Free The Evening Spider by Emily Arsenault Page B

burned by Mary, but the letter to Susan is in existence.Susan says that Mary told her she had come home because she thought she was about to become a mother. The person with whom she had been criminally intimate, she said, was the Rev. Mr. Hayden, and she hoped he could aid her in some way. Mrs. Studley says that on Aug. 29 Mary made a similar confession to her, and told her that the letter sent to Hayden through her sister contained a request that he should do something to remove her anxiety. Mr. Studley, who carried the girl home, says he told her on the way that he would see Hayden and ask him to take care of her; but when he reached Rockland Hayden was in South Madison, where he preached, and he had to return to Guilford without having seen him. Hayden’s house is on the same road, and not far south of Mr. Stannard’s. On Monday Mary went to his house two or three times on errands. Late in the day she went in that direction, and upon her return her sister says that she told her that Hayden had met her, and told her to keep up her courage, for he would go to the City of Middletown in the morning and get something which would remove the cause of her anxiety. On Tuesday morning Hayden told his wife he was going to Durham to buy some oats. He passed Durham and went to Middletown, and on his way home he stopped at the Stannard house, about noon, and got a glass of water. The water was warm, and Mary volunteered to go to a spring which was on the road to his house, and get some that was cool. At the spring she dipped up a pail of water, and he drank of it; Susan says that when Mary returned she said to her that Hayden while at the spring had told her that he had procured some medicine, and had asked herto meet him in an hour in the woods opposite the Stannard house, near a rock known as Big Rock. Soon afterward Mary went in the direction of the rock, with a tin pail in her hand, saying she was going to pick blackberries. Her friends never saw her again alive. Late in the afternoon her father became anxious about her, and went into the woods to find her. His first search failed, and he returned. By the advice of Susan, who had kept to herself the story about Hayden, he went again, and this time he found his daughter’s dead body. It seemed plain that her murderer had knocked her down with a blood-stained stone which was lying near her, and had then stabbed her in the throat with a sharp and narrow knife-blade. She lay as one prepared for burial; her arms had been folded on her breast, and her sun-bonnet had been placed under her head. Her empty tin-pail stood near the body, but no weapon could be found . . .
    The article went on to describe a knife of Herbert Hayden’s that was taken into evidence and examined under a microscope:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  In the little notch for the thumb-nail on one sharp and narrow blade were found 15 or 20 corpuscles, which were pronounced corpuscles of human blood. But Hayden’s wife testified that when he went to his wood-lot that day he and his wife agreed that with this blade he had recently cut one of his fingers.
    The article included some details of the whereabouts of the reverend on the day of Mary’s death—including this one:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Mr. Hayden said that in Middletown, Tuesday, he had bought some arsenic with which to kill rats, and had hidden it in his barn, to keep it away from his children.
    Herbert Hayden was arrested, and there was a hearing. He denied ever having an affair with Mary Stannard, and his wife provided supportive testimony. His lawyers managed to keep Mary’s half-sister’s statements out of the hearing, and he was eventually released. But more evidence against him was found after that initial hearing. Most compellingly, sixty grains of arsenic were found in Mary Stannard’s stomach when her body was exhumed and reexamined. She