Page 7 of Night Falls on Predicament Avenue
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EFFIE
May 1901
HERFINGERNAILShad been bitten to the quick, but that didn’t stop Effie from gnawing at them when no one was looking. There were some things a person must do to manage their nervousness, and for Effie this was one of them. Her father had all but dragged her back to 322 Predicament Avenue. The hubbub was fast growing as curiosity seekers noted the doors of the abandoned house open, men coming in and out, and now a plethora of onlookers had gathered.Murder. The word spread quickly once spoken, and there was no stopping it. Regardless of the creepy tales that hovered around the property, there had never been a proven homicide in Shepherd, Iowa. It was a peaceful small town where everyone knew everyone, where churches were central to daily life, and evildoing was thwarted.
Effie stood just outside the front of the house on PredicamentAvenue, staring up at its two-story frame that seemed to tilt toward the east as if it were tired of standing. It wasn’t a very old house; it had been built maybe thirty years prior. But it was a tired house. A dying house.
“Are you all right?” A woman sidled up to Effie, who stepped away from the unwanted attention.
“Yes, of course.” Effie nodded quickly, avoiding the searching gaze that was filled more with curiosity and inquiry than concern. Word had spread—by whom and how, Effie wished she knew. Yet immediately after she’d reported the incident early this morning, somehow it had leaked. Polly had collapsed into a catatonic state of shock on arriving back home. Effie’s shouts for help had awakened the James household and turned their world upside down. “This is why there arestandardsof decorum and etiquette!” Mother had wailed before collapsing onto a velvet settee with a handkerchief clasped in her hand. In spite her theatrics, however, Mother was a strong woman and had summoned the tenacity to tend to Polly and send one of their brothers for a doctor.
Father had been less than understanding—not that Effie could blame him. She had behaved like a hooligan, not a young woman of marriageable age, and not at all with the standards expected of a lady of society, such as she was. The daughter of the bank president. Others would be more forgiving toward Polly. And that was another troublesome burden altogether.
“Was there blood?”
“Hmm?” Effie swung her head around to look at the insatiably curious woman. She frowned, registering the question. “No. I mean ... gracious!” Effie leveled a look of sheer censure on the woman, who had the decency to offer a sheepish smile and leave Effie alone.
Effie watched as the woman joined a few other townsfolk. The small group began poking around the perimeter of the house. One of them pressed her face against a window, not unlike Pollyhad done only hours before. A shudder ran up Effie’s spine. Polly had not shared what it was she’d seen, but Effie could imagine. The woman’s screams, followed by silence? It all bespoke of violence and outright death.
“Why did I have to return here?” Effie muttered under her breath. A willow tree in the front yard waved its branches like a ghoul hovering over it as a silent witness. Her father stood on the front porch, his coattails pushed back and his hands at his waist. He was in an animated conversation with the constable.
A man exited the front door, his trousers tailored to his cut figure. He glanced at Effie, then said something to her father and the constable.
“Effie.” Father’s commanding baritone jolted her into obedience, and Effie moved through the growing crowd of gawkers.
Father extended his hand to Effie as she went up the stairs. She recognized the third male as Rand Fletcher, a local businessman who lived down the street from 322 Predicament Avenue. He was handsome in an angular sort of way, and Effie had been only a few years behind him in school. He shifted his eyes away from her as she looked up to meet his gaze.
That didn’t bode well. Effie tried not to squirm. Mr. Fletcher had always been friendly, if not warm, and confident. He had a habit of meeting women with a direct expression as if they were his equal. Now Effie felt diminished beneath the aversion of his attention. As though she were indeed beneath him—or was foolish or had done something horribly wrong.
Carlton James, Effie’s father, glowered at her from beneath his bushy gray brows. “Be honest now.”
“I’m nothing if not honest,” Effie responded, biting her tongue at her father’s darkening expression. Shehadacted immaturely, caught up in her sister’s mission to be adventurous and take risks before ... well, Effie had never been an adventurer, nor was she a risk-taker. She was a good Christian woman with ideals and hopes of having her own home one day, and it certainlywouldn’t be anything like this dreadful house on Predicament Avenue that—
“Euphemia!” Carlton James’s bark was worse than his bite, Effie knew, but when her father used her full name, she not only listened but felt thoroughly chastised.
The constable, whom Effie recognized as Constable Talbot, cleared his throat. “Miss James, you have raised quite the alarm in our community.”
Effie exchanged a glance with Rand Fletcher. Once again, he averted his eyes.
“I merely reported what I ... what my sister witnessed.” Effie felt her throat tighten with a growing desperation she couldn’t explain. “We heard screaming, and then there was just ... nothing. Pure silence. But Polly had looked through the window and—”
Rand cleared his throat, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb toward the innards of the house. “There is nothing inside, Miss James.” He skimmed his gaze across Effie’s face. “No body. No woman injured or dead.”
“Which matches what I saw when I first arrived here,” Constable Talbot concluded.
“Me too!” Gerald Ambrose piped up, a member of the town council and owner of the local drugstore. He stomped his feet on the porch as if to clear mud from his already clean shoes. “Except I did step in some moldy food on the floor in the kitchen.”
“That has no bearing on this.” Constable Talbot dismissed the comment. Two ladies approached the bottom of the stairs, stealing Constable Talbot’s attention for a moment. “Mrs. Jarvis, Mrs. Clements.”
“We’re here to offer our assistance with cleaning up after the body.” The older women exchanged glances, but Effie could see the curiosity etched into the fine lines of their powdered faces. Murder did that to a town. Everyone and their mothers’ brothers would turn out to tour the murder house, to see the bloodstains and speculate on what had happened.
Effie recalled reading in the paper about a town not much different from Shepherd, where over three hundred people gathered and made their way through the home where a family had been axed to death in their beds. Of course, the victims had been removed, but only after twenty or so had already viewed them, attempting to help the police.
It was what people did when a serious crime had been committed in their small town—offer their help while pretending not to be curious. In the end, though, it was mostly a fascination with the macabre. And it sickened Effie.
“Constable,” Effie broke in, desperate to end this growing carnival before it became newsworthy. “My sister and I may have acted foolishly, but my sister has taken to her bed and—”
