The Tracy diamonds

by Mary Jane Holmes

“My grandmother lived here, and she said half the women was runnin’ the street bareheaded, and some with their sleeves up and their kitchen aprons on, tellin’ the news of the arrest to them who hadn’t heard it, and then makin’ a bee line for the Dalton house, where Miss Dalton still set in her muddy white gown, with her hair streamin’ down her back, and she as cold and white as a block of marble. She’d set up all night; they couldn’t make her go to bed, and when the men got back and she heard St. John was took, she turned blue, but never spoke nor stirred. In the room with her was the officer watchin’ her and Mari, who was in hysterics most of the time. They’d laid Mr. Dalton out beautiful in his best clothes, and Miss Dalton had been in to see him. They tried to shet his eyes, but couldn’t, and they was wide open, starin’ at you, and when Miss Dalton see ’em she cried: ‘Oh, John, John, don’t look at me like that,’ and fell down in a swound, and they didn’t know for a spell but she was dead.

“They made him the biggest funeral Ridgefield ever seen, and folks come for miles and miles around. Why, Joel took in for drinks and keepin’ horses more’n he’d took for months. ’Twas better than general trainin’, or a cattle show for him. Miss Dalton sat like a stone with folks starin’ at her as if they’d never seen her before, and that strange man always close to her. When she got back from the grave she was that wilted they had to carry her into the house and put her on the bed, where she lay, never movin’, nor speakin’, only moanin’, like some dumb critter in pain.

“They took her next day, and the screetch she gin when they told her she was arrested was so awful that folks in the road heard it; then she froze up ag’in, except when she looked at her little boy. They say ’twas touchin’, and made ’em all cry when she bid him good-bye, with him a sayin’, ‘Take, mam-ma; take me,’ and clingin’ to her dress she had on,—the silk one Mr. Dalton had bought her and the gold beads round her neck.”

Here Uncle Zacheus’ feelings so overcame him a second time that he could scarcely finish the story, and tell of Mrs. Dalton’s farewell to her baby and home and Maria, against whom there did not seem sufficient evidence to warrant her arrest. She would be needed as a witness later, and was left with the child whom Mrs. Dalton entrusted to her, saying, as she took his little hands from her dress and put them in Maria’s, “It is preposterous to believe they can find me guilty. But if the worst happens, and I never come back, take good care of Robbie, and tell him all the good you know of his mother.”

Then like some tragic queen she turned to the officer, and, with a proud toss of her head, said to him, “Sir, I am ready.”

She was all in black, with no color about her except the beads and her luxuriant golden hair, which showed under her widow’s bonnet like a gleam of yellow sunshine as she was driven away from the home she was never to see again. The trial which came on quickly did not last long. There were not many witnesses, and few were needed, the case was so plain. Maria was on the stand until she lost her wits entirely, and what she said one minute she contradicted the next. Only one point of any importance was brought out by her evidence. Mrs. Dalton’s name was Christina, which her husband shortened into ’Tina, and Maria testified that on the night of the murder, after she heard a man’s voice speaking to Mrs. Dalton, she thought she heard, or dreamed that she did, some one call “’Tina, ’Tina,” in what she described “a gugglin’” voice, like one in distress or choking.

Up to this point Mrs. Dalton had sat with her face unveiled, her youthful beauty enhanced by her widow’s weeds and her bright hair, telling upon the sympathy of the spectators. But when Maria repeated the name “’Tina,” as it must have been called that awful night by her dying husband, she covered her face with her hands and moaned, “Oh, Maria, in mercy stop before I go mad.”

Then Maria broke down and was taken from the room for a time, nor could any amount of questioning afterwards wring from her a confession that she ever observed anything wrong between Mrs. Dalton and St. John. He liked her,—she liked him,—and they played and sang together a good deal when Mr. Dalton was home, and more, perhaps, when he wasn’t. There was, however, sufficient evidence to convict Mrs. Dalton without Maria’s. The papers referred to by the man called by Uncle Zacheus the “vally’s brother,” and whose real name was Davis,—a recent convict from state’s prison,—contained a promise from St. John to pay Davis and his comrade, Brown, another convict, one thousand dollars to get Mr. Dalton out of the way. Davis, who, in spite of his unprepossessing appearance, was the least hardened of the two men, confessed that several plans had been suggested and talked over and abandoned, until he was getting tired and would have given up but for the thousand dollars, five hundred of which Mrs. Dalton had agreed to pay. The visit to Ridgefield that night was an accident. The horse had been hired to go to an intermediate town. On reaching it Brown had suggested going to Ridgefield to see how the land lay, as he expressed it. On hearing from Mrs. Dalton that her husband was at the hotel, and that she was expecting him home when the storm was over, they decided that this was their opportunity, as no one knew they were in town, and, waiting in the darkness and rain, they accomplished their work. Taken as he was by surprise, Mr. Dalton uttered no cry as they grasped his throat, except the words “’Tina, ’Tina,” while the ’Tina called for gave no sign if she heard it.

She said she didn’t, but few believed her. The evidence against her as an accessory to the murder was sufficient to convict her, and with the three men she was sentenced to be hung. Efforts were made to commute her punishment to imprisonment for life, but public opinion was strong against her, and with her coadjutors in the crime she suffered the penalty of the law.

After the execution, which was public and which hundreds attended, a half brother of Mr. Dalton came to look after the property in the interest of his nephew. In accordance with Mrs. Dalton’s request repeated to Maria, who visited her once in her cell, the latter took charge of the little boy during his childhood, and for some time lived alone with him in the house, bravely fighting her nervous dread of the room where the body had lain, and her terror on wild, rainy nights when she fancied she heard her master’s voice calling “’Tina, ’Tina” through the storm,—the sound of a scuffle near the well, and the wheels on the grass as the murderers drove away. At last, overmastered by her fear, she left the house and the town, taking the child with her and going to Canada where her friends were living.