Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (27 page)

"Come to fish?" Ed asked as we tooled along a familiar shore-side road. "The mackerel's been running."

Uncomfortable, I said, "I came to do some writing. I have to go back Sunday."

We passed the Anchor Saloon. Ed took a back road which skirted the Center, and presently we arrived at the house.

He had made some alterations. The hedges were trimmed, the gnarled trees had been cut down, a new driveway went around to the side. Arched over the drive was a rose arbor.

I was sorry to see the old barn no longer there.

"Hurricane last September," Ed said.

But the front vestibule was familiar. The Victorian parlor was little altered, although the Eye had gone.

"Yes," Ed nodded with a rueful smile, "and the rest of it may go. We had a paying guest last season who was a decorator. Sold Annette on the idea of remodeling the whole place."

"Change and decay," I thought, "change and decay." Another few years, and the last Victorian nicknack might be gone. Another few years after that, and the house itself might disappear. Nothing on earth is possessed with permanence. The Gaslight Era was a matchflare between the Oil Lamp Period and the day of the Mazda Bulb. Our own Atomic Civilization might be no more durable.

"There's Massasoit," I noted. "If you ever do sell that statue, I'd like a chance to buy it. That picture, too— Morning, Noon and Night." Offhandedly I led around to the gramophone. "But I don't suppose you'll ever part with the phonograph."

"That stays," Ed said firmly. Then he shook his head. "Unless Annette makes me sell it to get a television."

I saw I was just in time. One more season, and vestigial Bride-wellia might vanish entirely. Into the limbo of the forgotten past might go the last bit of concrete evidence, the last reliable clue to the killing of Abby Bridewell. Another unsolved murder case wiped off the books by history's inexorable statute of limitations.

To mind came some remembered copybook lines from Christina Gabrielle Rossetti.

Come, gone—gone for ever— Gone as an unreturning river. . . . Gone as the year at the dying fall— Tomorrow, today, yesterday, never— Gone once for all.

I felt a disturbing sense of urgency. As though the Bridewell house were dissolving around me in the twilight, and tomorrow would be too late. Did I still have time?

That was hard to say when I was not quite sure what I was looking for.

For supper we had grilled mackerel, a platter of chicken lobster and a goose the size of a wild swan. On the steamer passage to the Point I had read a newspaper item on the unusual number of swans in the region that spring. Its concluding paragraph advised that poachers would be fined five hundred dollars for shooting the protected birds. Recalling Ed's rack of shotguns, I wondered. But that was not the reason my appetite began to hurt my conscience.

Annette said, "You were here before in April. I remember how it rained."

I said, "Yes, I was."

Ed beamed. "We had a good time spinning yarns. Remember?"

I nodded, ill at ease. My discomfort was heightened when Ed reminded, "We went over all those old papers on the Bridewell case. Earnest's scrapbook and all. You thought you might write an article about the mystery."

"Yes."

"Did you ever write it?" Annette inquired.

Glad to shift my eyes from Ed, I told her, "I never finished it."

I was relieved when the topic took another turn. And relieved when Ed said that he and Annette had made a date to go with friends to the Scenic Palace; would I excuse them that evening.

"Do you mind," I asked, "if I look over some of those old books and things in the attic? Don't bring them down."

"The Bridewell stuff? Sure, go ahead." Ed grinned. He said that he himself hadn't yet found time to go through all of it. "There's reams in that old Saratoga trunk. I clear it out a little now and then."

Annette protested, "The whole place needs clearing. Ed goes up to do it, then sits down and reads the old magazines."

He winked at me. "Police Gazettes. That's why I installed electric lights up there last year. Go on up, help yourself."

When you aren't sure what it is you are looking for, you may find everything or nothing, or everything and nothing. I found both that evening. And something quite unexpected.

I intended a final look at the Bridewell cellar. But on the off chance of discovering a skeleton in some closet, I looked first up under the eaves of the Bridewell attic. If I could not find a closeted skeleton, at least I might discover some clue—a hint— a key.

The only skeletal item in visible evidence was the black, high-bosomed dress form. When I snapped on the overhead light, the form, standing in center floor, cast a disturbing shadow on the rough brickwork of the chimney—the silhouette of a headless and truncated female torso.

I shoved the form into a dark corner. There were enough shadows in the Bridewell attic without that one.

Old books.

The household's intellectual boneyard. Therein I might find something. In uncut pages, the culture rejected. In worn-out bindings the family's education—the sources of its information or misinformation, its basic thinking, its opinions, inhibitions, prejudices—its ideology. I was curious about the Bridewell mentality, but my research was primarily aimed at a lower level. People sometimes leave scraps of paper, mementoes or revelatory marginal notes in old books.

The Bridewells had rejected Ruskin.

They had not read The House of Seven Gables.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel —"With Happy Memories to Lionel from Opal"—had apparently been read by Lionel. (He was deceived by the title? And who was Opal?)

Lalla Rookh, Don Quixote and the Personal Memoirs of U. S.

Grant had been left to the consumption of bookworms unrelated to the genus Bridewell.

Well, the first-generation household had read the brass-bound family Bible. Until the hasp had broken off and the vellum had worn shabby. Then it had been consigned to the attic. Even the Good Book must be dressed up if it is to sit in the parlor.

I suspected the Alger books had been next in favor for assiduous reading. Here was pabulum for the juvenile minds of youthful Earnest and Little Lionel. Phil the Fiddler; Brave and Bold; Sink or Swim; Bound to Rise. In spite of immense vicissitudes which were usually based on poverty, the commercially-minded Alger hero always rose. The formula keynote was struck on the flyleaf of Wait and Hope, or a Plucky Boys Luck. Illustrated was a youthful necktie salesman displaying his wares. The caption read: "There's lots of ways of making money. Do as I do — 'Wait and Hope.'"

The boys had bypassed gift copies of Ben Eur, Silas Marner and Vanity Fair. They had evidently plodded through The Last of the Mohicans —required reading of the gaslight school, until Mark Twain scalped Fenimore Cooper with a tomahawk criticism that exposed the latter's brain as a fountainhead of literary nonsense.

Ten Nights in a Bar Room —that, too, was probably required reading in this Sabbatarian household. So was a copy of Pilgrims Progress.

In his formative years, Earnest Bridewell had been subjected to John D. Quackenbos. Quackenbos s Practical Arithmetic. Quackenbos s Mental Arithmetic. Quackenhoss History of the World.

Standard texts in the American school system of the Gaslight Era, Quackenbos's arithmetics were similar to those in use today. Two times two seems to equal four in any age.

It was evident, however, that the same scientific consistency did not apply to the study of history.

Opening the Quackenbos text at random, I found the following passage concerning Charlotte Corday, heroine of the French Revolution.

"Death by the guillotine she had expected, and she met it with the utmost composure. When the brutal executioner

buffeted her severed head, her cheek flushed at the indignity." *

At that point the Professor's cheek should have flushed. Thousands of little Americans would believe this and similar hogwash, word for word; in fact, they stood to be birched if they refused to believe it. Aesop had nothing on Quackenbos.

In addition to quack history and geography, Earnest and Lionel Bridewell had been dosed with Barnes's New National Reader. From it they were compelled to absorb massive quantities of verse. And because elocution was then in educational vogue, they were called upon to disgorge the stanzas with gestures. Professor Charles J. Barnes tells them how. His text opens with a treatise on the subject of "Expression." To quote:

"EXPRESSION includes in its treatment the consideration of Tone of Voice, Rate or Movement, Force, Pitch, Emphasis, Pauses, Inflection and Modulation."

The Professor does not stop there. He dissects these various categorical elements into sub-elements. For example: "Tone is regulated by sentiment . . . The Conversational Tone is that used in expressing quiet or unemotional thoughts ... A Full Tone is used to express such sentiments as great joy, sublimity, lofty courage, reverential fear, exultation and others of similar nature . . . The Calling Tone is used in loud exclamations, in addressing persons at a distance, and in unbridled passion."

Ah, yes, those yesteryears of the little red schoolhouse—take us back to those good old days when training was "old school." Teachers tolerated no nonsense back then. Courses were stiff, and there was plenty of homework. Education was education.

All right, class, this semester you will memorize the following from Barnes—

Sample:

CURFEW MUST NOT RING TONIGHT . . . Wild her eyes and pale her features, Stern and white her thoughtful brow,

*
Emphasis supplied.

And within her secret bosom Bessie made a solemn vow.

She had listened while the judges read without a tear or sigh,

"At the ringing of the curfew, Basil Underwood must die . . ."

And:

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE . . . Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory! We carved not a line, we raised not a stone,

But we left him alone in his glory. . . .

And:

VIRGINIUS "Then clasp me round the neck once more, and give me one more

kiss; And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way but this." With that he lifted high the steel, and smote her in the side, And in her blood she sunk to earth, and with one sob she died.

And with gestures, mind! Waving your little arms. Posturing. Striking your forehead with anguish. Holding up your hands in appeal. . . . There in the Bridewell attic I could almost hear and see it. Earnest with arm upraised, preparing to smite with steel the "dear little girl." Lionel practicing the Calling Tone as used in "unbridled passion."

Five books remained to the attic stack. By the copyright dates and state of repair, I gathered that this residue marked the high tide of the household culture.

Two of the volumes dealt with humor—a copy of Bill Nye, and Aunt Samantha Goes to the Centenniel. Here was a side of Abby Bridewell I had previously missed. I wondered if she read these adult comics to her invalid husband.

I wondered, too, if Old Abby was the reader who had dog-eared a trashy romance entitled Captain Rudolph's Secret.

The next book at hand did belong to Abby, for the flyleaf bore a signatory demand that the potential borrower return it. A book of poems containing Songs of Many Seasons by Oliver Wendell Holmes. I was surprised at Abby's concern for this volume, until I sighted a marginal mark which called attention to a poem en-

titled Our Banker. Of course. And it seemed in keeping that the following stanza was underlined:

Old Time, in whose bank we deposit our notes,

Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats,

He keeps all his customers still in arrears

By lending them minutes and charging them years.

I picked up the last of the books. This was the strange little paperback with the intriguing title: From the Ball Room to Hell; Facts About Dancing. Between the covers of this 1894 booklet, the Glad Tidings Publishing Company issued a warning "to parents who are blind to the awful dangers there are for young girls in the dancing academy." I wondered at this opuscule turning up in a household unblessed with daughters. A glance at the contents informed me that the "facts" as presented might have been interesting to certain sons.

Once started, one cannot put the booklet down. But at last, and all too soon, it comes to a final summary.

"Two-thirds of the girls who go to dancing school are ruined . . . Did you ever know a lady, who danced to excess, to live to be over twenty-five years of age? If she does, she is in most instances broken in health physically and morally. Beside the harmful exercise there is great danger from the exposure a girl is so often subjected to in a ballroom. She gets in a perspiration during the dance and as soon as it is over rushes to an open door or window with arms and chest exposed. Is there any wonder that so many women of today are unhealthy? The average age of the excessive male dancer is thirty-one."

Today it seems unbelievable that American moralists ever poured out such slop. This outpouring did not occur in the year of Puritan judges and Salem witch trials. The date was 1894— on history's calendar the day before yesterday. The waltz, indeed! Why, by 1911—less than eighteen years later—the nation was two-stepping, syncopating and bunny-hugging from Maine to California. Everybody's doing it! Doing what? Turkey-trot! Give us Alexander's Ragtime Band! Give us the Vernon Castles!

So all the girls expired at the age of twenty-five. All the young men, aged thirty-one, dropped dead. America became a bleak and silent cemetery. Only the pious censors and the sinless moralists lived on to roam among the tombstones of fallen dancers.

How had either of the Bridewell boys managed to retain a semblance of sanity? On the one hand, the Bible: It is harder for a rich man to get into heaven. . . . On the other hand, Alger: There's lots of ways of making money. . . . The moralist: Dancing is death! Professor Barnes: To die is glorious! The sixth Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill! Newspaper headlines of 1898: Remember the Maine!

Well, it seemed to me you couldn't have it both ways, unless you were a schizoid—one of the world's more dangerous characters. The schizoid's, of course, is the maddening dilemma of the person who tries to carry water on both shoulders. Sooner or later he loses his balance, drops one bucket or the other, or both, in an emotional smash that sends him amuck.