The Case of Jennie Brice | Page 6

looked at the
slipper, but he did not touch it. "I don't think that is hers," he said.
"I've seen her wear it a hundred times."
"Well, she'll never wear it again." And then, seeing me stare, he added:
"It's ruined with the water. Throw it out. And, by the way, I'm sorry,
but I set fire to one of the pillow-slips--dropped asleep, and my
cigarette did the rest. Just put it on the bill."
He pointed to the bed. One of the pillows had no slip, and the ticking
cover had a scorch or two on it. I went over and looked at it.

"The pillow will have to be paid for, too, Mr. Ladley," I said. "And
there's a sign nailed on the door that forbids smoking in bed. If you are
going to set fire to things, I shall have to charge extra."
"Really!" he jeered, looking at me with his cold fishy eyes. "Is there
any sign on the door saying that boarders are charged extra for seven
feet of filthy river in the bedrooms?"
I was never a match for him, and I make it a principle never to bandy
words with my boarders. I took the pillow and the slipper and went out.
The telephone was ringing on the stair landing. It was the theater,
asking for Miss Brice.
"She has gone away," I said.
"What do you mean? Moved away?"
"Gone for a few days' vacation," I replied. "She isn't playing this week,
is she?"
"Wait a moment," said the voice. There was a hum of conversation
from the other end, and then another man came to the telephone.
"Can you find out where Miss Brice has gone?"
"I'll see."
I went to Ladley's door and knocked. Mr. Ladley answered from just
beyond.
"The theater is asking where Mrs. Ladley is."
"Tell them I don't know," he snarled, and shut the door. I took his
message to the telephone.
Whoever it was swore and hung up the receiver.
All the morning I was uneasy--I hardly knew why. Peter felt it as I did.
There was no sound from the Ladleys' room, and the house was quiet,

except for the lapping water on the stairs and the police patrol going
back and forth.
At eleven o'clock a boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell
into the water and was drowned. I watched the police boat go past,
carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing. I
went and sat with Peter on the stairs. The dog's conduct had been
strange all morning. He had sat just above the water, looking at it and
whimpering. Perhaps he was expecting another kitten or--
It is hard to say how ideas first enter one's mind. But the notion that Mr.
Ladley had killed his wife and thrown her body into the water came to
me as I sat there. All at once I seemed to see it all: the quarreling the
day before, the night trip in the boat, the water-soaked slipper, his
haggard face that morning--even the way the spaniel sat and stared at
the flood.
Terry brought the boat back at half past eleven, towing it behind
another.
"Well," I said, from the stairs, "I hope you've had a pleasant morning."
"What doing?" he asked, not looking at me.
"Rowing about the streets. You've had that boat for hours."
He tied it up without a word to me, but he spoke to the dog. "Good
morning, Peter," he said. "It's nice weather--for fishes, ain't it?"
He picked out a bit of floating wood from the water, and showing it to
the dog, flung it into the parlor. Peter went after it with a splash. He
was pretty fat, and when he came back I heard him wheezing. But what
he brought back was not the stick of wood. It was the knife I use for
cutting bread. It had been on a shelf in the room where I had slept the
night before, and now Peter brought it out of the flood where its
wooden handle had kept it afloat. The blade was broken off short.
It is not unusual to find one's household goods floating around during

flood-time. More than once I've lost a chair or two, and seen it after the
water had gone down, new scrubbed and painted, in Molly Maguire's
kitchen next door. And perhaps now and then a bit of luck would come
to me--a dog kennel or a chicken-house, or a kitchen table, or even, as
happened once, a month-old baby in a wooden cradle, that lodged
against my back fence, and had come forty miles, as it turned out, with
no worse mishap than a cold in its head.
But the knife was different.