Echoes in the Darkness

11

It was time for a break in the action. A Bill Bradfield former student who attended St. Johns College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was about to be married there.

Chris asked Bill Bradfield if he was going to the wedding but Bill Bradfield declined, one of the reasons being his suspicion that the young chap hadn’t heeded his advice to stay pure and chaste until marriage.

But in that Bill Bradfield was as predictable as a Tijuana dog race, he called Chris a few days later to say that he’d changed his mind and was coming along so that he “could do a favor for Doctor Smith.”

The wedding in Santa Fe was happy and the young couple was handsome and Chris wondered what Jay Smith could want done in New Mexico. He found out the day after the wedding when Bill Bradfield said that they were going to take a little drive from Santa Fe to Taos.

The Jay Smith “favor” had to do with the fact that cops were starting to pressure Dr. Jay about certain welfare checks that had been cashed around The Main Line, checks issued to his missing son-in-law, Eddie Hunsberger, and bearing Eddie’s forged signature. Jay Smith figured he had enough to worry about with his upcoming court trials so he asked his alibi witness, Bill Bradfield, to plant a seed or two in the arid soil of New Mexico.

Jay Smith supposedly told Bill Bradfield that there was a Spanish-speaking couple in a Taos commune with whom Stephanie and Eddie had stayed for a period of time. Jay Smith wanted to establish the time-frame when Stephanie and Eddie had been with the couple, a time that hopefully would be close to the period in which the stolen Hunsberger checks were being forged and cashed by person(s) unknown. That way, Jay Smith could tell the cops to get off his back because his daughter and son-in-law were alive and well, and maybe they’d stop implying that Jay Smith was the kind of guy who would murder his own daughter.

Off they drove from Santa Fe to Taos, not to visit the Spanish-speaking couple, but to phone the couple to arrange a visit. Chris Pappas didn’t ask why they hadn’t called the couple from Santa Fe before driving clear to Taos. He didn’t have time for such things. He was too busy trying to understand why they were trying to prove that Jay Smith wasn’t murderous enough to have killed his daughter when for the past several weeks they’d been glowing white-hot with the certain knowledge that Jay Smith was as deadly as plutonium in your drinking water.

After they got to Taos, Bill Bradfield made a private call from a pay phone outside a restaurant and informed Chris that the mission was accomplished. No further action was necessary. Back they drove to Santa Fe. Chris assumed by what Bill Bradfield told him that the Spanish-speaking couple had alibied Jay Smith by verifying that the Hunsbergers had been with them during the time in question. But Chris assumed incorrectly.

When they got back to Pennsylvania Chris received an urgent message from Bill Bradfield that their Taos trip had been another devious plot by Jay Smith to use and humiliate him. Jay Smith had just confessed to Bill Bradfield that he had in fact forged and cashed the Hunsberger checks. And according to Bill Bradfield, Jay Smith hinted that he had killed and disposed of Stephanie and Eddie Hunsberger.

What Bill Bradfield didn’t tell Chris Pappas was that on the very day that they were in Taos, a friend from work of Jay Smith’s wife had accepted an urgent collect call at the dry cleaners on behalf of Stephanie Smith who was back in the hospital for cancer treatment.

The friend talked to the Taos operator and then to the caller who said, “Hi! This is Eddie Hunsberger. Everything’s okay with my wife and me. Please pass on the message to Mrs. Smith.”

She had never talked to Edward Hunsberger before, but was delighted to relay the good news that he was alive and well in Taos, New Mexico.

* * *

Chris was called off his surveillance activities. Bill Bradfield decided that for now Jay Smith was probably not a great threat to Susan Reinert because he was too busy slaughtering prostitutes.

The prostitutes were also known as “remotes,” because they were remotely connected with the Jay Smith investigation. Bill Bradfield claimed that the “remotes” had made the mistake of smoking dope with Jay Smith, thus spoiling his defense that the drugs found in the Smith home belonged to Eddie and Stephanie Hunsberger. Dr. Jay was determined that the remotes should never appear as character witnesses against him in his upcoming trial. They had to go.

Sure enough, the next day in the papers there was a double murder-suicide in King of Prussia (which had been announced on the radio the day before) and Bill Bradfield pointed out to Chris that Jay Smith had done in the poor remotes and made it look like a family affair.

Chris was shown a legal document by Bill Bradfield who seemed almost as distressed by it as he’d been when he got the news that Jay Smith smoked pot. Susan Reinert had listed him as a beneficiary on a will and had made him the guardian of her children in the event of her death.

So now, in addition to his moral obligation to provide an alibi for the Sears theft for a guy who’d probably “disappeared” his own daughter and son-in-law, and to protect Jay Smith’s secret mistress from being disappeared, Bill Bradfield had his life complicated by this damn will!

There was only one consolation. “This will is not a final version,” he said. Bill Bradfield thought he still had a chance of getting her to drop her mad scheme of “obligating him” in her affairs. He had to persuade her to change the will, so that if she met a terrible fate the police wouldn’t think he was connected with her.

But Bill Bradfield had another worry: he knew of a second guy who wanted to kill Susan Reinert.

She’d been dating a black man from Carlisle named Alex, Bill Bradfield said. Alex was into kinky sex in a big way: he liked Susan Reinert to tie him up and beat him. And he wanted her to urinate on him, as did some other boyfriends she dated.

Chris was repulsed by the news of those golden showers, and while he was wondering if Susan Reinert was worth the hazardous duty on her behalf, Bill Bradfield said that the reason she’d confessed this to him was that she was making a last futile attempt to persuade him to marry her and take her away from the degradation.

From time to time even the most ardent disciple needs an offer of proof. Chris’s need came when Bill Bradfield told him about the “double-screen contact system” he and Jay Smith had devised to eliminate unwanted calls and to protect themselves from each other in the event that one of them was cooperating with authorities. It appeared that the dog distrusted the pony, and vice versa.

The double-screen phone system was designed so that if the calling party wanted to phone the other he’d let it ring three times, then hang up and call again. He’d let it ring once, then hang up and call again and let it ring three times.

If the other party was at home, he’d then take the phone off the hook so that when the caller tried to call a fourth time he’d get a busy signal and know that it was okay to put phase two into operation.

Phase two went like this: each man had a list of fifteen pay phones, with a numerical designation beside each number. The phones were all located within twenty minutes from home. They had each selected their own fifteen public phones and then exchanged lists. The caller would wait twenty minutes and start with the first phone number on his list. He’d continue calling until a phone was answered by his partner.

There was a third phase that might be used in the event of a perceived threat. It went like this: Bill Bradfield might reach Jay Smith on phone number five. But Dr. Jay might decide that he didn’t like the looks of a lady in a red bandana loitering nearby, so he’d pick up phone number five and quickly say, “Go to number seven.”

Then Bill Bradfield would wait ten minutes and call number seven on his list.

Bill Bradfield explained that Jay Smith admitted to having a favorite phone. It was one of the public phones in the Sheraton Hotel in King of Prussia. The phone booths were surrounded by mirrors so that Dr. Jay could sit in the booth and watch for dolls in red bandanas or guys with green carnations, or whatever.

While they were relaxing with a cold snack from the kitchen Chris made the mistake of asking if there might be a simpler way to accomplish their phone calls, because these two had done everything but square the telephone digits. Bill Bradfield looked at Chris like he’d found a strange pubic hair in his face soap.

He reluctantly decided to demonstrate to Chris how brilliantly it worked. Bill Bradfield looked as though he was doing one of his methodically devised seating charts at school, as though he enjoyed the control he was exercising over Dr. Jay by sending him scurrying around his neighborhood.

By and by, Bill Bradfield said, “Hello,” and beckoned Chris to the phone.

Bill Bradfield held the phone to Chris’s ear and there was no mistaking his former principals carefully enunciated speech. But before Chris could make much sense of the conversation Bill Bradfield took the receiver and by gesture indicated that he would conduct the rest of the conversation in private.

Nevertheless, just witnessing the double-screen telephone system in action, and hearing Dr. Jay Smiths own voice after all this time, brought on a huge power surge. Chris was never more convinced. He now believed every word that Bill Bradfield had ever uttered.

One night in April, Bill Bradfield took Vince Valaitis to the movies to see The Deer Hunter. But after leaving the cinema he didn’t want to talk about the movie. He wanted to talk about his troubles.

“Susan Reinert’s named me in her will as executor for her children,” Bill Bradfield said calmly.

“She what?”

“I know,” he said. “I know. The woman’ll do anything to entrap me.”

“It’s hard to believe.”

“Now what’s going to happen to me if she gets killed by Doctor Smith? Or by one of those weird guys she’s dating? Do you know, Vince, I’ve been in her home maybe two times in my life, and one of those was to help install an air conditioner.”

“The whole thing is just so bizarre!” Vince said.

“When I was installing that air conditioner I made the mistake of lying down on the sofa to rest a minute. Do you know what happened?”

“I can’t imagine,” said Vince, but he could imagine.

“She tried to make advances. The woman’s sex-starved. I had to practically insult her. I’ve done about all I can do.”

“All anyone can do,” Vince agreed.

“I’ve even managed to get my hands on Jay Smiths guns. I’m going to make them unworkable and then give them back to him.”

“Susan Reinert’s volunteered to be transferred to the junior high, from what I hear,” Vince said. He didn’t like talking about guns.

“You have to pity her,” Bill Bradfield said. “She’s a rotten teacher.”

“I pity her,” his young pal agreed.

“By the way, you’ve worked so hard at the store for us, I’d like to give you five hundred dollars.”

Vince thought he was joking. “Five hundred dollars? Where’d you get five hundred dollars?”

“Not from the store, of course,” Bill Bradfield said. “From my personal fortune, which has diminished considerably. Still, I’d like you to have it.”

“You’re too generous, Bill,” Vince Valaitis said. “Too generous with all your friends. Thanks, but I won’t be needing any more than my salary, for as long as it lasts.”

“Well, keep it in mind.”

“You’re too generous.”

Bill Bradfield didn’t disagree.

Vince had paid a lot of money in his life to get scared, that was one way to look at it. Nowadays, Bill Bradfield provided more fright than a dozen horror films, but Vince didn’t like it a bit.

One night, Bill Bradfield, who seldom drank and had never been known to use any kind of drug, came puffing into Vince’s apartment. He was overwrought and exhausted. He looked more crazed than the Ancient Mariner.

He sat down and said, “I don’t know how much longer I can go on. Jay Smith just put a gun to my head! I dared to doubt one of his stories about killing for hire, and he whipped out a roll of reinforcing tape and before I could move he’d taped my wrists and put a gun to my head!”

“Oh my, oh my, oh my,” Vince Valaitis said. “Oh my.”

“I’m afraid I’m losing my health,” Bill Bradfield said. “I need your help, Vince. I need it tonight.”

“Sure, Bill. Anything,” Vince said.

“I need you to come with me to Jay Smith’s house.”

“Oh my.”

An hour later, still unable to believe he was wide awake on a cold spring night in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., and not in some galazy far away, Vince Valaitis found himself driving his Camaro to a house on Valley Forge Road. A house with a basement apartment where unspeakable things occurred. A house that maybe looked like Anthony Perkins’s horrible house right next to the Bates Motel where he …

“Pull over and park!” Bill Bradfield told him suddenly.

Vince parked and cut his engine.

“Take the bulb out of the dome light!” Bill Bradfield ordered, and Vince’s hands were so sweaty he could hardly manage.

“Now continue driving. We’re almost there!” Bill Bradfield whispered, while Vince tried not to hyperventilate.

The house on Valley Forge Road was quiet. There was a light burning, perhaps two lights. Vince parked and cut his headlights. Bill Bradfield got out quietly and left the door open.

It was a secluded street with an orchard across the road. There obviously wasn’t much traffic here at any time. The garage that led to the mysterious basement apartment could not be seen from the street.

Vince could see Bill Bradfield blowing steam in the moonlight as he crept up the driveway toward the back of the house in a tangle of shadows.

A blood-freezing scream would not have surprised the young teacher, but after a moment Bill Bradfield came skulking back to the Camaro, jumped in, and said, “I’ve got it!”

“Got what?” Vince asked, afraid to know.

“My key. He had a key belonging to me. Let’s get out of here!”

Vince didn’t see Bill Bradfield all that much. He kept trying to lead a dull ordinary schoolteacher’s life.

Vince was in his apartment one night taping a horror movie when Bill Bradfield barged in. It was almost midnight. He had something in the trunk of his car to show Vince, and Vince hoped it wasn’t a body belonging to Jay Smith.

“What’s that?” Vince Valaitis asked when Bill Bradfield opened the trunk.

“It’s a gun.”

“It looks like an oil can,” Vince said, peering closer in the darkness. “It is an oil can. It’s not a gun.”

The driveway beside the apartment house in Phoenixville was next to the woods that marked a wildlife preserve. Bill Bradfield walked toward a row of trees and pointed his oil can. Vince heard it pop five times.

“I once saw Doctor Smith fire one into the ground in broad daylight. Right outside a restaurant.”

“Is that a silencer?”

“I may have to use it on Doctor Smith.” Bill Bradfield nodded.

“Put that away!” Vince cried. “Put that away!”

But Bill Bradfield grinned and whirled and sped away on some other madcap adventure and Vince returned to movie horror.

Vince Valaitis was finally upset enough to talk it over with his father. The blue-collar mechanic from South Philly listened to the story about all the nutty school teachers and shook his head and said, “Son, it all sounds crazy!”

And Vince was relieved. Just as Sue Myers had felt relieved when her lawyer said it sounded preposterous. He slept a little better that night. It was too crazy to think about. Jay Smith was just tormenting a decent man like Bill Bradfield for the perverse pleasure of it. Vince prayed that his friend would abandon this folly.

Most people have a general understanding that a sociopath’s personality disorder means that he has little or no conscience, no capacity for guilt. Some call it an underdeveloped superego. And some people understand that a sociopath would rather manipulate and control than go to heaven. Actually, to many sociopaths, manipulation and control is heaven.

A lesser-known symptom of sociopathy involves an obsession to always raise the stakes. A sociopath needs greater and greater risks.

Bill Bradfield may have had a demonstrable reason for spreading Jay Smith terror among certain of his friends. But among others the bizarre gossip provided nothing but more risk to the teller. Or perhaps it provided titillation. The larger a daredevils audience the greater his personal reward.

Or perhaps it was simply assumed that if enough people hear a rumor it becomes true.

Another English teacher was told by Bill Bradfield about being a reluctant alibi witness for Jay Smith with the usual explanation given. He was also told, during a secret conversation in the English office at Upper Merion, that Bill Bradfield might be mentioned in a will or insurance policy belonging to Susan Reinert. And that Bill Bradfield had learned that Susan Reinert was seeing a “kinky” person who used human feces in his disgusting sexual rituals.

By playing around with people like that, Susan Reinert might get herself killed, he said. But she wouldn’t listen to anyone’s advice, Bill Bradfield told the astonished teacher.

In May, 1979, Susan Reinert went to an attorney and had him draft a new will. In the event of her death, her brother Pat Gallagher would no longer be her executor, and her children would no longer be her beneficiaries. The sole beneficiary, executor and trustee of her estate would be her “future husband,” William S. Bradfield, Jr.

It was getting hard to talk to Sue Myers these days. Vince would drop in from time to time when he was bored or tired from correcting papers. Once he tried to bring up The Subject.

“Where’s Bill?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he’s with Doctor Smith?”

“I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything.”

“Did Bill tell you that he and Chris went to a commune in New Mexico and found someone who actually saw the Hunsbergers?”

“No.”

“Don’t you and Bill talk anymore?”

“Hardly.”

“Do you ever see Rachel?”

“I never see her. I don’t know if he does.”

“I hear she’s going to Harvard.”

“That’s real nice. Especially on Memorial Day. I’ll bet she has lots of family graves to decorate. In Salem, Massachusetts.”

And that’s how the conversations would go. Sue Myers knew too much and she was too tired. Her bones were tired. Even her hair was tired. Bill Bradfield made her feel older than coal.

What could she do? When she fell in love with the guy sixteen years earlier, she’d been a twenty-three-year-old college graduate, who, the statistics claimed, had a fifty-fifty chance of getting married and having children. Now what?

Toward the end of April, Bill Bradfield asked Chris Pappas to come over to the apartment and help with a little spring cleaning. So Chris put on an old shirt and jeans and looked forward to some good wholesome sweat. But something in the back of his mind told him that a Bill Bradfield housekeeping chore might not be like anyone else’s.

They weren’t up in the attic for more than five minutes before he learned he was right.

Bill Bradfield said it casually as he was dragging a box of books out of the attic. “I’ve got some things in the trunk of my car, Chris.”

“What things?”

“Cash. Thousands.”

“Of dollars?”

“Yeah. And some acid.”

“Acid?”

“A very large bottle of hydrochloric acid. Doctor Smith gave it to me and told me to hide it. He uses it to dissolve the fingertips of his victims. And their facial features.”

“Their facial features?”

“And their teeth, of course. Teeth can be identified.”

It wasn’t an extraordinary conversation. Not in the spring of 1979. Not among Bill Bradfields friends.

Chris wanted it slowly, so he could reflect. “Okay, Bill, Doctor Smith gave you acid and told you to hide it for him?”

“Precisely.”

“And he gave you thousands of dollars?”

“No. The money’s mine.”

“Where did you get thousands of dollars?”

Then Bill Bradfield asked, “Can you keep a secret?”

But Chris wasn’t into irony, not at the time, so he just said, “Of course I can.”

Bill Bradfield said, “I wouldn’t want Sue to know. This is money that has nothing to do with her or the store. I’ve been saving for years. I sold property sometime back and this is what I’ve ended up with.”

“Why’s it in the trunk of the car, Bill?”

“I withdrew it from the Elverson City Bank, and I tell you I’m lucky I did it. Do you know they’d only let me withdraw five thousand at a time? That’s how nervous the banks are. That’s how uncertain the whole economy is. A bank’s the worst place in the world to keep your money. I’ve been saving to buy a new boat.”

“But Bill, the banks pay interest on your money!”

“I think they’re all going under. I want this money accessible. I’m thinking of putting it in a safety deposit box.”

Chris had to sit down and start working on it by the numbers.

“Bill, if you’ve got a lot of money in the trunk with a bottle of acid, that isn’t wise. Is it?”

“Doctor Smith stole the acid from Upper Merion, by the way.”

“So if you have this acid and this money, don’t you think you better get that money out before an accident destroys it?”

“Good thinking,” Bill Bradfield said. “Let’s go get it.”

The bottle of acid was in the trunk all right, and so was the money. There were several envelopes full of money. Some of them were in a gym bag. Some of them were concealed in piles of clothes and in the toolbox. They gathered up the envelopes and took them into the apartment.

Chris noted that the bills were fifties and hundreds. The numbers were consecutive and the money looked as though it had been packaged in batches of $1,000.

Chris counted the money and it totaled $28,500. Bill Bradfield stuffed it in three envelopes and said he was going to hide it in the top drawer of a black filing cabinet in the apartment.

“Bill,” Chris said, “the United States insures bank savings, you know. I mean if a bank should fail.”

“Unwise,” Bill Bradfield said. “Unwise at this time.”

Chris didn’t have time to argue. There was yet another job, and this one took some talking, even for Chris, even at this juncture of the secret mission. They had to obliterate fingerprints.

“Why would we need to wipe our fingerprints off the money, Bill?” Chris asked, after being given a handkerchief.

“Very simple, Chris,” Bill Bradfield replied.

Chris got gooseflesh whenever Bill Bradfield said, “Very simple.”

“It all goes back to Jay Smith. If he should kill Susan Reinert, you know how terrible it would be for me. I’m this fool who’s tried to help her and what do I get for it? I get my name on her will as some sort of insurance beneficiary. Well, when the authorities come talking to me and find my money, they’re going to be looking for a scapegoat. As you know, Susan Reinert inherited an estate from her mother. And if she inherited an estate I assume she got some money. So, the police will see my name as her beneficiary and start searching my things and probably take fingerprints or something on any money they find. So really, the reason we’re wiping down all this money is to protect you. I wouldn’t want your fingerprints on my money.”

Chris was fuzzier than a boll weevil so he decided to shut up. And there they sat all afternoon on a day that was perfect for spring cleaning but even better for money wiping. The student and teacher, mentor and disciple, the director and his grip, getting all the props ready for opening night. They chatted and wiped each bill carefully.

Of course the handyman was given the task of taking the acid to a safe place on the Pappas property and storing it until Jay Smith should make a demand for its return. He said he’d store it under the small boat belonging to Bill Bradfield. The boat he was making shipshape for the skipper.

Another English teacher might notice that it was like the scene in Moby Dick where Ishmael and Queequeg are kneading the ambergris, and it’s all so intoxicating: the smell of ambergris and the silkiness of it as it slides between the fingers. And once in awhile the whalers accidentally squeeze each others hands and that served to strengthen the male bonding.

So they wiped and wiped and wiped the day away, smelling the long green as it slid through their fingers. It was not an unpleasant way to spend a spring afternoon.

Sue Myers couldn’t avoid talking with Vince Valaitis about the frantic coming and going of Bill Bradfield. But when Vince started babbling about something new in the life of Jay Smith, Sue Myers would give him a blank stare, and her darting brown eyes would get as placid as mud and she’d just tune him out. Simple as that. Sue Myers had honed her ability to turn deaf as a snail. But she could still sneak and peek with the very best of them.

Her lawyer had told her to advise William Bradfield what he could do with the cohabitation agreement, and he said that the whole business sounded nuts. But Sue had started keeping a lookout for anything that might be lying around the house, because there were surprises written on that cohabitation agreement. One, of course, was the reference under “assets of William S. Bradfield, Jr.” that consisted of very large insurance policies in his favor with the name of the insured person unlisted. The other was an asset of $20,000 that he supposedly had in the bank.

Now, Sue Myers didn’t know anything about a pile of money in some bank. In fact, she’d been forced to raid a savings account that he knew nothing about in order to pump some life into the art store. She’d depleted the secret account and figured that they now stood to lose $80,000. On one memorable day the store took in 84 cents worth of business. Sue Myers was starting to foresee a future as an indebted old maid, saving grocery coupons.

She also started wondering why he was suddenly locking the filing cabinet. At first she thought he might be keeping Jay Smith paraphernalia in there: tape, or rope, or chain, or other nonsense that in his mid-life fantasy had become instruments of torture and death. Now she wasn’t so sure about anything.

As usual, she waited until he was sleeping and then she lifted his key ring and opened the cabinet drawer. And lo, he had some hideout money! A lot of hideout money. In fact, he had a two-inch stack of crisp U.S. currency. On top was a picture of Benjamin Franklin.

Two weeks later she repeated the exercise and this time she found a will. She later claimed that she’d only read the first page and seen that the beneficiary was William S. Bradfield, Jr. But the beneficiary’s name was on the third page of the will, so no matter what she said, Sue Myers had taken a closer look at the will than she would ever admit. Without a doubt, she knew that there was some very funny business going on between Bill Bradfield and the woman she hated, Susan Reinert.

Sue Myers always said she didn’t want to know too much about his business, but the fact is, she already did know quite a bit more than she wanted to know.

Bill Bradfield may have sensed that the will or the envelope full of money in the file drawer had been disturbed. In any case, Chris Pappas got a call to report for duty. Bill Bradfield told Chris that he’d decided that the money should no longer be kept in a file cabinet in his apartment, but should be tucked away in a safety deposit box.

Bill Bradfield said, “If something does happen, and if the police start making inquiries at local banks, I hope they don’t discover my name on a safety deposit box.”

And Chris found himself staring into those brooding, poets eyes, and the pondering bard was twisting his whiskers and trying to figure a way to handle all this when Chris said, “I’ll go and rent a safety deposit box in my name, Bill.”

What an idea! Bill Bradfield told him.

Did Chris Pappas get a chance to walk into a bank and rent a safety deposit box like anybody else? Not a chance. Bill Bradfield wanted little Shelly to have access to the box.

That afternoon Chris Pappas went to the Southeast National Bank in West Chester and signed a contract for a safety deposit box. He signed the signature card and took additional cards for Bill Bradfield and Shelly.

A friend of Shelly’s had been planning to visit her in California so Chris asked her to deliver the signature card. And, naturally, Shelly blabbed all about the weird goings-on between Jay Smith and Susan Reinert to her pal.

Chris Pappas borrowed $1,300 of the money to buy his brothers 1973 Datsun, which was about to be traded in on a new car.

So by now there were several teachers and former students and parents and at least one lawyer and maybe Norman the janitor who’d heard that Susan Reinert might be in jeopardy.

One might think that somebody would just accidentally slip and say something like “Morning, Susan. Nice to see Jay Smith didn’t cut your throat over the weekend.”

Yet the fact is that nobody at any time so much as hinted to Susan Reinert or to any of her close friends that Bill Bradfield had been saying for months that Jay Smith or “Alex” wanted her dead.

And if a Gothic tale needs an element of the bizarre, many outsiders would later say that this was probably the most bizarre and incredible thing of all.