheritance. Reputation: unsavory. Attitude: reptilian. Deportment: bad. The man was a natural.

One should think that the minions of the State's Attorney General, and surely the County Sheriff, would have grilled the eye teeth out of Brother Lionel. If not for an accomplished matricide, certainly for an attempted fratricide with that shot-bag device. With the case against Earnest evaporating, suspicion positively coagulated around Lionel.

In court he was described as "a man of mystery." He was branded a scoundrel who would try to hang "his own flesh and blood." Before his brother's fate was decided, he slipped away from the courtroom. He looks virtually as guilty as Cain.

With the reputation of a wastrel and a rake, Lionel Bridewell is his own worst character witness. Of course, sexual rakery is not homicide—if it were the dockets would be jammed with some surprising mass murderers. But confirmed rakes are mistrusted by the average layman who, with some logic (and perhaps from experience) may reason that it is but a short step from knavery to foul play.

Expensive indulgences: wine, women and song. According to town talk, Lionel had indulged them all. And, according to bill collectors, such indulgence costs money.

Two barriers stood between Lionel and money—Mother Abby and Brother Earnest. Reduced to fundamentals, the Bridewell case seemed to boil down to a dual-purpose effort to dispose of both. No individual involved in the case had a motive factor as large and as dually inclusive as Lionel Bridewell's.

But on the debit side—a frustrating negative—was apparent lack of opportunity. Lionel had removed himself from the old homestead. His Lookout Hill address was a long way from Quahog Point. He claimed he was in Newport on business, Tuesday, April 11. Claimed he returned to Lookout Hill late that evening. At any rate, he was in his office at Lookout Hill on the morning of the 12th. To have included Quahog Point in this itinerary would have taken some doing.

Well, it just could have been done. Peddling orange pekoe, he

could have been in Newport on midday of April 11. Caught the afternoon boat for Quahog Point. Sneaked to the old homestead during the evening. Walked the peninsular road during the night. Caught an "inland" bus to Lookout Hill and made it by breakfast time. But!

At best he would have needed extraordinary luck to clear the time and space hurdle. The steamer to Quahog Point from Newport was often late. So was the average get-out-and-get-under motorbus. I could not believe that a native so familiar with the regional transportation problem as Lionel would have burdened a murder scheme with this hazardous obstacle race. For any hitch that delayed him on the final lap from Quahog Point to Lookout Hill, anything that prevented his return to base by breakfast time, and his geographic alibi was "jiggered."

In addition, there would have been the problem of traveling incognito. A nondescript Joao Gero might have attracted little attention on the road. Lionel was known to the seaboard area, and the nearer he drew to Quahog Point the greater the risk of recognition.

What were the known facts? Lionel was seen in Newport at midday on the 11th. He was seen in Lookout Hill on the morning of the 12th. By a long, long stretch of highspeed travel he could have reached Quahog Point during the night of April 11-12. If he did reach Quahog Point, he could have slain his mother. But I had to rate him almost zero opportunity.

Still, I left Lionel Bridewell on my suspect-list. In italics.

Mrs. Burton Smeizer. Cornelia Ord. Walter Jones. Hobart Cudworth. Lionel Bridewell.

I stared at the abbreviated list. Who else was there?

There was another—?

To mind came a prickly thought. A name that sent a little breath of frost down the back of my neck. Why hadn't it occurred to me before? Occuring to me now, it was scary.

I formed a resolve to return to Quahog Point and continue my research on locale. Current events intervened, and I did not see the Point again until after V-J Day.

CHAPTER 17

Ed said, "It's been a long time."

I said something fatuous about Hitler, and asked Ed if Luke Martin and his wife, Bengta, had been at the Point recently. He said not for a couple of seasons.

I noticed Gillion's Wharf had been smartened up with some new timbering and paint. Fishbait Fred Fox's hotel had a new roof and a brand new wing. The distant Seagull boasted a small Neon sign.

Ed explained, "Government's put some money in here. The State is going to build a bunch of highways."

Farewell to Quahog Point as a Currier and Ives antique. But its primitive face had not yet been lifted. It still retained its Grandma Moses background, Winslow Homer waterfront and Howard Chandler Christie hotels.

Except for some enlargement of the girth, my host had not changed much, either.