Chapter 4

"Sarah here."

"Hi."

"Hi, yourself. Jason, if you were here I would kiss you. God, I have never been so interested in anything as I am in these journals. I turned them all out of the chests and started to read the one written by a Ruth Baker. You know when I identified her as the first author of the first journal, it struck me that she had a biblical name and I have one too. How fitting, don't you think?"

"If you say so."

"Did you know your namesake was a pirate during the Revolutionary War? He captured a British supply ship full of grain. He sailed it into a harbor in Jersey and it went to General Washington for his horses. He also captured a ship that had a whole lot of blacksmith tools on it and barrels of horse shoes. It also had bales of blankets and several barrels of salted beef. It doesn't sound too exciting to me."

"Maybe not, but during war time all of that stuff would have been priceless to our side."

"This journal is very hard to read. I don't think Ruth had much education. She printed and some of it is faded and the paper is rough and thick, not like ours today. She was a farmer's daughter and lived on the farm with her three brothers. I haven't got too far into it and it takes me a long time to make out what she is saying sometimes. I have had to use a Websters to figure out what words mean for they used different ones than we do for different things. How come you called?"

"I've been reading Aunt Nellie's journal. She did something that I am going to the police with to clear up a mystery that took place sixty years ago. Would you like to be here when I do?"

"Would I? When are you going to do it?"

"Tomorrow afternoon after I read her journal some more."

"Jason, can I come down early so you can tell me all about it?"

"I was hoping you would. How early can you come?"

There was silence for a minute and then Sarah said, "You want me to come down this afternoon, don't you?"

"Kinda, but I didn't know how to ask without you thinking I was imposing. Some of Nellie's journal spooked me a little."

"You're scaring me. What did she do?"

"Not telling 'til you get here."

"Okay, I'm on my way. Be there in an hour."

Sarah made it in time for lunch, which my mother had prepared. Mom was laughing at me during the meal, telling Sarah about me knocking on her door last night. I gave Sarah the pertinent parts from the journal to read as soon as we finished lunch. The story was nowhere near as upsetting to me today as it was last night when I first read it. Sarah shivered and edged her chair a little closer to Mom. When she reached the end of the section where I stopped last night, I said I would read out loud what Aunt Nellie did next.

As put down in the journal, Aunt Nellie related that now she had killed her husband, she had a body to dispose of. She couldn't leave it in the attic where it shortly would begin to putrefy. When she tried to lift it, she couldn't budge it. Going down into the kitchen she secured a butcher knife and a pail and returned to the attic where she eviscerated the body. Four times she made the trip from attic to the bathroom where she chopped the disemboweled parts into small pieces and flushed then down the drain. She knew that they would pass into the Whetstone Brook and out into the Connecticut River where the carp and other fish would be waiting to totally dispose of the grisly soft body parts.

Her words:

Tired unto death, I looked at the clock in the living room and found it near daylight. I drew a tub full of water and washed myself and what of Henry clung to me from my grisly task. I then prayed to God for forgiveness and heating water again I soaked for an hour. I went to bed and slept until four in the PM. Rising I went to the hardware store and purchased twenty-five pounds of lime to slow down the decomposition of what was left of Henry that lay in the attic.

The thought crossed my mind that this truly was a shell of a man. This when I packed the lime into the empty cavity of what was once my husband. Again I washed and prayed to God and then I went to bed and slept the sleep of the damned, but I awoke refreshed and I now waited to be discovered of this deed I had done. I made a trip to the attic once a day for a month and decided even only with the vents at the end of the building, the stench would not be attributed to this house and would be blown away in the wind. In this time I constructed a coffin for him to rot in.

Again I went to the hardware store and purchased window putty and a lock and hasp. I sealed the door with the putty and put the lock on and put Henry from my mind. I'm sure God will seek retribution for this thing I have done, so I don't expect to live very long. He will take me and send me to Hell, which is only just. I can only plead my case that I have already been through Hell. I await God's will.

There were several empty pages in the journal at this point. Whether Nellie planned to write more and to fill the pages with more information on the subject would ever remain a mystery. I looked at Mom and Sarah to see their reaction to what I had just read. Both were staring straight ahead and I knew they were with Nellie as she went through her actions to hide what she had done. Apparently she thought at some point she would have to answer here on earth, but wanted to put it off as long as possible.

"What's the next entry?"

"Just about going home to Springfield to visit her parents. She took the train and had a friend with her. She says here she wore a colorful gown."

"But she was always dressed in black."

"Probably she didn't put those on until Henry was declared dead by court order seven years later. She would have wanted everything to appear normal and keep up the farce he was still alive until that time."

"To think she had almost fifty more years with the possibility of being found out hanging over her. That would drive anyone crazy. I visited her often and she never gave much indication of being fearful about anything. She was a semi-recluse, but never acted anything but a little odd."

"Maybe she accepted the fact that she would be found out and she would deal with it when it happened."

"When shall I talk to the police? I don't want these papers to leave my hand. I think to start with, I will give them a copy of the letter that the attorney gave me and retain the original. Who wants to go to the copy center?"

"I do. I haven't read the letter yet."

"Mom has seen it and as long as you are with me you might as well too."

I entered the police department and stepped up to the window. A woman in uniform looked at me. She looked about half asleep and bored. "Umm, I just took control of a piece of property that was left to me by my great-aunt, Helen Leblanc. I also received a letter that she left with Attorney Jones to be delivered to me. I read it this morning and in it she indicated there is a body in the building. Is there anyone here that could go with me to check it out?"

The uniform looked at me. "You're kidding aren't you?"

"Nope." I still don't think dispatch believed me.

"Well let me get a detective to listen to your story. Your name and address, please."

The detective, Mark Fisher, was much more wide awake--and the uniformed dispatch officer was awake too, by this time. I was asked for background information about myself. And how long had I lived at my mother's address? I answered a week recently and until I was eighteen previously. And who owns this building where you say the body is? I said I had inherited it but the estate hadn't been probated yet, so I supposed the estate did. Would excavating equipment be needed? Nope.

"Why not?"

"Because I have a key to where the body is said to be located."

"Well let's go there and see what we can find. I hope this isn't a wild goose chase."

"I do."

"Why's that?"

"Would you want to inherit a house and have a body come with it?"

"No I guess not. Do we need any tools at all?"

"Maybe a crow bar and a hammer."

"This is beginning to sound like fun. Who is this young lady with you?"

"Her name is Sarah Bernhardt and she is doing some archive work on some papers for me."

"She know about all this? Who else?"

"My mother, Jane Thibadeau. She kind of looked after the old lady. My father was the old lady's nephew."

"What do you do for employment?"

"I am self-employed, setting up a business of my own. I inspect buildings for banks, mortgage companies and homeowners. I also do appraisals and title searches. Umm, maybe we should have some flashlights. I have no idea whether there are lights where the body is."

"All right, let me get another officer."

Sarah, nervous, whispered the comment that the officer was afraid to go alone. Unfortunately he overheard her and stopped dead and looked at her. "I'm sorry. This has me shook up."

"You better not go with us then."

"No, I'm going. Jason said I could. No more comments from me, I promise."

The entrance to the cellar was in the kitchen. There were several lights that came on when I flicked the switch. I had paid no attention to how the house was heated in the winter time. Mostly cellars were cluttered with odds and ends, but this one wasn't. The floor was cemented and the area was nearly empty. There was an oil-fired boiler in one end and it appeared to be almost new. No oil tank so it must be buried outside. There was a monstrous coal- fired boiler along one wall that had been abandoned with a coal bin still with some pea coal in it.

Detective Fisher looked for an entrance to a stairwell. "I thought you said the door to the attic was down here?"

"Here, you read a copy of the directions and then you will know as much about it as I do."

He read the letter and went to a section of irregular wall that jutted out into the basement. Fisher tapped on it. The three foot face next to the stairs we had come down sounded hollow. He looked at me.

"Open it. There is room enough to have an enclosed staircase in that section."

Detective Fisher drove the crowbar into the edge of the panel made out of half-inch plywood. There were two sheets, one 3x8 and another one 3x4 nailed above that one. Sarah tried to see inside before the two detectives had fully pried the lower one free. I pulled her away to give them room just in time, for it came loose suddenly and fell away exposing a door with a padlock on it. I handed Fisher the two keys I had brought with me. He chose one and it fitted the lock and turned easily. When he swung the door open we could see the narrow stairs leading upward into the darkness.

Both officers had flashlights and Sarah and I had the two police lanterns they had provided us. The stairs were steep and narrow. At the first floor level the stairs reversed themselves at a small landing. We could see at one time there was a blocked off entrance here that would have gone into the kitchen. The same at the second floor level where the stairs again reversed. "This blocked off entrance will be about at the end of the ballroom cloak closet if I remember correctly the layout of the rooms."