An act of guilt

Ditta Sylvester, Contributor

The tenement house at Bird Street was a long, unattractive row of rooms rambling dejectedly across the yard.

The single kitchen, which was common to all tenants, was where the women met to cook and gossip. Their primary topic of discussion was their landlord, Toby Samuels, whose brother, Amos, lived with him in the same yard. Both men were over 70.

"You hear dem last night?" Jean asked nobody in particular.

"Toby and him bredda?" Carol responded.

Jean nodded.

"Patrick hear him telling Maas Amos to look somewhere go. Now him teck set pon Lisa to!"

Patrick was Jean's live-in boyfriend and the father of their eight-year-old daughter, Lisa.

"If Toby meck him own family haffi run way go a foreign, what you expect?" Miss Agnes asked.

"So Maas Amos don't have any but him bredda?" Carol enquired.

"No," Miss Agnes informed her. "No children, an him wife dead. Poor man!"

"Landlord a go way," Velma, another tenant, said, walking into the kitchen.

"Go 'way, Toby!" Miss Agnes muttered, peeping through a crack in the wall.

The women giggled.

Toby heard them and he knew they were laughing at him. If only he could get rid of the whole lot of them! Even the children were a source of annoyance. That skinny little Lisa was the worst of them, calling him 'Toe-butt' to his face! Pushing open the rickety gate, he stepped resolutely into the street. He wasn't going to be putting up with this foolishness for another day!

It was about five o'clock that Wednesday evening when Patrick came back home.

"Lisa come?" he asked Jean.

" No," she replied. "She tell me dis morning she going wait on you today."

"Yes, but I don't see her," Patrick replied. "I a wait long, long so I believe she come home."

"Wait till she reach here today!" Jean warned.

But Lisa was still missing after night had fallen. The other women tried to comfort Jean.

"Is one a her friend yard she gone, you know," Carol theorised.

"Bet you soon see Patrick coming wid her," Miss Agnes predicted, patting Jean's back.

"But is night now!" Jean exclaimed. "I haffi go look to."

She got up, walked quickly across the yard and the others followed.

By that time the following day, Lisa had been officially declared missing. Patrick and his friends had run out of places to search. Amos gave whatever encouragement he could but Toby remained aloof. Jean's friends tried to keep a brave face in her presence while the young mother seemed close to losing her mind.

She almost did when the news came a few days later that her daughter had been found strangled in a gully below Bird Street.

Toby was home when the police came a few days after.

"Where were you on Wednesday, Mr Samuels?" one of them asked him.

"I go to look bout some rent business," he replied.

"Anybody saw you?"

"Don't believe so. Di place did full so mi haffi go back."

To the landlord's chagrin, the officers proceeded to search his house. Hidden under Toby's mattress they found rope similar to that which the coroner said had been used to strangle Lisa. Toby was arrested and brought to trial two weeks later.

The case was over almost before it began. The rope the police had found was confirmed as the murder weapon. That, with the testimonies to the defendant's hatred of the dead child, was enough to convict him.

"Guilty!" shirked the headlines. "The gallows for the landlord."

Amos sat in his brother's chair, reading the papers. Life was just beginning to get back to normal. He had given Jean and Patrick enough money to cover Lisa's funeral expenses.

Maybe this place should get a touch-up too, Amos mused. Toby had put his name in the bank account a year ago when he (Toby) had taken ill. He went into his room and pulled a drawer open. Yes, there was more than enough money available to renovate the place. He would be a great landlord, Amos told himself.

He was about to close the drawer again when his eyes fell on the ribbon. He froze. How could he have forgotten this here? Suppose the police had seen it? He could fight the overpowering urge which had made him take it from Lisa's hair. For years, he had managed to stay away from little girls, knowing well what trouble that could bring him. But the sickness of his perversion consumed him.

Having overheard their plan, he had met Lisa and told her that Patrick had sent him instead. Trustingly, she had followed him. But her reaction to his touch had been violent. He had not planned on killing her but what choice had he? Where would he go after she told everybody what he had tried to do? Now he could live out his days here, undisturbed even by Toby. Framing his brother had been easy.

Amos grinned, quietly closed the drawer and returned to his seat. A burst of laughter from the kitchen made his heart leap. It was Jean. She was still young and sure to have more children. Girls, he hoped.

Amos chuckled, happily.