Харлан Эллисон - Murder Plus - True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

She offered him a job on her farm and she actually paid him wages. Moreover, whatever affection Belle Gunness entertained for Lamphere was reciprocated. Lamphere was genuinely fond of Belle. He importuned her to marry him. She never did. Since they soon became lovers, the wedding would have been a technicality only and Belle was of no mind to marry a man not possessed of “substantial means.”

Lamphere was still working on the farm when Eric Anderson, a Swede and widower who had just collected his wife’s insurance, arrived on the scene carrying a copy of the farm journal, which at Belle’s instructions had just printed her luring advertisement for the third time.

Ray Lamphere resented Anderson’s presence, but Belle quickly relieved her new suitor of what cash he had brought with him and tenderly promised her hand in marriage. Lamphere, despondent, took to drink.

He frequented the town’s saloons during the time that Eric Anderson was presumably pressing his wedding suit. However, upon his return home one evening, Belle Gunness gave him to understand that things between them were as they had been before.

“What about Anderson?” asked Lamphere, amazed.

“He’s gone. He jilted me. Decided to marry a girl in Chicago, instead.”

Lamphere frowned, “How come he knows a girl in Chicago? He told me once that he’d never been in the state of Illinois.”

Belle shrugged her ample shoulders. “What’s the difference? We’ll never hear from him again. Forget it.”

Lamphere forgot it — for the moment.

Between 1903 and 1906, Belle Gunness’s matrimonial proposition was printed several times in various rural periodicals. And during that time there were half a dozen applicants for her ponderous hand. In spite of the fact that she married none of them, their presence invariably aroused Ray Lamphere’s jealousy. He never knew if he was to sleep in the main bedroom or in the cubicle off the kitchen which was assigned to the hired man.

However, Lamphere’s fear of losing his mistress to another always vanished at the same time as did his rival. If he ever wondered that Belle Gunness was busy in her smokehouse both in and out of hog butchering season, he said nothing. If he was ever curious as to what she did with the sacks of quicklime she ordered from Indianapolis, he held his peace.

The only man, apparently, to escape from Belle Gunness’s lethal embrace was George Anderson of Tarkio, Missouri. He had read Belle’s advertisement with interest. He was a widower with a neat bank account and he was lonely. He packed his bags, bought a book of travelers’ checks and took the cars to La Porte and the “charming but lonesome young widow.”

It was Belle Gunness’s first experience with travelers’ checks. When she learned that each check must be signed by Anderson she was keenly disappointed. This, obviously, complicated matters.

After serving Anderson an ample supper on the night of his arrival, she said, “You know, it would be a good idea if you signed those checks before you went to bed.”

George Anderson, by no means as naive as some of Belle’s suitors had been, lifted his eyebrows and said, “Sign them before I go to bed? For goodness sake, why?”

Belle shrugged. “Something might happen to you during the night.”

“If anything happens to me there’s no reason to endorse the checks. The money will eventually go to my heirs.” He paused, had an afterthought. “Besides, what could possibly happen to me?”

Belle shrugged her power-packed shoulders. “You never can tell. Lots of persons die in their sleep, you know.”

Anderson frowned and looked at Belle sharply. He was still frowning when he bedded down on the couch in the living room.

He was awakened in the middle of the night by a slight, shuffling sound. He opened his eyes to see Belle Gunness clad in a capacious nightgown, staring at him. In one hand she held a lighted candle. In the other, a meat cleaver.

Anderson sprang from the couch as if it was afire. He said, “What are you doing here?”

“Oh,” said Belle blandly, “I couldn’t sleep. I remembered that some of my butchering tools needed sharpening so I figured I might as well do the job now. I stopped by here to make sure that you were comfortable.”

There may have been moments in George Anderson’s life when he was more uncomfortable than he was at the moment but they did not come immediately to his mind.

He dressed with the speed of a volunteer fireman and departed La Porte forever, taking his unsigned travelers’ checks and the memory of Belle’s meat cleaver along with him.

Early in 1907 John Alden arrived at the La Porte farm via the same lovelorn route as had the others. He avoided the cleaver for two whole weeks.

At the end of that period, Belle Gunness dispatched Lamphere on an errand which guaranteed his absence for at least three hours. Then she invited Alden into her smokehouse and gave her attention to more serious matters.

Lamphere, however, did not carry out Belle’s instructions. He went instead to a La Porte tavern. He enjoyed only three glasses of beer, since the bartender refused to grant him any credit. Then Lamphere returned home.

He arrived at a most inauspicious moment. He strode into the smokehouse just as Belle had laid the corpse of John Alden on a chopping block and was honing the edge of the cleaver. She turned red.

Lamphere’s face turned gray. It was doubtless true that he had suspected dirty work was going on. But actually to see his mistress calmly readying to chop up a suitor was something else.

“My God,” he said, “what are you doing?”

“I’m cutting him up,” said Belle coolly. “The quicklime will work better that way. Then I’m going to bury him in the vegetable garden.”

“You mean,” gasped the horrified Lamphere, “that you murdered him?”

“Self-defense,” said burly Belle. “He tried to trick me. Goodness knows what sort of girl he thought I was. I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”

Lamphere, through either desperate love or desperate fear of his own life, kept his mouth shut.

Shortly after John Alden had been run through the sausage grinder, Ole Budsberg, powerful, blond painter, brought himself and $200 in cash to La Porte. He was, in a short time, relieved of both his wallet and his life. The vegetable garden was growing in size.

The last suitor of record to pay court to Belle Gunness was one Andrew C. Helgelin of Aberdeen, South Dakota. He had replied to Belle’s provocative advertisement and had received, in return, a burning love letter.

Helgelin withdrew some money from the bank, packed his clothes and headed for Indiana. He only lived a week but he proved to be the biggest bonanza of all.

For some reason or other he failed to observe that Belle Gunness in no wise resembled the “charming widow” who had written of herself for publication. He was immediately smitten. He was all for an instantaneous marriage, but the obese object of his affection wasn’t having any. What sort of girl did he think she was?

When Belle requested her customary proof of genuine love, Andrew Helgelin daringly slapped his wallet on the table and offered her the entire contents. Since this obviously did not move the 230-pound bulk of his beloved, he vowed that he would get in touch with his bank back in Aberdeen, instructing them to convert his securities to cash and wire the funds to Belle.

This struck Belle as a capital idea. It took exactly a week to complete the transaction. And in exactly a week, Belle invited Helgelin on an inspection tour of her modern smokehouse. He did so, and finished the trip in the adjacent vegetable garden.

Back in South Dakota, Alex Helgelin, brother to Andrew, became worried. He knew Belle’s address, since Andrew had told him where he was going. He communicated with Belle, asking, anxiously, for news of his brother. This disconcerted Belle no whit. She answered promptly. Andrew, she wrote, left the farm a week after his arrival. She loved him and was as interested as Alex in his whereabouts. She suggested that Alex come at once to La Porte, bringing an adequate amount of cash with him. They would use the money to search for the missing Andrew. She was certain that with some cash she could bring the brothers together.