who happened to be a lawyer, sat full in the light of a solitary lamp. It shone upon the brown-covered composition book in his hands. A man named John Selby, a merchant in the small city, was seated in a low chair. He hung his head; his face was hidden; the light washed only his trembling head and the nervous struggle of his fingers. The Chief of Police, Barker, was seated in half shadow. And Doctor Coles loomed against the wall beside a white door that was ajar. It was one o’clock in the morning.
Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief…
“Well?” the Chief challenged. “Okay, Russell. You’re smart, as Selby says you are. You come running when you’re called, listen to five minutes’ talk about this kid, and you predict there’s got to be some such notebook around. Well? Now you’ve found it, why don’t you see what it says?”
“I’m waiting for a direction,” said the lawyer mildly. “It’s not for me to turn this cover. Look at the big black letters. Meredith Lee. Personal and Private. It’s not up to me to violate her privacy. But Selby’s her kin. Coles is her doctor. And you are law and order in this town.”
The doctor turned his head suddenly to the crack of the door.
“Any change?” the Chief asked eagerly.
“No. She’s still unconscious. Go ahead, Russell. Don’t be squeamish. She’s a child, after all.”
“See if there’s anything helpful in there,” the Chief of Police said, “See if that notebook can explain…”
“Explains,” the lawyer mused, “how a fifteen-year-old girl solved a seven-year-old murder mystery in four days…”
“She didn’t solve it all the way,” said the Chief impatiently.
Russell ignored him. “What do you say, Selby? She’s your niece. Shall we read her private notebook?”
Selby’s hands came palms up, briefly. The policeman spoke again, “Read it. I intend to, if you don’t. I’ve got to get the straight of it. My prisoner won’t talk.”
The doctor said pompously, “After all, it may be best for the girl.”
Russell said dryly, “I’m just as curious as the rest of you.”
He opened the book and began to read aloud.
Meredith Lee. New Notes and Jottings.
July 23rd.
Here I am at Uncle John’s. The family has dumped me for two weeks while they go to New York. I don’t complain. It is impossible for me to get bored, since I can always study human nature.
Uncle John looks much the same. Gray hairs show. He’s thirty-seven. Why didn’t he marry? Mama says he’s practicing to stuff a shirt. He was very Uncle-ish and hearty when I got dumped last night, but he actually has no idea what to do with me, except tell the servants to keep me clean and fed. It’s a good thing I’ve got resources.
Russell looked up. The Chief was chewing his lip. The doctor was frankly smiling. John Selby said, painfully, “She’s right about that. Fool I was…I didn’t know what to do with her.” His head rolled in his hands.
“Go on,” the Chief prodded.
Russell continued reading.
Went to the neighborhood drug store, first thing. Snooped down the street. I’d forgotten it, but my goodness, it’s typical. Very settled. Not swank. Not poor, either. Very middle. No logic to that phrase. A thing can’t be very middle, but it says what I feel. On the way home, a Discovery! There’s a whopping big hedge between Uncle John’s house and the house next door. The neighbor woman was out messing in her flower beds. Description: petite. Dark hair, with silver. Skillfully made up. Effect quite young. (N.B. What a bad paragraph! Choppy!)
So, filled with curiosity, I leaned over her gate and introduced myself. She’s a Discovery! She’s a Wicked Widow and she’s forbidden! I didn’t know that when I talked to her.
(N.B. Practice remembering dialogue accurately.)
Wicked Widow: Mr. Selby’s niece, of course. I remember you, my dear. You were here as a little girl, weren’t you? Wasn’t the last time about seven years ago?
Meredith Lee: Yes, it was. But I don’t remember you.
W.W.: Don’t you? I am Josephine Corcoran. How old were you then, Meredith?
M.L.: Only eight.
W.W.: Only eight?
We came to a stop. I wasn’t going to repeat. That’s a horrible speech habit. You can waste hours trying to communicate. So I looked around and remembered something.
M.L.: I see my tree house has disintegrated.
W.W.: Your tree house? (N.B. She repeated everything I said, and with a question mark. Careless habit? Or just pace?) Oh, yes, of course. In that big maple, wasn’t it?
M.L.: Mr. Jewell—you know, Uncle John’s gardener?—he built it for me. I had a cot up there and a play ice-box and a million cushions. I wouldn’t come down.
W.W.: Wouldn’t come down? Yes, I remember. Eight years old and your Uncle used to let you spend the night— (N.B. She looked scared. Why? If I’d fallen out and killed myself seven years ago, I wouldn’t be talking to her. Elders worry retroactively.)
M.L.: Oh, Uncle John had nothing to do with it. Mama’s rational. She knew it was safe. Railings, and I always pulled up my rope ladder. Nobody could get up, or get me down without an awful lot of trouble. I was a tomboy in those days.
W.W.: Tomboy? Yes, seven years is a long time. (N.B. No snicker. She looked serious and thoughtful, just standing with the trowel in her hand, not even smiling. That’s when I got the feeling I could really communicate and it’s very unusual. She must be thirty. I get that feeling with really old people or people about eighteen, sometimes. But people in between, and especially thirty, usually act like Uncle John.)
Now I forget…her dialogue wasn’t so sparkling, I guess, but she was understanding. Did I know any young people? I said No, and she politely hoped I wouldn’t be lonely. I explained that I hoped to be a Writer, so I would probably always be lonely. And she said she supposed that was true. I liked that. It’s not so often somebody listens. And while she may have looked surprised at a new thought, she didn’t look amused. My object in life is not to amuse, and I get tired of those smiles. So I liked her.
But then, at dinner time, just as soon as I’d said I’d met her, she got forbidden.
Uncle John: (clearing his throat) Meredith, I don’t think you had better…(He stuck. He sticks a lot.)
M.L.: Better what?
Uncle John: Er…(N.B. English spelling. Americans say uh. I am an American.) Uh…Mrs. Corcoran and I are not…uh…especially friendly and I’d rather you didn’t…(Stuck again)
M.L.: Why not? Are you feuding?
Uncle John: No, no. I merely…
M.L.: Merely what? I think she’s very nice.
Uncle John: Uh…(very stuffy)…You are hardly in a position to know anything about it. I’m afraid she is not the kind of woman your mother would…
M.L.: What kind is she? (You have to really pry at Uncle John.)
Uncle John: (finally) Not socially acceptable.
M.L.: What! Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Uncle John! That’s the stuffiest thing I ever heard! Why?
Uncle John: It’s not stuffy, Meredith, and it’s not easy to explain why. (Looks at me as if he wonders whether I understand English.) Maybe, if you knew that there was a strange business, years ago…Her husband was…uh…shot in rather mysterious circum…
M.L.: Shot! Do you mean killed? Do you mean murdered? Really? Oh, boy! How? When? Who did it? What happened?
Now, why did Uncle John act so surprised? Did he think I’d be scared? Don’t people who are thirty ever remember how they didn’t used to be scared by interesting things? But he was surprised and also very sticky and stuffy for a while. But I kept prying.
And I think it’s just pitiful. I don’t know why Uncle John can’t see how pitiful it is. Poor Mrs. Corcoran. Her husband came home late one night and as he was standing at his own front door, somebody shot him from behind. They found the gun but nothing else. He wasn’t robbed. It’s just a mystery. So, just because it is a mystery and nobody knows, they’ve treated her as if she were a murderess! I can just see how it’s been and I’m ashamed of Uncle John. He sure is practicing to stuff a shirt. He lets the hedge grow, and he goes along with the stupid town. It sounds as if nobody has accepted her socially ever since. Fine thing! She is supposed to be a wicked widow, just because her husband got murdered by person or persons unknown. Probably the town thinks such a thing couldn’t happen to a respectable person. But it could. I’m very sorry for her.
The thing I’m saving for the bottom of this page is—it’s my murder! I got that out of Uncle John. What do you know! What do you know! I was in my tree house that very night!
I’m just faintly remembering how I got whisked out of here so fast, that time. I never did know why. Holy cats! Eight years old. I’m asleep in a tree and a murder takes place right under me! And I never even knew it! They didn’t tell me! They didn’t even ask me a single question! A fine thing! A real murder in my own life, and I can’t remember even one thing about it!
The lawyer paused. The doctor stirred, looked through the door. Three raised heads queried him. He said, “Nothing. It may be a good while yet before she is conscious. Don’t…worry.”
Selby turned to stare blindly at the lamp. “My sister should never—should never have left her with me. I had no business—no business to tell her a word about it.”
“You thought she’d be scared away from the widow?”
“I suppose so.”
The Chief said, “Now, wait a minute. The girl puts down in there that she couldn’t remember even one thing about the killing? But that makes no sense at all.”
“That’s the July twenty-third entry,” said Russell. “Here is July twenty-fifth. Let’s see.”
I couldn’t stand it—I just can’t think about anything else but my murder. I had to find out more. This afternoon I had tea with the widow. I don’t think she’s wicked at all. She’s very sad, actually. She was in the garden again. I just know she was conscious of me, on Uncle John’s side of the hedge, all day yesterday. Today, finally, she spoke to me. So I went around and leeched onto her.
(N.B. Practice getting the “saids” in)
Nervously, she said, “I hope your Uncle won’t be angry.”
I said, pretending to blurt, “Oh, Mrs. Corcoran, Uncle John told me about the awful thing that happened to your husband. And to think I was right up in my tree house. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said, looking pretty tense. “It was long ago, and there is no need. I’m sorry he spoke of it.”
“Oh, I made him,” said I. “And now when I think that for all I know, I might have seen and heard exactly what happened, and the only trouble is, I was so little, I can’t remember—it just about makes me wild!”
She looked at me in a funny way. I thought she was going to blurt, “Oh, if only you could remember…” But actually, she said, “If you would like more cake please help yourself.”
“It’s too bad it’s a mystery,” I said (cried). “Why couldn’t they solve it? Don’t you wish they could solve it? Maybe it’s not too late.”
She looked startled. (N.B. What happens to eyes, anyhow, to make the whites show more? Observe.)
“I wish you would tell me the details,” I said. “Couldn’t they find out anything?”
“No, no. My dear, I don’t think we had better talk about it at all. It’s not the sort of thing a sweet child ought to be brooding about,” she said.
I was desperate. “Mrs. Corcoran, the other day I thought better of you. Because you didn’t laugh, for instance, when I mentioned that I used to be a tomboy, years ago. Most older people would have laughed. I’ll never understand why. Obviously, I’m quite different and seven years has made a big change, and why it’s so funny if I know that, I cannot see.” She was leaning back and feeling surprised, I judged. “So don’t disappoint me now and think of me as an eight-year-old child,” I said, “when I may have the freshest eye and be the open-mindedest person around.”
She nibbled her lips. She wasn’t offended. I think she’s very intelligent and responding.
“I’m going to brood and you can’t stop that,” I told her. “I just wish I could help. I’ve been thinking that maybe if I tried I could remember.”
“Oh, no. No, my dear. Thank you,” she said. “I know you would like to help. But you were only eight at that time. I don’t suppose, then or now, anyone would believe you.”
“And now I’m only fifteen,” I said crossly, “and nobody will tell me.”
She said sweetly. “You’re rather an extraordinary fifteen, my dear. If I tell you about it, Meredith, and you see how hopeless it is, do you think perhaps then you can let it rest?”
I said I thought so. (What a lie!)
“Harry, my husband, was often late getting home, so that night,” she said, “I wasn’t at all worried. I simply went to bed, as usual, and to sleep. Something woke me. I don’t know what. My window was open. It was very warm, full summer. I lay in my bed, listening. There used to be a big elm out there beside my walk. It got the disease all the elms are getting, and it had to be cut down and taken away. But that night I could see its leaf patterns on the wall, that the moon always used to make at night, and the leaves moving gently. There was a full moon, I remember. A lovely quiet summer night.” (N.B. She’s pretty good with a mood.)
“I had been awakened, yet I could hear nothing, until I heard the shot. It paralyzed me. I lay back stiff and scared. Harry didn’t…cry out. I heard nothing more for a while. Then I thought I heard shrubs rustling. When I finally pulled myself to the window, your Uncle John was there.” She stopped and I had to poke her up to go on.
“Your Uncle was forcing his way through the hedge, which was low, then. And I saw Harry lying on our little stoop. I ran to my bedroom door and my maid was standing in the hall, quite frightened, and we ran down. Your Uncle told me that Harry was…not alive. (N.B. Pretty delicate diction.) He was calling the doctor and the police from my phone. I sat down trembling on a chair in the hall. I remember, now, that as your Uncle started out of the house again, he seemed to recall where you were and went running to his garage for a ladder to get you down.”
“Darn it,” I said.
She knew what I meant, because she said right away, “You couldn’t remember—you must have been sleepy. Perhaps you didn’t really wake up.”
“I suppose so,” said I disgustedly. “Go on.”
“Well, the police came very quickly—Chief Barker himself. And of course, Doctor Coles. They did find the gun, caught in the hedge. They never traced it. There weren’t any fingerprints anywhere. And no footprints in that dry weather. So they never found out…” She pulled herself together. “And that, my dear, is all.” She started drinking her tea, looking very severe with herself.
I said, “There never was a trial?”
“There was never anyone to try.”
“Not you, Mrs. Corcoran?”
“No one accused me,” she said, smiling faintly. But her eyes were so sad.
“They did, though,” I said, kind of mad. “They sentenced you, too.”
“Dear girl,” she said very seriously, “You mustn’t make a heroine of me. Chief Barker and Doctor Coles…and your Uncle John, too, I’m sure…tried as helpfully as they could to clear it all up, but they never could find out who, or even why. You see? So…” She was getting pretty flustery.
“So the wind begins to blow against you,” I said, mad as the dickens. “Or how come the hedge? Why does Uncle John tell me not to come here? What makes him think you’re so wicked?”
“Does he?” she said, “I am not wicked, Meredith. Neither am I a saint. I’m human.”
I always thought that was a corny saying. But it’s effective. It makes you feel for whoever says it, as if they had admitted something just awful that you wouldn’t admit, either—unless, of course, you were trapped.
“Harry and I were not always harmonious,” she said. “Few couples are. He drank a good bit. Many men do. I suppose the neighbors noticed. Some of them, in fact, used to feel quite sorry for me. I…” Her face was real bitter, but she has a quick hunching way of pulling herself together. “…shouldn’t be saying these things to you. Why do I forget you are so young? I shouldn’t. Forgive me, and don’t be upset.”
“Not me,” I told her. “I’m pretty detached. And don’t forget my eye is fresh. I can see the trouble. There isn’t anybody else to suspect. You need…”
“No, no. No more. I had no right to talk to you. And you’d better not come again. It is not I, my dear. I like you very much. I would love to see you often. But—”
I said, “I think Uncle John is a stuffy old stinker. To bend the way the wind blows. But I don’t have to!”
“Yes, you do,” she said, kind of fixing me with her eye. “It’s not nice, Meredith, to be this side of the hedge. Now, please, never question your Uncle John’s behavior.” She was getting very upset. “You must…truly, you must…believe me…when I say…I think he meant…to be very kind…at that time.” She spaced it like that, taking breaths in between.
“But that mean old hedge, for the whole town to see. It makes me mad!” I said.
She fixed me, again. She said very fast almost like whispering, “Perhaps it was I, Meredith, who let the hedge grow.”
Naturally, my mouth opened, but before I got anything out she said, loudly, “It was best. There, now…”
(N.B. Yep. I was really disappointed. How I hate it when people say, “There, now.” Implying that they know a million things more than me. And I better be comforted. I’m not. I’m irritated. It means they want to stop talking to me, and that’s all.)
“It’s all so old,” she continued in that phony petting-the-kitty kind of way. “And nothing will change it. Let it rest. Thank you for coming and thank you for being open-minded. But go away now, Meredith, and promise me not to think about it any more.”
I fixed her with my eye. I said, “Thank you very much for the lovely cake.”
But I’m not angry. I feel too sorry for her. Besides, she let out hints enough and I should have caught on. Well, I didn’t, then. But after the session I had with Uncle John…Are they ever dumb!
We had finished dinner when I decided to see what more I could pry out of him. I said, “If Harry Corcoran was a drinking man he was probably drunk the night he got shot.”
Uncle John nearly knocked his coffee over. “How do you know he was a drinking man?” roared he. “Have you been gossiping with Mrs. Jewell?” (Mrs. Jewell is the housekeeper. Vocabulary about one hundred words.)
“Oh, no, I haven’t. Was he?”
“Who?”
“Harry Corcoran?”
“What?”
“Drunk?”
“So they say,” bites Uncle John, cracking his teeth together, “Now, Meredith—”
“Where were you at the time of the murder?” chirped I.
(N.B. Nope. Got to learn to use the “saids.” They’re neutraller.)
“Meredith, I wish you—”
“I know what you wish, but I wish you’d tell me. Aw, come on, Uncle John. My own murder! Maybe if I had all the facts, I’d stop thinking so much about it. Don’t you see that?”
(N.B. False. The more you know about anything the more interesting it gets. But he didn’t notice.)
“I told you the facts,” he said (muttered?), “and I wish I had kept my big mouth shut. Your mother will skin me alive. How the devil did I get into this?”
(N.B. I thought this was an improvement. He’s usually so darned stuffy when he talks to me.)
“You didn’t tell me any details. Please, Uncle John…” I really nagged him. I don’t think he’s had much practice defending himself, because finally, stuffy as anything, he talked.
“Very well. I’ll tell you the details as far as I know them. Then I shall expect to hear no more about it.”
“I know,” said I. True. I knew what he expected. I didn’t really promise anything. But he’s not very analytical. “Okay. Pretend you’re on the witness stand. Where were you at the time?”
“I was, as it happened…[N.B. Stuffy! Phrase adds nothing. Of course it happened.]…in the library that night working late on some accounts. It was nearly one in the morning, I believe…[N.B. Of course he believes, or he wouldn’t say so]…when I heard Harry Corcoran whistling as he walked by in the street.”
“What tune?”
“What?” (I started to repeat but he didn’t need it. Lots of people make you repeat a question they heard quite well just so they can take a minute to figure out the answer.) “Oh, that Danny Boy song. Favorite of his. That’s how I knew who it was. He was coming along from the end of town, past this house—”
“Was that usual?”
“It was neither usual nor unusual,” said Uncle John crossly. “It’s merely a detail.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“The next thing I noticed was the shot.”
“You were paralyzed?”
“What?” He just about glared at me. “Yes, momentarily. Then I ran out my side door and pushed through the hedge and found him there on his own doorstep…uh…”
“Not living,” I said delicately.
He gave me another nasty look. “Now, that’s all there was to it.”
“That’s not all! What did you do then? Didn’t you even look for the murderer?”
“I saw nobody around. I realized there might be somebody concealed, of course. So I picked up his key from where it had fallen on the stoop—”
“The Corcorans’ door was locked?”
“It was locked and I unlocked it and went inside to the phone. As I was phoning, Mrs. Corcoran and her maid came downstairs. I called Chief Barker and Doctor Coles.”
“Yes, I know. And then you ran to get the ladder and pulled me down out of my tree. Okay. But you’re leaving things out, Uncle John. You are deliberately being barren. You don’t give any atmosphere at all. What was Mrs. Corcoran’s emotional state?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Uncle John with his nose in a sniffing position, “and if I had, it would not be a fact.”
I pounced. “You think she did it?”
He pulled his chin practically to the back of his neck. “I wish you would not say that. I have little right to speculate and none to make a judgment. There was no evidence.”
“But you did pass judgment. You told me she was a certain kind of—”
“Meredith, I know only one fact. Your mother would not like this at all. In any case, I will not discuss Mrs. Corcoran’s character with you. I must insist you take my word for it. There is no way….” He kind of held his forehead.
“Uncle John, who let the hedge grow?”
“What? The hedge belongs to me.”
“That ain’t the way I heared it,” said stupid I.
So he pounced. “Where have you been hearing things? Who told you Harry Corcoran was a drinking man? Where have you been, Meredith?”
So I confessed. No use writing down the blasting I got. It was the usual. Bunch of stuff about my elders wanting no harm to come to me, things not understood in my philosophy, mysterious evils that I wot not of, and all that sort of stuff. Why doesn’t he tell me plain out that it’s none of my business?
Well, I don’t think it’s evil. I think it’s foolishness. I think that Uncle John’s too sticky and stuffy to tell me…(Probably thinks I never heard of s-blank-x)…is that he used to be romantic about the pretty lady next door. Probably Uncle John saw a lot of Harry’s drunken comings-home and heard plenty of the disharmonizing. Probably he is one neighbor who felt sorry for her. Wonder if they were in love and said so. I doubt it. Probably they just cast glances at each other over the hedge and said nothing. That would be just like Uncle John.
Anyhow, when somebody shoots Harry Corcoran in the back, the widow gets it into her head that Uncle John did it. After all, she heard things—rustling bushes—looked out, and there he was. But gosh, even if she felt romantic about him too, she’d draw the line at murder! But of course, Uncle John didn’t do it. He thinks she did. He knows she was unhappy with Harry. But he draws the line at murder, too. So these dopes, what do they do? They have no “right” to pass “judgment” or “accuse” anybody. They pull themselves in, with the hedge between. All these years, with their very own suspicions proving that neither one could have done it…Probably if they’d had sense enough to speak out and have a big argument, they could have got married and been happy long ago.
Oh, how ridiculous! How pitiful! And oh, that I was born to put it right! (N.B. Who said that?)
The lawyer put the book down. John Selby groaned. “I had no idea…no idea what she had in her head. I knew she was bright…”
“Bright, yes,” said Doctor Coles, “but that kid’s so insufferably condescending!”
“You wouldn’t like it even if she guessed right,” said Russell thoughtfully. “The girl’s got a hard way to go. She’ll be lonely.”
“Thought she was smart, all right,” growled Barker. “Wasn’t as smart as she thought. She was wrong, I take it?”
Selby didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on the lawyer’s face.
“You shouldn’t blame her for being wrong,” Russell murmured. “She’s not yet equipped to understand a lot of things. But she is compelled to try. There’s her intelligent curiosity fighting a way past some clichés, but the phrase ‘feel romantic’ is flat, for her, and without shading.”
“I still can’t see what happened,” Barker broke in to complain. “Never mind the shading. Go ahead—if there’s more of it.”
“Yes, there’s more. We come to July twenty-sixth—yesterday.” Russell began to read once more.
I’ve figured. I know exactly how to do it. I’ll say I can remember! I’ll tell them that when I was up in my tree that night the shot or something woke me, and I saw a stranger running away…
“So she made it up! Told a story!” Chief Barker slapped his thigh. “But…now wait a minute…you believed her, Selby?”
“I believed her,” her uncle sighed.
“Go on. Go on,” the doctor said.
I know how to make them believe me, too. This will be neat! I’ll tell Uncle John first, and I’ll mix into the story I tell him all the little bits I got from her that he doesn’t know I’ve been told. So, since they’ll be true, he’ll be fooled, and think I really remember. Then I’ll go to her, but in the story I tell her, all I have to do is mix in the bits I got from Uncle John that she doesn’t know I’ve been told. It’ll work! Ha, they’ll never catch on to the trick of it. They’ll believe me! Then they can get together, if they still want to. I’m not worried about telling a kind of lie about it. If anybody official starts asking questions I can always shudder, and be too young and tender, and clam up.
Get it exactly right. Make lists.
Russell looked up. “Meredith’s good at math, I suppose?”
“A plus,” her uncle groaned. “She scares me.”
Russell nodded and began to read again.
List No. 1. For Uncle John. Things she told me.
1. Warm night. Full moon.
2. The elm tree that used to be there.
3. The gun was found in the hedge.
4. Harry didn’t yell.
Now, put all these points in. Future dialogue. By Meredith Lee.
M.L.: Oh, Uncle John, I do remember now!
Uncle John: What?
(Whoops! Since this is in the future, I better not write his dialogue. It might confuse me.)
M.L.: I was up in my room, thinking, and I began to hum that tune. That Danny Boy. It made the whole thing come back to me like a dream. Now I remember waking up on my cot and hearing that whistling. I peeked out between my railings. The moon was very bright that night. It was warm, too, real summer. I could see the elm tree by the Corcorans’ walk. (Pause. Bewildered.) Which elm tree, Uncle John? There’s none there now. Was there an elm tree, seven years ago?
(Ha, ha, that’ll do it!)
I saw a man come up their walk. I must have heard the shot. I thought somebody had a firecracker left over from Fourth of July. I saw the man fall down but he didn’t make any noise, so I didn’t think he was hurt. I thought he fell asleep.
(What a touch! Whee!)
Then I saw there was another man, down there, and he threw something into the hedge. The hedge crackled where it landed. Then this man jumped through their gate and ran, and then you came out of this house…
(By this time the stuffing should be coming out of Uncle John.)
I’ll say I don’t know who the stranger was. “But it wasn’t you, Uncle John,” I’ll say, “and the widow Corcoran’s been thinking so for seven years and I’m going to tell her…”
Then I’ll run out of the house as fast as I can.
He’ll follow—he’ll absolutely have to!
Russell looked up. “Was it anything like that?”
“It was almost exactly like that,” said John Selby, lifting his tired, anxious face. “And I did follow. She was right about that. I absolutely had to.”
“Smart,” said Chief Barker, smacking his lips, “the way she worked that out.”
“Too smart,” the doctor said, and then, “Nurse? Yes?” He went quickly through the door.
“My sister will skin me alive,” said John Selby, rousing himself. “Kid’s had me jumping through hoops. Who am I to deal with the likes of her? Looks at me with those big brown eyes. Can’t tell whether you’re talking to a baby or a woman. Everything I did was a mistake. I never had the least idea what she was thinking. You’re smart about people, Russell—that’s why I need you. I feel as if I’d been through a wind-tunnel. Help me with Meredith. I feel terrible about the whole thing, and if she’s seriously hurt and I’m responsible…”
“You say you don’t understand young people,” began Russell, “but even if you did, this young person…”
“You take it too hard, John,” said Chief Barker impatiently. “Doc doesn’t think she’s hurt too seriously. And she got herself into it, after all. Listen, go on. What did she say to the widow? That’s what I need to know. Is it in there?”
“It must be,” said Russell. “She made another list.”
List No. 2. For the widow. Things Uncle John told me.
1. Harry was whistling Danny Boy.
2. He came in the direction that passed this house.
3. He was drunk.
4. He dropped his key.
Not so good. Yes it is, too. What woke her? She doesn’t know, but I do! Future dialogue:
M.L.: Oh, Mrs. Corcoran, I think I’m beginning to remember! I really think so! Listen, I think I heard a man whistling. And it was that song about Danny Boy. And he was walking from the east, past our house. Would it have been your husband?
(Ha! She’s going to have to say Yes!)
And he…it seems to me that he didn’t walk right. He wobbled. He wobbled up your walk and he dropped something. Maybe a key. It must have been a key because I saw him bending over to hunt for it but…
(Artistic pause here? I think so.)
Oh, now I remember! He straightened up. He couldn’t have found it because he called out something. It was a name! It must have been…Oh, Mrs. Corcoran, could it have been your name, being called in the night, that woke you up?
(Betcha! Betcha!)
Well the rest of hers goes on the same. Stranger, throws gun, runs away, just as Uncle John comes out. “So it wasn’t you,” I’ll say, “and I can prove it! But poor Uncle John has been afraid it was.”
Then what? I guess maybe I’d better start to bawl.
Yep. I think that will do it. I think that’s pretty good. They’re bound to believe me. Of course, the two stories are not identical, but they can’t be. They’ll never notice the trick of it. They’ll just have to be convinced that it wasn’t either one of them who shot Harry Corcoran. I can’t wait to see what will happen. What will they do? What will they say? Oh-ho-ho, is this ever research! I better cry soft enough so I can hear and memorize.
When shall I try it? I can’t wait! Now is a good time. Uncle John is in the library and she’s home. I can see a light upstairs in her house. Here goes, then.
(N.B. Would I rather be an actress? Consider this. M.L.)
The lawyer closed the book. “That’s all.” He put his hand to his eyes but his mouth was curving tenderly.
“Some scheme,” said Barker in awe. “Went to a lot of trouble to work up all that plot…”
“She had a powerful motive,” Russell murmured.
“My romance,” said Selby bitterly.
“Oh, no. Research for her,” the lawyer grinned.
“Whatever the motive, this remarkable kid went and faked those stories and she had it wrong,” growled Barker. “But she must have got something right. Do you realize that?” He leaned into the light. “Selby, as far as you were concerned, you believed that rigmarole of hers. You thought she did remember the night of the killing and she had seen a stranger?”
“I did,” John Selby said, sounding calmer. “I was considerably shaken. I had always suspected Josephine Corcoran, for reasons of my own.”
“Lots of us suspected,” the Chief said dryly, “for various reasons. But never could figure how she managed, with you rushing out to the scene so fast and the maid in the upstairs hall.”
“What were your reasons, John?” Russell asked.
“In particular, there was a certain oblique conversation that took place in the course of a flirtation that appalls me, now. It seemed to me, one evening, that she was thinking that the death of her husband might be desirable—and might be arranged. I can’t quote her exactly, you understand, but the hint was there. She thought him stupid and cruel and intolerable, and the hint was that if he were dead and gone she’d be clean. The shallow, callous, self-righteous…the idea! As if her life should rightfully be cleared of him with no more compunction than if he’d been…well, a wart on her hand.” He held his head again. “Now, how is a man going to explain to his fifteen-year-old niece just what makes him think a woman is wicked? The feeling you get, that emanates from the brain and body?” He groaned. “That little talk pulled me out of my folly, believe me. That’s when I shied off and began to let the hedge grow. When you realize that not long after that he did die, you’ll see how I’ve lived with the memory of that conversation for seven years. Wondering. Was I right about what she had in mind and did I perhaps not recoil enough? Had I not sufficiently discouraged the…the idea? There was no evidence. There was nothing. But I’ve had a burden close to guilt and I’ve stayed on my side of the hedge, believe me, and begun to study to stuff a shirt.” He groaned again and shifted in the chair. “When I thought the child had really seen a stranger with that gun, I was stunned. As soon as I realized where Meredith had gone…”
“You followed. You saw them through the widow’s front door?” The Chief was reassembling this testimony.
“Yes. I could see them. At the top of the stairs. Mrs. Corcoran standing by the newel post and Meredith talking earnestly to her.”
“You couldn’t hear?”
“No, unfortunately. But if Meredith had rehearsed it, if she stuck to her script, then we must have it here.”
“If it’s there, I don’t get it.” Chief Barker passed his hand over his face. “Now, suddenly, you say—in the middle of the girl’s story—the widow yelled something that you could hear?”
“She yelled, ‘I told you to keep out of this, you nosy brat!’ And then she pushed Meredith violently enough to send her rolling down the stairs.” Selby began to breathe heavily.
“And you got through the door…”
“By the time I got through the door, she was on the girl like a wildcat. She was frantic. She meant to hurt her.” John Selby glared.
“So you plucked the widow off her prey and called us for help? Did Mrs. Corcoran try to explain at all?” Russell inquired.
“She put out hysterical cries. ‘Poor dear! Poor darling!’ But she meant to hurt Meredith. I heard. I saw. I know. And she knows that I know.”
“Yes, the widow gave herself away,” said Russell. “She was wicked, all right.”
“So we’ve got her,” the Chief growled, “for the assault on Meredith. Also, we know darned well she shot her husband seven years ago. But she won’t talk. What I need,” the Chief was anxious, “is to figure out what it was that set her off. What did the kid say that made her nerve crack? I can’t see it. I just don’t get it.”
The doctor had been standing quietly in the door. Now he said, “Maybe Meredith can tell us. She’s all right. Almost as good as new, I’d say.”
John Selby was on his feet. So was Chief Barker. “Selby, you go first,” the doctor advised. “No questions for the first minute or two.”
The Chief turned and sighed. “Beats me.”
Russell said, “One thing, Harry Corcoran never called out his wife’s name in the night. Selby, who heard a whistle, would have heard such a cry.”
“Do I see what you’re getting at?” said Barker shrewdly. “It shows the kid didn’t get that far in the story or the widow would have known she was story-telling.”
“She certainly didn’t get as far as any guilty stranger, or the widow would have been delighted. Let’s see.”
“There was something….”
“Was it the tune? No, that’s been known. Selby told that long ago. Was it Harry’s drunkenness? No, because medical evidence exists. Couldn’t be that.”
“For the Lord’s sakes, let’s ask her,” the Chief said.
They went through the door. The nurse had effaced herself watchfully. Four men stood around the bed. Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief…
Young Meredith Lee looked very small, lying against the pillow with her brown hair pressed back by the bandages, her freckles sharpened by the pallor of her face, her big brown eyes round and shocked.
“How do you feel, honey?” rumbled the Chief.
“She pushed me down.” Meredith’s voice was a childish whimper.
Her Uncle John patted the bed and said compulsively, “There, Meredith. There now…”
“Don’t say that,” the Chief put in with a chuckle. “It just annoys her.”
The girl saw her notebook in Russell’s hands. She winced and for a flash her eyes narrowed and something behind the child face was busy reassessing the situation.
“Miss Lee,” said the lawyer pleasantly, “my name is Russell. I’m a friend of your Uncle John’s. I’m the one who ferreted out your notes. I hope you’ll forgive us for reading them. Thanks to you, now we know how wicked the widow was seven years ago.”
“I only pretended,” said Meredith in a thin treble. “I was only eight. I don’t really remember anything at all.” She shrank in the bed, very young and tender.
Her uncle said, “We know how you pretended. I…I had no idea you were so smart.”
“That was some stunt,” the doctor said.
“Very clever,” the lawyer said, “the two stories as you worked them out.”
“You’re quite a story-teller, honey,” chimed in Chief Barker.
On the little girl’s face something struggled and lost. Meredith gave them one wild indignant look of pure outraged intelligence before her face crumpled. “I am not either!” she bawled. “I’m not any good! I got it all wrong! Didn’t get the plot right. Didn’t get the characters right. I guess I don’t know anything! I guess I might as well give up…” She flung herself over and sobbed bitterly.
Chief Barker said, “She’s okay, isn’t she? She’s not in pain?”
The nurse rustled, muttering “shock.” The doctor said stiffly, “Come now, Meredith. This isn’t a bit good for you.”
But Selby said, to the rest of them, “See? That’s the way it goes. She’s eight and she’s eighty. She can cook up a complex stunt like that and then bawl like a baby. I give up! I don’t know what you should do with her. I’ve wired my sister. She’ll skin us both, no doubt. Meredith, please….”
Meredith continued to howl.
The lawyer said sharply. “That’s right, Meredith. You may as well give up trying to be a writer if you are going to cry over your first mistakes instead of trying to learn from them. Will you be grown-up for a minute and listen? We seriously want your help to convict a murderess.”
“You do not,” wailed Meredith. “I’m too stupid!”
“Don’t be a hypocrite,” snapped the lawyer. “You are not stupid. As a matter of fact, you are extremely stuffy—as this book proves to us.”
Meredith choked on a sob. Then slowly she opened one brown eye.
“The average young person,” hammered the lawyer, “has little or no respect for an elder’s experience and nothing can make him see its value until he gets some himself. But even a beginning writer should have a less conventional point of view.”
“Now wait a minute,” bristled John Selby. “Don’t scold her. She’s had an awful time. Listen, she meant well…”
Meredith sat up and mopped her cheek with the sheet. The brown eyes withered him. “Pul-lease, Uncle John,” said Meredith Lee.
So John Selby raised his head and settled his shoulders. “Okay.” He forced a grin. “Maybe I’m not too old to learn. You want me to lay it on the line? All right, you didn’t mean well. You were perfectly vain and selfish. You were going to fix up my life and Josephine Corcoran’s life as a little exercise for your superior wisdom.” His stern voice faltered. “Is that better?”
Meredith said, tartly, “At least, it’s rational.” She looked around and her voice was not a baby’s. “You are all positive the widow is a murderess,” she said flatly.
Chief Barker said, “Well, honey, we always did kind of think so.”
“Don’t talk down to her,” snapped John Selby, “or she’ll talk down to you. I…I get that much.”
“Who are you, anyhow?” asked Meredith of the Chief.
He told her. “And I am here to get to the bottom of a crime. Now, young lady,” the Chief was no longer speaking with any jovial look at all, “you jumped to a wrong conclusion, you know. She was guilty.”
“I don’t see why you’ve always thought so,” said Meredith rebelliously.
“I guess you don’t,” said Barker. “Because it’s a matter of experience. Of a lot of things. In the first place, I know what my routine investigation can or cannot turn up. When it turns up no sign of any stranger whatsoever, I tend to believe that there wasn’t one.”
The Chief’s jaw was thrust forward. The little girl did not wince. She listened gravely.
“In the second place, as you noticed yourself, there’s nobody else around here to suspect. In the third place, nine times out of ten, only a wife is close enough to a man to have a strong enough motive.”
“Nine times out of ten,” said Meredith scornfully.
“That’s experience,” said Barker, “and you scoff at the nine times because you think we forget that there can be a tenth time. You are wrong, young lady. Now, somebody shot Harry Corcoran…”
“Why don’t you suspect Uncle John?” flashed Meredith.
“No motive,” snapped Barker.
“Meredith,” began her Uncle, “I’m afraid you…”
“Speak up,” said Russell.
“Yes. Right.” Selby straightened again. “Well, then, listen. I’d no more murder a man as a favor to a neighbor than I’d jump over the moon. Your whole idea—that Josephine Corcoran would think I had—is ridiculous. Whatever she is, she’s too mature for that. Furthermore, I never did want to marry her. And your mother may skin me for this but so help me you’d better know, men sometimes don’t and women know it.” Meredith blinked. “Also, even if I had,” roared her Uncle John, “Barker knows it might occur to me that there is such a thing as divorce. Just as good a way to get rid of a husband, and a lot safer than murder.”
Meredith’s tongue came out and licked her lip.
“Now, as to her motive, she hated Harry Corcoran bitterly…bitterly. She’s…well, she’s wicked. To know that is…is a matter of experience. You spot it. Some cold and selfish, yet hot and reckless thing. That’s the best I can do.”
“It’s not bad,” said Meredith humbly, “I mean, thank you, Uncle John. Where is she now?”
“In the hospital,” said Chief Barker, “with my men keeping their eye on her.”
“Was she hurt?”
The doctor cleared his throat. “She’s being hysterical. That is, you see, she was startled into making a terrible mistake when she pushed you, my dear. Now, all she can think to do is fake a physical or psychic collapse. But it’s strictly a phony. I can’t tell you exactly how I know that…”
“I suppose it’s experience,” said Meredith solemnly. She seemed to retreat deeper into the pillow. “I was all wrong about her. The town was right!” She looked as if she might cry, having been forced to this concession.
Russell said briskly. “That’s not enough. No good simply saying you were wrong. You need to understand what happened to you, just how you were led.”
“Led?” said Meredith distastefully.
“The widow was guilty,” Russell said. “Begin with that. Now look back at the time you first hung over her gate. You couldn’t know she was guilty or even suspect it, because you hadn’t so much as heard about the murder yet. How could you guess the fright she got, remembering that little girl in the tree? You thought it was retroactive worry—that you might have fallen. Because that is a kind of fear in your experience. Do you see, now, when you turned up, so full of vigor and intelligence, that she never felt less like smiling in her life. Of course she took you seriously. And you were charmed.”
“Naturally,” said Meredith bravely.
“I can see, and now you should be able to see, how she tried to use your impulsive sympathy. Maybe she hoped that when you tried—as you were bound to try—to remember the night, long ago, that your imagination would be biased in her favor.”
“I guess it was,” said Meredith bleakly.
“Probably, she tried to put suspicion of your Uncle John into your head, not from innocence, but to supply a missing suspect to the keen and much too brainy curiosity that had her terrified. Now, don’t be downcast,” the lawyer added, his warm smile breaking. “I’d have been fooled, too. After all, this is hindsight.”
“Probably you wouldn’t have been fooled,” said Meredith stolidly. “Experience, huh?”
“I’ve met a few murderers before,” said Russell gently.
“Well, I’ve met a murderess now,” said Meredith gravely. “Boy, was I ever dumb!” She sighed.
The Chief said, “All clear? Okay. Now, what do you say we find out where you were smart? What did it? Can’t we get to that?”
“Smart?” said Meredith.
“This is our question to you, young lady. What cracked Mrs. Corcoran’s nerve? Where were you in the story when she flew at you and pushed you down the stairs?”
The girl was motionless.
“You see, dear,” began the doctor.
“She sees,” said her Uncle John ferociously.
Meredith gave him a grateful lick of the eye. “Well, I was just past the key…” she said. She frowned. “And then she yelled and pushed me.” The brown eyes turned, bewildered.
“What were the exact words?” said Barker briskly, “Russell, read that part again.”
But Russell repeated, lingeringly, “Just past the key…?”
“I don’t get it,” Barker said. “Do you?”
“I just thought she’d be glad,” said Meredith in a small groan. “But she pushed me and hurt me. I got it wrong.” She seemed to cower. She was watching Russell.
“You got it right,” said he. “Listen. And follow me. Harry Corcoran was shot in the back.”
“That’s right,” the Chief said.
“The key was on the doorstep.” The lawyer was talking to the girl.
“I picked it up,” said Selby.
“All this time we’ve been assuming that he dropped the key because he was shot. But that isn’t what you said, Meredith. You said that he dropped the key because he was drunk. Now, all this time we have assumed that he was shot from behind, from somewhere near the hedge. But if you got it right, when he bent over to pick up the key…and was shot in the back…” Russell waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
“She shot him from above,” said Meredith, quick as a rabbit. “She was upstairs.”
“From above,” said Barker, sagging. “And the widow’s been waiting for seven years for some bright brain around here to think of that. Yep. Shot from a screenless window. Threw the gun out, closed the window, opened her door, faced her maid. Pretty cool. Pretty lucky. Pretty smart. And there is nothing you could call evidence, even yet.” But the Chief was not discouraged or dismayed. He patted the bed covers. “Don’t you worry, honey. You got her, all right. And I’ve made out with less. By golly, I got her method, now, and that’s going to be leverage. And, by golly, one thing she’s going to have to tell me, and that is why she pushed you down the stairs.”
“She needn’t have,” said Meredith, in the same thin, woeful voice. “I didn’t know…I didn’t understand.” Then her face changed and something was clicking in her little head. “But she still thinks I saw him drop the key. Couldn’t I go where she is? Couldn’t I…break her down? I could act.” The voice trailed off. They weren’t going to let her go, the four grown men.
“I’m going,” said Selby grimly. “I’ll break her down.”
“Stay in bed,” said the doctor, at the same time. “Nurse will be here. I may be needed with the widow.”
“And I,” said Russell. But still he didn’t move. “Miss Lee,” he said to the little girl, “may I make a prophecy? You’ll go on studying the whole world, you’ll get experience, and acquire insight, and you will not give up until you become a writer.” He saw the brown eyes clear; the misting threat dried away. He laid the notebook on the covers. “You won’t need to be there,” he said gently, “because you can imagine.” He held out a pencil. “Maybe you’d like to be working on an ending?” She was biting her left thumb but her right hand twitched as she took the pencil.
“Meredith,” said her Uncle John, “here’s one thing you can put in. You sure took the stuffing out of me. And I don’t care what your mother’s going to say…”
Meredith said, as if she were in a trance, “When is Mama coming?”
“In the morning. I wish I hadn’t wired—I wish I hadn’t alarmed her…We’re going to be in for it.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Uncle John,” said Meredith. The face was elfin now, for a mocking second of time. Then it was sober. She put the pencil into her mouth and stared at the wall. The nurse moved closer. The four men cleared their throats. Nothing happened. Meredith was gone, imagining. Soon the four grown men tiptoed away.
Meredith Lee. New notes and Jottings.
July 27th.
Early to bed. Supposed to be worn out. False, but convenient for all of us.
Everybody helped manage Mama. Doctor Coles put a small pink bandage on me. Chief Barker and Mr. Russell met her train and said gloating things about the widow confessing.
But, of course, Mama had to blast us some. She was just starting to rend Uncle John when I said, “Don’t be so cross with him, Mama. He is the Hero. Saved my life.” That took her aback. She was about to start on me, but Uncle John jumped in. “Meredith’s the Heroine, sis. She broke the case.”
Well, Mama got distracted. She forgot to be mad at us any more. “What’s going on with you two?” she wanted to know. Well, I guess she could see that the stuffing was out of both of us.
(N.B. Men are interesting. M.L.)