Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951

English Legend: The Voice of Justice re-told by Mark Rondy

Here is the fourth in a series of short riddle stories which derive from folklore — from the folk-tales of all ages and nations. The first three, you will recall, had their origin in Chinese, American Indian, and Turkish legend. Now we bring you the tale of an English “witch.”

The author of this series — a Philadelphia schoolteacher — reminds us that two hundred years ago the old English “wise-woman” lived apart from other folk, usually in a dim, cavern-like cottage, with raven and cat, and bottles and bags of curious concoctions. At the weirdest hours she would be glimpsed on marsh or moor, gathering herbs, dung, small animals to brew her healing potions, she said. By means of her acknowledged “second sight” she could foretell dire fate (for those who persecuted her) and marvelous good fortune (for those who professed faith in her lore).

Those benighted “heathens” who feared her usually crossed their breasts and spat when they passed her door — for luck, they said. These misguided souls told tales of the wise-women which curdled the blood and tingled the scalps of their listeners. But wiser folk, though ignorant of coming discoveries in chemistry, psychology, and extra-sensory perception, vaguely realized the truth: it was not the Devil who inspired the English wise-woman — it was her own clever brain, long memory, encyclopedic knowledge, accurate observations, and shrewd intuitions which made her “miracles” possible.

“The Voice of Justice” stems from the devoted labors of a late-19th century collector who saved for posterity the songs, tales, folkways, and folk; say of Yorkshire before the Industrial Revolution. It wasn’t until 1823 that an Act of Parliament abolished the ancient custom of the breast-stake and crossroads-burial for “persons found felo-de-se.” The events of this story could have occurred a generation or two earlier...

The crowd gathered at the pond was silent and still beneath the bright noonday sun. Old Liz hobbled through them to a damp blanketed heap and a moaning, swaying woman near it. Old Liz knelt painfully beside the woman, lifted the blanket. The crowd surged forward to see again the streaming blonde hair and the pale face.

Old Liz pulled the blanket back. She smoothed the sodden clothes, turning up an icy left hand, running gnarled fingers along scratches and welts in the palm, along the bare wet fingers, scratched too on the inner sides. She brought the sprawling legs together, touched the clenched right hand almost in caress, and got to her feet with an agonized wheeze, leaving the dead girl uncovered...

“Here comes Owen Metcalfe!”

The crowd parted again, letting the man stumble through.

“Alice—” he sobbed. “My bonny Alice!...” On his knees beside the blanket, he took the white face between his hands and groaned, “Why did you do it?”

Murmurs of sympathy from the onlookers hushed suddenly. Startled, Metcalfe raised his head, and saw the gleaming knife that had appeared in Old Liz’s hand. But Old Liz merely reached for the long briar branch overhanging the pond. Two cuts of the knife, a sharp wrench, and the branch was in her hands.

She grimaced a bit from the effort, but said no word, just fell to trimming the branch, peeling off its thorns with the bark.

Metcalfe rose, his face full of venom. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

Old Liz cut slivers from the branch with short choppy strokes of the knife. “The stake to bury her with, that’s what I’m making. At the crossroads.” She began whittling one end into a fine long point.

“No!” It was the dead girl’s mother. “She’ll be buried in holy ground!”

Old Liz glanced down, her wrinkled face unsoftened. “Not if she drowned herself...” She straightened, the knife disappearing somewhere into her shapeless brown cloak. “Why did she do it, he wants to know. Why should she drown herself, the bonny lass?”

She looked around at the sombre, expressionless faces. “I’ll tell you why. Him there—” the stake darted out toward Metcalfe like the Devil’s prong — “he bamboozled the lot of you yesterday. Named me a witch, he did, and got you to duck me in this very pond.” She spat. “Toad-venom! Hag-worms! Grave-moss! All lies!... Eighty years old I am. My potions are good potions. Not a soul among you have I harmed, but many’s the one I’ve helped in trouble. I know somewhat about signs and herbs, maybe, but I’m no more a witch than he is a wizard!”

She caught her breath, then continued: “You saw me crawl out, a-holding on to this very branch for dear life. Half-dead I was, in the slime of the bank. And him there, waiting! The minute I was up he put out his hand and shoved me back in again!... Laughing and pointing he was—” she swept them again with her bitter stare — “and some of you here standing by, you laughed too. And others not laughing but afraid to speak. But she wasn’t afraid, my bonny Alice. She knew I was no witch. She came to me when she heard, helped me dry and dress, helped me put a poultice on my bleeding hands...”

Heads were bowed now, and eyes groundward, as they listened to the recital.

“Jenny Stull!” The stake swung over to point out a trembling young girl. “You told us this morning how she came to visit you afterwards, last evening. She told you she was intending to break her engagement with him. Found him out, she did, for his foul, cruel doings to me. And she so proud of her ring and all! She was greatly troubled over it, you said, and cried... And her mother thought she was with you, so she left the door unlatched and went to bed. But come morning, no Alice, and her bed not slept in, though she left Jenny Stull, mind you, at eight of the clock. She came to the pond—” the croaking voice boomed out over their heads — “and then what happened?”

Metcalfe answered, “She must have thrown herself in.”

“Thrown herself in,” repeated Old Liz. “Suicide...” She tested the stake’s point with a skinny linger. “Then she’s to lie at the crossroads, for the unholy spirit that she is. With this through her soft white bosom, till the Day of Doom...”

“No!” The mother screamed it again.

“Yes,” continued Old Liz inexorably. “And the man who murdered her, he’ll live yet a while, with his guilt hidden in his soul. But when he dies...” She shivered involuntarily, and closed her eyes.

“Unless—” her voice came strangely hollow and distant — “unless he owns up... Then she may lie in holy ground, in the churchyard, and the Lord may take mercy on his soul.” Abruptly she pointed the stake at Owen Metcalfe. “You didn’t meet her here, last evening?”

“No! I didn’t see her all day yesterday, nor last night either.”

The old woman laughed then — a high-pitched, rasping, mirthless cackle. “You didn’t quarrel with her, over me? Over breaking the engagement, poor thing, because she’d seen the evil of your soul when you harried me? You didn’t plead with her, beg her to come back to you? You didn’t lose your temper when it was all no use? You didn’t push her in, hold her under till she was still, push her body out into the deeper water...”

“No, no, no! I tell you, I was nowhere near her the whole day.” Metcalfe hesitated. Then: “How do you know she was pushed in?”

“The dead may speak,” said Old Liz, “though they have no tongues. She told me someone pushed her. And you have told me who pushed her — you, Owen Metcalfe!”

Metcalfe cursed her. “You foul, ranting, toothless devil’s hag! Is this your revenge?”

Old Liz touched the body with the stake. “Her bare hand speaks for her, poor lass! Torn and cut, as I cut my hands, on this very branch. She didn’t throw herself in to die — she was pushed! For she tried desperately to pull herself out of the water by this same branch — as I did... And her closed fist — what’s in it, Owen Metcalfe?”

Her voice lifted in a triumphant chant. “You don’t know? You didn’t notice what she was doing the very moment you pushed her? What she clutched in her hand — the one thing which proves you were here with her?... Open her fist, Owen Metcalfe,” Old Liz taunted. “Open it, and see. Or look on the fingers of the other hand, and guess as I guessed!”

The man whirled suddenly, to run. Old Liz lifted the stake, spear-like, and hurled it at his legs. He stumbled, tripped — then the crowd was on him, holding him still.

The mother frantically pried open the girl’s fist. She held up a ring.

“She took it off to return to him,” panted Liz. “How else would it get from her left hand to her right? For whom else would she remove it? And if she’d given it to him earlier, would he not have said so, and shown it to us? But he denied seeing her, all day — twice he denied it!... Do you own up now, Owen Metcalfe? Else it’s the stake for her and hell-fire, sure, for you!”

The man held her beady stare for a long moment. Then he collapsed, weeping softly.