The After House

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

The story of the early morning of August 12 will never be fully known; but much of it, in view of our knowledge, we were able to reconstruct. Thus—Jones ate his supper that night, a mild and well-disposed individual. During the afternoon before, he had read prayers for the soul of Schwartz, in whose departure he may or may not have had a part. I am inclined to think not, Jones construing his mission as being one to remove the wicked and the oppressor, and Schwartz hardly coming under either classification.

He was at the wheel from midnight until four in the morning on the night of the murders. At certain hours we believe that he went forward to the forecastle-head, and performed, clad in his priestly robe, such devotions as his disordered mind dictated. It is my idea that he looked, at these times, for a heavenly signal, either a meteor or some strange appearance of the heavens. It was known that he was a poor sleeper, and spent much time at night wandering around.

On the night of the crimes it is probable that he performed his devotions early, and then got the signal. This is evidenced by Singleton’s finding the axe against the captain’s door before midnight. He had evidently been disturbed. We believe that he intended to kill the captain and Mr. Turner, but made a mistake in the rooms. He clearly intended to kill the Danish girl. Several passages in his Bible, marked with a red cross, showed his inflamed hatred of loose women; and he believed Karen Hansen to be of that type.

He locked me in, slipping down from the wheel to do so, and pocketing the key. The night was fairly quiet. He could lash the wheel safely, and he had in his favor the fact that Oleson, the lookout, was a slow-thinking Swede who notoriously slept on his watch. He found the axe, not where he had left it, but back in the case. But the case was only closed, not locked—Singleton’s error.

Armed with the axe, Jones slipped back to the wheel and waited. He had plenty of time. He had taken his robe from its hiding-place in the boat, and had it concealed near him with the axe. He was ready, but he was waiting for another signal. He got it at half-past two. He admitted the signal and the time, but concealed its nature—I think it was a shooting star. He killed Vail first, believing it to be Turner, and making with his axe, the four signs of the cross. Then he went to the Hansen girl’s door. He did not know about the bell, and probably rang it by accident as he leaned over to listen if Vail still breathed.

The captain, in the mean time, had been watching Singleton. He had forbidden his entering the after house; if he caught him disobeying, he meant to put him in irons. He was without shoes or coat, and he sat waiting on the after companion steps for developments.

It was the captain, probably, whom Karen Hansen mistook for Turner. Later he went back to the forward companionway, either on his way back to his cabin, or still with an eye to Singleton’s movements.

To the captain there must have appeared this grisly figure in flowing white, smeared with blood and armed with an axe. The sheet was worn over Jones’s head—a long, narrow slit serving him to see through, and two other slits freeing his arms. The captain was a brave man, but the apparition, gleaming in the almost complete darkness, had been on him before he could do more than throw up his hands.

Jones had not finished. He went back to the chart-room and possibly even went on deck and took a look at the wheel. Then he went down again and killed the Hansen woman.

He was exceedingly cunning. He flung the axe into the room, and was up and at the wheel again, all within a few seconds. To tear off and fold up the sheet, to hide it under near-by cordage, to strike the ship’s bell and light his pipe—all this was a matter of two or three minutes. I had only time to look at Vail. When I got up to the wheel, Jones was smoking quietly.