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Eben heard it too, and I can still see him standing there, the handkerchief held to his neck, staring over it at the Lancaster house and holding tight to the handle of his mower. How long he stood I do not know, for now the shriek was repeated, but nearer at hand; and the next moment Emily Lancaster, the elder of the old lady’s two daughters, stumbled out of the side door, screamed again, ran across the lawn toward Eben and then collapsed in a dead faint almost at his feet.

So rapidly had all this happened that Eben was still holding to the mower and to his handkerchief. When I got to them, however, he was stooping over her and trying to raise her.

“Let her alone, Eben,” I said impatiently. “Leave her flat. And see what has happened.”

“I reckon the old lady has passed on,” he said, and moved rather deliberately toward the side door. But before he reached it a sort of pandemonium seemed to break loose in the house itself. There were squeals from the women servants, and hysterical crying, distinct because of the open windows; and above all this I could hear Margaret Lancaster’s voice, high pitched and shrill.

Even then I believed as Eben did, that the old lady had died; and I remember thinking that there was an unusual amount of excitement for what had been expected for years anyhow. My immediate problem, however, was Miss Emily, lying in her spotless white on the path, her high pompadour slipped to one side and her face as white as her dress.

Eben had disappeared into the house by the side door, and there was nothing I could do until help came. I had expected him to send that help, but after perhaps two or three minutes I heard someone run across the front porch and out into the street, and I saw that it was Eben. He had apparently forgotten us, for he stood there for a second staring right and left and then set off, running again, toward the gate to the Crescent.

I knew then that there was something terribly wrong, and I tried to rouse Emily.

“Miss Emily!” I said. “Listen, Miss Emily, can’t you sit up?”

But she did not move, and I stared around helplessly for someone to assist me. It was then that I saw Jim Wellington. It looked as though he had come out of the Lancasters’ side door, although I had not heard the screen slam; and I have not lived all my life beside that door without knowing that it can slam.

At first I thought he had not noticed us. He was moving rapidly toward the back of the property, where a path connected the rears of all the houses. Our grapevine telegraph line, Bryan Dalton called it, because the servants used it to go from one house to another and to carry all the news. Then I felt that he must have seen us, for I in my pale dress and Miss Emily in white must have stood out like two sore thumbs.

“Jim!” I called. “Jim Wellington! Come here.”

He turned then and came toward us. Like the screen door, I have known him all my life and been fond of him; too fond once, for that matter. But never have I seen him look as he looked then. His face was gray, and he seemed slightly dazed.

“I need help, Jim. She’s fainted.”

“Who is it? Emily?”

“Yes.”

He hesitated, then came closer and leaned over her.

“You’re sure she’s not hurt?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t seem to fall very hard. She just slid down. What on earth has happened, Jim?”

But as Miss Emily moved then and groaned, he straightened up and shook his head for silence.

“She’s coming to,” he said. “Better tell them where she is. I have to get on home.” He turned to go and then swung back. “See here, Lou,” he said roughly, “you needn’t say you’ve seen me. There’s trouble in there, and I don’t want to be mixed up in it.”

“What sort of trouble?” I asked. But he went on as though he had not heard me, toward the back path and his house.

Still no help came. Apparently not even our own servants had heard the excitement, for our service wing is away from the Lancasters’ and toward the Dalton house. Five minutes had passed, or maybe more; long enough at least for Eben to have reached Liberty Avenue and to return, for now he reappeared on the run, followed by our local police officer. They had disappeared into the house when Miss Emily groaned again.

I bent over her.

“Can you get up, Miss Emily?” I inquired.

She shook her head, and then a memory of some sort sent her face down again on the grass, sobbing hysterically.

“What is it?” I asked helplessly. “Please tell me, Miss Emily. Then I’ll know what to do.”

At that she went off into straight hysterics, that dreadful crying which is half a scream, and I was never so glad to see anyone as I was to see Margaret, hastily clad in a kimono and standing in the side doorway. She too looked pale and distracted, but she came across to us in a hurry.

“Stop it, Emily!” she said. “Louisa, get some water somewhere and throw it over her. Emily, for God’s sake!”

Whether it was the threat of the water or the furious anger in Miss Margaret’s voice I do not know, but Miss Emily stopped anyhow, and sat up.

“You’re a cold-blooded woman, Margaret. With Mother—!”

“Who do you think you are helping by fainting and screaming?” Margaret demanded sharply. “Do you want Father to hear you?”

“Does he know?”

“He knows.” Miss Margaret’s voice was grim. “I told them not to let him go upstairs.”

Naturally I knew or was certain by that time that Mrs. Lancaster was dead, and as everyone had known how faithfully Emily had cared for her mother, I could understand her hysteria well enough. She was an emotional woman, given to the reading of light romances and considered sentimental by the Crescent. Margaret had been a devoted daughter also, but she was more matter-of-fact. In a way, Emily had been the nurse and Margaret had been the housekeeper of the establishment.

The screen door was still unfastened, and together we got Emily into the house and across the main hall to the library. Margaret was leading the way, and I remember now that she stopped and picked up something from the floor near the foot of the stairs. I did not notice it particularly at the time, for the patrolman, Lynch, was at the telephone in the lower hall, and well as I knew him he stared at me and through me as he talked.

“That’s it,” he said. “Looks like it was done with an axe, yes. … Yeah, I got it. Okay.”

He hung up and ran up the stairs again.

Suddenly I felt sick and cold all over. Somebody had been hurt, or killed with an axe! But that automatically removed Mrs. Lancaster from my mind as the victim. Who would kill that helpless old woman, and with an axe! Confused as I was, I was excited but still ignorant when we reached the library door; and it was not until I saw old Mr. Lancaster that I knew.

He was alone, lying back in a big leather chair, his face bloodless and his eyes closed. He did not even open them when we went in, or when Margaret helped me get Emily onto the leather couch there. It was after we had settled her there that Margaret went to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You know that it was murder, don’t you, father?”

He nodded.

“Who told you?”

“Eben.” His lips scarcely moved. “I met him on the street.”

“But you haven’t been up?”

“No.”

“I’ll get you a glass of wine.” She patted his shoulder and disappeared, leaving the three of us to one of those appalling silences which are like thunder in the ears. It was the old man who broke it finally. He opened his eyes and looked at Emily, shuddering on the couch.

“You found her?” he asked, still without moving.

“Yes. Please, father, don’t let’s talk about it.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“No. I was dressing with my door closed.”

“And Margaret?”

“I don’t see how she could. She was taking a bath. The water was running when I called her.”

Margaret brought in a glass of port wine, and he drank it. Always small, he seemed to have shrunk in the last few minutes. A dapper little man, looking younger than his years, he was as much a part of the Crescent as Mrs. Talbot’s dahlias, or our own elm trees; a creature of small but regular habits, so that we could have set our clocks by his afternoon walk, or our calendars by his appearance in his fall overcoat.

But if he was stricken, I imagine that it was with horror rather than grief. After all, a man can hardly be heartbroken over the death of a wife who has been an exacting invalid for twenty years or so, and a bedridden one for ten.

The wine apparently revived him, for he sat up and looked at the two women, middle-aged and now pallid and shaken. It was a searching look, intent and rather strange. He surveyed Emily moaning on the couch, a huddled white picture of grief. Then he looked at Margaret, horrified but calm beside the center table, and clutching her flowered kimono about her. I do not think he even knew that I was in the room.

Apparently what he saw satisfied him, however, for he leaned back again in his chair and seemed to be thinking. I was about to slip out of the room when he spoke again, suddenly.

“Has anyone looked under the bed?” he said.

And as if she had been touched by an electric wire Emily sat up on the couch.

“Under the bed? Then you think—?”

“What else am I to think?”

But no one answered him, for at that moment a police car drove up; a radio car with two officers in it, and a second or so later another car containing what I now know were an Inspector from Headquarters and three members of the Homicide Squad.

I
WAS STILL SHOCKED
and incredulous when I went into the hall and watched that small regiment of policemen as they trooped silently up the stairs. The clock on the landing showed only twenty minutes after four. Only twenty minutes or so ago I had been peacefully sewing at my window, and the Lancaster house had gleamed white and quiet through the trees.

Now everything was changed, and yet nothing was changed. The hall was as usual, the old-fashioned brass rods on the stairs gleamed from recent polishing, and the men had disappeared overhead. The only sound I could hear was of women softly crying somewhere above, and toward that sound I found myself moving. It came from the upper front hall, and there I found Lynch, the patrolman. He had rounded the three women servants outside Mrs. Lancaster’s door, and he was holding Eben there also.

Two of the maids were elderly women and had been there for years; Ellen the cook and Jennie the waitress. Only Peggy the young housemaid was a comparative newcomer, but none the less shocked and stricken. All three of them were crying with the ease and facility of people who know that tears are expected of them, but as I looked Peggy pointed to the doorsill and gave a smothered cry.

“Blood!” she cried.

Lynch told her gruffly to keep still, and so we stood until one of the detectives came out into the hall. He surveyed the drooping group grimly.

“And now,” he said, “let’s hear about it.”

There was apparently nothing to hear. Ellen had been beating up a cake on the back porch, and Jennie had been cleaning silver, also on the porch for coolness. Peggy was off that afternoon, and had been about to leave by the kitchen door when they heard Miss Emily screaming. None of them had seen Mrs. Lancaster since Jennie had carried up her tray at half past one o’clock, and all of them swore that all the doors, front, rear and side, had been locked.

The detective took Eben last.

“Where were you?”

“Where was I when?”

“When this thing happened.”

“I don’t know when it happened.”

“Let’s see your feet.”

“There’s blood on them most likely. When Miss Emily ran out screaming I thought most likely the old lady had passed away, so when the noise began I came on up here. But Miss Margaret was here ahead of me. She had the door open and was looking in. She told me to see if her mother was still alive, but I didn’t need to go far to know that.”

“I can corroborate that,” I said. “Eben was cutting the grass near my window. I saw Miss Emily come out, and I sent him in to see what was wrong.”

I had to explain myself then, and what I had seen from my window. He listened carefully.

“That’s all you saw?” he asked. “Didn’t see anyone going in or coming out?”

“No,” I told him; and suddenly for the first time since I had entered the house I remembered Jim Wellington. What I might have done or said then I hardly know now. I remember that my chest tightened and that I felt shaky all at once. But the need did not arise. There was a sound like a mild explosion from the death room at that moment, and one of the maids yelped and turned to run.

In the resulting explanation, that a flashlight photograph had been made inside the closed room where the body lay, I was asked no more questions. The servants were dismissed and warned not to leave the house, and the detective, whose name I learned later was Sullivan, turned and went into the death chamber again.

I was left alone in the upper hall, but entirely incapable of thought. I remember hearing Miss Emily’s canary singing loudly in her room and thinking that it was dreadful, that gaiety so close at hand. Then I went, slowly and rather dazedly, down the stairs and out the front door.

I have no clear recollection of the rest of that afternoon, save that on the way back I met Lydia Talbot on the pavement staring at the police car, with her arms filled with bundles and her face white and shocked.

“Whatever has happened?” she asked me. “Is it a fire?”

“Mrs. Lancaster is dead. I’m afraid she’s been murdered, Miss Lydia.”

She swayed so that I caught her by the arm, and some of her bundles dropped. She made no attempt to pick them up.

“But I was there,” she said faintly. “I was there this afternoon. I took her some jellied chicken, just after lunch. She was all right then.”

In the end I took her home, cutting across the Common to save time, and was glad to find that she had rallied somewhat.

“How was it—was it done?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. I believe with an axe. Don’t think about it,” I added, as I felt her trembling again. “We can’t help it now.”

And then she said a strange thing.

“Well, she was my own sister-in-law, but I never liked her. And I suppose they stood it as long as they could.”