ONGWOOD was stunned. By noon everybody knew it and there was no more business that day. The people stood in groups, talking in whispers as if they were at a funeral. And in the afternoon it was like a funeral, the body coming back by train and being taken from the depot to Mapleshade in one of the Doctor's farm wagons. It lay under a sheet and as the wagon passed through the crowd you couldn't hear a sound, except for a woman crying here and there.
Then it was as if a spring that held the people dumb and still was loosed and the excitement burst up. I never saw anything like it. It seemed like every village up and down the line had emptied itself into Longwood. Farmers and laborers and loafers swarmed along the streets, the rich came in motors, tearing to Mapleshade, and the police were everywhere, as if they'd sprung out of the ground.
By afternoon the reporters came pouring in from town. The Inn was full up with them and they were buzzing round my exchange like flies. Some of them tried to get hold of me and that night had the nerve to come knocking at Mrs. Galway's side door, demanding the telephone girl. But, believe me, I sat tight and said nothing—nothing to them. The police were after me mighty quick, and there was a seance over Corwin's Drug Store when I felt like I was being put to the third degree. I told them all I knew, job or no job, for I guessed right off that that talk I'd overheard on the phone might be an important clew. They kept it close. It wasn't till after the inquest that the press got it.
Before the inquest every sort of rumor was flying about, and the papers were full of crazy stories, not half of them true. I'd read about places and people I knew as well as my own face in the mirror, and they'd sound like a dime novel, so colored up and twisted round the oldest inhabitant wouldn't have recognized them.
To get at the facts was a job, but, knowing who was reliable and who wasn't, I questioned and ferreted and, I guess, before I was done I had them pretty straight.
Sylvia had been killed by a blow on the side of her head—a terrible blow. A sheriff's deputy I know told me that in all his experience he had seen nothing worse. Her hat had evidently shielded the scalp. It was pulled well down over her head, the long pin bent but still thrust through it. Where she had been hit the plush was torn but not the thick interlining, and her hair, all loosened, was hanging down against her neck. There was a wound—not deep, more like a tearing of the skin, on the lower part of her cheek. It was agreed that she had been struck only once by some heavy implement that had a sharp or jagged edge. Though the woods and fields had been thoroughly searched nothing had been discovered that could have dealt the blow. Whatever he had used the murderer had either successfully hidden it or taken it away with him. The deputy told me it looked to him as if it might have been some farming tool like a spade, or even a heavy branch broken from a tree. The way the body was arranged, the coat drawn smoothly together, the branches completely covering her, showed that the murderer had taken time to conceal his crime, though why he had not drawn the body back into the thick growth of bushes was a point that puzzled everybody.
It was impossible to trace any footprints, as the automobile party and Hines had trodden the earth about her into a muddy mass, and the grass along the edge was too thick and springy to hold any impression.
Close behind the place where she lay twigs of the screening trees were snapped and bent as if her assailant had broken through them.
There were people who said Hines would have been arrested on the spot if robbery had been added to murder. But the jewelry was all on her, more than he said he had noticed when she was in the Wayside Arbor. The pearl necklace alone was worth twenty thousand dollars, and just below it, clasping her gown over the chest, was a diamond cross, an old ornament of her mother's, made of the finest Brazilian stones. In the pocket of her coat was a purse with forty-eight dollars in it. So right at the start the theory of robbery was abandoned.
Another inexplicable thing was the disappearance of the French maid, Virginia Dupont. Jack Reddy denied any knowledge of her. He said Sylvia had never mentioned bringing her with them and he didn't think intended to do so. The Mapleshade people thought differently, all declaring that Sylvia depended on her and took her wherever she went. One of the mysteries about the woman that was quickly cleared up was the walk she had taken to the village on Sunday morning. This was to meet Mr. Reddy and take from him the letter for Sylvia which had been found in the desk.