get a look at Auntie and anyway see those other windows. He was a carpenter, Stuart—built most of this place himself, though Harriet had the fence put up, of course, after she come home. Used to be kids throwing rocks through the windows, sometimes, or yelling things from the road. Seems to me people could bring up their kids better, somehow, teach them to respect other people and other people’s property.”
_____
Harriet Stuart died quietly in her sleep some ten or twelve years after Mr. Halloran had built the big house, her aunt removed to another town and was known to have changed her name, and the Stuart house stayed empty. No one was willing to live in it because of its lack of sanitary accommodations, and the villagers kept it in repair because tourists came to look at it. The fence was taken down, and it was not thought in doubtful taste to tack neatly lettered little signs upon the doors to the significant rooms, and set a small metal standard beside the bush where the hammer was found. The villagers tried valiantly to pretend that the house was haunted, and occasionally Mr. Straus, who had re-taken possession of the property when the Stuart mortgage lapsed, received letters from scholarly folk who wanted to visit the house in order to write gently humorous, cynical articles proving that Harriet Stuart was innocent, or that she was guilty. One such article referred to the village as “a quiet place, untouched by time or progress.”
The present Mr. Straus, who owned the butcher shop, was the son of the original Mr. Straus who owned the butcher shop and had gone with Mr. Parker and old Watkins to the Stuart house; the present Mr. Straus had heard the Harriet Stuart story so often from his father that he could repeat it, now, without hesitation, when people came by the shop and asked him; he knew perfectly where the blood had been spilled and how Mrs. Stuart had made it halfway to the door before the hammer caught up with her, and he could re-create, with telling effect, the look in the dead eyes of Mr. Stuart, gazing with horror upon his murderer; his pathetic recital of how the two young boys were found in one another’s arms was very apt to move his hearers to tears. The Stuart house was listed in local guide books as a spot of some grisly interest. Mr. Peabody, when he took over the Carriage Stop Inn, had actually debated for some time the wisdom of renaming the Inn the Harriet Stuart Lodge, but had been dissuaded by the sterner heads in town, and particularly the Misses Inverness, who ran the gift shop next to the Inn, and who regarded the entire Harriet Stuart affair as uncouth, and criminally unfilial. No curios or mementos of the Stuart family were to be found in the gift shop run by the Misses Inverness, although several books discussing the murder were in the Inn library, and a rude pamphlet, purporting to be the work of one of the party who visited the house that night, was on sale in several shops in the village; it gave a vivid and gory description of the house, and had sketches of Harriet Stuart, her unfortunate family, and a map of the probable route she had taken from arising that morning to her eventual arrival at Parker’s Bakery.
Harriet Stuart lured a small regular stream of tourists to the village; two busses a day stopped in front of the Carriage Stop Inn, and there was time between them for a visit to the Harriet Stuart house, and a country-style dinner at the Inn, with a few minutes for browsing with the Misses Inverness, and a walk down the one street of the village to purchase homemade jelly and preserves in Mrs. Martin’s little shop, regard the site of Parker’s Bakery, now, with Parker, defunct; look at antiques in the big barn back of the Basses’ house, and inspect, with shudders, the Stuart family memorial in the cemetery, which gave no more than the names of the murdered family and, horribly, their one common date of death. Most of the villagers managed to sell a little
_____
Harriet Stuart died quietly in her sleep some ten or twelve years after Mr. Halloran had built the big house, her aunt removed to another town and was known to have changed her name, and the Stuart house stayed empty. No one was willing to live in it because of its lack of sanitary accommodations, and the villagers kept it in repair because tourists came to look at it. The fence was taken down, and it was not thought in doubtful taste to tack neatly lettered little signs upon the doors to the significant rooms, and set a small metal standard beside the bush where the hammer was found. The villagers tried valiantly to pretend that the house was haunted, and occasionally Mr. Straus, who had re-taken possession of the property when the Stuart mortgage lapsed, received letters from scholarly folk who wanted to visit the house in order to write gently humorous, cynical articles proving that Harriet Stuart was innocent, or that she was guilty. One such article referred to the village as “a quiet place, untouched by time or progress.”
The present Mr. Straus, who owned the butcher shop, was the son of the original Mr. Straus who owned the butcher shop and had gone with Mr. Parker and old Watkins to the Stuart house; the present Mr. Straus had heard the Harriet Stuart story so often from his father that he could repeat it, now, without hesitation, when people came by the shop and asked him; he knew perfectly where the blood had been spilled and how Mrs. Stuart had made it halfway to the door before the hammer caught up with her, and he could re-create, with telling effect, the look in the dead eyes of Mr. Stuart, gazing with horror upon his murderer; his pathetic recital of how the two young boys were found in one another’s arms was very apt to move his hearers to tears. The Stuart house was listed in local guide books as a spot of some grisly interest. Mr. Peabody, when he took over the Carriage Stop Inn, had actually debated for some time the wisdom of renaming the Inn the Harriet Stuart Lodge, but had been dissuaded by the sterner heads in town, and particularly the Misses Inverness, who ran the gift shop next to the Inn, and who regarded the entire Harriet Stuart affair as uncouth, and criminally unfilial. No curios or mementos of the Stuart family were to be found in the gift shop run by the Misses Inverness, although several books discussing the murder were in the Inn library, and a rude pamphlet, purporting to be the work of one of the party who visited the house that night, was on sale in several shops in the village; it gave a vivid and gory description of the house, and had sketches of Harriet Stuart, her unfortunate family, and a map of the probable route she had taken from arising that morning to her eventual arrival at Parker’s Bakery.
Harriet Stuart lured a small regular stream of tourists to the village; two busses a day stopped in front of the Carriage Stop Inn, and there was time between them for a visit to the Harriet Stuart house, and a country-style dinner at the Inn, with a few minutes for browsing with the Misses Inverness, and a walk down the one street of the village to purchase homemade jelly and preserves in Mrs. Martin’s little shop, regard the site of Parker’s Bakery, now, with Parker, defunct; look at antiques in the big barn back of the Basses’ house, and inspect, with shudders, the Stuart family memorial in the cemetery, which gave no more than the names of the murdered family and, horribly, their one common date of death. Most of the villagers managed to sell a little
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