Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (10 page)

lookers heard excited palaver at the door. Then Abby Bridewell went in. Glory be! First time in history a woman had been admitted to a Lodge meeting.

Relating the episode, Davenport said that Old Doc Hatfield had told him about it. Dober's words:

"The doc, he was pretty well along, back then, but his memory hadn't dimmed. He could tell you who had the measles in the first year he practiced, and just who had the typhoid when the town first put in a reservoir and the wrong water mains were connected. He knew every Pointer from head to toe, and maybe that's why they were kind of afraid of him. He was a free-thinker. Didn't belong to any Party or to the Lodge. But they let him alone."

Dr. Hatfield saw Abby Bridewell enter Lodge Hall. And there were other witnesses. No outsider knew what went on in there, but everyone knew what happened afterward; the town talked about it for years.

On Election Day eve both Parties climaxed their campaigns with mass meetings. Candidate Bridewell spoke from the steps of Lodge Hall. The Mugwumps staged a rally in front of the schoolhouse on the other side of town, with Candidate Alden speaking from a platform.

In the tangy autumn night the torchlights flared in the offshore breeze like agitated storm signals. Man and boy—yes, and woman and maid—the whole town had turned out for the occasion. Excited leaves blew across the curbstones. Dogs and youngsters raced underfoot. Everyone was keyed up. Fireworks, literal and figurative, were expected.

Doc Hatfield joined the throng at Lodge Hall, and listened to Earnest Bridewell for a time. Then, misanthropic, he walked four blocks across town to listen to Stephen Foster Alden.

He heard Alden appeal for common sense in the State capital. For an end to the privilege and patronage. For a school system worthy of the name. In closing, Alden quoted the Cleveland slogan. "A public office is a public trust." And then it happened.

A blare of band music in the night. A distant outburst of pandemonium and cheering. The uproar swelled and loudened, coming across town with a parade. And then the marchers came in sight. First the brass band blazing out an incongruous rendi-

tion of Marching Through Georgia. Then a regiment of boys and men bearing torchflares. And finally the Ancient Knights of Local Lodge No. 46, all fifty of them, in full regalia—Zouave bloomers, opera capes, and tophats caparisoned with ostrich plumes.

With a crash of tympani the parade wheeled into the street before the schoolhouse. The crowd, there, fell back gaping. For the band, passing the speaker's platform (as though Alden were on a reviewing stand) burst into a new tune— Bye Baby Bunting! Then everyone was staring at the torch bearers—at the little white flags fluttering on the poles beneath the flares. Lettered on each flag was the name, ALDEN.

And now the Knights were passing in review, each Knight cradling in his arms a toy baby doll. Someone yelled, "Eyes right!" and as they passed Alden's stand, the Knights shouted a chant.

"Ma! Ma! Where's my Pa? "Ask Sybil Alden! "Ha! Ha! Ha!"

Everyone saw Stephen Foster Alden go rigid, his face as white as bone. His supporters were too stunned to move, to lift a hand. It was all over before they could realize what had happened. The paraders swept around a corner, broke ranks and melted off in the dark. Doc Hatfield, who saw it all, could not say whether Earnest Bridewell had been in line of march or not. The doctor found himself staring, numbstruck, at Stephen Foster Alden. The doctor did not understand.

At that juncture of Davenport's story, I did not understand, either. I admitted, "I don't quite get it. The little white flags with Alden's name—"

"Diapers," Dober said.

"Do you mean to say that Alden had an illegitimate—?"

"No," Dober said. "Not Alden. That wasn't the chant. They chanted, 'Ask Sybil Alden!'"

"His mother."

"You can imagine what a stunner that was," Dober wheezed. "In a town the size of Quahog Point. The story got around. See,

there hadn't been any marriage when she was a schoolteacher in Boston. There wasn't any Mr. Alden who deserted her. She'd made it all up. Seemed like Stephen Foster was what they called a child of sin."

"Rotten term for it."

Davenport agreed. "The way my grandfather told it, the town never suspected. But the Bridewell family must have suspicioned something. Specially with Sybil first calling herself Mrs. Alden, then changing back to Bridewell. Probably Abby got to wondering about her cousin-in-law."

"So they investigated."

"My grandfather always figured it was Lionel. Sashaying around Boston in Back Bay society, he could have stumbled on the fact there wasn't a William Alden. So he wrote the news to Abby. Then when it looked like Earnest might lose the election, Abby had a check made up in Boston. There were some people who'd known Sybil. She'd been deserted all right. By a sailor on a Baltimore clipper."

"That was what the big Lodge meeting was about?"

"The way my grandpa figured it. Abby brought the official word. Even Doc Hatfield hadn't known about it. Worst of it was, Stephen Foster Alden hadn't known about his mother, neither. That he was illegitimate, I mean."

The parade. The scurrilous doggerel. One could almost groan for the man struck in the face by this wallop of fundamental mud.

Bad enough for a stalwart Grover Cleveland, who had only his own reputation at stake and could shame his detractors by uttering an honorable admission of the truth. What could a Stephen Foster Alden say from the platform? What word could he utter to down the forces of smalltown prejudice? How could he ever clear his mother? As for his own good name—

"Never call a man a bastard," Dober Davenport said. "He may be one."

I glared at the fat man. "And that's the story of how Earnest Bridewell got elected to the State Senate?"

"How he got into politics," Davenport corrected. "He didn't win that particular election, no."

None of the major County candidates did. Dober did not say so, but I could well imagine that Ben Butler's yacht wrecked the election chances of Earnest Bridewell and the Greenback faction. The Greenback ticket was snowed. The Republican candidate, a straw man, never had a chance. The Mugwump-Democrats had no time to find a winning replacement, and the Point election went to the Temperance candidate. On the national level, Cleveland won.

"And while he was President he visited Quahog Point," Dober said proudly.

"And I suppose they gave him a great big hand."

"Well, my grandfather said he never seen such fireworks."

"When did Earnest Bridewell finally get elected?"

"Four or six years later. Then a lot of times."

"What happened to Stephen Foster Alden?"

"Well," Davenport observed, "if I'd been him, I'd have blown my brains out. Losing a 'lection like that. Old Doc Hatfield always claimed that Alden was assassinated."

Apparently Stephen Foster Alden had made no answer from the public platform. No doubt Quahog Point was disappointed. He should have prevented his foes from enjoying the satisfaction of adding insult to the injury done him and his mother. According to Victorian tradition, he should have gone down to his law office that election eve and shot himself.

Instead, he behaved sensibly. He stayed around Quahog Point for a time. Then he quietly "wound up his affairs" and went to Texas or Australia or somewhere. Or so Dober Davenport believed.

Dober apologized for not being certain about the details. He reminded me that it had happened many years ago—"practically back to the Civil War"—and he had heard the story from his grandfather.

"Quahog Point is full of stories," he assured me. He stood up wheezily. "Excuse me, here's a customer. . . . Oh, it's Ed."

As Dober Davenport retired to his post behind the bar, Ed came to the table and plumped down.

Ed said, "Luke Martin is still on the phone. Thought I'd better come back for you, case you got bored."

"Far from it. I've been hearing some local history."

A cautious expression curtained his countenance. "About who?"

"Someone named Stephen Foster Alden."

Ed shook his head to indicate he did not know the name.

I inquired, "And a Sybil Bridewell?"

"Oh, her," Ed said. "Used to live here at the Point. Used to teach school, they say."

"Did she go away?"

"Manner of speaking," Ed said. "She shut herself away. Never heard why. But I recollect she lived in this cottage—the little place down the hill from the Bridewell house. Shutters always closed and the door locked. Nobody in the village ever saw her. Recluse. They say she was crazy."

"How did she manage to exist?"

"Never did know. She must've had some money. They used to deliver groceries to her back door—she'd come out at night, I guess, to get them. Methodist minister tried to call, I've heard, but she wouldn't let anyone in. They say the only Pointer who ever saw her was Doc Hatfield, and he wouldn't open his mouth about her. . . . Sybil Bridewell. ... I used to go by the cottage."

"How long did Sybil Bridewell live?"

Ed frowned off. "Nineteen Sixteen? No, it was during the World War. . . . What'd Dober tell you about her?"

"Quite a tale. He said he got it from his grandfather, Crusoe Robinson."

Ed said from the corner of his mouth, "The biggest liar since America was discovered. Dober's just as bad. He'll read something in a magazine, then tell you six months later it happened."

"But there really was this recluse? A Bridewell cousin?"

"Like I said," Ed affirmed. "She outlived Old Abby for some years. The Pointers used to call her Spooky Sybil."

Buried alive. The victim of a character assassination that had also finished her son? I could not help wondering if the murder of Abby Bridewell had not actually been payment deferred.

Ed asked, "Do you want to try a Ward Eight?"

71 'No thanks," I said.

We said goodbye to obese Dober Davenport, and I was glad to walk out into the gentle rain from heaven.

CHAPTER 8

For supper that night we had planked swordfish smothered in a sauce that almost reestablished my faith in the brotherhood of man. During a meal devoted to eating and short on conversation, the rain stopped and the watery gloaming at the window became suffused with a spectacular amber light. Before darkness set in, Luke Martin was off with Ed Brewster, bent on surf-casting at a beach called Shipwreck Fathom. Ed was to taxi him and come back.

I did not go. Ed had an extra pair of hip boots and Abercrombie gear, but I lacked the requisite skill with rod and reel. Nothing frustrates an expert so much as a blundering tyro who continually tangles his line and hooks nothing but rocks. And nothing frustrates a tyro so much as an expert who can cast beyond the farthest breaker with fluid and tireless ease. I told Luke to go ahead and bring in a whale.

Annette Brewster went out to play bridge somewhere with the Ladies Aid. Left to my own devices, I wandered (perhaps gravitated would be the better word) into the Victorian parlor. I could not let the Bridewell story alone. Postman's holiday.

The furnishings of the pentagonal chamber had become familiar, if not exactly friendly. The lithographed orb overlooking the mantel had acquired significance. With its optic, pseudo-mystical stare, the Eye had witnessed in that room something more than acrimonious squabbles over money. It had stared at countenances that were cold masks of secrecy. At faces flushed and bright-

eyed, joyously vengeful. Had it seen a conference between Abby and Earnest wherein mother and son planned the character assassination of the two relatives who stood in their way?

I had rather admired Old Abby after Ed's recital of the ox-head incident. The election campaign stoiy altered grudging respect to a conviction of lefthanded justice. The old woman in her rocker must have been a cross between Mrs. Jeff ray and Dickens' Madame Dufarge. True, notorious Mrs. Jeffray disposed of her victims by poison, and the fictional Dufarge sent hers to the guillotine. It appeared that Abby Bridewell, equally ruthless, perhaps employed devices beyond the reach of the Law's reprisal —indeed, that she had borrowed the lethal technique from certain political leaders on the national Currier and Ives scene. Stab your rival's reputation. Murder his good name. But was the Alden story truth or fable? Even if true, it had occurred long before the murder of Abby Bridewell. Twenty-seven years had intervened. America had paced from a horse-and-buggy civilization into the era of the automobile. The bustle had been replaced by the hobble skirt. There'd been a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. Abby, in her eighties, wore lavender and old lace.

Sweeter as the years go by? Somebody did not think so. Lionel Bridewell had been trying to relieve his mother of her money by means of a law suit. State Senator Earnest wanted her incarcerated in an asylum. Cornelia Ord, the stubborn niece, cherished a resentment against the old woman as massive as a grand piano.

And then the cousin-in-law entombed in the cottage down the hill. Did she abide there in a desolation of self-reproach and despair, excruciated by a masochistic conscience? Had she, in her bitter isolation, nursed a cancer of hatred for relatives responsible for her son's ruin? What of Spooky Sybil?

But I was to learn that Abby, in the prime of old age, had by no means exhausted the potential in local enemies. When she herself did not make them, it seemed her sons cultivated the field. Apparently at this type of horticulture Lionel was as adept as Earnest. Cornelia and Sybil were not the only Ophelias in the Bridewell drama.

The subject of women in general was introduced by an over-

ture from the gramophone. Ed returned from the beach to find me in the parlor musing over the relic. I observed that it was a marvelous machine and asked him if it played. It did. Ed cranked it up, placed a cylinder on the rotary, adjusted the needle. Out of the morning glory came a nasal tenor, thin and tinny. "Daisy, Daisy. ..." A second random selection entertained us with a quartet. I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad.

I had a fleeting mental view of Lionel, Earnest and Abby listening to this vocalized sentiment. Three faces as expressionless as cement.