A Moment on the Edge:100 Years of Crime Stories by women by Elizabeth George
She held the box away from her.
The sheriff’s wife again bent closer.
“Somebody wrung its neck,” said she, in a voice that was slow and deep.
And then again the eyes of the two women met—this time clung together in a look of dawning comprehension, of growing horror. Mrs. Peters looked from the dead bird to the broken door of the cage. Again their eyes met. And just then there was a sound at the outside door.
Mrs. Hale slipped the box under the quilt pieces in the basket, and sank into the chair before it. Mrs. Peters stood holding to the table. The county attorney and the sheriff came in from outside.
“Well, ladies,” said the county attorney, as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries, “have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?”
“We think,” began the sheriff’s wife in a flurried voice, “that she was going to—knot it.”
He was too preoccupied to notice the change that came in her voice on that last.
“Well, that’s very interesting, I’m sure,” he said tolerantly. He caught sight of the birdcage. “Has the bird flown?”
“We think the cat got it,” said Mrs. Hale in a voice curiously even.
He was walking up and down, as if thinking something out.
“Is there a cat?” he asked absently.
Mrs. Hale shot a look up at the sheriff’s wife.
“Well, not now,” said Mrs. Peters. “They’re superstitious, you know; they leave.”
She sank into her chair.
The county attorney did not heed her. “No sign at all of any one having come in from the outside,” he said to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted conversation. “Their own rope. Now let’s go upstairs again and go over it, piece by piece. It would have to have been some one who knew just the—”
The stair door closed behind them and their voices were lost.
The two women sat motionless, not looking at each other, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back. When they spoke now it was as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but as if they could not help saying it.
“She liked the bird,” said Martha Hale, low and slowly. “She was going to bury it in that pretty box.”
“When I was a girl,” said Mrs. Peters, under her breath, “my kit-ten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—before I could get there—” She covered her face an instant. “If they hadn’t held me back I would have”—she caught herself, looked upstairs where footsteps were heard, and finished weakly—“hurt him.”
Then they sat without speaking or moving.
“I wonder how it would seem,” Mrs. Hale at last began, as if feeling her way over strange ground—“never to have had any children around?” Her eyes made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what that kitchen had meant through all the years. “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird,” she said after that—“a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too.” Her voice tightened.
Mrs. Peters moved uneasily.
“Of course we don’t know who killed the bird.”
“I knew John Wright,” was Mrs. Hale’s answer.
“It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife. “Killing a man while he slept—slipping a thing round his neck that choked the life out of him.”
Mrs. Hale’s hand went out to the birdcage.
“His neck. Choked the life out of him.”
“We don’t know who killed him,” whispered Mrs. Peters wildly. “We don’t know.”
Mrs. Hale had not moved. “If there had been years and years of—nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful—still—after the bird was still.”
It was as if something within her not herself had spoken, and it found in Mrs. Peters something she did not know as herself.
“I know what stillness is,” she said, in a queer, monotonous voice. “When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died—after he was two years old—and me with no other then—”
Mrs. Hale stirred.
“How soon do you suppose they’ll be through looking for evidence?”
“I know what stillness is,” repeated Mrs. Peters, in just that same way. Then she too pulled back. “The law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale,” she said in her tight little way.
“I wish you’d seen Minnie Foster,” was the answer, “when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and stood up there in the choir and sang.”
The picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could bear.
“Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while!” she cried. “That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?”
“We mustn’t take on,” said Mrs. Peters, with a frightened look toward the stairs.
“I might ’a’ known she needed help! I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same
thing! If it weren’t—why do you and I understand? Why do we know—what we know this minute?”
She dashed her hand across her eyes. Then, seeing the jar of fruit on the table, she reached for it and choked out:
“If I was you I wouldn’t tell her her fruit was gone! Tell her it ain’t. Tell her it’s all right—all of it. Here—take this in to prove it to her! She—she may never know whether it was broke or not.”
She turned away.
Mrs. Peters reached out for the bottle of fruit as if she were glad to take it—as if touching a familiar thing, having something to do, could keep her from something else. She got up, looked about for something to wrap the fruit in, took a petticoat from the pile of clothes she had brought from the front room, and nervously started winding that round the bottle.
“My!” she began in a high, false voice, “it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a—dead canary.” She hurried over that. “As if that could have anything to do with—with—my, wouldn’t they laugh?”
Footsteps were heard on the stairs.
“Maybe they would,” muttered Mrs. Hale—“maybe they wouldn’t.”
“No, Peters,” said the county attorney incisively: “it’s all perfectly clear, except the reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing—something to show. Something to make a story about. A thing that would connect up with this clumsy way of doing it.”
In a covert way Mrs. Hale looked at Mrs. Peters. Mrs. Peters was looking at her. Quickly they looked away from each other. The outer door opened and Mr. Hale came in.
“I’ve got the team round now,” he said. “Pretty cold out there.”
“I’m going to stay here awhile by myself,” the county attorney suddenly announced. “You can send Frank out for me, can’t you?” he asked the sheriff. “I want to go over everything. I’m not satisfied we can’t do better.”
Again, for one brief moment, the two women’s eyes found one another.
The sheriff came up to the table.
“Did you want to see what Mrs. Peters was going to take in?”
The county attorney picked up the apron. He laughed.
“Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out.”
Mrs. Hale’s hand was on the sewing basket in which the box was concealed. She felt that she ought to take her hand off the basket. She did not seem able to. He picked up one of the quilt blocks which she had piled on to cover the box. Her eyes felt like fire. She had a feeling that if he took up the basket she would snatch it from him.
But he did not take it up. With another little laugh, he turned away, saying:
“No; Mrs. Peters doesn’t need supervising. For that matter, a sheriff’s wife is married to the law. Ever think of it that way, Mrs. Pet
Mrs. Peters was standing beside the table. Mrs. Hale shot a look up at her; but she could not see her face. Mrs. Peters had turned away. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.
“Not—just that way,” she said.
“Married to the law!” chuckled Mrs. Peters’s husband. He moved toward the door into the front room, and said to the county attorney:
“I just want you to come in here a minute, George. We ought to take a look at these windows.”
“Oh—windows,” said the county attorney scoffingly.
“We’ll be right out, Mr. Hale,” said the sheriff to the farmer, who was still waiting by the door.
Hale went to look after the horses. The sheriff followed the county attorney into the other room. Again—for one moment—the two women were alone in that kitchen.
Martha Hale sprang up, her hands tight together, looking at that other woman, with whom it rested. At first she could not
see her eyes, for the sheriff’s wife had not turned back since she turned away at that suggestion of being married to the law. But now Mrs. Hale made her turn back. Her eyes made her turn back. Slowly, unwillingly, Mrs. Peters turned her head until her eyes met the eyes of the other woman. There was a moment when they held each other in a steady, burning look in which there was no evasion nor flinching. Then Martha Hale’s eyes pointed the way to the basket in which was hidden the thing that would make certain the conviction of the other woman—that woman who was not there and yet who had been there with them all through the hour.
For a moment Mrs. Peters did not move. And then she did it. With a rush forward, she threw back the quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put in in her handbag. It was too big. Desperately she opened it, started to take the bird out. But there she broke—she could not touch the bird. She stood helpless, foolish.
There was a sound of a knob turning in the inner door. Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff’s wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as the sheriff and the county attorney came back into the kitchen.
“Well, Henry,” said the county attorney facetiously, “at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to—what is it you call it, ladies?”
Mrs. Hale’s hand was against the pocket of her coat.
“We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson.”
The Man Who Knew How
DOROTHY L. SAYERS
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1957) is one of the most remarkable and influential figures in crime fiction history. Born in Oxford and a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, she was a language teacher, publisher’s reader, and advertising copywriter before becoming a full-time writer. In Whose Body? (1923), she introduced one of the most famous gentleman detectives in literature, Lord Peter Wimsey, a somewhat Wodehousian character, affected in speech and manner with pronounced “silly ass” tendencies, who would become a much deeper and more fully developed figure as his career went on. In Strong Poison (1930), Wimsey met novelist Harriet Vane, whom he would save from a charge of murder, then (in reckless disregard of the rules against romance in Golden Age detective novels) woo through several novels, including the academic classic Gaudy Night (1935), and finally wed in Busman’s Honeymoon (1937), the final detective novel completed by Sayers. (The fragmentary Thrones, Dominations would be completed with remarkable fidelity many years later by Jill Paton Walsh and published under their joint byline in 1998.)
Sayers, who became a feminist icon in the 1970s, in part because of the independence she personified in her own life and in part because of her creation of Harriet Vane, has been the subject of more biographical works and critical analyses than any Golden Age of Detection figure save Agatha Christie, and certainly few equaled her in her devotion to the games-playing elements of the detective story. However, she left detective fiction in the latter part of her life in favor of other literary pursuits, including some highly regarded religious plays and a translation of Dante.
Though Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a number of short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey, her best shorter works tend to be those without a series detective. In “The Man Who Knew How,” Sayers is able to comment wittily on her detective fiction speciality while developing a situation that could as easily have taken the title of another of her best short stories: “Suspicion.” “The Man Who Knew How” is the sort of crime story ideally suited to radio adaptation, as it was in a memorable Suspense broadcast starring Charles Laughton as Pender, with Hans Conreid in the title role.
For the twentieth time since the train had left Carlisle, Pender glanced up from Murder at the Manse and caught the eye of the man opposite. He frowned a little. It was irritating to be watched so closely, and always with that faint, sardonic smile. It was still more irritating to allow oneself to be so much disturbed by the smile and the scrutiny. Pender wrenched himself back to his book with a determination to concentrate upon the problem of the minister murdered in the library. But the story was of the academic kind that crowds all its exciting incidents into the first chapter, and proceeds thereafter by a long series of deductions to a scientific solution in the last. Twice Pender had to turn back to verify points that he had missed in reading. Then he became aware that he was not thinking about the murdered minister at all—he was becoming more and more actively conscious of the other man’s face. A queer face, Pender thought. There was nothing especially remarkable about the features in themselves; it was their expression that daunted Pender. It was a secret face, the face of one who knew a great deal to other people’s disadvantage. The mouth was a little crooked and tightly tucked in at the corners, as though savoring a hidden amusement. The eyes, behind a pair of rimless pince-nez, glittered curiously; but that was possibly due to the light reflected in the glasses. Pender wondered what the man’s profession might be. He was dressed in a dark lounge suit, a raincoat and a shabby soft hat; his age was perhaps about forty. Pender coughed unneccessarily and settled back into his corner, raising the detective story high before his face, barrier-fashion. This was worse than useless. He gained the impression that the man saw through the maneuver and was secretly entertained by it. He wanted to fidget, but felt obscurely that his doing so would in some way constitute a victory for the other man. In his self-consciousness he held himself so rigid that attention to his book became a sheer physical impossibility.
There was no stop now before Rugby, and it was unlikely that any passenger would enter from the corridor to break up this disagreeable solitude à deux. Pender could, of course, go out into the corridor and not return, but that would be an acknowledgment of defeat. Pender lowered Murder at the Manse and caught the man’s eye again.
“Getting tired of it?” asked the man.
“Night journeys are always a bit tedious,” replied Pender, half relieved and half reluctant. “Would you like a book?”
He took The Paper-Clip Clue from his briefcase and held it out hopefully. The other man glanced at the title and shook his head.
“Thanks very much,” he said, “but I never read detective stories. They’re so—inadequate, don’t you think so?”
“They are rather lacking in characterization and human interest, certainly,” said Pender, “but on a railway journey—”
“I don’t mean that,” said the other man. “I am not concerned with humanity. But all these murderers are so incompetent—they bore me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Pender. “At any rate they are usually a good deal more imaginative and ingenious than murderers in real life.”
“Than the murderers who are found out in real life, yes,” admitted the other man.
“Even some of those did pretty well before they got pinched,” objected Pender. “Crippen, for instance; he need never have been caught if he hadn’t lost his head and run off to America. George Joseph Smith did away with at least two brides quite successfully before fate and the News of the World intervened.”
“Yes,” said the other man, “but look at the clumsiness of it all; the elabor
“Oh come!” said Pender. “You can’t expect committing a murder and getting away with it to be as simple as shelling peas.”
“Ah!” said the other man. “You think that, do you?”
Pender waited for him to elaborate this remark, but nothing came of it. The man leaned back and smiled in his secret way at the roof of the carriage; he appeared to think the conversation not worth going on with. Pender found himself noticing his companion’s hands. They were white and surprisingly long in the fingers. He watched them gently tapping upon their owner’s knee—then resolutely turned a page—then put the book down once more and said:
“Well, if it’s so easy, how would you set about committing a murder?”
“I?” repeated the man. The light on his glasses made his eyes quite blank to Pender, but his voice sounded gently amused. “That’s different; I should not have to think twice about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I happen to know how to do it.”
“Do you indeed?” muttered Pender, rebelliously.
“Oh yes; there’s nothing to it.”
“How can you be sure? You haven’t tried, I suppose?”
“It isn’t a case of trying,” said the man. “There’s nothing uncertain about my method. That’s just the beauty of it.”
“It’s easy to say that,” retorted Pender, “but what is this wonderful method?”
“You can’t expect me to tell you that, can you?” said the other man, bringing his eyes back to rest on Pender’s. “It might not be safe. You look harmless enough, but who could look more harmless than Crippen? Nobody is fit to be trusted with absolute control over other people’s lives.”
“Bosh!” exclaimed Pender. “I shouldn’t think of murdering anybody.”
“Oh yes you would,” said the other man, “if you really believed it was safe. So would anybody. Why are all these tremendous artificial barriers built up around murder by the Church and the law? Just because it’s everybody’s crime and just as natural as breathing.”