‘If that is blood on my dress,’ I said, ‘I must do something to get it off at once, or the dress will be ruined.’
It came to my mind that I had been told that bloodstains had been removed from cloth by an application of flour paste on the wrong side. I took my green silk, and ran down the back stairs, which lead – having a door at the foot – directly into the kitchen.
There was no fire in the kitchen stove, as I had thought. Everything was very solitary and still, except for the ticking of the clock on the shelf. When I crossed the kitchen to the pantry, however, the cat mewed to be let in from the shed. She had a little door of her own by which she could enter or leave the shed at will, an aperture just large enough for her Maltese body to pass at ease beside the shed door. It had a little lid, too, hung upon a leathern hinge. On my way I let the cat in; then I went into the pantry and got a bowl of flour. This I mixed with water into a stiff paste, and applied to the under surface of the stains on my dress. I then hung the dress up to dry in the dark end of a closet leading out of the kitchen, which contained some old clothes of father’s.
Then I made up the fire in the kitchen stove. I made coffee, baked biscuits, and poached some eggs for breakfast.
Then I opened the door into the sitting-room and called, ‘Father, breakfast is ready’. Suddenly I started. There was a red stain on the inside of the sitting-room door. My heart began to beat in my ears. ‘Father!’ I called out. ‘Father!’
There was no answer.
‘Father!’ I called again, as loud as I could scream. ‘Why don’t you speak? What is the matter?’
The door of his bedroom stood open. I had a feeling that I saw a red reflection in there. I gathered myself together and went across the sitting-room to father’s bedroom door. His little looking-glass hung over his bureau opposite his bed, which was reflected in it.
That was the first thing I saw, when I reached the door. I could see father in the looking-glass and the bed. Father was dead there; he had been murdered in the night.
* * * * * *
I think I must have fainted away, for presently I found myself on the floor, and for a minute I could not remember what had happened. Then I remembered, and an awful, unreasoning terror seized me. ‘I must lock all the doors quick,’ I thought; ‘quick, or the murderer will come back.’
I tried to get up, but I could not stand. I sank down again. I had to crawl out of the room on my hands and knees.
I went first to the front door; it was locked with a key and a bolt. I went next to the north door, and that was locked with a key and bolt. I went to the north shed door, and that was bolted. Then I went to the little-used east door in the shed, beside which the cat had her little passage-way, and that was fastened with an iron hook. It has no latch.
The whole house was fastened on the inside. The thought struck me like an icy hand, ‘The murderer is in this house!’ I rose to my feet then; I unhooked that door, and ran out of the house, and out of the yard, as for my life.
I took the road to the village. The first house, where Phoebe Dole and Maria Woods live, is across a wide field from ours. I did not intend to stop there, for they were only women, and could do nothing; but seeing Phoebe looking out of the window, I ran into the yard.
She opened the window.
‘What is it?’ said she. ‘What is the matter, Sarah Fairbanks?’
Maria Woods came and leaned over her shoulder. Her face looked almost as white as her hair, and her blue eyes were dilated. My face must have frightened her.
‘Father – father is murdered in his bed!’ I said.
There was a scream, and Maria Woods’s face disappeared from over Phoebe Dole’s shoulder – she had fainted. I do not know whether Phoebe looked paler – she is always very pale – but I saw in her black eyes a look which I shall never forget. I think she began to suspect me at that moment.
Phoebe glanced back at Maria, but she asked me another question.
‘Has he had words with anybody?’ said she.
‘Only with Rufus,’ I said; ‘but Rufus is gone.’
Phoebe turned away from the window to attend to Maria, and I ran on to the village.
A hundred people can testify what I did next – can tell how I called for the doctor and the deputy sheriff; how I went back to my own home with the horror-stricken crowd; how they flocked in and looked at poor father; but only the doctor touched him, very carefully, to see if he were quite dead; how the coroner came, and all the rest.
The pistol was in the bed beside father, but it had not been fired; the charge was still in the barrel. It was bloodstained, and there was one bruise on father’s head which might have been inflicted by the pistol, used as a club. But the wound which caused his death was in his breast, and made evidently by some cutting instrument, though the cut was not a clean one; the weapon must have been dull.
They searched the house, lest the murderer should be hidden away. I heard Rufus Bennett’s name whispered by one and another. Everybody seemed to know that he and father
