The Girl at Central

I

Poor Sylvia Hesketh! Even now, after this long time, I can't think of it without a shudder, without a comeback of the horror of those days after the murder. You remember it – the Hesketh mystery? And mystery it surely was, baffling, as it did, the police and the populace of the whole state. For who could guess why a girl like that, rich, beautiful, without a care or an enemy, should be done to death as she was. Think of it – at five o'clock sitting with her mother taking tea in the library at Mapleshade and that same night found dead – murdered – by the side of a lonesome country road, a hundred and eighteen miles away.

It's the story of this that I'm going to tell here, and as you'll get a good deal of me before I'm through, I'd better, right now at the start, introduce myself.

I'm Molly Morganthau, day operator in the telephone exchange at Longwood, New Jersey, twenty-three years old, dark, slim, and as for my looks – well, put them down as "medium" and let it go at that. My name's Morganthau because my father was a Polish Jew – a piece worker on pants – but my two front names, Mary McKenna, are after my mother, who was from County Galway, Ireland. I was raised in an East Side tenement, but I went steady to the Grammar school and through the High and I'm not throwing bouquets at myself when I say I made a good record. That's how I come to be nervy enough to write this story – but you'll see for yourself. Only just keep in mind that I'm more at home in front of a switchboard than at a desk.

I've supported myself since I was sixteen, my father dying then, and my mother – God rest her blessed memory! – two years later. First I was in a department store and then in the Telephone Company. I haven't a relation in the country and if I had I wouldn't have asked a nickel off them. I'm that kind, independent and – but that's enough about me.

Now for you to rightly get what I'm going to tell I'll have to begin with a description of Longwood village and the country round about. I've made a sort of diagram – it isn't drawn to scale but it gives the general effect, all right – and with that and what I'll describe you can get an idea of the lay of the land, which you have to have to understand things.

Longwood's in New Jersey, a real picturesque village of a thousand inhabitants. It's a little over an hour from New York by the main line and here and there round it are country places, mostly fine ones owned by rich people. There are some farms too, and along the railway and the turnpike are other villages. My exchange is the central office for a good radius of country, taking in Azalea, twenty-five miles above us on the main line, and running its wires out in a big circle to the scattered houses and the crossroad settlements. It's on Main Street, opposite the station, and from my chair at the switchboard I can see the platform and the trains as they come down from Cherry Junction or up from New York. It's sixty miles from Longwood to the Junction where you get the branch line that goes off to the North, stopping at other stations, mostly for the farm people, and where, when you get to Hazelmere, you can connect with an express for Philadelphia. Also you can keep right on from the Junction and get to Philadelphia that way, which is easier, having no changes and better trains.

When I was first transferred from New York – it's over two years now – I thought I'd die of the lonesomeness of it. At night, looking out of my window – I lived over Galway's Elite Millinery Parlors on Lincoln Street – across those miles and miles of country with a few lights dotted here and there, I felt like I was cast on a desert island. After a while I got used to it and that first spring when the woods began to get a faint greenish look and I'd wake up and hear birds twittering in the elms along the street – hold on! I'm getting sidetracked. It's going to be hard at first to keep myself out, but just be patient, I'll do it better as I go along.

The county turnpike goes through Longwood, and then sweeps away over the open country between the estates and the farms and now and then a village – Huntley, Latourette, Corona – strung out along it like beads on a string. A hundred and fifty miles off it reaches Bloomington, a big town with hotels and factories and a jail. About twenty miles before it gets to Bloomington it crosses the branch line near Cresset's Farm. There's a little sort of station there – just an open shed – called Cresset's Crossing, built for the Cresset Farm people, who own a good deal of land in that vicinity. Not far from Cresset's Crossing, about a half mile apart, the Riven Rock Road from the Junction and the Firehill Road from Jack Reddy's estate run into the turnpike.

This is the place, I guess, where I'd better tell about Jack Reddy, who was such an important figure in the Hesketh mystery and who – I get red now when I write it – was such an important figure to me.

A good ways back – about the time of the Revolution – the Reddy family owned most of the country round here. Bit by bit they sold it off till in old Mr. Reddy's time – Jack's father – all they had left was the Firehill property and Hochalaga Lake, a big body of water, back in the hills beyond Huntley. Firehill is an old-fashioned, stone house, built by Mr. Reddy's grandfather. It got its name from a grove of maples on the top of a mound that in the autumn used to turn red and orange and look like the hillock was in a blaze. The name, they say, came from the Indian days and so did Hochalaga, though what that stands for I don't know. The Reddys had had lots of offers for the lake but never would sell it. They had a sort of little shack there and before Jack's time, when there were no automobiles, used to make horseback excursions to Hochalaga and stay for a few days. After the old people died and Jack came into the property everybody thought he'd sell the lake – several parties were after it for a summer resort – but he refused them all, had the shack built over into an up-to-date bungalow, and through the summer would have guests down from town, spending week-ends out there.

Now I'm telling everything truthful, for that's what I set out to do, and if you think I'm a fool you're welcome to and no back talk from me – but I was crazy about Jack Reddy. Not that he ever gave me cause; he's not that kind and neither am I. And let me say right here that there's not a soul ever knew it, he least of all. I guess no one would have been more surprised than the owner of Firehill if he'd known that the Longwood telephone girl most had heart failure every time he passed the window of the Exchange.

I will say, to excuse myself, that there's few girls who wouldn't have put their hats straight and walked their prettiest when they saw him coming. Gee – he was a good looker! Like those advertisements for collars and shirts you see in the back of the magazines – you know the ones. But it wasn't that that got me. It was his ways, always polite, never fresh. If he'd meet me in the street he'd raise his hat as if I was the Queen of Sheba. And there wasn't any hanging round my switchboard and asking me to make dates for dinner in town. He was always jolly, but – a girl in a telephone exchange gets to know a lot – he was always a gentleman.

He lived at Firehill – forty miles from Longwood – with two old servants, David Gilsey and his wife, who'd been with his mother and just doted on him. But everybody liked him. There wasn't but one criticism I ever heard passed on him and that was that he had a violent temper. Casey, his chauffeur, told a story in the village of how one day, when they were passing a farm, they saw an Italian laborer prod a horse with a pitchfork. Before he knew, Mr. Reddy was out of the car and over the fence and mashing the life out of that dago. It took Casey and the farmer to pull him off and they thought the dago'd be killed before they could.

There was talk in Longwood that he hadn't much money – much, the way the Reddys had always had it – and was going to study law for a living. But he must have had some, for he kept up the house, and had two motors, one just a common roadster and the other a long gray racing car that he'd let out on the turnpike till he was twice arrested and once ran over a dog.

My, how well I got to know that car! When I first came I only saw it at long intervals. Then – just as if luck was on my side – I began to see it oftener and oftener, slowing down as it came along Main Street, swinging round the corner, jouncing across the tracks, and dropping out of sight behind the houses at the head of Maple Lane.

"What's bringing Jack Reddy in this long way so often?" people would say at first.

Then, after a while, when they'd see the gray car, they'd look sly at each other and wink.

There's one good thing about having a crush on a party that's never thought any more about you than if you were the peg he hangs his hat on – it doesn't hurt so bad when he falls in love with his own kind of girl.

And that brings me – as if I was in the gray car speeding down Maple Lane – to Mapleshade and the Fowlers and Sylvia Hesketh.

II

About a mile from Longwood, standing among ancient, beautiful trees, is Mapleshade, Dr. Dan Fowler's place.

It was once a farmhouse, over a century old, but two and a half years ago when Dr. Fowler bought it he fixed it all up, raised the roof, built on a servants' wing and a piazza with columns and turned the farm buildings into a garage. Artists and such people say it's the prettiest place in this part of the State, and it certainly is a picture, especially in summer, with the lawns mown close as velvet and the flower-beds like bits of carpet laid out to air.

The Doctor bought a big bit of land with it – I don't know how many hundred acres – so the house, though it's not far from the village, is kind of secluded and shut away. You get to it by Maple Lane, a little winding road that runs between trees caught together with wild grape and Virginia creeper. In summer they're like green walls all draped over with the vines and in winter they turn into a rustling gray hedge, woven so close it's hard to see through. About ten minutes' walk from the gate of Mapleshade there's a pine that was struck by lightning and stands up black and bare.

When the house was finished the Doctor, who was a bachelor, married Mrs. Hesketh, a widow lady accounted rich, and he and she came there as bride and groom with her daughter, Sylvia Hesketh. I hadn't come yet, but from what I've heard, there was gossip about them from the start. What I can say from my own experience is that I'd hardly got my grip unpacked when I began to hear of the folks at Mapleshade.

They lived in great style with a housekeeper, a butler and a French maid for the ladies. In the garage were three automobiles, Mrs. Fowler's limousine, the Doctor's car and a dandy little roadster that belonged to Miss Sylvia. Neither she nor the Doctor bothered much with the chauffeur. They left him to take Mrs. Fowler round and drove themselves, the joke going that if Miss Sylvia ever went broke she could qualify for a chauffeur's job.

After a while the story came out that it wasn't Mrs. Fowler who was so rich but Miss Hesketh. The late Mr. Hesketh had only left his wife a small fortune, willing the rest – millions, it was said – to his daughter. She was a minor – nineteen – and the trustees of the estate allowed her a lot of money for her maintenance, thirty thousand a year they had it in Longwood.

In spite of the grand way they lived there wasn't much company at Mapleshade. Anne Hennessey, the housekeeper, told me Mrs. Fowler was so dead in love with her husband she didn't want the bother of entertaining people. And the Doctor liked a quiet life. He'd been a celebrated surgeon in New York but had retired only for consultations and special cases now and again. He was very good to the people round about, and would come in and help when our little Dr. Pease, or Dr. Graham, at the Junction, were up against something serious. I'll never forget when Mick Donahue, the station agent's boy, got run over by Freight No. 22. But I'm sidetracked again. Anyhow, the Doctor amputated the leg and little Mick's stumping round on a wooden pin almost as good as ever.

But even so they weren't liked much. They held their heads very high, Mrs. Fowler driving through the village like it was Fifth Avenue, sending the chauffeur into the shops and not at all affable to the tradespeople. The Doctor wouldn't trouble to give you so much as a nod, just stride along looking straight ahead. When the story got about that he'd lost most of the money he'd made doctoring I didn't bear any resentment, seeing it was worry that made him that way.

But Miss Sylvia was made on a different measure. My, but she was a winner! Even after I knew what brought Jack Reddy in from Firehill so often I couldn't be set against her. Jealous I might be of a girl like myself, but not of one who was the queen bee of the hive.

She was a beauty from the ground up – a blonde with hair like corn silk that she wore in a loose, fluffy knot with little curly ends hanging on her neck. Her face was pure pink and white, the only dark thing in it her big brown eyes, that were as clear and soft as a baby's. And she was a great dresser, always the latest novelty, and looking prettier in each one. Mrs. Galway'd say to me, with her nose caught up, scornful,

"To my mind it's not refined to advertise your wealth on your back."

But I didn't worry, knowing Mrs. Galway'd have advertised hers if she'd had the wealth or a decent shaped back to advertise it on, which she hadn't, being round-shouldered.

There was none of the haughty ways of her parents about Miss Sylvia. When she'd come into the exchange to send a call (a thing that puzzled me first but I soon caught on) she'd always stop and have a pleasant word with me. On bright afternoons I'd see her pass on horseback, straight as an arrow, with a man's hat on her golden hair. She'd always have a smile for everyone, touching her hat brim real sporty with the end of her whip. Even when she was in her motor, speeding down Main Street, she'd give you a hail as jolly as if she was your college chum.

Sometimes she'd be alone but generally there was a man along. There were a lot of them hanging round her, which was natural, seeing she had everything to draw them like a candle drawing moths. They'd come and go from town and now and then stay over Sunday at the Longwood Inn – it's a swell little place done up in the Colonial style – and you'd see them riding and walking with her, very devoted. At first everybody thought her parents were agreeable to all the attention she was getting. It wasn't till the Mapleshade servants began to talk too much that we heard the Fowlers, especially the Doctor, didn't like it.

I hadn't known her long before I began to notice something that interested me. A telephone girl sees so many people and hears such a lot of confidential things on the wire, that she gets to know more than most about what I suppose you'd call human nature. It's a study that's always attracted me and in Miss Sylvia's case there was a double attraction – I was curious about her for myself and I was curious about her because of Jack Reddy.

What I noticed was that she was so different with men to what she was with women – affable to both, but it was another kind of affability. I've seen considerably many girls trying to throw their harpoons into men and doing it too, but they were in the booby class beside Miss Sylvia. She was what the novelists call a coquette, but she was that dainty and sly about it that I don't believe any of the victims knew it. It wasn't what she said, either; more the way she looked and the soft, sweet manner she had, as if she thought more of the chap she was talking to than anybody else in the world. She'd be that way to one in my exchange and the next day I'd see her just the same with another in the drugstore.

It made me uneasy. Even if the man you love doesn't love you, you don't want to see him fooled. But I said nothing – I'm the close sort – and it wasn't till I came to be friends with Anne Hennessey that I heard the inside facts about the family at Mapleshade.

Anne Hennessey was a Canadian and a fine girl. She was a lady and had a lady's job – seventy-five a month and her own bathroom – and being the real thing she didn't put on any airs, but when she liked me made right up to me and we soon were pals. After work hours I'd sometimes go up to her at Mapleshade or she'd come down to me over the Elite.

I remember it was in my room one spring evening – me lying on the bed and Anne sitting by the open window – that she began to talk about the Fowlers. She was not one to carry tales, but I could see she had something on her mind and for the first time she loosened up. I was picking over a box of chocolates and I didn't give her a hint how keen I was to hear, acting like the candies had the best part of my attention. She began by saying the Doctor and Miss Sylvia didn't get on well.

"That's just like a novel," I answered, "the heroine's stepfather's always her natural enemy."

"He's not that in this case," said Anne – she speaks English fine, like the teachers in the High – "I'm sure he means well by her, but they can't get on at all, they're always quarreling."

"There's many a gilded home hides a tragedy. What do they fight about?"

"Things she does he disapproves of. She's very spoiled and self-willed. No one's ever controlled her and she resents it from him."

"What's he disapprove of?"

Anne didn't answer right off, looking thoughtful out of the window. Then she said slow as if she was considering her words:

"I'm going to tell you, Molly, because I know you're no gossip and can be trusted, and the truth is, I'm worried. I don't like the situation up at Mapleshade."

I swung my feet on to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed, nibbling at a chocolate almond.

"Here's where I get dumb," I said, sort of casual to encourage her.

"Sylvia Hesketh's a girl that needs a strong hand over her and there's no one has it. Her father's dead, her mother – poor Mrs. Fowler's only a grown-up baby ready to say black is white if her husband wants her to – and Dr. Fowler's trying to do it and he's going about it all wrong. You see," she said, turning to me very serious, "it's not only that she's head-strong and extravagant but she's an incorrigible flirt."

"Is there a place in the back of the book where you can find out what incorrigible means?" I said.

Anne smiled, but not as if she felt like it.

"Uncontrollable, irrepressible. Her mother – Mrs. Fowler's ready to tell me anything and everything – says she's always been like that. And, of course, with her looks and her fortune the men are around her like flies round honey."

"Why does the Doctor mind that?"

"I suppose he wouldn't mind if they just came to Mapleshade or Longwood. But – that's what the quarreling's about – he's found out that she meets them in town, goes to lunch and the matinée with them."

"Excuse me, but I've left my etiquette book on the piano. What's wrong about going to the matinée or to lunch?"

"Nothing's really wrong. Mind you, Molly, I know Sylvia through and through and there's no harm in her – it's just the bringing-up and the spoiling and the admiration. But, of course, in her position, a girl doesn't go about that way without a chaperone. The Doctor's perfectly right to object."

I was looking down, pretending to hunt over the box.

"Who does she go with?" I said.

"Oh, there are several. A man named Carisbrook – " I'd seen him often, a swell guy in white spats and a high hat – "and a young lawyer called Dunham and Ben Robinson, a Canadian like me. People see her with them and tell the doctor and there's a row."

I looked into the box as careful as if I was searching for a diamond.

"Ain't Mr. Reddy one of the happy family?" I asked. "Ah, here's the last almond!"

"Oh, of course, young Reddy. I think it would be a good thing if she married him. Everybody says he's a fine fellow, and I tell you now, Molly, with Sylvia so willful and the doctor so domineering and Mrs. Fowler being pulled to pieces between them, things at Mapleshade can't go on long the way they are."

That was in May. At the end of June the Fowlers went to Bar Harbor with all their outfit for the summer. After that Jack Reddy didn't come into Longwood much. I heard that he was spending a good deal of his time at the bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, and I did see him a few times meeting his company at the train – he had some week-end parties out there – and bringing them back in the gray car.

At the end of September the Fowlers came home. It was great weather, clear and crisp, with the feel of frost in the air. Most everybody was out of doors and I saw Sylvia often, sometimes on horseback, sometimes driving her motor. She was prettier than ever for the change and seemed like she couldn't stay in the house. I'd see her riding toward home in the red light of the sunset, and as I walked back from work her car often would flash past me, speeding through the early dark toward Maple Lane.

Anne said they'd had a fairly peaceful summer and she hoped they were going to get on better. There had only been one row – that was about a man who was up at Bar Harbor and had met Sylvia and paid her a good deal of attention. The Doctor had been very angry as he disapproved of the man – Cokesbury was his name.

"Cokesbury!" I cut in surprised – we were in Anne's room that evening – "why, he belongs round here."

Anne had heard that and wanted to know what I knew about him, which I'll write down in this place as it seems to fit in and has to be told somewhere.

When I first came to Longwood, Mr. and Mrs. Cokesbury were living on their estate, Cokesbury Lodge, about twenty-five miles from us, near Azalea. They had been in France for a year previous to that, then come back and taken up their residence in Mr. Cokesbury's country seat, and it was shortly after that Mrs. Cokesbury died there, leaving three children. For a while the widower stayed on with nurses and governesses to look after the poor motherless kids. Then, the eldest boy taking sick and nearly dying, he decided to send them to his wife's parents, who had wanted them since Mrs. Cokesbury's death.

So the establishment at the Lodge was broken up and Mr. Cokesbury went to live in town. There were rumors that the house was to be sold, but in the spring Sands, the Pullman conductor, told me that Mr. Cokesbury had been down several times, staying over Sunday and had said he had given up the idea of selling the place. He told Sands he couldn't get his price for it and what was the sense of selling at a loss, especially when he could come out there and get a breath of country air when he was scorched up with the city heat?

I'd passed the house one day in August when I was on an auto ride with some friends. It was a big, rambling place with a lot of dismal-looking pines around it, about five miles from Azalea and with no near neighbors. Mr. Cokesbury only kept one car – he'd had several when his wife was there – and used to drive himself down from the Lodge to the station, leave his car in the Azalea garage, and drive himself back the next time he came. He had no servants or caretaker, which he didn't need, as, after Mrs. Cokesbury's death, all the valuable things had been taken out of the house and sent to town for storage.

It gave me a jar to hear that Sylvia Hesketh – who, in my mind, was as good as engaged to Jack Reddy – would have anything to do with him. I'd never seen him, but I'd heard a lot that wasn't to his credit. He hadn't been good to his wife – everybody said she was a real lady – but was the gay, wild kind, and not young, either. Anne said he was forty if he was a day. When I asked her what Sylvia could see in an old gink like that, she just shrugged up her shoulders and said, who could tell – Sylvia was made that way. She was like some woman whose name I can't remember who sat on a rock and sang to the sailors till they got crazy and jumped into the water.

My head was full of these things one glorious afternoon toward the end of October when – it being my holiday – I started out for a walk through the woods. The woods cover the hills behind the village and they're grand, miles and miles of them. But wait! There was a little thing that happened, by the way, that's worth telling, for it gave me a premonition – is that the word? Or, maybe, I'd better say connected up with what was in my mind.