Mysteries of Winterthurn Read online

  Dedication

  for Raymond, most exacting of readers—

  Epigraph

  “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

  —Samuel Johnson

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, The Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor

  Editor’s Note

  Quicklime

  Trompe L’Oeil

  The Keening

  The Spectacle in the Honeymoon Room

  “Iphigenia”

  Slaughtered Lambs

  “If I-Am You-”

  The Corpse

  At Glen Mawr Manor: The Dungeon

  The Lost Suitor

  The “Little Nun”

  “The Accursèd Kilgarvans”

  The Fatal Wedding Night

  At Glen Mawr Manor: The Attic

  Felo-de-Se

  Epilogue: Mr. Guillemot’s Testimony

  Devil’s Half-Acre; or, The Mystery of the “Cruel Suitor”

  Editor’s Note

  Devil’s Half-Acre

  “Damsels of the Half-Acre”

  The Scent of Calla Lilies

  “Our Accursèd Profession”

  The Faithful Maiden

  “. . . Your Adoring Cousin”

  The Doomed Man

  “Too Fast Have Those Young Days Faded”

  At Ravensworth Park

  Quicksand

  In Courthouse Green

  Postscript

  The Traitor

  “Let Your Light So Shine . . .”

  Postscript

  A Romantic Interlude

  The “Cruel Suitor” Tried

  The “Footman’s” Testimony

  The “Cruel Suitor” Unmask’d

  The “Cruel Suitor” Judged

  The Turtle Dove’s Fate

  Cousin Thérèse

  Epilogue

  The Bloodstained Bridal Gown; or, Xavier Kilgarvan’s Last Case

  Editor’s Note

  “. . . You Alone Are Our Salvation”

  A Parenthetical Aside

  “The Golden Vanity”

  “The Red-Haired Specter”

  In the Rectory

  Lapis Lazuli

  The Talk of the Town (I)

  Xavier Kilgarvan’s Investigation: At St. Bride’s

  Postscript

  The Betrothal

  Xavier Kilgarvan’s Investigation: The Embrace

  Postscript: Xavier Kilgarvan’s Vow

  The Talk of the Town (II)

  Memento Mori

  The Poisoned Benison

  The Proposal

  Xavier Kilgarvan’s Investigation: Hotel Paradise

  The Honeymoon Cottage. Poindexter’s Defeat. The End.

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Joyce Carol Oates

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The Virgin in the Rose-Bower

  or

  The Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor

  If I—am You—

  Shall You—be me?

  If You—scorn I—

  Where then—We—

  Be—?

  “IPHIGENIA”

  Editor’s Note

  It is frequently observed by our self-righteous critics that we amateur “collectors” of Murder are antiquarians at heart: unapologetically to the right in matters political, moral, and religious: possessed of a near-insatiable passion for authenticity, down to the most minute, revealing, and lurid detail: impatient with the new (whether it be new and untried modes of murder, or new and untried modes of mystery), and enamored of the old. Studying the history of crime, as, indeed, history more generally, with the hope of comprehending human nature,—or, failing that lofty ambition, comprehending the present era—cannot interest the purist. For, as the outspoken De Quincey has argued,—Is not Murder an art-form? And does any art-form require justification?

  Herewith, I am happy to present that perennial favorite of aficionados of American mystery, The Virgin in the Rose-Bower; or, The Tragedy of Glen Mawr Manor, which, albeit most informally, introduces young Xavier Kilgarvan to his destiny as a detective sui generis. (In Winterthurn City itself the case has long enjoyed a variety of appellations, amongst them, most bluntly, “The Glen Mawr Murders” and “The Glen Mawr ‘Angel’ Murders,” etc. Not one person—including even that exploitive scribbler of murder mysteries, Mr. Mountjoy Price—has had the wish, or the audacity, to refer to this controversial episode of Xavier Kilgarvan’s life as “Xavier Kilgarvan’s First Case”: nor is it this editor’s intention to do so.)

  How to best describe this old, much-analyzed, yet still tantalizing mystery of more than a century ago! Though it would seem at first blush to declare itself a classic of the locked-room variety, and though, doubtless, numberless collectors prize it for that reason, I have always believed that its fame (or notoriety) resides in the fact that, despite heroic effort, it was never satisfactorily solved. Or, at any rate, the solution to the mystery was never made public; and the murderer, or murderers, never brought to justice.

  And for very good reasons,—as the reader will doubtless agree.

  THE UNEXPLAINED MURDERS at Glen Mawr Manor, and in its vicinity, aroused great terror in the inhabitants of Winterthurn, somewhat out of proportion (it seems to us today) to the actual number of violent deaths involved. For a liberal count of corpses, so to speak, yields but four outright murders; and one self-inflicted death. (The deaths, mutilations, victimizations, etc., of a miscellany of animals in the vicinity being of less significance, though, doubtless, still a potent factor in the arousal of fear.) Yet it might be considered that there is such a phenomenon as soul-murder, of as great a moral harm as murder of the body: in which case, one, or perhaps two, or even three, additional “deaths” might be acknowledged. (For instance, it happened that as a consequence of their horrific experiences, Mrs. Abigail Whimbrel and Mrs. Roxana Murphy were plunged into the abyss of hopeless insanity, from which no physician could rescue them. Though it falls somewhat beyond the scope of this history, I should like to record that Mrs. Whimbrel lived to a sickly old age,—well into her ninety-seventh year, it is said—at the Mt. Moriah Hospital for Nervous Invalids, where her grieving family had seen fit to place her; while the fortune hunter Mrs. Murphy,—or Mrs. Kilgarvan, as she might legally be called—suffered an extreme abreaction to a sedative dose of belladonna, administered by Dr. Colney Hatch, and died within twelve days of her husband.)

  Superstitious the inhabitants of Winterthurn doubtless were, to have feared, for decades, “angels,” or “angel-figures,” loosed in the night and frequently in the day: and naïve in their stubborn belief that a preternatural force emanated from the Manor. Yet it were well for the contemporary reader to withhold judgment; and to reflect that our ancestors, though oft appearing less informed than ourselves, were perhaps far more sensitive,—nay, altogether more astute, in comprehending Evil.

  Quicklime

  Scarcely was it dawn of a remarkably chill morning in May,—indeed, large damp clumps of snow were being blown about like blossoms—when, seemingly out of nowhere, Miss Georgina Kilgarvan, the eldest daughter of the late Judge, appeared, accompanied by her Negro servant Pride, to ring the bell of a tradesman named Phineas Cutter (of Cutter Brothers Mills, on the Temperance Vale Road), and to make a most unusual request. Poor Phineas!—awakened harshly from sleep, afflicted with deafness in his right ear, he must have bethought himself whether this veiled and dark-clad vision was indeed the Judge
’s spinster daughter, or a specter out of troubled dreams: for how could it be,—nay, how should it be—that Miss Georgina of Glen Mawr Manor, heavily clothed in her mourning costume, and as always discreetly veiled, had come on foot to his store to make a purchase of,—fifty pounds of quicklime?

  Little wonder, then, that Phineas Cutter cupped his hand to his ear, and stammeringly requested of the lady that she repeat her words.

  While the diminutive Negro servant stood some yards distant, his crabbed expression giving no sign that he heard, or cared to hear, what his mistress said, Georgina Kilgarvan, speaking in a low, rapid, forceful voice, in which no evident agitation could be discerned, apologized for having disturbed Phineas at an unnatural hour; in truth, she did not know the precise time, as clocks at Glen Mawr vied with one another, in telling the time,—for they had been tampered with, it seems, since her father’s death,—but that unhappy fact had no bearing here, and she did not wish to pursue it. The situation was: she found herself in immediate need of a certain gardening substance, a compound of some sort,—lye, lime, quicklime? she could not recall precisely—only that it was a most potent material, employed commonly by gardeners,—a whitish substance with disinfectant and purgative powers: lye, or lime, or quicklime,—spread on organic materials, she believed, to hasten their decomposition; to effect a general cleansing, a purifying of that which was rotting and foul,—and evil,—and a source of contagion: quicklime, she thought it. As she was a gardener, albeit on a modest scale, she required this substance for her garden, and wished to purchase fifty pounds of it, without delay, which her servant would carry home for her: for it was her firm intention to begin work on her rose-garden that very morning.

  Speaking now in a more peremptory tone, and still without raising her veil, Miss Georgina Kilgarvan explained that she had not cash on her person, but, “as her father had done business with Mr. Cutter for many years, and his father before him, with Mr. Cutter’s father, she was confident that he would trust her to pay in the usual manner; and would simply bill Glen Mawr,”—this being information of a totally needless sort, as business with Glen Mawr was always transacted in that manner.

  Phineas Cutter is to be forgiven for his somewhat dazed response to the lady’s request, for the situation possessed that exquisite air of the utterly rational conjoined with the irrational that is a characteristic of dreams: the vision of a tall, dark-clad, veiled lady, her seal-skin cape falling majestically to her feet, her manner courteous, yet edged with a faint air of impatience, or contempt: the which was wondrously heightened by the very early hour, and the soundless, yet wildly melodic, disportment of soft, wet, giant clumps of snow that swirled about and clung melting to her black bonnet and cape. Ah, it might have been that one of the “life statues” from the nearby cemetery had roused itself, to make a teasing visit,—these statues being uncannily realistic in their proportions and stances, though executed in chill stone; or might it be a prank of some sort, played upon him to test his credulousness,—someone who had got himself up in disguise, as the “Blue Nun” of Glen Mawr Manor? (For it had happened more than once in the past several years that Cutter Mills, like many another establishment in the area, had been visited by pranksters,—or outright vandals: and though the wily culprits always eluded capture, it was generally believed, and charged, that they were young men of “good family,”—spoiled youths whose notion of amusement it might well be to overturn Phineas’s outhouse, or tie his billy goat atop his roof, or, indeed, trick him into thinking that Erasmus Kilgarvan’s eldest daughter was paying him a visit.)

  As Miss Georgina was altogether herself, in flesh and blood, Phineas quickly bestirred himself to comply with her strange request: for, like any tradesman, he feared provoking displeasure in his customers, and particularly in a member of the Kilgarvan family. Miss Georgina had acquired a reputation for eccentricity over the years, and for dealing somewhat punitively with shopkeepers, tradesmen, servants, and the like, who failed to meet with her exacting standards,—to the extent to which it had begun to be said, before her father’s death, that one would as readily deal with Erasmus Kilgarvan as with the “Blue Nun.” (Behind her back Miss Georgina was thus called, in reference to her perpetual costume, of long, full, oft shapeless dresses and skirts, of no shades other than navy or midnight blue, or black itself; and silk-lined capes of varying degrees of antiquity; and dark, austere bonnets, and hats, in the styles of bygone seasons. She was invariably veiled, not only in public but, it was said, frequently in private as well: though, in truth, so few persons encountered her in recent years, since her resignation from the faculty of the Parthian Academy for Girls and her gradual withdrawal from society, that such observations must have been the fruit of mere rumor. The veils consisted of the sheerest gossamer; or were smartly dotted in black velvet; or were made of a somewhat disfiguring species of netting; or, more frequently of late, they were of so darkly opaque a gauze, the observer was hard put to imagine a human face within, and a pair of secretive watchful eyes—! Little wonder, then, that when Miss Georgina Kilgarvan appeared in public, whether in the relative seclusion of church services at the Grace Episcopal Church on Berwick Avenue or on the street, small children openly gaped at her, and the unmannered amongst the adults covertly stared,—for the remarkable woman did very much resemble a nun; or, it might be said, a handsome and self-possessed species of witch.)

  Phineas made the offer of delivering the sack of quicklime to the Manor somewhat later in the day: but Miss Georgina irritably interrupted him, and stressed again her need for the “gardening substance” straightaway. So Phineas brought Pride with him, into the storeroom, that he might hand over the unwieldy sack; and, perhaps, discreetly inquire of the old Negro what on earth was bedeviling his mistress, to make her behave so queerly—! For he had heard,—or, rather, his wife and daughter had made mention of the fact—that, since the abrupt death of Chief Justice Erasmus Kilgarvan of the Winterthurn County Court, some weeks previous, things were in great upset at Glen Mawr Manor; and one or two servants had already given notice. There were rumors too of Miss Georgina’s cruel treatment of her two young half-sisters . . . And was not Simon Esdras Kilgarvan, the Judge’s brother, lapsed into a very odd state of mourning, or grief . . .

  Old Pride, however, gave evidence of disdaining Mr. Cutter’s friendly chatter, no less emphatically than his mistress; and did not deign to cast a rheumy eye in his direction, or allow his very black, and very wrinkled, face to relax into a smile, though poor Phineas did his best to “draw him out.” Thus the transaction was completed, in a most businesslike fashion: and Phineas Cutter stood in his doorway, wiping his hands on his overalls, to watch mistress and servant glide away into the swirl of snowflurries, with no backward glance. Lye, lime, quicklime,—ah yes quicklime!—fifty pounds, please,—for my roses, Mr. Cutter, please,—at once,—with no delay: and charge it to the Kilgarvan account.

  IN SPEAKING OF THE INCIDENT afterward, particularly as the months and years passed, Phineas Cutter could not resist embellishing it somewhat,—noting that the “Blue Nun’s” gloved hands visibly trembled; or that the stark pallor of her skin was discernible through her veil; or that her voice betrayed agitation, and guilt. In later years he was to insist, without, it seems, being conscious of the falsehood, that mistress and servant exchanged many a “significant” glance in his presence; and that Miss Georgina found it necessary to lean on Pride’s arm, as they walked away. Ah, and had not the woman’s black, piercing, uncanny eyes fixed themselves most disturbingly on his face—!

  Withal, there was something appealing, and even romantic, about the scene: an air of the poignant and the melancholy: and the haunting. For was not Miss Georgina a most enigmatic figure, in her mourning costume, with a mantle of soft melting snowflakes on her head and shoulders, delicate as the finest lace? And was it not an act of thoughtless desperation, never to be explained, that a lady of her social station should come on foot, upward of three miles, along a rough country road, before th
e sun had well risen,—thereby exposing herself to all manner of gossip and speculation?

  This, on the morning of May 3, some hours before the discovery of the death of Miss Georgina’s infant cousin, up at the Manor.

  YET PHINEAS CUTTER REMAINED standing in his doorway for some minutes, gazing into the distance, though Miss Georgina and her servant had long since disappeared; and the snow began soundlessly to melt. Was there not something pitiable, and half tragic, about Erasmus Kilgarvan’s eldest daughter, Phineas thought; had it not been her fate to be sorely disappointed,—nay, humiliated—many years ago, in an affair of the heart?

  Trompe L’Oeil

  Impatient with waiting. With longing. So lonely. Hungry. These many years. Impatient to love. To nurse. Our time fast approaches . . .

  It was near midnight of May 2, not more than six hours before Phineas Cutter was to be roused so discourteously from his sleep, that Mrs. Abigail Whimbrel (Miss Georgina’s cousin by way of her mother’s family, the Battenbergs of Contracoeur) started from her sleep, for the second or third time since retiring: and suffered so foreign a sensation through her being,—part nervous excitation, part languor of a heavy sensuous sort—she halfway feared some unnatural presence had slipped into her bed-chamber.

  “Who is here?—who dares disturb us? I shall ring for a servant—!”

  With trembling fingers Mrs. Whimbrel lit the oil lamp by her bedside table: and saw nothing that might be deemed out of the ordinary, save, perhaps, the wildly distended shadows caused by the lamp’s flame, and her own most uncommonly pale reflection in a bronze-frosted mirror on the facing wall. Though possessed of an enviably placid, and even quiescent, nature, and very rarely, for her sex, prone to outbursts of emotion or hysteria,—save at those inevitable times when female vicissitudes make war, as it were, upon mental equilibrium—Mrs. Whimbrel bethought herself that she must rise from her bed to examine the room and check once more the slumber of her infant son, who, having been fretful earlier, had been placed by his nurse, at Mrs. Whimbrel’s adamant request, in a wicker crib close by her bed.