set off at a trot and saw the two boys turn the corner. A little over a block away, white and colored people were congregating. The address was 809 Washington Street. There was a trellis gate with climbing roses starting to bud. Standing just outside a group of colored women on the walk was a tall white man in a bowler. He was chewing a cigar stub.
“Sir, what happened here?”
“Widow woman got killed. Say her washwoman done it. Somebody at the C&O seen the girl coming and going from the house.”
About fifty feet down the street was a sleek chestnut mare hooked to a buggy. I recognized her. She nibbled at a patch of new grass at the edge of a yard. One of the buggy wheels was up on the curb.
A tall man with thick brown hair parted in the middle and a Vandyke emerged from the house, heading for the street. He was carrying a small black bag. That was Dr. George Vanderslice, coroner for the city of Hampton, the owner of the mare. He walked to the trellis gate and stopped, casting his eyes about until he saw the buggy.
“Phoebe!” he called. The mare lifted her head and nickered, but didn’t move. He opened the gate and started toward the buggy. The people on the sidewalk made a little room for him, but they still blocked my way.
“Dr. Vanderslice!” I shouted. “Can you give me any information?”
“Go to the sheriff’s office, Charlie. Get a statement there.”
“Has there been a homicide?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Go to the sheriff’s.”
“Who was the victim, Dr. Vanderslice? Was it a woman?”
“Mrs. Ida Belote, a widow,” he said. “Now get going!”
The name was painted on the mailbox. I made a note of the spelling. The house stood a hundred yards from the C&O depot. I headed down Washington Street at a sprint. Sure enough, Poindexter was on the platform. His cap was askew and his eyes glistened with excitement.
“Did they tell you I seen the colored girl, Charlie, the one does the washing for the widow woman? Seen her walking fast toward Sam Howard’s store about 11 o’clock this morning. Why I reckon this is the biggest thing ever happened in my life.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll have to get your statement.”
“Couple guys loafing on the mail carts this afternoon heard some boys hollering and said there must be trouble.” He whistled. “This sure beats it, don’t it? Neighbor lady brought the girls in.”
“What girls?”
“The widow woman’s girls. Two of them. They’re sitting in there right now.”
I pushed open the swinging doors into the depot. The sun hung just above the rooftops and the air was getting chill. It swirled at my ankles as the doors shut behind me. A woman I would guess to be in her fifties was sitting on the bench. She was wearing a straw bonnet, the kind you’d expect to see in summer. It sat too far back on her head and the ribbon was untied. A pale, thin girl was leaning her head on the woman’s shoulder, and a younger girl was leaning hers on the pale girl’s. The younger girl had a pink peppermint stick in her mouth.
The woman on the bench sat forward when she saw two sheriff’s officers approaching from the platform. The girls raised their heads. The officer walking in front was a big man with sandy red hair and rosy cheeks. The other officer was smaller, wiry build, brown hair.
“Ma’am, I’m Deputy Leslie Curtis Jr.,” the officer in front said. “This is Officer R. D. Hope. Are these your children?”
“No,” she said. “These are Mrs. Belote’s children. I’m Mrs. Belote’s neighbor. This is her daughter Harriet,” she indicated the pale girl beside her, “and this is her baby girl, Sadie. Sarah Elizabeth.” She patted the knee of the younger girl. Harriet looked pretty calm. Sadie’s eyes and nose were red from crying.
Sadie took the peppermint stick from her mouth. “Is Momma all right?” she asked the deputy. “Did she get hurt?”
“She did, honey,” the deputy said. “We’ll just have to wait and see how bad. Do you girls remember your momma having trouble with anybody?”
“Uh-huh,” Sadie said. “Momma was mad with Virgie about taking her skirt.”
“Who’s Virgie?”
“Virginia Christian,” the older girl Harriet said. “She’s the colored girl who washes clothes for my mother. My mother thought she’d stolen her best black skirt. But we found it.” Harriet’s face hardly moved as she spoke. She sat rigid as a feral cat. Her voice seemed to come from somewhere else. Her eyes looked black as ink.
“Do you know where this colored girl lives?”
“Wine Street,” Harriet said. “Three hundred something.”
“Ma’am, has any family come round?” the deputy asked the woman on the bench.
“Not yet,” the woman said. “The girls have an older sister, Pauline Wright. She was married just this past year. Lives over in Newport News. I’m sure she’ll get here soon as she hears the news. Then there’s Mrs. Belote’s brother in Norfolk, a businessman.”
“I hate him,” Harriet said.
“Goodness!” the woman said. “You shouldn’t speak that way about your uncle.”
“I want Pauline to come,” Harriet said.
The woman nodded and stroked the girl’s hair. “She will, dear. She will.”
“Ma’am, could we ask you to look after the girls, then? Sheriff’s office ain’t really a fit place,” the deputy said.
“Of course,” the woman said.
“Well, R. D.,” the deputy said, “let’s tell Chas about this colored girl.”
“All right, Junior,” the other officer said. They tipped their hats to the woman on the bench. “We’re much obliged, ma’am.”
Passersby had joined the crowd on the street in front of the Belote house. A couple of saddle horses were tied to the fence. A freight wagon was parked in the street. The teamsters were smoking cigarettes with their boots propped up on the rail of the wagon. They were watching a pack of boys roll hoops in the street.
“You men get that rig moving!” the deputy hollered.
“All of you, move on!” the other officer said. No one did, except for the teamsters.
A hearse from Rees’ Funeral Parlor was parked where Dr. Vanderslice’s buggy had been. Two men filed out the back door of the house carrying a litter. A body was bound in a bed sheet. Dark splotches stained the sheet. Some of the women in the crowd gasped and put kerchiefs to their faces.
“Look yonder!” a white boy hollered. “That there’s a corpse!” His hoop banged into the picket fence and a woman shrieked.
“You boys don’t get on, I’ll
