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

by Henry Johnson Brent

One great misfortune was inevitable from this sudden and continued irruption, and that was the total extinction of any foot-track of the murderer, or any vestige of his garments which might have been torn from him in the struggles with the stronger girl, or the conjectured chase he made in pursuit of the fleeing boy; for strange it was, that the bodies were found separated by several hundred yards of distance, an interval of dense wood and shrubbery closing in in all directions.[1] The one, as I said before, was killed on the summit of the hill; the other, at its base. As strict an examination as it was possible to effect was instituted, by the police authorities, of all the paths leading to the two spots of deepest interest, of every brake and shaded place; and very useless was it soon found to be in the vicinity of the death-scene of the girl,—for there the ground was dry and rocky; but where the boy was found the soil was moist, and had not the paths been constantly travelled over during that silent week and afterward, it was there that some clue might have been found, the footsteps of the assassin evident, kept there by that inscrutable and puzzling fatality that frequently attends on such events. The party of discovery, however, not having the police presence of mind at the moment when they came upon the desolate object, obliterated, by an unconscious complicity with the assassin, and demolished, in their eager rush, any marks he might have left; for at least to that body no one had approached, and the footmarks of the only living witness and actor must have kept company with the bloody corpse throughout that interval. Thus everything tended to shield the doer of the deed. The dry ground and flints around the girl; the very solitude of the boy’s last asylum, to whose protection he had fled with the breath of his pursuer hot upon him; the rain that fell afterward, and that fatal week’s concealment,—gave him ample time to perfect his plan of evasion; and well did the demon use his opportunities; for, up to this moment, the public is in possession of no clue by which he can be brought to the expiation, if human expiation be possible, of his unparalleled offence. Whatever may be known to the mysterious agent of legal vindication, the keen-eyed chief, we cannot discover; possibly there is nothing to discover, though I do not agree to that; he may be waiting for one of those redressing incidents by which the chain of evidence is united,—incidents simple of themselves and reaching forward out of doubt and difficulty, and helping the law to a fulfilment of its intentions.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Since I finished writing my narrative, a friend has informed me, that, visiting the wood sometime after the discovery of the bodies, and while searching for the exact spot where Isabella Joyce was discovered, he picked up a portion of an old green coat, or some other habiliment, and carried it out in the road to his friend, who was waiting in the carriage the issue of his search, to show her, in joke, as a relic of the murderer’s dress. His friend instantly grew serious over the matter, and to this day believes it to have been worn by the man who did the murders.

V.
THE DOGS.

And during all that week I had pursued my usual monotonies, happy that they were such, tired to death of battles, and the bulletins of newspapers, which had added such a tangle of falsehood to the wickedness of slaughter; happy that I was where I could see the sun rise and go down without touching with his ray, so far as my rustic horizon was concerned, a soldier’s tent or a soldier’s grave; moping, in the very licentiousness of laziness, with my seraphic pipe between my teeth, over a thousand trifles, such as ingoing and outcoming of shadows on the leaf-domes of the woods; enjoying the soothing spasm with dinner of green peas, fresh pulled from vines that in my airy fancy called back old travels through the low shrubbery of the French vineyards; having now and then a townsman’s visit to cheer me back, if cheerful it be, to a consciousness of taxes and municipal street-sweepings, of city lamps lit up as regularly as the night came down,—a visit that in its way was as pleasant to me as the old trees or the gray rocks crowding around their base; a friend to sit with me in the old back porch and look at the grand wooding of that desecrated hill, to sip with me the test of hospitality, and smoke the pipe of peace in the peaceful air that takes no offence at the indulgence of any method by which honest men earn the recompense of honest living; avoiding all topics of scandal, blessed in that rural asylum in the absence of all objects of scandal; going into the woods now and then and often, out of which, like Peter the Czar, I had built my city and peopled it with my own people; and all the time so ignorant of the two dead children who lay within easy range of my vision. There they lay all that festering week, and here was I so near to them, following out the idle purpose of a perhaps useless life,—they perhaps of no greater use to all the world in their dead slumbering than I in my grand philosophy of lethargy.

My host was blessed with two dogs, and, very oddly, they bore the same name, Jack. One was a bull-dog, but, strange to say for his breed, of a sweet and even, more than common, Christian disposition, inasmuch as I never knew him to turn from the person he had once elevated to his friendship. In his firm, calm old face, there was nothing of deceit. Making his protestations of love to you in his own way of muscular revelation, you might be sure of his proffer, and that he never would trick you out of your confidence. I have known bipedical bull-dogs do otherwise; and they turned out afterwards to be such arrant cowards that even my solemn Jack, could he but have become acquainted with their behavior, would have swept them out of the sphere of respectable personalities by the vigor of his superhuman sincerity. The other dog was a fighting character, and as such I had not much sympathy with him,—war on a larger and more brutal scale had sufficed me,—and yet about him there was a geniality and honesty and pluck, that forced you, while you recognized his “belligerent rights,” to offer him your respect,—at least I did; and so there were times when he was allowed to accompany my placid Jack and myself in our woodway journeys. Friendly as they were with me, there was another whom they loved with the fervor of canine Abeilardism, and that person was their master, my host. I mention this fact now because it bears upon an incident of a very extraordinary nature, and which I will state in its proper place.

At present I have but to add a few words about these dogs. Though they bore the same name, they perfectly understood when they were separately called; that is, they comprehended their own individuality as we individualized them. I never knew them to make a mistake. Thus it was, Jack the gentle was never addressed, or had his name called, except in just such terms as we would use to a human being gifted with his rare qualities. Jack the fighter, hard-biter, great cat-worrier, knew when he was spoken to well enough; for the manner of the family was such as they would use to a retired or active member of the prize ring, a tone half of uncertainty and the other half of admiration. They were, in fine, two distinct characters, bearing the same name; but our voices being adapted to their peculiar idiosyncrasies, they sensibly drew the line of distinction in sound, and understood us.

It would be worth any one’s while to get two such distinctly different dogs in character, and try the experiment of similar names. It might at least afford Mr. John Tyndall, LL.D., of England, some hints to his theory of sound.

VI.
THE FLAT BRIDGE.

So one week had passed since the committal of the murders and the discovery of the bodies,—and the bodies lying in a wood so frequently, indeed so constantly and largely visited. One would have supposed that they would have been discovered half an hour after the deeds were done; but, to understand why it was so long concealed, you must visit the wood itself in the leafy month of June, and then you will find out what a hiding-place it can be turned into. Now the spot where the boy was found was a few feet from the little stream frequently mentioned, and this stream was spanned by a flat bridge just enough elevated from the surface of the water to allow it to flow freely underneath. This bridge led over to a half-obliterated path that you could with a little care follow until it brought you to the regular path that led from the lower bridge, and which I before observed conducted you to the rock where the girl was found, and farther on to a spot which I am soon to speak of. This lower part of the forest is composed of open spaces filled with low shrubbery, small and close-growing pines, and by the brook-way with densely thick alders. There is a wall running west from the brook, dividing the property of my host from that of Mr. Motley. Mr. Motley’s property, along the wall to the north-west, is composed of a wood of great beauty. The path to which I have alluded connects with the main county road that circles Bussey’s wood to the east, and it was by this path that my host was in the habit of returning from his daily city business, sometimes a little after sunset, but generally not earlier than nine at night, and frequently later. Relative to this circumstance I have hereafter something of an extraordinary character to make mention of; so it may as well be remembered.