The Whitfield Murder

Nearly a year later, in the month of October, the city was startled by a crime of singular ferocity, rendered all the more notable by the position of the victim. The details were few and staggering. A young woman, house-sitting for her aunt in a building overlooking Cutter Lane, not far from the river, had gone up to the third floor about eleven. Though fog rolled off the water in the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the lane below her window lay bright under a full moon. She was of a romantic temper, and she said afterward that never had she felt more at peace with the world than she did sitting on the sill of that open window, watching the moonlight on the cobbles.

The aunt's building was one of the narrow brick survivors on Cutter Lane, four stories, her lamp burning on the third. She said she had let herself in with a borrowed key and set the kettle on, and that afterward the cup stood cold on the table where she had left it, because she had sat down at the open window instead. The lane ran straight down to the water below the window, cobbled and empty, a single lamp at each end and the moon doing the work of ten between them.

And as she sat, there came into the lane an elderly, beautiful gentleman with white hair, walking up, and a small man advancing to meet him. She paid the small man little attention at first. When the two had come within speaking distance, directly below the window, the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty air of politeness. The subject of his address did not seem weighty. From his pointing, it appeared at moments that he was only asking his way. But the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the face breathed an innocent and old-world kindness, and with it something high, a well-founded content in his own worth. Presently her eye went to the other figure, and she recognized in him a certain Mr. Marsh, who had twice called at her aunt's building on some business with the basement flat, and whom she had disliked from the first without being able to give a reason for it. He had in his hand a heavy walking stick, with which he was trifling, turning it over and over. He answered never a word and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then, all at once, he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, carrying on like a madman. The old gentleman stepped back, surprised and a trifle hurt. And at that Marsh broke all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. The next moment, with an ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped on the roadway. She fainted where she sat.

It was two o'clock when she came to herself and called the police. The murderer was long gone. There lay his victim in the middle of the lane, mangled past sense. The stick with which the deed had been done, though it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the stress of that insensate cruelty, and one splintered half had rolled into the gutter; the other half, beyond doubt, the murderer had carried away. A wallet and a gold watch were found on the body. There were no cards, no papers, except a sealed envelope he had probably been carrying to the post, and the envelope bore the name and address of Walter Kessler.

This was brought to the lawyer the next morning before he was out of bed. No sooner had he seen it and heard the circumstances than his face set. "I shall say nothing until I have seen the body," he said. "This may be very serious. Kindly wait while I dress." With the same grave countenance he hurried through breakfast and drove to the district station, where the body lay. As soon as he came into the room he nodded.

"Yes," he said. "I recognize him. I am sorry to say this is Congressman Alan Whitfield."

"Good God, sir," exclaimed the officer. "Is it possible?" And the next moment his eye brightened with professional ambition. "This will make a deal of noise. Perhaps you can help us to the man." He briefly narrated what the witness had seen and showed the broken stick.

Kessler had already gone cold at the name of Marsh. But when the stick was laid before him he could doubt no longer. Broken and battered as it was, he recognized it for one he had himself presented to Adrian Voss many years before, a cane of dense African blackwood with a silver band, given the night Voss's institute opened its doors, and carried by Voss every winter since.

"Is this Mr. Marsh a person of small stature?" he inquired.

"Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking is what the witness calls him," said the officer.

A detective had joined them by then, a compact woman of the major crimes unit, Renata Cole.

"Mr. Kessler," she said. "I am told you know this name. Tell me what you have on it."

"I have met him once," said Kessler.

"When?"

"Some months ago. At the door on Mercer Row."

"What is he to Dr. Voss?"

Kessler did not answer at once. "He is known to Dr. Voss."

"Employment?"

"None that I know of."

"Where does he sleep?"

"The lower ward. I have the number."

Cole wrote it down. "Has he been about the house on Aldercote Square?"

"Yes."

"Often?"

"Mr. Kessler," said Cole, "a congressman has been beaten to death on a public street and I am asking you questions. Give me the rest of it."

"I have given you what I can give you. Anything more would do my client an injury."

"You understand that I can put you in front of a grand jury."

"I understand it," said Kessler. "And when you do, I shall say the same thing."

Cole looked at him for a long moment and said only, "Then we had best begin with the address he keeps."

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season lay over the harbor districts. A great brown murk sat on the sky, but the wind kept charging and routing it, so that as the car crawled from street to street Kessler beheld a marvelous number of degrees and shades of twilight: here dark as the back end of evening, there a rich lurid glow like the light of some strange fire, and here, for a moment, the fog torn open and a haggard shaft of daylight glancing through. The low warren of the lower ward, seen under these changing glimpses, with its wet streets, its slatternly foot traffic, and its convenience-store lights burning against the murk as if they had never been put out, seemed to the lawyer like a district of some city in a nightmare. His thoughts were of the gloomiest dye, and when he glanced at his companion he was conscious of a touch of that fear of the law and its officers which can assail the most honest.

As the car drew up before the address, the fog lifted a little and showed a dingy street: a package store, a low counter-service restaurant, a shop selling phone cases and secondhand tools, ragged children huddled in doorways, women of several nationalities passing out with keys in their hands for the morning errand. The next moment the fog settled down again upon that quarter, brown as umber, and cut the two off from their surroundings. This was the home of Adrian Voss's favorite, the man who stood to inherit several hundred thousand dollars.

An ivory-faced, silvery-haired old woman opened the door. Her face was smoothed by hypocrisy, but her manners were excellent. Yes, she said, this was Mr. Marsh's lodging, but he was not at home. He had been in that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour. There was nothing strange in that; his habits were irregular; it was nearly two months since she had seen him until yesterday.

"Very well, then. We wish to see his rooms," said Kessler, and when the woman began to declare it impossible, Cole said, "Madam, this is the police. We may come in lawfully, or we may come back with a warrant and a photographer. It will be pleasanter the first way."

A flash of odious joy crossed the woman's face. "Ah," she said. "He is in trouble. What has he done?"

Cole and Kessler exchanged glances. "He does not seem a very popular character," observed Cole. "Now, my good woman, just let us have a look about us."

In the whole extent of the house, which but for the landlady stood empty, Marsh had used only a couple of rooms, but these were furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was hung with wine; the glass was of silver; a good picture hung on the wall, a gift, as Kessler supposed, from Adrian Voss, who was much of a connoisseur; the rugs were deep and agreeable in color. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked. Clothes lay on the floor with the pockets turned inside out. Locked drawers stood open. On the hearth lay a pile of gray ash, as though many papers had been burned. From these embers Cole disinterred the butt end of a green checkbook, whose stubs had resisted the fire. The other half of the blackwood stick was found behind the door. This clinched her suspicions, and a visit to the bank, where several hundred thousand dollars were found lying to the account, completed her gratification.

"You may depend upon it," she told Kessler. "I have him in my hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick, and above all he never would have burned that book. Money is life to this man. We have nothing to do but wait at the bank and put out the bulletins."

The bulletins were not so easily satisfied. Marsh had numbered few familiars. Even the woman's son, who owned the building, had seen him only twice. His family could nowhere be traced. He had never been photographed. The few who could describe him differed widely, as casual observers will, and only on one point were they all agreed: the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed everyone who saw him.