THE WIDOWER TURMORE
by Ambrose Bierce
The circumstances under which Joram Turmore became a
widower have never been popularly understood. I know
them, naturally, for I am Joram Turmore; and my wife,
the late Elizabeth Mary Turmore, is by no means ignorant
of them; but although she doubtless relates them, yet
they remain a secret, for not a soul has ever believed
her.
When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin she was very
wealthy, otherwise I could hardly have afforded to
marry, for I had not a cent, and Heaven had not put
into my heart any intention to earn one. I held the
Professorship of Cats in the University of Graymaulkin,
and scholastic pursuits had unfitted me for the heat
and burden of business or labor. Moreover, I could
not forget that I was a Turmore--a member of a family
whose motto from the time of William of Normandy has
been Laborare est errare. The only known infraction
of the sacred family tradition occurred when Sir
Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore, an illustrious
master burglar of the seventeenth century, personally
assisted at a difficult operation undertaken by some
of his workmen. That blot upon our escutcheon cannot
be contemplated without the most poignant mortification.
My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the Graymaulkin
University had not, of course, been marked by any
instance of mean industry. There had never, at any
one time, been more than two students of the Noble
Science, and by merely repeating the manuscript
lectures of my predecessor, which I had found among
his effects (he died at sea on his way to Malta) I
could sufficiently sate their famine for knowledge
without really earning even the distinction which
served in place of salary.
Naturally, under the straitened circumstances, I
regarded Elizabeth Mary as a kind of special Providence.
She unwisely refused to share her fortune with me, but
for that I cared nothing; for, although by the laws of
that country (as is well known) a wife has control of
her separate property during her life, it passes to
the husband at her death; nor can she dispose of it
otherwise by will. The mortality among wives is
considerable, but not excessive.
Having married Elizabeth Mary and, as it were,
ennobled her by making her a Turmore, I felt that
the manner of her death ought, in some sense, to
match her social distinction. If I should remove
her by any of the ordinary marital methods I should
incur a just reproach, as one destitute of a proper
family pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable
plan.
In this emergency I decided to consult the Turmore
archives, a priceless collection of documents,
comprising the records of the family from the time
of its founder in the seventh century of our era.
I knew that among these sacred muniments I should
find detailed accounts of all the principal murders
committed by my sainted ancestors for forty generations.
From that mass of papers I could hardly fail to
derive the most valuable suggestions.
The collection contained also most interesting
relics. There were patents of nobility granted to
my forefathers for daring and ingenious removals of
pretenders to thrones, or occupants of them; stars,
crosses and other decorations attesting services of
the most secret and unmentionable character;
miscellaneous gifts from the world's greatest
conspirators, representing an intrinsic money value
beyond computation. There were robes, jewels, swords
of honor, and every kind of "testimonials of esteem";
a king's skull fashioned into a wine cup; the title
deeds to vast estates, long alienated by confiscation,
sale, or abandonment; an illuminated breviary that
had belonged to Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore
of accursed memory; embalmed ears of several of the
family's most renowned enemies; the small intestine
of a certain unworthy Italian statesman inimical to
Turmores, which, twisted into a jumping rope, had
served the youth of six kindred generations--mementoes
and souvenirs precious beyond the appraisals of
imagination, but by the sacred mandates of tradition
and sentiment forever inalienable by sale or gift.
As the head of the family, I was custodian of all
these priceless heirlooms, and for their safe
keeping had constructed in the basement of my
dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose
solid stone walls and single iron door could defy
alike the earthquake's shock, the tireless assaults
of Time, and Cupidity's unholy hand.
To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of sentiment
and tenderness, and rich in suggestions of crime,
I now repaired for hints upon assassination. To my
unspeakable astonishment and grief I found it empty!
Every shelf, every chest, every coffer had been
rifled. Of that unique and incomparable collection
not a vestige remained! Yet I proved that until I
had myself unlocked the massive metal door, not a
bolt nor bar had been disturbed; the seals upon the
lock had been intact.
I passed the night in alternate lamentation and
research, equally fruitless, the mystery was
impenetrable to conjecture, the pain invincible
to balm. But never once throughout that dreadful
night did my firm spirit relinquish its high design
against Elizabeth Mary, and daybreak found me more
resolute than before to harvest the fruits of my
marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring me
into nearer spiritual relations with my dead
ancestors, and to lay upon me a new and more
inevitable obedience to the suasion that spoke
in every globule of my blood.
My plan of action was soon formed, and procuring
a stout cord I entered my wife's bedroom finding
her, as I expected, in a sound sleep. Before she
was awake, I had her bound fast, hand and foot.
She was greatly surprised and pained, but heedless
of her remonstrances, delivered in a high key, I
carried her into the now rifled strong-room, which
I had never suffered her to enter, and of whose
treasures I had not apprised her. Seating her,
still bound, in an angle of the wall, I passed the
next two days and nights in conveying bricks and
mortar to the spot, and on the morning of the third
day had her securely walled in, from floor to
ceiling. All this time I gave no further heed to
her pleas for mercy than (on her assurance of
non-resistance, which I am bound to say she
honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of
her limbs. The space allowed her was about four
feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of the
top course, in contact with the ceiling of the
strong-room, she bade me farewell with what I
deemed the composure of despair, and I rested
from my work, feeling that I had faithfully
observed the traditions of an ancient and
illustrious family. My only bitter reflection,
so far as my own conduct was concerned, came of
the consciousness that in the performance of my
design I had labored; but this no living soul
would ever know.
After a night's rest I went to the Judge of the
Court of Successions and Inheritances and made
a true and sworn relation of all that I had
done--except that I ascribed to a servant the
manual labor of building the wall. His honor
appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful
examination of the work, and upon his report
Elizabeth Mary Turmore was, at the end of a week,
formally pronounced dead. By due process of law
I was put into possession of her estate, and
although this was not by hundreds of thousands
of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it
raised me from poverty to affluence and brought
me the respect of the great and good.
Some six months after these events strange rumors
reached me that the ghost of my deceased wife had
been seen in several places about the country, but
always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin.
These rumors, which I was unable to trace to any
authentic source, differed widely in many particulars,
but were alike in ascribing to the apparition a
certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity
combined with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts.
Not only was the spirit attired in most costly raiment,
but it walked at noonday, and even drove! I was
inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking
there might be something more than superstition in
the popular belief that only the spirits of the
unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some
workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the
now long unentered strong-room, and ordered them to
demolish the brick wall that I had built about the
partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body
of Elizabeth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal
part might be willing to accept as an equivalent to
the privilege of ranging at will among the haunts
of the living.
In a few minutes we had broken down the wall and,
thrusting a lamp through the breach, I looked in.
Nothing! Not a bone, not a lock of hair, not a
shred of clothing--the narrow space which, upon my
affidavit, had been legally declared to hold all
that was mortal of the late Mrs. Turmore was
absolutely empty! This amazing disclosure, coming
upon a mind already overwrought with too much of
mystery and excitement, was more than I could bear.
I shrieked aloud and fell in a fit. For months
afterward I lay between life and death, fevered
and delirious; nor did I recover until my physician
had had the providence to take a case of valuable
jewels from my safe and leave the country.
The next summer I had occasion to visit my wine
cellar, in one corner of which I had built the
now long disused strong-room. In moving a cask of
Madeira I struck it with considerable force against
the partition wall, and was surprised to observe
that it displaced two large square stones forming
a part of the wall.
Applying my hands to these, I easily pushed them
out entirely, and looking through saw that they
had fallen into the niche in which I had immured
my lamented wife; facing the opening which their
fall left, and at a distance of four feet, was
the brickwork which my own hands had made for that
unfortunate gentlewoman's restraint. At this
significant revelation I began a search of the
wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I found four
historically interesting but intrinsically valueless
objects:
First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of
state (Florentine) of the eleventh century; second,
an illuminated vellum breviary with the name of
Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore inscribed
in colors on the title page; third, a human skull
fashioned into a drinking cup and deeply stained
with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight
Commander of the Imperial Austrian Order of
Assassins by Poison.
That was all--not an object having commercial
value, no papers--nothing. But this was enough
to clear up the mystery of the strong-room. My
wife had early divined the existence and purpose
of that apartment, and with the skill amounting
to genius had effected an entrance by loosening
the two stones in the wall.
Through that opening she had at several times
abstracted the entire collection, which doubtless
she had succeeded in converting into coin of the
realm. When with an unconscious justice which
deprives me of all satisfaction in the memory I
decided to build her into the wall, by some
malign fatality I selected that part of it in
which were these movable stones, and doubtless
before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she
had removed them and, slipping through into the
wine cellar, replaced them as they were originally
laid. From the cellar she had easily escaped
unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant
parts. I have endeavored to procure a warrant,
but the Lord High Baron of the Court of Indictment
and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead,
and says my only course is to go before the Master
in Cadavery and move for a writ of disinterment
and constructive revival. So it looks as if I must
suffer without redress this great wrong at the
hands of a woman devoid alike of principle and
shame.
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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