While she was taking up my black silk on the shoulder seams, Phoebe Dole said, ‘Let me see – you had a green silk made at Digby three summers ago, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said she, ‘why don’t you have it dyed black? Those thin silks dye quite nice. It would make you a good dress.’
I scarcely replied, and then she offered to dye it for me herself. She had a recipe which she used with great success. I thought it was very kind of her, but did not say whether I would accept her offer or not. I could not fix my mind upon anything but the awful trouble I was in.
‘I’ll come over and get it tomorrow morning,’ said Phoebe.
I thanked her. I thought of the stains, and then my mind seemed to wander again to the one subject. All the time Maria Woods sat weeping. Finally Phoebe turned to her with impatience.
‘If you can’t keep calmer, you’d better go upstairs, Maria,’ said she. ‘You’ll make Sarah sick. Look at her! She doesn’t give way – and think of the reason she’s got.’
‘I’ve got reason, too,’ Maria broke out; then, with a piteous shriek, ‘Oh, I’ve got reason.’
‘Maria Woods, go out of the room!’ said Phoebe. Her sharpness made me jump, half dazed as I was.
Maria got up without a word, and went out of the room, bending almost double with convulsive sobs.
‘She’s been dreadfully worked up over your father’s death,’ said Phoebe calmly, going on with the fitting. ‘She’s terribly nervous. Sometimes I have to be real sharp with her, for her own good.’
I nodded. Maria Woods has always been considered a sweet, weakly, dependent woman, and Phoebe Dole is undoubtedly very fond of her. She has seemed to shield her, and take care of her nearly all her life. The two have lived together since they were young girls.
Phoebe is tall, and very pale and thin; but she never had a day’s illness. She is plain, yet there is a kind of severe goodness and faithfulness about her colourless face, with the smooth bands of white hair over her ears.
I went home as soon as my dress was fitted. That evening Henry Ellis came over to see me. I do not need to go into details concerning that visit. It seemed enough to say that he tendered the fullest sympathy and protection, and I accepted them. I cried a little, for the first time, and he soothed and comforted me.
Henry had driven over from Digby and tied his horse in the yard. At ten o’clock he bade me goodnight on the doorstep, and was just turning his buggy around, when Mrs Adams came running to the door.
‘Is this yours?’ said she, and she held out a knot of yellow ribbon.
‘Why, that’s the ribbon you have around your whip, Henry,’ said I.
He looked at it.
‘So it is,’ he said. ‘I must have dropped it.’ He put it into his pocket and drove away.
‘He didn’t drop that ribbon tonight!’ said Mrs Adams. ‘I found it Wednesday morning out in the yard. I thought I remembered seeing him have a yellow ribbon on his whip.’
* * * * * *
When Mrs Adams told me she had picked up Henry’s whip-ribbon Wednesday morning, I said nothing, but thought that Henry must have driven over Tuesday evening after all, and even come up into the yard, although the house was shut up, and I in bed, to get a little nearer to me. I felt conscience-stricken, because I could not help a thrill of happiness, when my father lay dead in the house.
My father was buried as privately and as quietly as we could bring it about. But it was a terrible ordeal. Meantime word came from Vermont that Rufus Bennett had been arrested on his farm. He was perfectly willing to come back with the officers, and indeed, had not the slightest trouble in proving that he was at his home in Vermont when the murder took place. He proved by several witnesses that he was out of the state long before my father and I sat on the steps together that evening, and that he proceeded directly to his home as fast as the train and stagecoach could carry him.
The screwdriver with which the deed was supposed to have been committed was found, by the neighbour from whom it had been borrowed, in his wife’s bureau drawer. It had been returned, and she had used it to put a picture-hook in her chamber. Bennett was discharged and returned to Vermont.
Then Mrs Adams told of the finding of the yellow ribbon from Henry Ellis’s whip, and he was arrested, since he was held to have a motive for putting my father out of the world. Father’s opposition to our marriage was well known, and Henry was suspected also of having had an eye to his money. It was found, indeed, that my father had more money than I had known myself.
Henry owned to having driven into the yard that night, and to having missed the ribbon from his whip on his return; but one of the hostlers in the livery stables in Digby, where he kept his horse and buggy, came forward and testified to finding the yellow ribbon in the carriage-room that Tuesday night before Henry returned from his drive. There were two yellow ribbons in evidence, therefore, and the one produced by the hostler seemed to fit Henry’s whip-stock the more exactly.
Moreover, nearly the exact minute of the murder was claimed to be proved by the post-mortem examination; and by the testimony of the stableman as to the hour of Henry’s return and the speed of his horse, he was further cleared of suspicion; for, if the opinion of the medical experts was correct, Henry must have returned to the livery stable too soon to have committed the murder.
He was discharged, at any rate, although suspicion still
