The Famous Dar Murder Mystery Read online

  Henry laughed. “All right, my dear, your man was a very important fellow, but you’ll have a hard time convincing the sheriff of that.”

  That was Wednesday. Wednesday means choir practice, and I had laundry to do and a thousand other things to take care of. There was no time to consider the DAR mystery any further. Besides, it was still very much an imaginary adventure to me, and I didn’t expect to think seriously about it again.

  HOW THE OLD ORCHARD FORT CHAPTER GOT SO MUCH PUBLICITY

  Elizabeth Wheeler

  Isobel Parsons insists that I must write up everything that I did in connection with the murder business that our chapter worked out. My part of it was really very small. Being the first in the group to actually see the body might count for something. But I would never have the courage of Helen Delaporte, the Regent of the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, who examined the body really in a most professional way and did so many things that I would never have dared to do. And then, of course Mrs. Bushrow was so clever and brave. I just have to think there was some purpose that brought those two ladies together that day in the Brown Spring Cemetery, because neither I nor Margaret would have known what to do.

  On the other hand, having two jobs in the chapter—I am public relations chairman and also on the committee that helps the ladies with their genealogy—it turned out that there were two things I could do to help.

  From a very small child, I have always been interested in family history. I love old records and feel that there is nothing more exciting than uncovering forgotten facts by means of faded old documents, letters found in neglected trunks, old Bibles, and a thousand and one memories that have been handed down from our ancestors. But that part of my work comes later in the story. The thing for me to explain now is how the Old Orchard Fort Chapter got 1,540 inches of publicity in one year.

  Actually I was not supposed to be public relations chairman this year. Frances St. John was chairman; but when her son moved to Florida, she went with him and resigned the chairmanship. So since I had been public relations chairman about five years ago, I agreed to step in, little suspecting what it would lead to.

  National is very strict about giving credit for publicity. The newspaper—oh, how they can get things wrong! They must—absolutely must—print the name of the chapter accurately. It is not enough to say, “The DAR did so and so, or”a local chapter of the DAR did this.” I remember once that I inserted a story in the paper and they changed”Old Orchard Fort Chapter, NSDAR” to “an old chapter of the DAR.” So we got no credit although the story ran nine inches.

  Well, here’s how I got 1,540 inches of publicity and got it all counted for the Old Orchard Fort Chapter.

  I have a recipe for pound cake that I got from a cousin in Russell County. I think it’s about the best pound cake at all, and I’ve noticed whenever I’ve served it where there were men, my pound cake disappeared faster than anything else on the table. It is not at all hard to make; and since I don’t have to ice it, it’s easy to carry in the car. So that’s the cake I generally make when there has been a death somewhere or they want a cake at the church or anything in that line.

  Not to go into too many details, I got just very busy; and the cake turned out to be lovely—as it always does. Besides, I love the smell of it while it’s baking.

  Then I got all dolled up and took my cake down to the newspaper office.

  I asked the young lady at the big desk—the one just after you go through the main door—I asked her who the reporter was that had written up the story about our little escapade. It turned out that it was a nice young man—new on the paper—named Albert Manley.

  Of course I used to be very chummy with Kate Loveless when she was on the paper, and I trained her to handle DAR publicity and notices and that kind of thing, though she made some awful mistakes sometimes. But she died about three years ago. Anyhow, this young man was quite a different item from Kate.

  Well, the young lady at the front desk I was telling about directed me toward the back of the building, where there was a big room with nice windows all along the south side and a good many desks all neatly lined up. And one of them belonged to this good-looking young man named Albert Manley.

  I guess I was a little hesitant, because it was just a little bit “forward” of me to do what I was going to do.

  I said, “Good morning!” and, “I’m Elizabeth Wheeler.” And he stood up right away and was very polite.

  He said, “I’m Albert Manley,” and, “Won’t you sit down?”

  So I did, holding my big cake box on my lap.

  “Would you like to rest that package on my desk?” he said.

  So I did, and I took the top off the box.

  “See what this is?” I said. “Would you like to have a piece?

  “Oh, don’t cut your cake,” he said, and I could tell right away that his mother had raised him right.

  “But that’s what I made it for,” I said, and I commenced cutting it with the cake break that I had slipped into the side of the box.

  About that time everyone else in the room seemed to know what was going on. All the typewriters or word processors or whatever those things are called stopped rattling and all those faces were looking at me and Mr. Manley, and especially at my cake.

  “I imagine there is enough for everybody,” I said. So they all crowded around. It was just the way I knew it would be. That pound cake never fails.

  “I want you all to know that this pound cake is a bribe,” I told them. “I have a recipe for Belgrade bread that I bet you would all like. And I’ll make it for you if you’ll do something nice for me.”

  Of course Mr. Manley and all of them wanted to know what that was—which gave me an opening to explain how I wanted them to write up anything that was said about our chapter. I made them understand that the name of the chapter is most important and that the story must show that the chapter is engaged in a DAR-related activity.

  Then I explained about marking the grave of Adoniram Philipson, which is a bona fide activity of our chapter, and we ought to get credit for any story that mentions it and mentions it in the right way. And I gave Mr. Manley my DAR yearbook so that he can always get the names right, and asked him please, please to always call me when he was going to write something about our chapter so I could say the publicity came from us, which of course it did.

  I could tell immediately that the Old Orchard Fort Chapter, DAR, would feature in every news story in the Bordertown Banner-Democrat if there was any connection at all with that matter out at Brown Spring.

  Now just in case some other chapter wants to bribe the newspaper, here is the recipe:

  BUTTERMILK POUND CAKE

  3 cups flour

  3 cups sugar

  1 cup shortening

  1 cup buttermilk

  6 eggs separated

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon soda

  2 teaspoons lemon or

  orange flavoring

  Blend sugar and shortening. Add egg yolks, one at a time, and blend after each addition. Add flavoring. Sift dry ingredients together and add to first mixture alternately with buttermilk. Begin and end with dry ingredients. Beat egg whites until stiff and carefully fold into mixture. Pour batter into 10-inch tube pan, greased and floured. Bake at 350 about 1 hour and 10 minutes.

  And of course you can bake it in a Bundt pan, and the cake will be very pretty on a stand even though it is not iced.

  HOW I CAME TO BE AT CROSS-PURPOSES WITH OUR SHERIFF

  Helen Delaporte

  The following day, which was Thursday, there was a short follow-up story in the Banner-Democrat that simply said that no identification of our “DAR” corpse had been made and that no missing persons had been reported who corresponded to our man, although an inquiry had been received from Shelby County. What surprised me was seeing the full name of our chapter, my name as regent, and an explanation of our mission, i.e., locating a Revolutionary War grave in order to mark it. As a recap of t
he story that had appeared before, it seemed an unusually long story. I did not know then to what depths Elizabeth had stooped to secure our publicity.

  Later I called Sheriff Gilroy and told him all the things I had noticed about the corpus delicti. He was polite to me because he was coming up for election and had not yet figured out how he could fob me off. I knew immediately that although he was listening with elaborate patience and politeness, he was not really hearing a word. Henry does the same thing sometimes, and there is nothing that makes me so mad.

  “This man was not just a derelict,” I said.

  Gilroy said, “Now, Ms. Delaporte”—I can’t stand to be called Ms.—“we have a lot of cases like this. Bums break into a fishing cabin—a hunting cabin—they steal liquor …”

  “What fishing cabin? What hunting cabin?” I demanded. I am not so stupid as to suppose that every stolen bottle of Jack Daniel’s is reported to the sheriff, but in this case the fishing cabins and hunting cabins occupied a position only in Gilroy’s imagination and were constructed on the spur of the moment expressly to get me out of his hair. It was a totally unsatisfactory conversation. I was so provoked that I went around most of the day with my lower lip stuck out. When Henry came home, he said, “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I answered quite firmly, as I always do when I am in a sulk, and Henry knew enough not to ask further.

  Nothing much happened for the rest of the week.

  Sunday is my big day. I try to get to the church early to run over the prelude and postlude before anyone shows up. Then, by good fortune, the 8:00 o’clock communion is a read service; and while it is going on, I get to have another cup of coffee and do a few things in the choir room, such as put the chairs back where they are supposed to be, put out the anthems, check the choir robes, etc. Meanwhile I wonder how many choristers will show up and hope that my old Hillgreen and Lane won’t develop a cipher.

  But I always get through the service, and I really feel that I have accomplished something when I get to the last few bars of the postlude. I reach over and press the switch, and the organ goes dead. I look up, and the church is almost empty except for me and the altar guild.

  But that Sunday—it was the twenty-seventh—I looked up and there was Elizabeth Wheeler in her little black hat with the pheasant feathers shooting across it.

  “Dear, the music was so pretty!”

  Whether I play Bach, Mendelssohn, or Messiaen, they always say it is “pretty.”

  I make it a practice to say (as I said to Elizabeth) thank you, and I try to say it prettily.

  Elizabeth was fishing about in a huge black purse, out of which she pulled what seemed to be a brochure that had fallen for an instant into a rain-filled gutter.

  “Here’s your map, dear.”

  “My map?”

  “Yes, it must have fallen out of the car when we got out at the cemetery. I picked it up and slipped it into my purse and forgot to give it to you.”

  I recognized the folded paper as the map of Ambrose County. I took it because Elizabeth was handing it to me; but as I did so, I said, “That isn’t mine. I have one somewhere, but this isn’t mine.”

  “But it was right beside your car, and it must have fallen out.”

  I opened the map and spread it out. It was still just a bit damp, though it was probably not so wet as to affect anything in Elizabeth’s purse. “Someone must have lost it in the snow,” I said. “When did that snow fall, anyhow?”

  “Saturday—I think—yes, a week ago yesterday.”

  And then I remembered. Choir directors always remember when it snows on weekends.

  Now that I had opened the map, I saw a heavy pencil line marking the route from Borderville to the Brown Spring Cemetery.

  Could this be Margaret’s? But no—I couldn’t imagine her needing a map of an area that she knew so well. “Surely it wouldn’t be Harriet’s. I’ll take it and ask her about it,” I said as I put it with my music.

  When I got home, I called Margaret. As I had assumed, Margaret knew nothing about a map, and neither did Harriet.

  But there it was—not actually grungy as though it had been exposed to the elements for weeks—but certainly dropped just outside the cemetery before the snow on the previous Saturday.

  Here was an additional mystery, however minor. Could it be a clue? And if so, what did it mean?

  The map, the Jack Daniel’s bottle, and the body—the only three things that could tell us anything about the crime in that snowy cemetery on the previous Saturday.

  This additional bit of evidence was a clue; but what did it mean?

  I felt certain that the Jack Daniel’s bottle had been placed deliberately to confuse any investigation. But the map was different: It surely must have been left accidently and therefore must be a genuine clue.

  As I stood there looking at it, I realized that the map had been marked to show how to get to Brown Spring, but tracing the penciled line in the other direction led only to the city limit, where the line stopped—or, more properly, started.

  What the the map proved was that someone who was unfamiliar with the district had gone to Brown Spring before that Saturday—the nineteenth, that would be—but not a very long time before the nineteenth.

  I kept thinking about that map for the rest of the day. It seemed to me that the map said that the murder had been committed somewhere else and that someone familiar with the area had directed a second party—someone who was not familiar with the area—to Brown Spring in order to deposit the body in the cemetery. With the body thus remote, it would not have been discovered in the ordinary course of events for a month or more. And by that time decomposition and the superficial evidence of the bottle and the clothes would have convinced almost anybody that the man had been a mere bum who met misadventure at the hands of another bum. As things stood, therefore, it seemed obvious that someone had been at pains to remove the body from the place where the murder had occurred and put it in the Brown Spring Cemetery.

  My citizenship hackles began to rise. Under our government every individual’s life is of the greatest value. And if that life is taken away, is it not the duty of every citizen to see that justice is done? We talk a lot about rights and that sort of thing, but few people do anything about them. And so, like an idealistic teenager—more exactly an opinionated matron—I made up my mind to prod Butch Gilroy into making a decent inquiry.

  It was still very much on my mind the next day.

  Monday is a day when I usually try to get a little housecleaning done. But since I don’t particularly like cleaning the house, I frequently start all sorts of projects on Monday because I think I have a whole week ahead with lots of time to do the unpleasant.

  Henry was not coming home for dinner because he had a lot to do at the office and was going to grab a hamburger before going to the vestry meeting at 7:30. Consequently I did not have to think of more than a cup of soup and a sandwich for myself. All of this contributed to my illusion that I had time to spend as I wished.

  All morning as I dusted the furniture, used the vacuum, and ran the mop over the floors I carried on a conversation with myself: Should I or should I not?

  Then about one-thirty I thought I just might go out to Brown Spring and look around again. Of course that was just a way to put off the decision whether I would talk to Gilroy again or not.

  So I went.

  The area where we found the body had been trampled pretty thoroughly—first by ourselves, then by Gilroy’s men, and finally by the television crew. The Jack Daniel’s bottle was there where someone had kicked it aside—additional proof that Gilroy had no intention of investigating the case.

  As it turned out, we did not need the bottle as evidence, but I picked it up anyhow, being very careful not to add fingerprints.

  I took my time wandering around the cemetery. There were at least two hundred graves there, representing for the most part perhaps twenty families, some of whom no doubt had either die
d out or vanished without trace during the hundred and fifty years that the cemetery has been used. Outside of the descendants of these twenty or so families, hardly anyone would be expected to know about the Brown Spring Cemetery. I wondered how many people that would be.

  I thought back over the scores of detective stories I have read in the last thirty years. Where was it the detectives always began? At the scene of the crime. Well, Brown Spring wasn’t that. So I couldn’t examine the scene of the crime.

  What else did detectives do? The time when the crime was committed always seems to be of great importance.

  I drove down to Rachel Pennybacker’s place. She seemed to be an intelligent, factual sort of person. I like her. In fact I hope we are going to be able to get her to join our chapter.

  With her house situated where it is, she would have to know about any traffic to or from the Brown Spring Cemetery. How much was there in the winter months, I asked.

  “Just about none,” she said. “The cemetery association comes out one Saturday in the summer and clears the weeds and brush off. Of course there are some Confederate graves there and the UDC marks them on Memorial Day. There hasn’t been a burial there in ten years. I would say a car doesn’t pass up that way more than once a month for any reason.”

  “Did anybody go by week before last”? I asked.

  “I don’t know. Friday and Saturday we weren’t here,” she said. “Bill and I went up to Tazewell to see our grandson play basketball—left here about three-thirty—Chris is six foot four! While we were at the game, the snow came on, and it snowed all that night and most of Saturday. It was eight inches up there, and we couldn’t get out until Sunday morning. We got in here about three o’clock. And there wasn’t nearly that much snow here, though sometimes our lane gets pretty bad. And before that, I don’t remember any car passing our gate. I would have heard it if I had been in the house, especially at night.”