The Pigot Murder

by C. Davis

I had been eight years on the special detective force in Philadelphia when that trouble about Joe Myers turned up. Joe was an old chum of mine: the only red-headed fellow I ever did trust, by-the-way, but it was a matter of propinquity; my father’s tavern and old Pete Myers’ shop were close beside each other, on the L— turnpike; Joe and I were in the same classes in the district school; and after that, worked together on Squire Hall’s farm, year in and year out, until I got the chance of an opening up in town. The fact is, whatever success I met with there is due to a succession of lucky chances – hits, as I may say, at discoveries in my line of business, rather than any astuteness of mine. That troubled me but little; it was enough that I did succeed; at the end of the eight years had a snug marble-slabbed brick house out on Green Hill, which my wife had as prettily fitted up as any of the old blooded nobs in town. She had a fanciful way of hanging plant baskets about, and matching colors in carpets and the other trumpery, that set off a room somehow; she got up prime little game suppers for our friends, in winter, too; we had the boys at good schools; and, altogether, bid fair to settle down early into a comfortable, easy middle age. Next to Pike (the chief) I had the best salary on the staff; and no man on the force was so often called on for fancy jobs; and they always pay well.

Things move slower in the country, you know. Joe, in the mean time, had only come to be a sort of steward for Hall – an agent for selling his trees; for the Squire had gone into the nursery business within the last three years.

I think he and Joe were both bitten by the morus multicaulis mania, too, which raged about that… Read More