Jean Webster - The Four-Pools Mystery

The next few days were a nightmare to me. Even now I cannot think of that horrible period of suspense and doubt without a shudder. The coroner set to work immediately upon his preliminary investigation, and every bit of evidence that turned up only seemed to make the proof stronger against Radnor.

It is strange how ready public opinion is to believe the worst of a man when he is down. No one appeared to doubt Rad's guilt, and feeling ran high against him. Colonel Gaylord was a well-known character in the countryside, and in spite of his quick temper and rather imperious bearing he had been a general favorite. At the news of his death a wave of horror and indignation swept through the valley. Among the roughs in the village I heard not infrequent hints of lynching; and even among the more conservative element, the general opinion seemed to be that lawful hanging was too honorable a death for the perpetrator of so brutal a crime.

I have never been able to understand the quick and general belief in the boy's guilt, but I have always suspected that the sheriff did not do all in his power to quiet the feeling. It was to a large extent, however, the past reasserting itself. Though Radnor's record was not so black as it was painted, still, it was not so white as it should have been. People shook their heads and repeated stories of how wild he had been as a boy, and how they had always foreseen some such end as this. Reports of the quarrels with his father were told and retold until they were magnified beyond all recognition. The old scandals about Jeff were revived again, and the general opinion seemed to be that the Gaylord boys were degenerates through and through. Rad's personal friends stood by him staunchly; but they formed a pitifully small minority compared to the general sensation-seeking public.

I visited Radnor in the Kennisburg jail on the morning of my uncle's funeral and found him quite broken in spirit. He had had time to think over the past, and with his father lying dead at Four-Pools, it had not been pleasant thinking. Now that it was too late, he seemed filled with remorse over his conduct toward the old man, and he dwelt continually on the fact of his having been unwilling to make up the quarrel of the night before the murder. In this mood of contrition he mercilessly accused himself of things I am sure he had never done. I knew that the jailer was listening to every word outside, and I became unspeakably nervous for fear he would say something which could be twisted into an incriminating confession. He did not seem to comprehend in the least the danger of his own position; he was entirely taken up with the horror of his father's death. As I was leaving, however, he suddenly grasped my hand with tears in his eyes.

"Tell me, Arnold, do people really believe me guilty?"

I knew by "people" he meant Polly Mathers; but I had not had an opportunity to speak with her alone since the day of the tragedy.

"I haven't talked to anyone but the sheriff," I returned.

"Mattison would be glad enough to prove it," Radnor said bitterly, and he turned his back and stood staring through the iron bars of the window, while I went out and the jailer closed the door and locked it.

All through the funeral that afternoon I could scarcely keep my eyes from Polly Mathers's face. She appeared so changed since the day of the picnic that I should scarcely have known her for the same person; it seemed incredible that three days could make such a difference in a bright, healthy, vigorous girl. All her youthful vivacity was gone; she was pale and spiritless with deep rings beneath her eyes and the lids red with crying. After the services were over, I approached her a moment as she stood in her black dress aloof from the others at the edge of the little family burying-ground. She greeted me with a tremulous smile, and then as her glance wandered back to the pile of earth that two men were already shoveling into the grave, her eyes quickly filled with tears.

"I loved him as much as if he were my own father," she cried, "and it's my fault that he's dead. I made him go!"

"No, Polly, it is not your fault," I said decisively. "It was a thing which no one could foresee and no one could help."

She waited a moment trying to steady her voice, then she looked up pleadingly in my face.

"Radnor is innocent; tell me you believe it."

"I am sure he is innocent," I replied.

"Then you can clear him—you're a lawyer. I know you can clear him!"

"You may trust me to do my best, Polly."

"I hate Jim Mattison!" she exclaimed, with a flash of her old fire. "He swears that Rad is guilty and that he will prove him so. Rad may have done some bad things, but he's a good man—better than Jim Mattison ever thought of being."

"Polly," I said with a touch of bitterness, "I wish you might have realized that truth earlier. Rad is at heart as splendid a chap as ever lived, and his friends ought never to have allowed him to go astray."

She looked away without answering, and then in a moment turned back to me and held out her hand.

"Good-by. When you see him again please tell him what I said."

As she turned away I looked after her, puzzled. I was sure at last that she was in love with Radnor, and I was equally sure that he did not know it; for in spite of his sorrow at his father's death and of the suspicion that rested on him, I knew that he would not have been so completely crushed had he felt that she was with him. Why must this come to him now too late to do him any good, when he had needed it so much before? I felt momentarily enraged at Polly. It seemed somehow as if the trouble might have been avoided had she been more straightforward. Then at the memory of her pale face and pleading eyes I relented. However thoughtless she had been before, she was changed now; this tragedy had somehow made a woman of her over night. When Radnor came at last to claim her, they would each, perhaps, be worthier of the other.

I returned to the empty house that night and sat down to look the facts squarely in the face. I had hitherto been so occupied with the necessary preparations for the funeral, and with instituting a search for Cat-Eye Mose, that I had scarcely had time to think, let alone map out any logical plan of action. Radnor was so stunned by the blow that he could barely talk coherently, and as yet I had had no satisfactory interview with him.

Immediately after the Colonel's death, I had very hastily run over his private papers, but had found little to suggest a clue. Among some old letters were several from Nannie's husband, written at the time of her sickness and death; their tone was bitter. Could the man have accomplished a tardy revenge for past insults? I asked myself. But investigation showed this theory to be most untenable. He was still living in the little Kansas village where she had died, had married again, and become a peaceful plodding citizen. It required all his present energy to support his wife and children—I dare say the brief episode of his first marriage had almost faded from his mind. There was not the slightest chance that he could be implicated.

I sifted the papers again, thoroughly and painstakingly, but found nothing that would throw any light upon the mystery. While I was still engaged with this task, a message came from the coroner saying that the formal inquest would begin at ten o'clock the next morning in the Kennisburg court-house. This gave me no chance to plan any sort of campaign, and I could do little more than let matters take their course. I hoped however that in the progress of the inquest, some clue would be brought to light which would render Radnor's being remanded for trial impossible.

So far, I had to acknowledge, the evidence against him appeared overwhelming. A motive was supplied in the fact that the Colonel's death would leave him his own master and a rich man. The well-known fact of their frequent quarrels, coupled with Radnor's fierce temper and somewhat revengeful disposition, was a very strong point in his disfavor; added to this, the suspicious circumstances of the day of the tragedy—the fact that he was not with the rest of the party when the crime must have been committed, the alleged print of his boots and the finding of the match box, his subsequent perturbed condition—everything pointed to him as the author of the crime. It was a most convincing chain of circumstantial evidence.