6
The fire broke out at about three o’clock in the morning. It rose, flared, roared, crashed, and crumbled in on itself almost before anyone noticed it. When the volunteers ran up, pulling their hose cart, there was nothing for them to do but wet down the roofs of the neighboring houses to keep them from catching fire.
The Ames house had gone up like a rocket. The volunteers and the ordinary audience fires attract looked around at the lighted faces, trying to see Mr. and Mrs. Ames and their daughter. It came to everyone at once that they were not there. People gazed at the broad ember-bed and saw themselves and their children in there, and hearts rose up and pumped against throats. The volunteers began to dump water on the fire almost as though they might even so late save some corporeal part of the family. The frightened talk ran through the town that the whole Ames family had burned.
By sunrise everyone in town was tight-packed about the smoking black pile. Those in front had to shield their faces against the heat. The volunteers continued to pump water to cool off the charred mess. By noon the coroner was able to throw wet planks down and probe with a crowbar among the sodden heaps of charcoal. Enough remained of Mr. and Mrs. Ames to make sure there were two bodies. Near neighbors pointed out the approximate place where Cathy’s room had been, but although the coroner and any number of helpers worked over the debris with a garden rake they could find no tooth or bone.
The chief of the volunteers meanwhile had found the doorknobs and lock of the kitchen door. He looked at the blackened metal, puzzled, but not quite knowing what puzzled him. He borrowed the coroner’s rake and worked furiously. He went to the place where the front door had been and raked until he found that lock, crooked and half melted. By now he had his own small crowd, who demanded, “What are you looking for, George?” And “What did you find, George?”
Finally the coroner came over to him. “What’s on your mind, George?”
“No keys in the locks,” the chief said uneasily.
“Maybe they fell out.”
“How?”
“Maybe they melted.”
“The locks didn’t melt.”
“Maybe Bill Ames took them out.”
“On the inside?” He held up his trophies. Both bolts stuck out.
Since the owner’s house was burned and the owner ostensibly burned with it, the employees of the tannery, out of respect, did not go to work. They hung around the burned house, offering to help in any way they could, feeling official and generally getting in the way.
It wasn’t until afternoon that Joel Robinson, the foreman, went down to the tannery. He found the safe open and papers scattered all over the floor. A broken window showed how the thief had entered.
Now the whole complexion changed. So, it was not an accident. Fear took the place of excitement and sorrow, and anger, brother of fear, crept in. The crowd began to spread.
They had not far to go. In the carriage house there was what is called “signs of a struggle”—in this case a broken box, a shattered carriage lamp, scraped marks in the dust, and straw on the floor. The onlookers might not have known these as signs of a struggle had there not been a quantity of blood on the floor.
The constable took control. This was his province. He pushed and herded everyone out of the carriage house. “Want to gum up all the clues?” he shouted at them. “Now you all stay clear outside the door.”
He searched the room, picked up something, and in a corner found something else. He came to the door, holding his discoveries in his hands—a blood-splattered blue hair ribbon and a cross with red stones. “Anybody recognize these here?” he demanded.
In a small town where everyone knows everyone it is almost impossible to believe that one of your acquaintance could murder anyone. For that reason, if the signs are not pretty strong in a particular direction, it must be some dark stranger, some wanderer from the outside world where such things happen. Then the hobo camps are raided and vagrants brought in and hotel registers scrutinized. Every man who is not known is automatically suspected. It was May, remember, and the wandering men had only recently taken to the roads, now that the warming months let them spread their blankets by any water course. And the gypsies were out too—a whole caravan less than five miles away. And what a turning out those poor gypsies got!
The ground for miles around was searched for new-turned earth, and likely pools were dragged for Cathy’s body. “She was so pretty,” everyone said, and they meant that in themselves they could see a reason for carrying Cathy off. At length a bumbling hairy half-wit was brought in for questioning. He was a fine candidate for hanging because not only did he have no alibis, he could not remember what he had done at anytime in his life. His feeble mind sensed that these questioners wanted something of him and, being a friendly creature, he tried to give it to them. When a baited and set question was offered to him, he walked happily into the trap and was glad when the constable looked happy. He tried manfully to please these superior beings. There was something very nice about him. The only trouble with his confession was that he confessed too much in too many directions. Also, he had constantly to be reminded of what he was supposed to have done. He was really pleased when he was indicted by a stern and frightened jury. He felt that at last he amounted to something.
There were, and are, some men who become judges whose love for the law and for its intention of promoting justice has the quality of love for a woman. Such a man presided at the examination before plea—a man so pure and good that he canceled out a lot of wickedness with his life. Without the prompting the culprit was used to, his confession was nonsense. The judge questioned him and found out that although the suspect was trying to follow instructions he simply could not remember what he had done, whom he had killed, how or why. The judge sighed wearily and motioned him out of the courtroom and crooked his fingers at the constable.
“Now look here, Mike,” he said, “you shouldn’t do a thing like that. If that poor fellow had been just a little smarter you might have got him hanged.”
“He said he did it.” The constable’s feelings were hurt because he was a conscientious man.
“He would have admitted climbing the golden stairs and cutting St. Peter’s throat with a bowling ball,” the judge said. “Be more careful, Mike. The law was designed to save, not to destroy.”
In all such local tragedies time works like a damp brush on water color. The sharp edges blur, the ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from the many separated lines a solid gray emerges. Within a month it was not so necessary to hang someone, and within two months nearly everybody discovered that there wasn’t any real evidence against anyone. If it had not been for Cathy’s murder, fire and robbery might have been a coincidence. Then it occurred to people that without Cathy’s body you couldn’t prove anything even though you thought she was dead.