University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST SUSPECT.

The house in which J. Samuel McCue resided on the night of the
tragedy is on Park Street, about half way from the court-house to the
home of the late Judge William J. Robertson, and the premises adjoin
on one side, "Comyn Hall," then the home of Mr. F. Berger Moran,
now the residence of President E. A. Alderman of the University of
Virginia, and on the other the home of the late Hon. John E. Massey,
known widely as "Parson Massey." Dr. Frank C. McCue's home is on the
corner of Park Street, almost facing the court-house, two squares from
the residence of Samuel McCue, while Police Justice Edward O. McCue's
is midway between the houses of his brothers.

Before the fact that Mrs. McCue had been murdered was known to
the public—indeed, but a few minutes after the shot that had put an
eternal end to her piteous pleading for life—someone carrying a small
grip ran down Park Street from the direction of the court-house, dashed
up on the porch of E. O. McCue's residence and knocked violently on the
door. Mr. Thomas F. Randolph, on his porch nearly opposite, started
across the street to say to the man that he should ring the bell, when
the fellow rushed away in the same manner as he had come. "I thought
he wanted a warrant" said Mr. Randolph. "When he saw me he ran.
He was a white man, but I do not know him."

Mr. Burnley Sinclair, who lives in the next house to Mr. Edward
O. McCue, was reading in an upstairs room when he heard a person run
down the walk in front of his residence and up Mr. McCue's front
steps. He knocked violently, awaited probably a half-minute and then
ran across the grass lawn in the direction of Mr. J. Samuel McCue's
residence. A few minutes later he heard of the tragedy.

The few minutes which elapsed between this incident and the announcement
of the crime at Sam. McCue's may have been sufficient for
the accomplishment of the tragedy. Edward O. McCue was confident
that the man who went on his porch desired his life and was responsible
for all that occurred at his brother's. He had in mind a man whom he
and his brother had caused to be punished more than once for misdemeanors,

and it was understood that this man was very resentful
toward them. His brother's description of the man who assaulted him
fitted this one as well as any other. The scheme attributed to Leslie
Marshall—for this was the name of the suspect—was wholesale. It
involved the "removal," to use Guilean's euphemism, of Edward and
Samuel McCue in one grand performance. Edward was to have been
killed as he appeared at the door—but he foiled that part of the plan
by a sort of balcony appearance at an upper window. Having dispatched
the justice who had fined him for drunkenness, he was to proceed to the
residence of Samuel and send to his final account the man who had had
him put under bonds to be of good behavior—the man he afterwards
accused of robbing him of his wife.

It was suggested that Dr. McCue, on the way to his brother's, stopped
to tell Edward of the gruesome occurrence, but that gentleman declared
then, and afterwards swore, that he did not pause anywhere.

The premises of Edward McCue were searched until a late hour,
because that gentleman believed the assassin was after him too. But
that was not all. Assuming that if the criminal was Marshall he had
returned post-haste to his home at Earleysville, a town about ten miles
from Charlottesville, Mr. Percy Payne was directed to go thither and
investigate the whereabouts of the young painter at the hour of the
murder. Later in the night Policeman Emmett E. Stratton was sent
on the same errand, provided, perhaps, with full authority to apprehend
the suspected man if he thought the developments justified it.

But whatever may be said in general of the conduct of Leslie Marshall
on this particular occasion he was full panoplied with innocence.
That night he had gone to church with his mother at Earleysville,
which was by no means usual, and returned home after the services
and gone virtuously to bed. Well for him that he had an alibi so easily
and perfectly established, for if he had been arrested and brought to
Charlottesville charged with the murder of Mrs. McCue he would have
been in grave danger, even if he had not been lynched.

Such was the clue, and such the end of it as a working theory through
which this murder mystery was to be cleared up. But the story of the
Marshalls—for the wife. Hattie Marshall, an attractive brunette of
twenty-two, becomes one of the personal dramatis—is serial, and many
of its details became known after this night. The story had a brisk
run in the newspapers, and may be referred to hereafter in this narrative.

Lester Marshall met the insinuation of possible guilt with an intimation
that the goaded accuser might well be the accused. He did not
hesitate to charge that there was a conspiracy in which the wife was
involved, to connect himself with the crime—and that the conspiracy
antedated the murder by at least two days. A few brief sentences will

give all the details necessary for a comprehension of the alleged conspiracy.

In August, less than thirty days before the violent death of Mrs.
McCue, Mrs. Hattie Marshall began a suit for divorce, her attorneys

MRS. LESTER MARSHALL.

being J. Samuel McCue and Daniel Harmon. On the second day of September,
two days before the murder of Mrs. McCue, Mrs. Marshall—
then in Charlottesville—wrote a long gossipy and affectionate letter to
her husband in Earleysville, in which she strongly urges him to come
to Charlottesville on Monday morning—the morning after the murder—
to see her, for which purpose does not appear. "I wish you could arrange
it so you could come to town Monday"—so her letter ran—"and I will
give you money to pay your way to Proffitt's (the nearest railway
station at Earleysville). If you could come early Monday morning and
go back Monday eve, that would be the very thing." Further on in the
letter she recurs to this request.

Marshall received this letter on the 3d day of September, the day before
the death of Mrs. McCue, and says he was very much surprised by
it, in view of the fact that she was seeking a divorce. However, he did
not go to Charlottesville on Monday, but did Tuesday. His wife
received him coldly, he said, and refused to make up, and he inquired
"then why did you send for me?" Her reply was that for a few hours

after the murder he was under suspicion and she wanted him to come
and clear himself. "How was it, then, that you wrote to me before the
crime?" was his next question, the answer to which was not reported.

"There is a conspiracy against me," said Marshall. "Sam. McCue
cheated me out of my wife and ruined my house. Now he wants to put
a rope around my neck. My wife and McCue wanted me to come back
from Earleysville in time to get my head into the noose after the murder
had been committed. It was a trap for me. The first thing McCue said
after the murder was that I had committed it. Only a few days before
the crime, his brother, Police-Justice E. O. McCue, had put me under
a heavy bond for drinking and for disorderly conduct.

"Sam McCue was on hand that day—the court was held in my house,
too—and he urged his brother to put it to me. "Sam McCue wouldn't
even let me speak to my wife on that occasion. He had long had improper
relations with her. She always had plently of money and she
craved fine clothes. I have heard her talk of what she would do if she
were Mrs. McCue. I have heard her say she would wear different clothes
from those Mrs. McCue wore—that she would travel around and have a
good time instead of staying at home. We lived in one of McCue's
houses for six months. He let my wife have the rent free—at least,
I never gave her any money to pay it. What could I do to prevent all
this? He was rich and influential, I was a poor working man. * * *

"And right here," added the husband, "I want to deny another thing
Hattie, my wife, said. She told you I was not making any defense to the
divorce suit; that she would claim the custody of the two children.
Above all things, correct this. I shall file a cross bill and will ask the
court to give me the oldest child. It is mine by rights. I have no
desire for the younger child. I claim no kinship to it. The woman has
told me it is not mine."

Marshall on this occasion certainly spoke more in anger than in
sorrow, and too much reliance should not be put in his story, which
his wife denies. There are some reasons for taking her statements—
and she has made some very warm ones about her husband—with a
proper allowance of salt. There is much uncertainty about the grain
of truth in the chaff the papers have been winnowing, but there
is one sure thing—if Marshall had reached Charlottesville "early Monday
morning" his chances of being summarily dealt with would have
been very strong. There was a popular desire for revenge just then,
which might have proved deaf to explanations however reasonable.