 | CHAPTER XII.
WEIGHING THE TESTIMONY. Haunted hearts |  |
12. CHAPTER XII.
WEIGHING THE TESTIMONY.
The murder — its perpetrator — its motive — its manner
of execution — its probable consequences, — these, of
course, constituted the nine days' wonder of Stein's Plains
and the neighboring district. Every ascertained detail of
the affair, every reasonable supposition, every absurd conjecture,
was discussed, and the tavern was naturally the
nucleus of the county gossip, — the centre where rumor
held her court, and whence all her emissaries radiated.
Stein was in high feather. Never, according to calculations
of his made during the small hours of the night,
when there was a temporary lull in the business, had
any thing brought so much money to his till as this murder.
The Stein races were the product of his fertile brain,
and he appreciated the genius which had fathered and
fostered such a lucrative institution; but murder was the
devil's own invention, and never before had Stein fully
realized the allegiance that he owed to the Prince of
Darkness. Why, this one murder was worth to Stein,
in hard cash, more than a dozen horse-races, more than
ordinary profits of a whole year. The weather on the
day succeeding the catastrophe was indeed unfavorable,
for the air was sharp, the snow deep, the roads heavy;
still, on the other hand, it was Sunday and Christmas,
— the former fact giving the news an opportunity to
circulate in the churches, the latter, taken in connection
with the cold, making it reasonable to throng the public
house, and indulge in a holiday drink, flavored with “the
latest particulars.” Then the coroner's inquest, which
took place the following day, was a fresh excitement for
the neighborhood, and a rich harvest to the busy publican
who dined the jurymen, put up their horses, and threw
open his doors to the thirsty crowd. Finally, the funeral,
which it was happily decided should, as a matter of convenience,
take place at the tavern rather than on the
mountain, brought half the inhabitants of the county
together, and might justly have been styled “The landlord's
benefit.”
Taking all these facts into account, reflecting on the
vigorous constitution Baultie Rawle had possessed, and
the risk there would have been of his outliving his
brother-in-law, or making some capricious disposition of
his property, Stein, as one of the legal heirs (through
his wife, who was nobody), could not but congratulate
himself that the loss of the golden guineas on the night
of the murder was more than balanced by the timely
death of the old man and the singularly felicitous circumstances
attending his departure.
That Stein was satisfied, — more than satisfied, — with
the compensation thus made to him, no one would doubt
who could have seen him late at night, divested of the
tragic mask, — worn religiously by day, — complacently
reviewing his cash account, and rubbing his hands with
glee, as he surveyed the sum total derived from one
week's custom.
That Stein — the covetous Stein — had thus mentally
offset his losses by his gains, was proof enough of the
hopelessness of the former. Stein would never have
acknowledged the loss of any thing, much less submitted
to it, except as compelled by necessity.
But, so far as any chance of recovering the guineas
was concerned, the sum total of the week's revelations
was less satisfactory than that of Stein's gains. The
evidence collected previous to the coroner's inquest resulted
in the following verdict, namely, —
“That Baultie Rawle came to a violent death on the
night of December twenty-fourth, 1812, owing to a blow
on the right temple, inflicted by a portion of a broken
sleigh-runner, through the agency of some person or persons
unknown.”
A most unsatisfactory verdict for an excited community!
A most ungrateful one on the part of the coroner
and his aids, considering the travelling expenses, the
dinner at Stein's, the rum punch, and the officer's fees,
all at the county expense.
“Wal, I do vum! that's all they've got to tell, is it?
Any fool might ha' known that much!” cried the indignant
coroner's report; and in this she only represented the
sentiment of the community, who had labored under the
impression that twelve jurymen, imported from abroad,
and empowered to the solemn duty of sitting on a body,
must necessarily be possessed of a species of divination.
The facts stated in the verdict were, indeed, meagre
compared with the rumors which were in circulation.
They were unsatisfactory, too, compared with those which
skilful detectives might reasonably have hoped to establish.
Up to a certain point the testimony regarding the
crime was immediate and ample, but there the connecting
thread was broken, and no trace of it could be
discovered.
In addition to the evidence afforded by the impressions
on the snow and within the house, the owner of the
broken sleigh promptly appeared before the coroner's
jury, and testified to that portion of his property which
had been converted into a deadly weapon. This individual,
a respectable farmer named Boggs, residing beyond
Stein's Plains, on the high road to New York,
further related, that on the evening previous to the
murder a stranger came to his door on foot from
the direction of the city, and proposed hiring his horse
and sleigh for the purpose of continuing his journey
to a town beyond the plains, whither, he said, he had
been summoned to visit a sick relative. In answer to
the objection made on the part of the farmer, that his
sleigh had been weakened the previous winter by a
needing repair, the man had begged to examine the
vehicle, and had declared it, in his opinion, sufficiently
trustworthy for the short journey he had in view. The
farmer, who distrusted the man's appearance, had then
argued that his horse was equally incapacitated for
travel by the loss of one of his shoes; but this objection
had also been overruled, partly by the assurance
that the animal's hoofs would not suffer from his being
carefully driven over roads bedded with fresh snow, but
still more, (as the farmer, who was a poor man, himself
confessed), by the offer of two Spanish dollars on the
spot, and a promise that horse and sleigh should be
restored before noon of the following day. On these
conditions, he had himself assisted the stranger, who had
a stiff finger, in harnessing the old farm horse, and had
seen the man set off alone in the direction of Stein's
Plains.
To corroborate this account and strengthen the chain
of proof, a widow woman, living in a solitary cottage on
the road which ran over the mountain, and near the spot
where marks on the snow indicated the accident to the
sleigh, testified to the following facts: —
On the night of the murder, being kept awake by a
sick child, she had been startled, first, by hearing a gruff
voice outside, apparently addressed to a horse, and then,
by a violent knocking at her door. Upon her cautiously
inquiring from her window as to the cause of the disturbance,
the owner of the same voice called out loudly
with which to repair an injury to his sleigh. He was
a benighted traveller, he said, suffering from the cold and
storm, but compelled to continue his journey across the
mountain with as much speed as possible, making use of
the same plea as that quoted by the farmer, a summons to
the bedside of somebody who was ill. At first she thought
she should be obliged to deny his request, not being
conscious of possessing a rope in the world, except that
which corded up the bedstead, occupied by her invalid
boy. But the boy, who had heard the dialogue and compassionated
the traveller, happened to bethink himself of
his sled, which was furnished with a strong, though
knotted cord, by means of which it was suspended to the
wall of a shed adjoining the house. The child generously
offering it for the stranger's use, the mother admitted
the traveller, led the way to the outer building where
the sled hung, held the light while he climbed a heap of
brush and took it down from the nail, and herself helped
him to detach the rope. She remembered this latter
circumstance particularly, because the man had a sore
finger, bound up with a bit of rag, which made him, as
she said, “kind o' awkard and clumsy like.” Immediately
upon obtaining what he had come to seek, the
man hurried off. She could distinguish his voice for
a moment or two, uttering oaths, which so alarmed her,
she said, that she was glad when, through the darkness,
she saw the vehicle move off, after which all was silence,
nor, though kept awake during the greater part of the night
might easily have passed down the mountain, however,
unobserved by her, as the snow was, by this time, deep
on the ground, and she was confident that there were no
sleigh-bells attached to the horse, — a point on which her
evidence failed to correspond with that of Farmer Boggs,
who had himself, he said, hung a chain of bells around
his horse's neck. From first to last her impression had
been that her visitor was a solitary traveller; she had
heard no voice but his, and had no reason to suspect his
having a companion.
When questioned whether she could identify the rope,
she answered promptly in the affirmative, upon which
the coroner, who was no such fool after all, ordered a
bushel-basket full of ropes to be produced, of various
sizes and descriptions. Without hesitation the woman
selected the very piece of rope with which an attempt
had evidently been made to bind Baultie Rawle. The
child, who had now recovered from his illness, being
summoned and subjected to the same ordeal, at once
seized upon the same tangled and knotted piece of property,
and with dreams of coasting in his little brain,
insisted upon retaining it, crying lustily when this valuable
link in the chain of evidence was taken from him by
the coroner's order, nothing daunted by his mother's horrified
warning, “Don't touch the bloody thing, Joey!
hangin' the varmint is all it's fit fur now;” and only
consoled by a silver shilling, which Van Hausen slipped
into his hand.
What could be more clear than the evidence of such
unsophisticated witnesses. It only remained now to
overtake, identify, and hang the murderer, — processes
which seemed so feasible under the promising state of
the case that the more ardent portion of the community
began almost to speculate whether the character of this
domestic tragedy were not such as to justify Lynch law
and immediate execution.
Great, therefore, was the disposition to charge the coroner
with lukewarmness when he gravely alluded to the
mystery which still overhung the case; and distrust,
amounting to suspicion of connivance at crime at once
attached itself to a city constable, who, as he stalked
among the rustic crowd, was heard to say, “Pshaw!
your evidence ain't worth that” — snapping his fingers
contemptuously in the air.
It was only when time had cooled their ardor, and
successive disappointments checked their zeal, that the
people of Stein's Plains could be brought to acknowledge
what was palpable to less unsophisticated minds, namely,
that, clear as might be the track of Farmer Boggs's
sleigh, it availed nothing, unless, being followed up, it
led to some further discovery; and that, although Farmer
Boggs and the widow might be haunted to their dying
day with the certainty of having seen a murderer face to
face, their conviction on this point was of no benefit to
society unless it could be instrumental in bringing the
criminal to justice: and on both these points the evidence
was greatly at fault.
The trail of the broken sleigh-runner, after being
traced for some miles, gradually melted into those of the
numerous vehicles which, by daylight, were moving in the
direction of New York. Even at the ferry, where it was
hoped a door might have been left open for detection, due
precaution had been observed, for a little short of this
point the sleigh had been deserted of its occupant, who
had doubtless thence made his way to New York on foot,
and without exciting observation. Even these facts did
not come to light immediately; but at length a public
notice being served that a horse without a shoe, and attached
to a broken sleigh, had strayed into Hoboken,
where both might be found at a locality named in the
advertisement, and restored to the owner on payment of
charges, Farmer Boggs, accompanied by a constable of
the district, and attended by a little throng of satellites,
hastened to the place indicated, recognized and reclaimed
his property. The old horse proved to be in an exhausted
condition, as if abused and over-driven; his broken shoe
was dangling from his hoof, and its sharp edge, by continually
galling the opposite leg, had caused such a bruise,
and consequent swelling, that the poor brute limped in a
pitiable manner. The injury to the sleigh proved, to the
great satisfaction of a gaping crowd, exactly to correspond
with the breakage indicated by the fractional part
of the runner found in Baultie Rawle's cottage, with the
additional circumstance that every part of the vehicle
was shattered and strained, as might have been anticipated,
from the hard usage to which it had been subjected
were found carefully stowed away under the seat, there
was nothing further to indicate the purpose to which it
had recently been applied, the character of its occupant,
nor the quarter in which he had taken refuge. If, however,
the witnesses could furnish a life-like description of
the individual who was known to have been abroad on
the night of the catastrophe, he might yet, it was
believed, be traced, detected, and brought to trial. But
when these witnesses were required to furnish a portrait
of the man, their testimony was chiefly remarkable for
its discrepancy. Not that their accounts were so contradictory
as to create doubts regarding the identity of the
person who had hired the farmer's sleigh with him who
had paid the widow a midnight visit. On the contrary,
there were a few points on which they were sufficiently
well agreed to establish this fact — his gruff voice, his
profanity, pertinacity, and his finger bent nearly double,
and protected by a dirty rag, — the third finger of the
right hand, — sworn to with exactness by both parties.
But when it was proposed to placard a description of his
person, the witnesses were sadly at variance. Let any
two persons — excitement apart — undertake to furnish
the details of a man's personal appearance, and there is
generally but little harmony in the coloring. It was unfortunate,
then, but scarcely strange, that the more the
witnesses strove to be graphic, the more blurred and confused
was the sketch they mutually drew.
The one thought him dark-complexioned; the other
declared his face to have been round and ruddy. “He
was about as tall as So-and-so,” was the impression of
one. “No; taller by half a head,” was the conviction
of the other. And as each illustrated his or her recollections
by comparison with one or another of their
neighbors, they contrived, between them, to draw a picture
of a most motley man. Farmer Boggs had thought
him ill-favored in the beginning, but conciliated before
the close of the interview (doubtless by means of the
two dollars), had ended in retracting his first judgment,
and trusting to the man's honest countenance. The
widow, on the other hand, had evidently mistaken him
at first for a benevolent individual, possibly a physician,
on his way, as he assured her, to visit the sick. Doubts
on this point had probably arisen in her mind when she
overheard his profane abuse of his horse; but the horror
of his ferocious countenance which she professed on
examination, must have been the after-growth of her
imagination.
Little Joey had his word, too, in regard to the identification
of the stranger — a circumstance which did not
help to clear up the mystery, since he insisted that the
visitor, whom he had seen striding through his sick room
at midnight, bore a close resemblance to good old
Dominie Van Zandt, the only other person among Joey's
acquaintance of whom the boy stood in awe.
Of course every word that dropped from the mouths
of these three personages, elevated as they were into
gave rise to all sorts of surmises.
One man would not have wished to be pointed out like
Sam the butcher, as being just the height of the murderer;
another was glad he had not Joel Beck's round
ruddy face, for that would be suspected next; one old
woman shook her head, and thought all the doctors round
had better be looking out; and another whispered to a
crony of hers, in the church porch, on Sunday after
the sermon, that the dominie did have a threatening
look in his face when he preached hard doctrine, and
laid down his finger in a terrible way when he meant
something should strike home. If she hadn't always
supposed he was such a good man, she should think
he was one of the sort that might do any thing he
had made up his mind to.
As to the sore finger, the most telling and tallying
point in the evidence, that was dwelt upon at great
length in the parish. Every body's brains were racked
to recall every body's else ailments in that quarter.
Several persons were named who had suffered from
whitlows and chilblains; but it was in every instance
called to mind that they had been healed for a year
or more. The blacksmith's clumsy apprentice, who
was jamming and bruising his fingers daily, was suddenly
brought into prominent notice, and the question
was mooted whether the boy, generally considered
underwitted, might not have disguised himself, and
taken part in the tragedy; but an alibi being at once
Only one eye in the parish had prescience of a
wounded finger, bound with a dirty rag, which criminated
its owner. Only one ear that heard the report
of the solitary fact on which the witnesses were agreed,
was struck with a truth that carried with it instant conviction.
But Angie had felt the truth before. To know
it now was but to make “assurance doubly sure.” And
she kept her own counsel.
The city detectives, relying little on the inconsistent
evidence afforded by rustic testimony, still hoped to
trace the villains by means of the golden guineas, the
silver coin, or the notes and other papers, the property
of Baultie Rawle, which had been rifled from the money
box. But their early and active efforts to win the reward,
promised by the heirs for the recovery of the
valuables, were unavailing; and as there was every
reason to believe that these efforts would relax in proportion
as time diminished the chances of success, the
prospect of the villain's detection grew daily more discouraging.
It was the general opinion, judging from the testimony
of the witnesses, and the identity of the footprints
left in the snow, that there had been but one agent in
the murder; and this in spite of the protestations of
Hannah Rawle, who persisted that there were two or
more men engaged in the struggle. “Don't they s'pose,
the fools, that if there hadn't been more 'n one, me an'
spirited refutation of the possibility suggested by those
who had weighed the evidence, and decided adversely
to her in the matter. Nobody could positively contradict
her on this point. Indeed, in her presence nobody dared
to, for nothing so kindled her temper, or excited her
animosity; but the very individual, who had apparently
been convinced by her argument, would shake his head
when out of her sight, and say, “The old hen's crop is
full o' grit, but one strong man could ha' settled that
tough pair of fowls easy enough, catchin' 'em as he did
arter they 'd gone to roost. Why, the wretch tied the
old man fust, you see, and it was easy enough then to
silence him, and send the old wife flyin'. It was the
blackest kind o' darkness, and she deaf as a post. What
does she know how many hawks pounced on her nest.
One could break it up as well as a dozen!”
The fact that Stein's Tavern and the Christmas races
brought many a foul bird of prey into the neighborhood
at this season, left a wide field open for speculation. Let
the country people discuss the question as they might
among themselves, and cast trembling glances at one
another; let them indulge in vain surmises concerning
respectable individuals, or hint vaguely at the war with
Great Britain, as the exciting cause of this act of violence,
the burden of suspicion always rested finally on the
crowd of gamblers, horse-jockeys, and thieves, which it
was well-known that the city belched forth on occasion
of festivities at the tavern. These men were but little
they seldom, save in single instances, and for temporary
purposes, held any communication with the members
of the rural community, except in the case of young
men, who, like Geordie, had a horse on the course, and
then the intercourse grew so naturally out of circumstances
that it failed to attract special attention. Indeed,
the people of the plains, so far from seeking to avoid
the imputation of having any knowledge of these city
jail-birds, as they now thought proper to term them, had
each some special rogue, swindler, horse-jockey, or passer
of counterfeit money, whom he declared he knew root
and branch, knew to his sorrow, and whom he would be
glad to see swing for this offence. On the whole, the
races fell into greater disrepute than ever, and Stein,
although insinuating his doubts whether the races, or
their frequenters, had any thing to answer for in respect
to the murder, professed himself satisfied that limits
must be put to the popularity of his house, and that
its reputation being well-established, it would be politic
in him to raise his charges, and thus make it more
select.
Once, indeed, Stein made an endeavor to clear his
premises from suspicion, and implicate one otherwise
unthought of and unnamed in such a connection. Of
all the persons who had witnessed the stormy interview
between George and Baultie Rawle, Stein was the
only one both able and disposed to give evidence. Even
he so realized the terrible nature of the charge, and the
breaking the matter cautiously to Van Hausen, — and
here he ended. “Say that agin,” cried Van Hausen,
“and I'll knock every one of yer teeth down yer throat
fur yer, you black villain, you!” shaking his fist at
the landlord, who, physically an arrant coward, was
already quaking and repentant. “Accuse yer own
nephew of a crime like that? Look at home fur crimes
I tell yer!” and the whole current of Van Hausen's
wrath let loose, he now poured out upon the sneaking
wretch such a stream of accusations and threats as
effectually warned Stein of his own damaged character,
and the certainty of a merciless rooting up of much that
would not bear the light; possibly, a retaliatory charge
on the matter of the murder itself, should he ever again
dare to whisper his innuendoes concerning George to
any human ear; and Stein knew Van Hausen and his
own interests too well ever to repeat the experiment.
As time passed on, and the surmises which had been
raised concerning an event that had startled the neighborhood
acquired a more vague, hopeless, and indefinite
character, the Rawle tragedy came to be thought of less
as a murder than a mystery. Had the perpetrator been
discovered, and atonement made, the ghost of the murdered
Baultie might have been laid to rest, and visions of
cruel men, holding up fingers bound with bloody rags,
might have ceased to haunt the imaginations of the
neighbors. As it was, the subject, though no longer
of engrossing interest, was never wholly exhausted. It
of men rehearsed it on stormy evenings in the tavern
bar-room; women, with their heads close together, whispered
its grim details to one another at the fireside;
children trembled in their beds, and heard strange
noises in the dark; and as the chill wintry wind swept
from the mountain across the plains, old and young shivered
and shuddered as they remembered Baultie Rawle.
| CHAPTER XII.
WEIGHING THE TESTIMONY. Haunted hearts | |