Only in New England : the story of a gaslight crime (25 page)

Defense prayed that His Honor would release the defendant from the thrall of this horrid plot and cleanse the blot from his escutcheon. "The case is in your able hands."

Summarizing for the State, Bolivar Dodd got his second wind.

He agreed the charge was vastly serious, the crime heathenishly atrocious—nobody should murder an old mother. He said the State had proved that murder was committed. A long chain of circumstantial evidence linked the crime to the accused. Admittedly there was much conflicting testimony. He agreed with learned counsel for the defense that perjury had reared its ugly head in this court proceeding. But the question was, which witnesses were the perjurers? The State wished to spare His Honor a blizzard of forensics. The State's Attorney was confident that the magistrate on the bench had been able to weigh the evidence presented. "Justice will therefore prevail."

Judge Cottonwood cleared his throat. Harrumph! "The State has spoken. The defense has spoken. This has been an extraordinary hearing. . . ."

Judge Cottonwood reviewed the case. It was, he said, one beyond his jurisdiction—the most important he had yet heard. The defendant had rights which the Bench was bound to consider. If the Bench erred, the decision could be reviewed by a higher court.

Judge Cottonwood conceded that evidence pointed to Earnest Bridewell as the possible murderer. Motive—attitude—these spoke against the defendant. But proof that he had done physical violence to his mother had not been established. There was evidence of murder, but no evidence directly connecting the accused with the crime. The accused had established an alibi. His wife's testimony might be open to question. The testimony of a minor might be open to question. But here were two disinterested parties —out-of-towners—gentlemen from New Bedford. They had volunteered their statements, and had no apparent interest other than seeing justice done. Add these factors, and it would seem that the defendant had not been on the scene of the crime when it was committed, and had indeed been victimized by local enemies.

In closing, the Judge had this to say: "Some of the witnesses in this case have deliberately lied. It has always been my experience while on this bench for the past seven years that in Quahog Point cases—and there have been many of them—the witnesses from that town have been disposed to perjure themselves. Invariably, in the matter of an alibi from that place, the defense has beendisposed to perjure itself. It is too bad. But that is the fact observed after years of experience in this Court." *

The Judge added that the "people of Quahog Point were the biggest liars in the country." Therefore he attached considerable weight to the evidence offered by the good men of New Bedford.

"The State has not made out its case, and I will discharge the defendant upon the strength of the evidence introduced." *

Earnest Bridewell shot to his feet. Bibbs got him by one arm; Coulter by the other. The surgeons were beaming. The patient was saved.

A newspaper reporter rushed out to write: "There was no demonstration, but the defendant was immediately surrounded by his friends, who seemed quite numerous, and gave hearty handshakes and words of cheer. Many even went to the Judge to commend him on the fairness of his decision, as it seemed to them (sic)."

Earnest's private reaction to the Court decision was succinct. I found it in the margin of his scrapbook, entered as a footnote to the Judge's closing verdict. It was: "Ha! Ha!"

I quote the curtain-line of the story published in the Seaboard Herald: "The trial had taken two full days, held the witnesses away from their homes until Sunday afternoon, and caused all sorts of inconvenience for the lawyers who had made other plans for Saturday."

I was staring at that final paragraph. Wondering what other plans those lawyers could have made for Saturday. Wondering what Earnest had planned and what plans Lionel must have made. Certainly Brother Lionel must have had an important date. I could think of only one pastime that could have whisked him out of the courtroom on so dramatic an afternoon. No doubt she would have worn a picture hat tilted like the side of a roof, a princess-line coat, an ankle-length skirt, and the daintiest little

*
Verbatim quote from the records.

cloth-topped shoes. I could see her waiting at a stage door, her gloved hands folded on the knob of a long-handled parasol. I could almost hear them.

"You may call me Lil."

"Call me Lion."

A voice behind me said, "Evening." Earnest Bridewell's scrap-book sprawled to the floor as I swerved around.

Fishbait Fred Fox leaned in the vestibule door. "Didn't mean to startle you," he said. "I was lookin' for Ed Brewster."

"He and his wife are out," I said.

Fishbait eyed me. He wore a wholly incongruous tuxedo jacket, a white vest, brown trousers and yellow oxfords. The straw hat on the back of his head was in character. He said, "I see you're still doing your homework."

"I've been reading about the Bridewells. Earnest Bridewell's trial."

"That was something, wasn't it? Get to where the Judge jumped on Quahog Point for telling fibs?"

"What do you think of it?"

"Think he hit the nail on the head. Except, maybe, Mrs. Smeizer."

I could not conceal my surprise. "Mrs. Smeizer?"

Fishbait eyed the ceiling. "My Aunt Nellie knew her quite well." He paused to insert thumb and finger into his mouth. Groping carefully, he took out a denture, frowned at it, then adjusted it back in place. "Mail-order teeth," he said bitterly.

"You were saying about Mrs. Smeizer?"

"Oh, yes. It was that night Abby Bridewell was done in. Bertha Smeizer told my Aunt Nellie that she saw the front door open and shut. It was night, you know, and she saw the yellow light. She was on her porch. And—this never got in the testimony—when the door opened she heard a man's voice. Sounded like it was here in the parlor."

"She heard a man?"

"Plain as day. He says something like, 'This is Neddy' or 'This is Ed.'"

"Neddy?" I exclaimed. "Or Ed!"

"That's all she heard. But she told my Aunt Nellie it was God's truth. Only she didn't get a chance to say so at the trial."

"Who could it have been, Fishbait?"

"Damfino." He rounded from the door and sauntered out into the kitchen. I heard the kitchen door slam. A moment later a car pulled into the drive.

Luke Martin burst in from the night. "Get your bag, we're going."

"How did you do, Luke?"

He stormed, "It got away! The biggest one I ever saw. It got away!"

But as we drove out of town that night, I was convinced that Luke's fish was not the only big one that ever got away at Quahog Point.

With the charges against Earnest Bridewell dismissed, the case ends as abruptly as one of those amputated news items in previous reference. And as unsatisfactorily, needless to add.

For if the evidence pointed to murder, as Judge Cottonwood conceded, why was the criminal investigation dropped? Why did the State's Attorney General shelve it as though it were a worthless old hat which some bumpkin had inadvertently left in his office?

Certainly a great many obvious questions were left hangfire. To enumerate a few:

Convinced as the Judge was that the Quahog Pointers were errant perjurers, why did not the State bring formal charges against them?

Why did Senator Bridewell's lawyers fail to bring similar charges against the witnesses who had presumably maligned him?

Why did the Court tolerate the testimony of a thirteen-year-old orphan who was "bound out" to Senator Bridewell and who could easily have been bribed or pressured?

Why did the officers who visited the scene of the crime fail to look for fingerprints on the cellar wall or on the door at the stair-top? Since 1900 or thereabouts the Bertillon System had been employed in America. And New England police were considered innovators, among the constabulary avant-garde.

What became of Exhibit A—the bag of shot? Harvard, Brown and other nearby universities contained scientific equipment which might have been put to better use than the examination of jumping cigar-store Indians. Indeed, the medical savants had for some years been assisting in police work. At hand, then, were facilities for a microscopic study of the alleged murder weapon, which might conceivably have uncovered a wisp of hair, a smear of face powder, or some other revelatory clue. Why was no scientific examination made in this case?

Defense averred that Dr. Hatfield, with the Hatfield axe to grind, offered adverse testimony and urged other Quahog Pointers to testify against Earnest Bridewell. A political vendetta was alleged. Why was this allegation never investigated?

In court Lionel Bridewell was denounced as a scoundrel who would frame his own brother. Why was there no police reaction to this allegation which added a fratricidal plot to matricide?

Finally (and it would seem rather importantly) if Earnest Bridewell did not slay his mother, who did?

"The State's evidence was that murder had been committed." And possessed of such evidence the State drops the affair. A pack of witnesses who are manifest perjurers. A village where liars are reputedly thicker than fiddlers in hell. Manifestations of an ugly family feud. Obvious political skullduggery. Clues as numerous as fleas on a dog. Motives in homicidal abundance. But? Case closed.

Surely this was a unique attitude on the part of law enforcement officials.

When the State's Attorney General shelved it, the Bridewell affair was an anthology of mysteries.

Certainly the trail was zero cold when, thirty-five years later, I spread the notes across my desk in New York.

CHAPTER 16

No collector of true crimes and criminological curiosa is surprised to come across an unsolved murder mystery. Only the most naive layman believes the myth that "murder will out."

But a murder mystery in a microcosm, in a flyspeck community of 700 people, an anthill packed together in "togetherness." Here are no jungly terminals where smog provides cover for a human carnivore, no asphalt canyons teeming with strangers in hurrying anonymity. In this one-street town you know your neighbor like a book, and he is equally informed on you. Murder in concealment? As well try to hide a blacksnake in a goldfish bowl. It was this goldfish bowl aspect of the Bridewell case that made it, to me, most intriguing.

Physical geography, if nothing else, virtually precluded a chance slaying by a vagabond intruder. By the same token it ruled out a revenge killing by rum-runners or some professional hireling. At remote Quahog Point, vagrant strangers would have been spotted by eyes behind every window curtain.

No, it almost had to be a local job. Sea pirates and alien smugglers could be scratched from any list of possible suspects.

Going over my notes, I composed such a list. I summarized:

"Someone well acquainted with the Bridewells. Conversant with the habits of the family. Familiar with layout of house and grounds. Had access, and could make or seize opportunity."

Almost any neighbor or fellow townsman could qualify. Yet the suspect list could again be whittled down by evidence which strongly indicated an inside job.

I wrote: "An intimate of the household. Probably in the bosom of the family. Must reckon with ambush potential of parlor, dining room, pantry, kitchen, the many doors."

Rationale: the death-blow had been lightning swift. Delivered with the hair-trigger timing and deadly precision of a mousetrap. But this was a better mousetrap. And it had been set at the best possible vantage point. Had the victim been struck down in the kitchen, parlor or anywhere else in the house, there would have been blood-stains on carpets to reckon with, or linoleum to wash, or other traces to hide. Only those brutal cellar steps would do to lend the appearance of accident.

And would a neighbor have been likely to discern the cellar-way's strategic potential? To know the pitch of those stone steps, the insecurity of the handrail, the ugly outcroppings of the side-wall? And the tricky detail involving Earnest Bridewell's bag of shot. How would a neighbor have come into possession of that fantastic item?

Would a neighbor have been liable (a) to filch the bag, and then (b) risk the planting of the bag in an upstairs bedroom? In addition to the murder risk downstairs, such an awkward maneuver upstairs would have been extremely hazardous. What excuse can a neighbor offer if surprised upstairs with a hand under the mattress of your bed?

"Mrs. Bertha Smeizer," I wrote. "Possible, but unlikely for reason of ambush strategy and business of shot-bag. Modicum motive, but negative opportunity."

The same applied to other neighbors and townsmen. Many may have harbored private reasons to do away with Old Abby. Quahog Point seems to have been Grudge Harbor. However, all the visible signs indicated a house intimate, someone who knew his, or her— and the victim's—way around.

So I ruled out a Madame Sophie on the score that a town Venus would have had even less opportunity than a backfence busybody. For maternal, if not financial, reasons a state of cold war doubtless existed between Abby Bridewell and Lionel's lady friends. Which seemed to militate against the possibility of some trull intimately acquainting herself with the Bridewell homestead. Certainly Abby would never have invited one of the Cyprian sisterhood to tea, nor would a doxie have been there at garden parties with the King's Daughters. Sophie was too shady a lady to begin with.

Sybil Bridewell—I crossed her off, too. She was a ghost. Another character as unsubstantial as an old wives' tale. Not an iota of historicity supported the stories told about her. One could as reasonably list Ghostly Mary as a suspect.

Joao Gero? One could think about it. A man who presumably knew his way around the Bridewell house and grounds. Who knew the byroads and backroads of Quahog Point.

And conceivably the type to stage a vendetta. If there was any truth in the story about him and his daughter. If the girl had actually been seduced by Lionel Bridewell. If Abby had hustled the Geros away. If Magdalena had died in childbirth. If—if—if. All supposition. All conjecture. I had to cross Gero off. Hearsay cannot stand as valid testimony, and assumption spun from hearsay is a rope of sand.