The trouble at Pinelands A detective story
it was still early, showed us to the telephone, and Wakefield called for
the county jail.
We claimed Pinelands for the county seat, but the courthouse and jail of
Carabas County were not in the town. When the new buildings were
projected some ten years before there was a bitter rivalry between
Pinelands and Smyrna, five miles off, for the honor of possessing them.
And finally, to settle this, the jail and courthouse were built upon the
dividing line of the two townships, over two miles from either village.
This singular arrangement, of course, pleased neither contingent. But
there our courthouse stood, alone in the wilderness, and I know of one
other similar case in North Carolina.
The sheriff lived in the jail, which made this a long-distance call. We
had to wait for ten minutes or so to get a connection.
“Hello!” said Wakefield. “Hello! Th’ jail?... Gimme th’ high sheriff.
Huh?... This here’s Rufe Wakefield, over to Pinelands.... Yeah,
Const’ble Wakefield. Hello, sheriff?... They’s been a killin’ here--Doc
Gaskell’s done been shot.... Huh?... Yeah, I got th’ feller did it....
Huh?... Bring ’im out there? Nossir! I ain’t got no author’ty outside
th’ corporation, an’, anyways, I ain’t a-goin’ to.... Huh?... Nossir!...
Huh?”
I pushed him aside; I could see that he was getting nowhere. “Hello!
Sheriff?... George Uhlman speaking.... Yes, Doctor Parker’s uncle. We
just found Doctor Gaskell out here in the bushes, near his house, dead.
He’d been killed with a shotgun. We don’t know how it happened; looks
like an accident. Wakefield thinks my nephew did it, but I don’t!
Anyway, it’s not clear, and it needs investigation. There’s nobody here
fit to take charge. Will you come right over, please?”
“W’y sure!” came the sheriff’s high, whining falsetto. “I s’posed f’om
Rufe it wa’n’t nothin’, on’y just a plain killin’. Be over directly. You
sent f’r th’ coroner?”
“No; we just found the body.”
“Aw right! I’ll git Doc Burgess f’om Smyrna an’ carry him over there.
Git started soon as I c’n git my clothes on.” His shrill voice took on
an injured note. “Wisht you-all’d have y’r killin’s later in the day!”
We went out into the fresh, bright morning, and walked toward the pine
grove. Even now Pinelands was scarcely awake. Thin curls of smoke began
lazily to mount from a chimney here and there; a colored servant or two
hurried up the street, fresh from Jimtown, across the creek. In an hour
they would be serving breakfast; the orderly life of Pinelands would
begin behind those white colonnaded house fronts, which were now so
still. It came to me as a shock, that peaceful life should be going on
all about, when I seemed caught into the whirl of another world
altogether--a fantastic, unreal world of sudden death and police
officers and all the sordid routine of criminal investigation. Perhaps I
felt the whole affair as deeply as Lewis did. I was fond of my nephew.
We passed under Aunt Mary’s window, and I could hear Miss Christie’s
undisturbed snoring. There was no sound from Miss McGregor herself,
although the quail still whistled piercingly. I wondered if she could
really be asleep--if, perhaps, the bobwhites disturbed her less than she
fancied. Surely, with the shouting which had followed that fateful
explosion of Peter McGregor’s shotgun, even a sound sleeper might well
have been awakened.
But one, at least, in Fort House, was stirring. As we passed the corner
of the old place Dorothy ran out, breathless, hastily dressed, but
distractingly pretty. Her thick braids were coiled carelessly on her
head; as she came toward us she thrust a hairpin home.
“Oh, Lewis! What is it, boy? What’s happened? I just know it’s something
terrible!”
“There, there, honey!” With a vast effort the boy shook himself into a
semblance of calm, and put an arm about her protectingly. “It’s nothing!
There’s been an accident, and Doctor Gaskell is hurt.”
“Hurt?” She drew away from him a little, looking deep into his eyes.
“Oh, boy, boy! You didn’t quarrel with him again?”
“No. I--I didn’t know he was there, dear. I never saw or heard a thing.
And the gun went off, and----”
“Did you hit him? Is he hurt badly? Where is he? Can’t I help?”
“Nobody can help him now,” I told her gravely. “The only way you can
help is to go back in the house and try to keep this from Aunt Mary as
long as you can. No!” I caught her sharply back, as she would have run
down the path. “You can’t do anything there; you must keep away.”
She stared at me in agony. “You--you mean he’s dead?” She seemed unable
to understand; her face was quite blank. Indeed, all of us seemed
helplessly confused that fateful morning. I look back now and see how we
might have risen to the occasion, how we might have handled the
situation efficiently; but then we all seemed bound by the same
nightmare, gripped by that terrible helplessness of dreams, so that we
could only stare and gape. After all, it was no wonder! Doctor William
Gaskell had been killed in a very sudden and dreadful fashion--and my
nephew, Lewis Parker, was supposed to have killed him, however
unintentionally. And we loved the boy.
“We-ell,” said Dorothy uncertainly, “I’ll try and be good. You come with
me, Lewis, please.”
“I--I’m needed here,” he began, but Constable Wakefield’s stentorian
voice drowned his evasion.
“He’s gotta stay right with me, ma’am,” he declared. “He’s under arrest,
he is, f’r murder!” He inflated his huge chest importantly, then shrank
suddenly back, fumbling at his hip, as my nephew turned upon him. “Here,
here! None o’ that, now!”
“You fool!” said the boy. “I’ve a good mind to break your head--blurting
out that way.”
“Quit, quit!” The constable tried to hide his vast bulk behind me, and
his voice shook. Here was a desperate criminal, a red-handed murderer,
threatening him! I read the thought in the sickly face of him. “You-all
make him quit! Resistin’ a officer’s serious, Parker!”
Lewis had forgotten him already. His eyes were all for Dorothy. “It--it
was an accident!” he declared piteously. “Dorothy--honey--you believe
me, don’t you? I never even saw him; I supposed he was home in bed. Oh,
honey, you don’t think I really meant to shoot him?”
The girl’s eyes shone, and she brushed the thought away with a
magnificent gesture. “Of course not! But, Lewis, boy, arrested! W-will
they put you in j-jail, dearest? They won’t keep you there, will they?
Why, our wedding’s only two days off!”
“Come, dear,” I urged. “Run in, now. See, people are coming already.
It’s only a formality”--how I hoped it was not a lie--“just a form.
He’ll be out again and back in time for dinner. You go look after Aunt
Mary and be brave.”
She turned away obediently, her slender shoulders shaking with sobs;
then she came back to kiss the boy, and fled. I sighed with relief as
she vanished into the house. “Come on, Wakefield, let’s get it over,” I
suggested.
Already the news had spread. Perhaps it had been the telephone operator,
perhaps the mysterious wireless of small-town gossip. Anyhow men and
boys had begun to collect, to hang in whispering groups along the road.
A few bolder spirits advanced, full of questions, and followed us back
along the path to where Gaskell’s body still lay.
“How come?” asked one man of the constable, who stood beside Lewis,
still rubbing his chin with unsteady fingers. He had made no move to
lift the dead man.
“How come? Doc Parker, here, done it with his shotgun just now. I as
good as seen him!”
The constable’s statement was relayed from one whispering group to
another. The crowd gathered, came closer, jostling and shoving through
the scrub for a better look. A little murmur started somewhere and grew
into a menacing growl: “Killed Doc Gaskell! Shot ’im down deliberate!
Dirty coward!” A high, excited voice from the rear shouted: “He ought to
be lynched!”
At that sinister suggestion the crowd began to mill. The mutter of
unfriendly voices deepened, grew more ominous. “Git a rope!” exclaimed
another. Suddenly there was an outburst of howls, shrill, bitter,
inhuman, like the baying of hounds. “Git a rope! Git a rope! Hang
’im--lynch ’im!”
Pushing and crowding, they drew closer, surrounding us and the body,
treading down the bushes, thrusting aside saplings. I looked into a
circle of flushed, ugly faces. The crowd had become a mob.
Constable Wakefield straightened to the full of his six feet two, thrust
out his official chest and glowered at them fiercely. “Stand back,
boys!” he ordered. “Don’t interfere with th’ law!”
His authoritative way had its effect for an instant; then some one
laughed. “Yah, Rufe! ’Member when Ralph Satterfield took y’r star off of
yuh that day? Knock his block off, fellers; take ’is gun away, if he
starts anythin’. He ain’t got the nerve to shoot.” Wakefield had now
produced a huge and ancient pistol.
The big man paled, and his small eyes shifted uncertainly. His heavy,
bullying voice quavered. “Now, now, boys,” he said, suddenly pacific,
“don’t do nothin’ you’ll be sorry for.”
“Gr-r-r-r!” The crowd swayed forward. Lewis, very white, clenched his
fists and crouched, prepared to sell his life dearly. I stood in front
of him; I would come to grips with Nate Buford who was nearest me; I
could hold him back for a minute, at least. And, even in that breathless
moment, I had to grin to myself to think of pitting my puny, rheumatic
sixty-odd years against the wrath of a mob.
Presently the crowd began to waver. “Beat it!” shouted some one from the
rear. Those nearest us shifted, looked over shoulders, then stepped
back, each trying to hide behind his fellows and look like an innocent
bystander. A wide lane opened, and along it a shrunken, undistinguished
figure advanced toward us. It was a little old man, stooped and bent,
whose rheumy, red-rimmed eyes peered mildly from beneath a wide,
flapping hat brim; his lean, leathery face, seamed by a thousand
wrinkles, was made ludicrous by the merest wisp of straggling white
mustache; the gnarled, calloused hands swung empty at his sides. It was
High Sheriff Redden, and glad I was to see him.
He came on through the shrinking, melting crowd and stood with us,
peering down at Doctor Gaskell’s quiet body. “H’m,” said he. “Daid,
ain’t he?”
He spoke in a quavering, cracked falsetto. Then he turned and ran a
mild, watery eye over the throng, stroking his ridiculous, wispy
mustache the while. “Seems like I heerd some racketin’ round here,” he
went on in that grotesque, squeaky whine. “You-all c’n go home now. Git!
Scatter!”
His bent, shrunken form contrasted absurdly with the constable’s
massiveness; his voice, to the constable’s roar, was a penny whistle to
a pipe organ. His rheumy eyes were mild, almost timid; his gnarled hands
were empty.
But none withstood him. The crowd melted fast, each man looking, or
trying to look, as if he’d just stopped for a minute and was ready to
go, anyway. Presently Lewis and I stood alone with the constable, the
sheriff, and the dead man.
I conceived a sincere respect for High Sheriff Redden.
CHAPTER VII
INVESTIGATION
Sheriff Redden, at least, seemed quite untouched by the paralysis of
thought which held us all. He cleared his throat briskly, ran a watery
eye over our blank visages, and stooped over the dead man.
“H’m,” said he. “Plumb center--with a shotgun, held clost enough to
scorch his shirt some. Who found him?”
A quail whistled sharply, as if in mockery, and its shrill note struck
exactly the key of the high sheriff’s squeaky voice. It was ridiculous
enough, yet none of us seemed moved to laugh. Indeed, I valued the
sheriff’s intelligence the higher, that he asked: “Who found him?”
instead of “Who did it?”