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Murder on the VineyardDecember 29, 2008 No, there hasn't been another one: this particular murder took place on June 30, 1940. The only big news in these parts (and my excuse for the long silence) is that I haven't been able to access the Internet from my home computer in a week. Literally. Monday night it was its usual funky self. Tuesday morning? Little to no connectivity. Nada. The surprise is that last Tuesday was bright and clear, when the connection is usually good. Since then none of my entreaties and efforts (which have included uninstalling and reinstalling the wireless adapter, studying the connection info on my neighbor's laptop -- in the same building, and we're all on the same network -- calling in neighbor's computer guy, and buying a new adapter) have made a bit of difference. The last time something like this happened, it was because Comcast, source of the wireless signal that my connection has been riding on, upgraded its security. It took a while to figure this out, but once my neighbor/landlady gave me her password I was online again. This time who knows? Yesterday I signed up for a Comcast deal: digital phone service and high-speed Internet access for a very few dollars more than I'm currently paying Verizon for just the phone. (Verizon still has no plans to bring DSL or FIOS to my neighborhood, so adios, Verizon.) Meanwhile I'm fact-checking the Civil War history I'm editing on my neighbor's laptop and accessing my ISP e-mail on Cris's desktop -- Cris is currently in M.V. Hospital recoup-and-rehabbing after hip replacement surgery, and I'm periodically running by her house to drop off mail, do laundry, and generally check on things. Christmas Eve around sundown Travvy decided to do some of his own checking: as we were leaving Cris's house, he bounded off through the very brambly woods and was AWOL for almost an hour, scaring me half to death. That might have turned into a murder on Martha's Vineyard, but it didn't. The murder in question is the subject of Mystery on the Vineyard: Politics, Passion and Scandal on East Chop, by Thomas Dresser (Charleston, S.C.: History Press, 2008). Yes, people, I have actually read a book that was not about dogs and that I was not getting paid to edit. See what not having an in-house Internet connection will do for you? The murder (and rape) victim was one Clara Smith, a septuagenarian Christian Scientist who came to Martha's Vineyard to take a two-week diction course at the Rice School of the Spoken Word on East Chop. The Rice School and the associated Rice Playhouse had both been founded by actor Phidelah Rice, who was in ill health that summer of 1940. His younger brother, Ralph Huntingdon Rice, a teacher at the school, was charged with the murder, tried, and acquitted after a scant 45 minutes of deliberation, and with good reason: the prosecution's case was flimsy and the defense pointed out that there was a more likely suspect in the wings. The book then follows the subsequent life of said suspect, one Harold Tracy, a charming wastrel with an alcohol problem who was employed by the school-playhouse. There's plenty of detail in this book: Dresser's done a fine job excavating in newspaper morgues, not least that of the Vineyard Gazette. But the events aren't woven into a story, and alone the historical detail -- Hitler is trying to bomb Britain into submission, and the Boston Red Sox are wiping out in the American League, among other things -- doesn't create a feel for time and place. I kept wanting to slow Dresser down, to ask him to explore a certain detail in more depth or take a closer look over here. Which is sort of what an editor does, or a good writing group. Why were the local law enforcement officials so gung-ho for Huntingdon Rice as a suspect? Hmmmm . . . Rice might be aptly described as neurasthenic (I love that word). High-strung, nervous, fussy, a wreck if his routine was interrupted. The word "queer" is applied to him more than once, but with no clue about what connotations the word carried in 1940. No heterosexual relationships were in evidence -- could he have been homosexual, or at least perceived as such by the local cops? Could this have been a factor in their eagerness to perceive the worst of him? And how about class, and the summer/year-round split, which is both perennial and perennially underacknowledged? Dresser's dependence on the Vineyard Gazette as a source, and on the Gazette's longtime and locally revered editor, Henry Beetle Hough, as a commentator, doesn't help: Hough and the Gazette were avid purveyors of Martha's Vineyard as idyllic summer resort, whose troubles must all come from somewhere else. Class? Class antagonism? Perish the very thought! Well, the details contained in Mystery on the Vineyard are interesting, especially if you've already got a Vineyard story to fit them into. Quite possibly the murder of Clara Smith and the prosecution of Ralph Huntingdon Rice would be better served by a novel or a play. |
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