Was it a ghost? The murders in Bussey's wood

by Henry Johnson Brent

Everything, indeed, about the transaction was unusual. The hour, the circumstances, and the locality, all contributed to inspire a greater horror of the act; and yet, up to this moment, no man’s name, of high or low, bears a blemish of continued suspicion. Justice seems to rest, after the excitement of the instant search,—a search that, I have every reason to know, was intricate and thorough; but, at the same time, it is well to know that the intelligent Chief of the police department has only seemed to pause. His eyes have never been entirely withdrawn from the contemplation of the subject; and I feel assured, from what I know, that his vigilant and nervous grasp will, at the appointed time, be placed upon the shoulder of the atrocious criminal. The murderer may have perhaps, ere this, caught glimpses, from his abode of gloom in another world, of those two spirits whose bodies he hacked so butcherly. If that be so, the Chief will have naught to do; but if he be alive, wandering a desolate path through a desolate world, it may be that justice will not have waited with an energetic patience in vain.

THE NARRATIVE.

I.
THE ROADS.

There are two roads direct by which the scene I am about to describe can be reached from Boston. One is the steam-car road, passing through Roxbury, and dropping way-passengers at Laurel Hill Station. The other is the horse-car line, that, for some portion of the route, runs parallel to the steam. The third, and more picturesque, is another horse-car line, which passes through Jamaica Plain, and drops the passengers some several hundred yards west, and farther removed from the official terminus of the two other routes. It was by the second of these routes, that, on the 12th day of June, 1865, two children, Isabella and John Joyce, started from their home in Boston, where they were temporarily boarding, to spend a few hours in May’s wood, intending to return, according to the elder one’s promise, in time for her brother to attend his afternoon school. Thus it is established that the sister never intended to go farther than the wood first proposed; and in this we have the first glimmering of the series of mysterious circumstances in which the wretched affair is enveloped from the beginning to the end.

This girl was not sixteen years old.

The boy was barely eight.

Whatever happened after they took their seats in the car, and who accompanied them, or joined them afterward, is a matter simply of conjecture; and yet, as they sat there, these two young things, who, of all the rest of the passengers that looked upon their fresh, pleasure-anticipating faces, could have dreamed that, in a section so civilized, a community so guarded, a population so abundant, in the marginal outlines of a great city, that ere the sun went down, within a few short hours, indeed, that girl and boy would be lying stiff and stark, pierced,—the one, the girl, by twenty-eight poniard stabs, and the boy by enough to have killed the captains of a full regiment; the girl dead in the hollow of a rock within thirty feet of a public road, the boy less than a quarter of a mile away, in the dense shrubbery, by a tiny stream that flows through the shades of Bussey’s wonderfully beautiful woods!

Now, this wood of Bussey’s—at present in the possession of Mr. Motley, one of the heirs by marriage—is a subject of frequent thought to the writer of this narrative. It was so before it became the witness to the murder of these two children; after that, while of course losing in sentiment and by association some of its innate and sympathetic loveliness, it ever wore the weird aspect of a mystic realm; but now is added that terrible consciousness of a fright, a terror, pervading all its recesses. The wood lies about six or seven miles southward of the Boston State House, on a county road, and its summits are lofty enough to afford a view of the city and the rattlesnake infested Blue Hills back of the Mattapan, more southwardly yet.

The wood, as you approach down the road from Mr. Motley’s gate, presents the aspect of a hill of pines, dark and massive; but, crossing the fence that keeps it from the highway, you are almost at once in the midst of a mingled growth of birch and beech and willows; beneath these passes the brook, near to whose bank was found, farther up, the body of the boy. Old Mr. Bussey, it would seem, was a man of droll, yet picturesque fancies, mingled with a sturdy sense of the useful; for no sooner are you free of the pasture land, and in among the trees, than you discover traces of his handiwork. The path you are upon is broad and well constructed, leading to a solid bridge of masonry; and well may you pause here to take in the full effect of the scenic entanglement. On your right is a fish-pond, fringed with the swamp willow, and of sufficient capacity to contain fish enough for a council of cardinals during the abstinent days of Lent; and near by a spring of water, so cold that ice is never needed by those frequent picnic parties that, up to the period of the murders, sought these delicious retiracies for holiday festivals, or love’s deeper and sweeter plans of recreation. Crossing this lower bridge, and passing over a road with velvety grass borders, you turn to your left, and if you have the time from sandwiches and other condiments, or are not too absorbed in emotions that beat marches to the field of matrimony, or much elaboration of flirtation, you will see the steep ascent, bearded with huge pines, and covered with abutting rocks, looking like the base of a minor incident of Alpine precipice. If you choose, there is a wild pathway made among the zigzags, and this you can pursue until the summit meets you, with the recompense of a noble prospect, but with your muscles somewhat demoralized. Did those children take this route?