The Wetherel affair :: :: University of Virginia Library

And yet a stroke of deadly violence, as cruel and conclusive as the crunch
of a headsman's axe, had fallen; and in one of the rooms of this summer pleasure-house
a corpse watched with wide-open, glassy eyes for the morning.
During all the latter hours of the night it stared into the darkness, utterly unknown
and unsuspected to the living who were so near it, so that it seemed to
be lying in wait to surprise and shock and terrify them, and this too although
it wore the guise of one who had loved them. From certain points of view
there is something vampire-like, something uncomfortably hostile and ferocious,
in a dead body. To the living, so far at least as concerns their continuance
in physical life, it is a menace and a prophet of evil.

The victim was not Mrs. Dinneford; she had slept that slumber from
which we wake. But some oppressive thing in the air of the house, some subtle
influence which was unfriendly to prolonged repose, aroused her at an unusually
early hour; and unable to close her eyes again, she got up and dressed
herself hastily, meaning to go out and breathe the refreshment of dawn.
First, however, she peeped into her daughter's room, as was her motherly
custom of mornings, to see if the girl slept well. Next, the doors of the
sleeping apartments being all open on account of the summer heat, she went
softly to take a like kindly glance at Nestoria.

To her astonishment she found the room of the guest empty and the bed
undisturbed. Alarmed at once (tender-hearted women are so easily anxious),
she hurried to a window, peered out in all directions, and called, first gently
and then louder, “Nestoria!”

No answer came from within or without; and Mrs. Dinneford, throbbing
with agitation, ran down stairs to continue her search; fearful goblins of suspicion
meanwhile following her fast with such queries as, Sickness? Insanity?
Edward? Had the dear child been taken suddenly and dangerously ill? Had
her perplexities unsettled her mind and sent her out wandering? Had the
headlong and ill-starred Edward so far abused her inexperience and innocence
as to draw her into an elopement? Mrs. Dinneford could think of no other
explanations for this extraordinary disappearance.

On reaching the lower floor of the still quiet and silent cottage, it occurred
to her that she would do well to awaken the Judge and inform him of what
had happened. But in passing through the parlor on the way to his bedroom
she chanced to look into the study, and there, to her amazement, she beheld
her venerable kinsman seated in his office chair. His back was toward her,
his body leaning forward, his arms and head resting upon his writing-table,
his silver hair hanging loosely about his face, and his whole attitude that of
deep slumber.

“Why, Cousin Wetherel!” exclaimed, or rather screamed Mrs. Dinneford.
“Have you been here all night?”

The Judge did not stir; his sleep was awfully, alarmingly profound; and
of a sudden the wondering woman became tremulous with fright. Was it a
fainting fit, or was it apoplexy? Forgetting all about Nestoria, she advanced
hastily to the old man and laid her hand upon his shoulder. In the next instant
she snatched it away and shrieked with all her strength, “Murder!”

The terrible cry awakened or startled all the members of the family,
and brought them one by one into the room, flurried, amazed, and staring.
The first living person of whom Mrs. Dinneford became aware was the
gardener, a quiet, silent, and somewhat stolid man, of the lowly-born English
type.

“Oh, James, he has been killed! see the blood!” hurriedly and mechanically
gasped the horror-stricken woman.

James advanced to the unmoving body, surveyed with profound solemnity
a large crimson, clotted pool on the writing-table, passed an unflinching horny
hand over a white, cold face, and touched with one finger a gash in the hoary
crown. There was no question about the remorseless completeness of the
sanguinary work. The severe and somewhat sunless, but conscientious, benevolent,
and on the whole beautiful life had ended; and the sincere spirit of the
old man, purified through worthy work and worthier aspirations, had risen by
mortal violence to divine mercy.

Having completed his rude diagnosis, James fell back with some brief and
simple remark, the exact phraseology of which Mrs. Dinneford did not note at
the time, merely gathering that the Judge was quite dead.

Now came the cook, the chambermaid, and lastly Alice. There were four
frightened, weeping, and more or less hysterical women together, supported
by only one ignorant, lumpish, and every way inadequate man. Under the
spur of necessity Mrs. Dinneford suppressed her own faintings of spirit, and
gave such directions as were given. She sent the chambermaid to summon
the nearest neighbors, and the gardener to search the earth around the house
for strange foot-tracks. When the cook proposed to remove the Judge to his
bedroom, “and lay him out decently before he stiffened,” she called to mind
in a vague way that there must be legal examinations, and ordered with excited
sharpness, “Don't touch him, and don't touch anything.”

Meantime she was endeavoring to comfort and tranquillize her daughter.
Alice was almost irrational with fright and horror; her jaws quivered so that
she could not articulate with distinctness, yet she talked incessantly. She
asked a hundred questions, and asked them over and over again. “Oh,
mother, did he breathe?” she chattered. “Oh, didn't he breathe just once?
Was he all gone when you came in? Don't you suppose he knew you were
there when you touched him? Don't you suppose he was just a little conscious?
Oh, so sudden! it's worse than the blood, isn't it, mother? Do you
think he saw them when they struck him? Do you think he knew they were
going to kill him? I hope he didn't know it and didn't see them—don't you,
mother? Oh, I would give worlds if he could have told you something about
it. Wasn't it dreadful for him to be alone so! Do you think he was conscious
of it? If he died after they left him, do you think he knew he was alone? Do
tell me something about it. Don't you think anything?”

Terrible mystery of sudden death! The girl was wild to lift its immovable
curtain, and look upon every feature of the tremendous tragedy within.
Death in all its forms, every fashion and incident of death, had an awful fascination
for her. It was a characteristic of the Wetherel stock, derived perhaps
from centuries of serious ancestors who had felt called to reflect much
upon matters beyond the grave, or possibly springing from some still more
remote spiritual source of feeling which had swept the breed into puritanism.
No Wetherel, however light-minded in youth, had ever come to middle age
without gravely pondering the trial of death, and preparing himself for it by

one system of faith or another. And Alice, through her mother, belonged to
this fundamentally earnest-minded race.

“Where is Nestoria?” she presently asked. “Why doesn't she come
here? I will go and tell her.”

Mrs. Dinneford caught her daughter by the hand, and held her fast. For
the first time since she had become aware of the murder she remembered Nestoria's
disappearance; and she feared for Alice's reason, in case some second
tragedy should add its horrors to the one before her.

“What is the matter?” gibbered the shrinking girl, looking about her with
eager eyes. “Did you think you saw them?”

“I want you to stay with me,” said the mother. “We will tell Nestoria
by and by.”

Neighbors soon arrived, men and women and children, all of course in a
buzz of wonder, curiosity, and horror. They were strangers to the family, for
the excellent old Judge had been somewhat patrician in his social ways, and
had not sought to consort with the plain farmers and fishermen of the vicinity.
But the presence of a mortal tragedy necessarily broke down reserve, and enabled
human sympathy to speak its fitting word and do its helpful deed, so far
as words or deeds could be fitting or helpful in such an hour of agitation. A
florid, stoutly built man, in a cotton-velvet sack-coat and soiled treusers of
brown linen, who proved to be the keeper of a small and noisy “hotel” near
by, presently made himself prominent in the babbling confusion, assumed a
leadership over it, and reduced it to order. His first act of authority was to
turn the crowd out of the study and post a sentinel at the door.

Next, turning to Mrs. Dinneford, he asked, “Is there any property gone?
I see the old gentleman's safe is open. You'd better look about and see if
anything is missing, and make a note of it.”

So there was a hasty, flurried examination. No money was found in the
safe, although the Judge always kept a few hundred dollars on hand.

“Burglars,” remarked the tavern-keeper, whose name, by the way, was
Mr. John Sweet. “Looks decidedly burglarish. Anything else gone?”

“I can't see his will,” murmured Mrs. Dinneford, her hands fluttering
over the papers on the blood-stained table, without touching them. “He had
two wills here, an old one that was signed, and a new one that he was writing.
They are gone, they are both gone.”

It was a fresh shock, but it would be hard to say whether she were fairly
conscious of it or not, her feelings were in such a turmoil. That a rich legacy
might have been lost to her, and that the Wetherel estate might now fall entire
into the hands of Edward—so much she comprehended in a vague way,
without a distinct sense of calamity.

“Burglars—yes,” repeated the taverner slowly and after sound reflection.
“And old uns and bold uns, that's used to takin' risks and knows what risks to
take. If I hadn't been a p'lece officer, I wouldn't 'a known what they did
that for. The parties concerned 'll have to buy that paper. They'll git letters
about it. Them fellers pocketed that paper so as to sell it to the heirs.
It's a mighty highflown trick, and I shouldn't wonder if it boosted 'em—
though law is uncertain, that's a fact. And I've known fellers git off—I've
known—gracious!”

Mrs. Dinneford dimly understood, but made no comments.

“Who did the estate go to, by the way?” was the next question of Mr.
Sweet, delivered in an easy, abstracted manner, as if it were of no consequence.

In her confusion of mind the good lady promptly stated that the property
was to be divided between herself, her daughter, Walter Lehming, and certain
benevolent institutions.

“And wasn't the nephew to have anything?” asked the taverner, so surprised
that he showed eagerness. “I seen his nephew t'other day, out on the
fishin' grounds,” he immediately added. “That's all. He don't owe me anything.”

“No, he was not an heir,” sighed Mrs. Dinneford. She was about to add
that there had been family troubles, but of a sudden it occurred to her that
she was telling more than necessity required, and, still searching with her
eyes for the vanished documents, she fell silent.

The ancient hunter of criminals made no further remark for perhaps half a
minute. He was unquestionably meditating, though he strove to conceal his
thoughtfulness by looking intently at the body of the murdered man, his hands
meanwhile clasped behind him in a reverent and funeral attitude. After a
time there came into his dull and slightly bloodshot brown eye a sparkle which
showed that his reflections had culminated in some definite and confident conclusion;
and then he fell to studying Mrs. Dinneford, searching her face all
over with unfaltering attention, and slightly working his mouth at her as if he
were trying to mould her into the sort of person that he desired. At last,
touching her on the arm in a way meant to be respectful, he observed in a
whisper, “I say!”

“What?” she started, turning suddenly upon him, with a confused expectation
that he was about to point to the murderer.

“Don't say anything about that, you understand,” he continued, almost inaudibly.
“I mean about the nephew not having anything. Don't tell anybody
but the authorities.”

With the consciousness of receiving a terrible inward shock, Mrs. Dinneford
divined that this man suspected Edward Wetherel of the murder.