A Detective’s Story

One winter morning, away back in the sixties, I left the Providence train at a village about thirty miles away to look for a man for whom I had a warrant for grand larceny. In walking from the depot to the hotel I came across a group of women at the gate of a fine old mansion which stood back several rods from the street. They were nervous and fearful. The house was the residence of a Mrs. Brush and her son, she a widow 60 years of age, and he a young man of 22. The hour was 11 o’clock, and they were alarmed because there was no stir about the house. It was known that the son, James, had gone to Providence the evening before, but the mother was an early riser, and the house should have been open by 7 o’clock. The milkman had been there, as also the butcher boy and a laborer, but their knocks had been unanswered. The neighbors had at last come to have a dreadful suspicion, and a constable had already been sent for to make an investigation.

It was in my line to be interested and to remain. When the constable came we found that we had met before, and he asked me as a favor to assist him. He was nervous and excited, and we both had the same feeling before the house was entered. I would have bet my life that the old woman was dead, and he was just as sure. We knocked at the kitchen door until any living person would have been aroused, and then we broke it open and entered. Everything in the kitchen was in order, and the same was true of the sitting room and parlor. Mother and son occupied the rooms up stairs. One of the women… Read More