“Did the noise sound to you like pounding?” Knowlton asked.
“What is it?” Mrs. Chagnon said.
“Did the noise sound to you like pounding?”
“Like?”
“Pounding.”
“I don’t understand that expression.”
“Pounding?”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t you understand what pounding is?”
“Pounding?”
“Yes.”
“No, sir.”
“What?”
“No, I don’t understand it.”
“Don’t know that word?”
“No, sir, pounding.”
“All right, I can’t put the question,” Knowlton said. “You don’t understand the word pounding?”
“No, sir.”
“To pound,” Knowlton said.
“Pounding?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“All right. Do you remember of seeing the dogs there at the ash barrel at anytime afterwards?”
“We have since seen some dogs sometimes taking some bones in the barrels.”
“And do you remember of your husband pounding that dog one time... excuse me... moving that ash barrel at one time?”
“I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember of Mr. Harrington, the officer, being there one day?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your husband made a noise with that barrel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And didn’t you say that it sounded like the noise you’d heard?”
“Yes, sir, but...”
... It wasn’t in the same direction. It was the same noise but I tell to my husband it isn’t in the same direction. It was nearly the noise. But that night the ash barrel was in the barn. In the back yard. It was in the barn that time. The noise of the ash barrel was about that noise, but it was not in the same direction. To make that noise with the ash barrel, my husband strike the barrel near the... the little barn, and he said, “Is it not that noise you heard?” I tell, “Yes, perhaps it is so, but it seems to me it was not in this same direction.” He strike the barrel with his hand. And when he strike the barrel with his hand, it seems like the same noise that I heard.
Because it sounds on the wood like that.
My name’s Charles N. Gifford. I work at C. E. Macomber and Company, the clothing store, and I live at 29 Third Street. That’s the house next north of the Chagnons. Uriah Kirby lives there, too. I was there at the house about eleven o’clock on the night before the murders.
I saw a man on the steps, the steps leading into the yard, right there on the side steps. The man, I should judge, weighed between a hundred and eighty to ninety pounds, and he sat there on the steps, apparently asleep, with a straw hat pulled over his face. I took hold of his arm and shook him, and in shaking him his hat fell off onto the sidewalk. I lit a match and held it up in front of his face to see if I knew who it was, and found that I didn’t. I know most of the people living in that vicinity, I’ve lived there — with the exception of twelve years — about thirty-one years. In that same house, my father’s house. I didn’t smell any liquor about him, got no response from him whatever, don’t know what became of the man. I went into the house and left the hat on the sidewalk. A few minutes afterward, Mr. Kirby came by...
My name is Uriah Kirby, I live in Fall River, on Third Street. The house next north of the Chagnons. I was living there on the third day of August last year. When I went home that night about eleven o’clock, there was a man sitting on the steps, four stone steps leading from the sidewalk which reached up into the yard.
I spoke to him, hollered out to him, spoke loud. No reply. Sat there dormant, as it were, in about the middle of the step, I should think, either the second or third. There was four steps in all, and he was back in this form, laid back against the side of a little fence that ran there, with his hat pulled down nearly over his eyes, and sitting there very quietly. Didn’t seem to move at all, paid no attention to my voice. I put my hand on his hat, on top of his head, and shook him in this form, and spoke again to him. No reply.
I didn’t take hold of him on any other portion of the body except the hat. It was a dark hat. Didn’t smell any signs of liquor on him. He said nothing, did nothing, couldn’t seem to arouse him. These steps are some fifteen to seventeen feet from the Chagnon driveway, just south of the steps there. I left him there, and went into my house. Mr. Gifford had already retired.
That’s all that took place that night.
7: Paris — 1890
A dozen red roses waiting in the room!
And a handwritten note from Alison!
Bienvenue, Chérie!
Albert’s beastly business will detain us here for the better part of a week. For once, I am grateful to his financial machinations. Do telephone me the moment you’re comfortably settled. I have made delicious plans for us!
She was tempted to telephone the Hotel Binda at once, but the porters were arriving with their baggage, and again there was the nuisance of figuring what to tip them, complicated this time by the strange French currency — just when she was getting accustomed to the British coins. The two hulking men in their blue smocks struggled the trunks and valises into the room, and stood blinking in stupefied amazement as Felicity did a series of pirouettes in the vast chamber and then threw herself full length on the only bed in the room, a massive, four-postered and canopied antique against the wall opposite the inner door. The men continued to gape as Felicity began squealing and giggling, raising her knees and pumping her feet against the air as though she were riding a bicycle, skirts flying, her childish abandon exposing her petticoats and her black stockings and all but her underdrawers.
“Felicity!” Lizzie shouted, and she at once brought her knees down and lay as stiff as a board, legs together, eyes closed, arms crossed over her ample bosom as if she’d suddenly been struck dead by an unseen hand. She began giggling again as Lizzie paid the porters, sorting out the coins, remembering that Geoffrey had told her the franc — for all practical purposes — could be estimated at tenpence in English, or twenty cents in United States money.
Felicity was off the bed again as the porters bowed themselves out of the room, scruffy gray caps clenched in their hands, mumbling, “Merci, madame, mademoiselle, (a nod at Felicity) and then closing the inner door behind them. She scurried to the windows, drew open the curtains, threw open the shutters, and then, opening her arms wide, shouted to the courtyard below and the Parisian afternoon in general, “Hello, Paris!” and then, in surely inaccurate and positively atrocious French, “Adoo, Paree, adoo! We’re here!”
“Felicity, do be still,” Lizzie warned. “There may be people napping!”
“In Paris? Don’t be silly, Lizzie!” She rushed across the room to her, threw her arms about her, hugged her fiercely and said, “Oh, I’m so excited! Aren’t you excited?”
“I am, yes, but Felicity, you shall crush my ribs!”
“Adoo, Paree, adoo!” she squealed again, and, giggling, began dancing and prancing about the room as though she had completely lost her wits, touching the upholstery on the chairs, fingering the silk brocade coverlet on the large bed, dancing away again, passing her hands over the wallpaper, flicking the electric lamps on and off, on and off, going to the windows again, shouting “Napoleon, we are here!” and finally collapsing onto the bed again, where she continued to giggle uncontrollably, quite affirming the surmise that she had lost her mind.