Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (20 page)

"What was that?"

"The sort of thing that happened at Abby Bridewell's funeral."

But I did not learn of "the Abby Bridewell obsequies from Ed Brewster. Having baited my hook with the Meek preamble, he left me to fish in a fresh stack of yellowed newspapers and note papers from the attic reliquary. After directing my attention to these waters, he told me he had to go down to the Center and pick up a brace of guinea hen for six o'clock dinner.

"The service for Abby was here in the parlor," he said, and walked out.

At four o'clock I pushed aside the faded copies of the Weekly Pointer, the State Capital Clarion-Journal and other contemporary journals. So far as press accounts were concerned, I had the skeletal framework of the story.

Here, then, are the surface details concerning Abby Bridewell's funeral. I say surface details in deliberate equivocation, because as you know, and I know, the press seldom covers the under-the-surface story of anything.

The Journal item was treated to the usual reportorial formula of Who, When, Where, What, and Why. The formula is sound enough for basic story data, but the tag-end "Why" is too often lopped off to make room for a late ad or some special insertion. That is why news stories frequently end with a jolt, or seem to hangfire in incompletion. I recall an unforgettable example which appeared some years ago in a hinterland paper in Pennsylvania. From an item reporting a mine cave-in, the "Why" was amputated to make space for a Christmas poem. The verses must have been composed by the mine-owner's maiden aunt, or submitted by some subscriber as influential, say, as Abby Bridewell. I can still remember the poem's title— Frankenstein and Myrrh.

Similarly chopped off, the Journal story of Abby Bridewell's funeral was abridged in favor of an ad announcing that the Star Royal Lawn Mower "featuring 11-inch wheels, three pawl ratchets and a minimum of noise" was now on sale at Bryan and Min-nisink's at a greatly reduced price. In fact, I almost missed the funeral item because of the ad on the opposite page—an overpowering picture of the smart Dexter Shoe—"cloth top and pearl buttons for $2.00 the pair." The reader had just time to skim over the Bridewell story before he raced downtown to the shoe store.

Then the original account in the Quahog Weekly Pointer went to the other extreme. Five columns, with most of the copy reading like the listings of the county census. "In attendance were Mr. and Mrs. Otis Purdy, Mr. and Mrs. Saul Smeizer, Henrietta and Tansy Thorn, Captain Aquarius Robinson of the Letty and Marge. . . ." On and on. Evidently the only localites who failed to attend Old Abby's funeral were Ed Brewster, recluse Sybil,

Madame Sophie, and Chester Goodbody's cigar-store Indian. But here was a news story which never got much farther than "Who."

So my own account, based on those in mention, is admittedly superficial.

As will be seen, it was the facts which were buried at that funeral, not Abby Bridewell.

Everyone tried to get there early so as to sit behind the family and not be left in the dining room or stranded out on the front lawn. House funerals usually meant a shortage of space and folding chairs. The ice-cream chairs from the Center Soda Emporium —small with springy back-supports—were uncomfortable when the service was long.

But the early birds found others who were earlier. Mrs. Bertha Smeizer had been there since breakfast time. She had, in fact, come over with an offer to prepare breakfast, hurrying crosslots the moment she saw Cornelia Ord drive up to the house.

Cornelia had left her farm at four A.M. At five she had been in the throes of a dress fitting in the home of seamstress Lizzie Robinson. Now, posted at the Bridewell front door to greet comers, she stood in the vestibule in her black veil and weeds like somber Hecate, Ruler of the Shades of the Departed. She had nothing to say to Mrs. Smeizer, who definitely had no intention of departing. And Mrs. Smeizer had nothing to say to Cornelia.

At seven Horatio Meek arrived. He put on his crying act, saw it made little impression on the bereaved, and briskly got down to last-minute details and instructions.

Horatio (blowing his nose): Now, then, Earnest, it looks a little cloudy out. But I know you'll want Mother laid to rest, rain or shine.

Earnest Bridewell: Why not? We've got umbrellas.

Horatio: I don't like to suggest an extra expense. However, if you'd like a canopy—?

Earnest: A canopy?

Lionel Bridewell (coming forward): Certainly we'll want one if it rains. Hell, I'm not going to ruin a new suit in any downpour.

Earnest: It's not going to rain. Look here, Horatio. Can't we hurry this up an hour? It's a strain, this waiting.

Horatio: Now, Senator, you wouldn't really want that. People are coming from miles around.

Earnest: I suppose so.

Horatio (sotto voce): As it is, some may feel you're a bit previous on the usual three days. You know how people are.

Earnest: I do. And they can shut their . . . never mind. All right. Nine to eleven. Will you tell the minister to time his speech?

Horatio: Glad to, Earnest, glad to. No use prolonging the painful . . . Hmmm . . . I'll go see about the urns.

As Horatio moves off, Earnest grips Lionel's arm and steers his brother into the kitchen.

Lionel (wrenching loose): What do you want?

Earnest (gritting): That bottle on your hip! Lay off, you fool! Do you want these busybodies to see you drunk?

Already the carriages are lining up before the house. Friends and neighbors come trooping in. Old folks, young folks, parents herding their children. For the most part they wear their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and as they approach the Bridewell door they put on their Sunday-go-to-meeting faces.

Cornelia gives each a cold handshake in the vestibule, and says tonelessly: "In there."

At the threshold the visitor stalls a moment with that instinctive hesitation which causes most of us to pause before we enter the presence of the departed. What word of consolation can we offer the next of kin? What consolation can we offer ourselves as we face this reminder that our own sojourn on earth will one day terminate? The presiding clergyman will assure us that the departed is in a Hereafter of golden streets and angelic choirs—a far, far Better World. But catch him taking Charon's Ferry! So we hang back, instinctively reluctant to join the one-way traveler. Even the most confirmed immortalist seems to do his best to prolong his mortal stay.

Reconstructing the scene, I could see it there—the coffin under the fixed gaze of the Eye.

Furniture has been shoved back and various nicknacks rearranged to make room for the folding chairs and flowers. In one corner looms a floral donation from the Fire Volunteers—a setup the size of a fireworks display. However, instead of such pyrotechnic ballyhoo as "Hurrah for Teddy" or "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean," the silent flowers spell out "Gates Ajar." Another tripod holds a heavenly harp of black dahlias—contribution of Local Lodge No. 46. Urns of purple gladioluses (from the First Sabbatarian) flank the catafalque. A chrysanthemum "Peace at Last" carries a placard labeled Babcock's Grocery. Other floral displays are from Meck's Market, Jones's Livery, Ross's Blacksmith Shop, The Scenic Palace, and the Beach Hotel Association.

And Abby? We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and her little life was rounded with its sleep. She did not look natural. Not with her hair combed in a wing across her forehead to hide the deadly bash on the left temple. Not with her hands folded on her bosom, supine.

Yet even in this condition of repose, the chatelaine manages to hold her final reception with an air. Certainly she dominates the parlor. Her wintry little smile may be as artificial as the cosmetics applied by Horatio Meek, but it is disturbing, none the less. "You may think you've got me down," it seems to say, "but I've not gone yet."

The viewers file in for the last look. Uneasy, shuffling, subdued, women with handkerchief to mouth, men hat in hand.

Now the parlor fills rapidly. Scuffing of chairs. Nervous coughing. Heads turning to see who next comes in.

The air becomes oppressive, drugged with the scent of hothouse plants, of heavy breathing, of woollens, pomade, menthol. Plus a faint but insistent hint of formaldehyde. You could always detect it in the old days, whether you went to Moriarty's or to Campbell's.

Sudden hush. Enter Earnest and Lionel Bridewell, each with black crepe on his sleeve. Then Floss and Alvin Bridewell in black.

Enter Cornelia Ord, from head to toe in midnight. (A small

child wails in fright and is promptly slapped by its parent. "Hush up, Herman, or you'll go straight home.")

Enter the Reverend John Q. Ironquill, parson of the old school. His mien is enough to scare any child. It is supposed to. (And if that statement seems exaggerated, the doubter may refer to the Methodist Doctrine of 1900—a book which advises the aspirant preacher not to smile in public. Stern Ironquill, of course, is a Sabbatarian.)

The Bridewells and Cornelia take reserved seats. The minister strikes a pose by the catafalque. He looks like a statue of Discipline.

The hush deepens.

Ironquill: Brethern and sister'n, we have assembled here to pay our last respects to one we have all revered and loved. That our mood may be appropriate, let us sing. Brother Lionel, would you care to lead?

Lionel (standing up reluctantly): Yes, we'll gather . . . ?

Reverend Ironquill: I think we all know that one.

If we don't, we had better learn it. All of us are going to be there sooner or later.

Yes, We'll Gather at the River.

Out in the dining room the overflow shifts and cranes. Someone bangs the front door and wins a community scowl. Another general frown is evoked by a latecomer who presses in through the vestibule. It is one of the summer people early at the Point to open her sea house. In she comes in a motoring hat and linen duster. Of course, being an "inlander" she doesn't know any better. She is passed hand to hand across the dining room until she is deposited at the threshold of the kitchen.

"I'm terribly sorry," she whispers to a lounger there. "I tried to get here on time, but my car broke down ... I was fond of Mrs. Bridewell."

Needles Thorn regards her noncommittally. Then, approving the costume, he reassures her gallantly, "It's all right. Have my chair."

Lady (speaking behind her hand): Thank you. Can you tell me . . . when it happened?

Needles: Tuesday.

Lady: What a shame.

Needles: It was expected like.

Lady: Yes . . . her age.

Needles: Not that, exactly. Somebody seen a death baby.

Lady (shocked): A wh-what?

Needles: A death baby. Out in the front yard. I can see you're not a New Englander.

Lady: I—I'm afraid I'm not.

Needles: It's a kind of toadstool. A sort of omen. Them as see one near their house ought to kill it right away. It's bad.

(Authentic Down East folklore: The "death baby"—a fungus of the genus Ithyphallus —portended a fatality in the home. The superstition may have stemmed from the growth's confusion with the death-cup, a poisonous mushroom.)

Chorus from the parlor: The beautiful . . . the beautiful . . . River. . . .

Lady (to turn the subject): It happened suddenly?

Needles: Right sudden.

Lady: Here at home?

Needles: Right there behind you. Broke her neck on those cellar stairs.

The lady rises silently and beats a retreat out through the kitchen door.

Now from the parlor a monotone drone. Quarter hour. Half hour. The Reverend Ironquill compares Abby Bridewell's life to a river. He begins with the springs of infancy, goes into the tributaries of adolescence, descends into the channel of the prime, and flows unhurriedly on and on to the estuary of old age, the delta of antiquity, and at last the sea. It is a discourse the ministerial geographer seldom covers in two hours. But today he chooses the Jordan Valley instead of the Amazon, and he reaches the sea at eleven o'clock. This is the big moment for Horatio A. Meek.

"This way, please."

The house is cleared. The assemblage is martialled in the door-yard. Hats off. Then a general movement toward the carriages that are lined up as far as the road-bend behind the hearse.

In high hat and frock coat Meek mounts to the driver's seat

with all the pride and dignity of an Admiral boarding a ship. I could not imagine the order that he might have given to start the solemn procession on its way. To six black horses with plumes "Giddyap!" would hardly have sounded appropriate. Nor could I imagine the utterance of a prolonged "Scuddahoo-scuddahayl"

The matter is academic. For, whatever the order, it was of no consequence that day. The horses were just digging in when an automobile swerved into view up the road and came speeding toward the hearse, head-on.

The tandem leaders reared and neighed. Clutching the reins, Horatio Meek reared and neighed with them, glaring in outrage. The car pulled up only in time, and with a shriek of brakes came to a halt athwart the roadway. Heads popped from the caravan of carriages. Someone scolded, "That ain't no Quahog car. They ought to rule these noisy autos off the roads."

They ought to rule out barking dogs, too. A commotion like that at such a time. And now this slamming of car doors as the motorists pile out. This stomping and loud talk at the roadside. The Reverend Ironquill glares from his buggy. What sort of corruption is this?

Advances a heavy-set man with silvery hair and a red face—a beefy stranger in a flapping overcoat with a pugnacious derby in his hand. Behind him, apologetic, comes Pythias Ross, town constable. Behind Pythias comes Wen Tasker with his walrus mustache, his Sheriff's star and his abdominal artillery.

Constable Ross holds up his hand in an appeal for silence.

Ross: I'm sorry, folks. This here funeral is over.

Earnest Bridewell (stepping from his carriage): What the devil is this, Pythias?

Ross: This here is a gentleman from the State's Attorney's Office.

Earnest: What's the meaning?

Gentleman: I have a restraining order.

The Sheriff (moving in): Hate to tell you, Senator, but your mother can't be buried today. Seems like the State wants her held for an autopsy. There's going to be an inquest.

Cornelia Ord (striding up): Inquest! What in heaven's name for?

Sheriff: To determine cause of death.

Lionel Bridewell: Well, hold an autopsy then! Good God!

Gentleman (pugnaciously): We intend to.

Sheriff: I'm afraid we got to hold you, too, Senator.

Earnest: What!

Sheriff: At least until this clears up. Sorry to say, Earnest, you're under suspicion. The State's Attorney got this word. Someone here in Quahog Point thinks your mother was murdered. There's this rumor you done the matricide.

Rounding to the hearse, the Sheriff hands a "cease and desist" to Horatio Meek.

According to the story, Meek burst into the only genuine tears shed at Abby Bridewell's funeral.

CHAPTER 13

At six o'clock I drove with Ed in the Kissel out to Shipwreck Fathom Beach, intending to pick up Luke Martin. We had just time to eat and catch the seven-thirty boat back to civilization.

But Luke had himself a sea bass and wanted another. He had joined a party of big-game fishermen—business acquaintances from New York—and he elected to go on surf casting and dine later with them. The New Yorkers had cars and would drive us to an inland town where we could catch a midnight train to Newport.

Whereby Luke missed a feast of guinea hen with wild rice. And I had another evening on locale, with opportunity to follow the Bridewell case to its historic courtroom conclusion.

After dinner Ed worried, "You sure you don't mind if Annette and I go over to a neighbor's for a while?"

"Not at all, Ed."

So while Ed and his good wife were in the Center paying a social call, I covered the trial of State Senator Earnest Bridewell. Which is to say, I read through the press accounts of what contemporary newspapers called "The Bridewell Murder Mystery." This contemporary press coverage was not up to the best of American journalism in the century's first decade. And any who care to check that standard will soon discern that with the notable exception of Richard Harding Davis and one or two others the best was none too good.

The Clarion-Journal tried. So did the Coastal City News and the widely read Seaboard Herald. None of these dailies had a Davis or the one or two others on its staff. All were more interested in the Mexican situation than in the strange death of an old lady in remote Quahog Point.

Of course, the fact that a State Senator was held under suspicion of matricide most foul did demand a number of frontpage headlines. But as the novelty wore off, the story was quickly relegated to page 6.1 had a feeling, too, that the prisoner's Senatorial status somehow restrained the flow of journalistic ink. Soon after Earnest Bridewell went to jail, news editors began to treat the case with diffidence. A use of polite adjectives—a respectful or sympathetic tone—a resort to such qualifying loopholes as "it is said"—one can easily recognize the styling when journalists handle a story with kid gloves. Even before the trial began, the area papers were dealing gently with the accused. Midway through the trial they were treating him as though he were a troublesome but eccentric granny and they were Boy Scouts helping him across the street.

It was a mystery. For several weeks it vied for space in the State Capital Clarion-Journal with a serial by Anna Katharine Green. With all due respect to that popular story-teller, I could not help but feel that her fiction tale was contrived and conventional in comparison with the Bridewell case.

At least, Miss Green's fictional mystery came to a logical conclusion. The Bridewell case proved the polar opposite. For the trial of Earnest Bridewell, up for willful matricide, came to what must remain on record as one of the more outlandish courtroom conclusions in the annals of New England jurisprudence.

In my own coverage of the case, I had two singular advantages over the contemporary journalists who reported it. They were at the scene of the trial. But I was at the scene of the crime.

True, I was there almost thirty years late. In going to press, the contemporary accounts were only twenty-four hours behind time. I could visualize those mustachioed newsmen with their green eyeshades and pink armbands, pounding their Smith-Premier and Oliver typewriters. But so far as I could determine from their stories (and I subsequently checked through newspaper after newspaper in various city libraries) not a single out-of-town reporter visited the Bridewell homestead.

Skimpy press coverage notwithstanding, Quahog Point must have seethed with the news on that day when Earnest Bridewell was carted off to the County Jail. First Old Abby's death. Then the funeral brought to a dead end. Then the inquest finding— murder! Then the elder son charged with the slaying. Sensation after sensation. But no reporters, local or out-of-town, were on hand to interview the accused when the jail door clanged on his person. At that date (April 18, 1911) readers of the State Capital Clarion-Journal had to satisfy a taste for thrills with the early installments of "The House in the Whispering Pines" by Anna Katharine Green. Most of the space in the Weekly Pointer went to social items and ads for such commodities as Holman's Fever and Ague Poultice, Columbia Bicycles and Castoria.

Here I enjoyed my second advantage over the contemporary reporters. I was possessed of an informative dossier which would not have been at their disposal even had they made an effort to interview the prisoner.

This dossier was placed on my knee by Ed Brewster before he left the house that evening. "Scrapbook," he told me. "Found it in the attic under a lot of junk. The Senator maintained it while he was in jail waiting trial."

Earnest Bridewell's prison scrapbook offered an interesting close-up of the accused. Evidently while incarcerated, he had subscribed to most of the area dailies. These he had perused with picky care. Every column, every paragraph devoted to his case he had torn from the page and painstakingly pasted into the folio.

Then he had carefully studied and analyzed the news accounts. With pencil he had checked or underlined various statements. He had made numerous marginal notes—little side-remarks and comments such as "Bah!" and "Not true!"

To be sure, the book was not as revelatory as a diary. But the analecta and accompanying notations did furnish an insight into the writer's mental attitude and character. I saw that Earnest had followed the case with engrossed self-interest to the very end of the trial. Cryptically he had circled the name of every witness who had testified against him. Or perhaps the encirclements were not so cryptic. They were made with red pencil, and I could not believe the maker was compiling a Christmas-card list.

The scrapbook also contained numerous items of correspondence. Most of these were from well-wishers offering sympathy. But a letter addressed to the orphan boy, Walter Jones, caught and held my attention. Wondering how the boy's letter came to be in Earnest's private scrapbook, I examined the smudged envelope.

It was postmarked Boston, April 3,1911. Which meant it should have been delivered to the boy during the week prior to Abby Bridewell's death. The stationery bore the letterhead of the Milk Street Orphans' Home, Boston. The missive was signed by a Miss Adelaide Fitzgibbon, Orphanage Secretary. An excerpt:

"We hope that you will now have a perfect attendance at school —we are sure your resolutions about this are very good. We are sorry to disappoint you about the corduroy suit. The reason that we do not send you one is that it was understood between the Orphans' Home and Mr. Bridewell when you were taken to Quahog Point that Mr. Bridewell should buy all of your clothing and pay whatever other bills were necessary for your support and welfare. If Mr. Bridewell wishes to order a corduroy suit, and will pay for it himself, we will be glad to have one sent from here C.O.D."

Of course. The Senator had picked up this letter at the Post Office. And for reasons of his own had never given it to the boy. Another glimpse into the Earnest Bridewell personality. The man who intercepts an orphan's mail, reads it and then withholds it from the youngster—such a character has a mean streak all wool

and a yard wide. Or, as in this instance, all corduroy and a yard wide.

The scrapbook divulged a second letter which had never been delivered to young Walter Jones. This too had been dispatched from the Milk Street Orphans' Home. Dated April 22, 1911, the letter read as follows:

Master Walter Jones Quahog Point My dear Walter:

Because of the recent happenings at Quahog Point, we do not feel that you should stay there any longer. We have written to your patron saying that you must come to Boston on the Plymouth Line steamer which leaves Quahog Point on Wednesday, April 26. We want you to come that day without fail. Someone will be at the South Boston dock to meet you.

Sincerely yours, Adelaide Fitzgibbon, Orphanage Secy.

The above letter was followed by one from the Milk Street Orphans' Home to Earnest Bridewell, Esq. "It is over a week since we wrote requesting Walter Jones' return to our orphanage. . . . As we have heard nothing further from you, we write now to ask exactly when we may expect him. The Childrens' Aid Society will be happy to refund you the amount of his passage, if you will forward the bill."

To this peremptory note was pinned the carbon copy of a typewritten reply, probably dictated by Earnest Bridewell in the office of his defense attorneys. It was dated May 8, 1911—two weeks after the orphanage had directed Walter to return to Boston. Earnest advised the orphanage secretary:

"In reply to your recent letter, will say I have been under arrest for several weeks but am now released on bail. I am the victim of a plot of which you know nothing and I will prove my innocence at the first hearing which will probably be May 23rd.

"Walter Jones knows positively of my innocence and for that reason the guilty parties are anxious for him to get as far away from this town as possible before the hearing."

"Walter gave his testimony at the inquest in a manner which everyone gives him credit for, as the inquest was entirely one sided and I was under detention and not allowed a representative. Walter being a boy, the opposite side tried very hard to rattle him but I understand that he was as cool and level headed as a man. Now in justice to myself Walter should be allowed to remain with us until this unfortunate affair is over and the facts of the case exposed. He is a very important witness. . . . Therefore I request that he be allowed to remain here for the time being."

Naturally the foregoing correspondence never reached the public eye. And the good secretary of the Milk Street Orphans' Home must have wondered (as did I) just how a thirteen-year-old boy, who had spent the crucial evening at a moving picture show and then gone straight home to bed, could possibly "know positively" that the accused Senator was innocent. Even the Senator seems to have cherished a private doubt about the matter. In the scrap-book he had drawn a circle around Walter's name where it first appeared in newsprint. And in the margin opposite he had pencilled a question mark.

No, the currently serialized "House in the Whispering Pines" contained no mystery as mysterious as that one little notation.

With the Walter Jones enigma in mind, I turned eagerly to the press accounts of the trial of Earnest Bridewell, State Senator charged with matricide.

Counsel for the defense consisted of Vernon Bibbs, Esq., and Erasmus T. G. Coulter—an astute, and therefore expensive, team. Bibbs had pleaded a number of frontpage cases, and apparently was on his way up as a criminal lawyer. From his tactics I deduced that Coulter was a pleader of the older gaslight school which produced more gas than light. But sharp. A smalltown Joseph Choate. (And lest some nostalgic alumnus of Harvard Law protest the implication that Choate had a sharp side, be it remembered that the famous Choate as a young man was sharp enough to escape the Civil War draft by hiring a substitute to fight in his stead. It was Choate, too, who later wangled a whitewash for Captain Bowman McCalla, a martinet who touched off one of the relatively few mutinies in the U.S. Navy.)

That Bibbs and Coulter were adept was evidenced by the publicity immediately generated in their client's behalf. Less than two weeks after Earnest Bridewell's arrest, the Coastal City News published an opinion which flatly stated that the charges against the Senator were groundless.

"Considerable mystery enshrouds the case, and there is a report in court circles that he [Earnest Bridewell] may never be tried, ... It is understood that the Attorney General's office has failed to produce a shred of incriminating evidence."

The prosecution, as embodied in the Office of the State's Attorney General, apparently did not protest this effort to suborn public opinion. Either the Attorney General was asleep, or he felt confident that the State had an open-and-shut case and he could therefore ignore such hokey-pokey defense tactics. There remains one other possibility—one having to do with politics. But the Attorney General himself had pushed the case against the defendant; he would hardly call off his dogs immediately after unleashing them.

The prosecution was entrusted to State's Attorney Bolivar Dodd. Dodd seems to have been determined enough. The day after Earnest Bridewell's arrest, State officers and police detectives were dispatched to Quahog Point to procure evidence and round up witnesses. Of this latter there was no lack, especially in the anti-character category. Scores of depositions were taken. Evidently most of them were freely offered.

Bibbs and Coulter scored a preliminary victory for the defense by maneuvering the case into District Court. Those who know the area informed me that this maneuver gave the defense a decided gambit advantage. At that date (1911) the District Court would have been awed to its bootstraps by a capital case.*

I do not know that Judge Mather P. Cottonwood, the jurist who sat on the Bridewell case, wore bootstraps (whatever they might be). He does seem to have been awed by some of the courtroom developments. Practically all of Quahog Point arrived by excursion steamer to cram the little down-coast courthouse. Lured by the rumor that a State Senator might possibly hang, rubberneckers came from such distant points as Woods Hole and Sag Harbor. "It was said" that some of the rich Van Cleafs might be in attendance. "It was said" that the Governor planned to send an observer. On opening day the courtroom would be stuffed chock-a-block, with windowsills and standing room at a premium.