"Who Killed Judge Pyncheon?": The Scene of the Crime Revisited

99 NOTES "WHO KILLED JUDGE PYNCHEON?" THE SCENE OF THE. CRIME REVISITED Clara B. Cox Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Alfred H. Marks questions whether the death of Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is prematurely brought on by another man.1 In his examination of this mystery, Marks directs his attention to Clifford Pyncheon, the Judge's ghost-like cousin, who has returned to the house after a thirty-year imprisonment for murder. Indeed, it is because of this ghost-like appearance that Marks singles Clifford out as the man who "killed" Judge Pyncheon. Interest in Marks' case against Clifford has remained high since his article first appeared in 1956, and his theory has drawn favorable comment from such critics as Roy R. Male2 and Richard H. Brodhead.3 Yet, while his argument that a second party contributed to the Judge's demise adds a new dimension to the novel, problems exist with his choice of a suspect. Another character in the story appears more likely to have been the catalyst of the Judge's hereditary tendency to hemorrhaging. And it is through this character's complicity in that event that the novel achieves the structural unity scholars have thus far found lacking.4 Before this new suspect is examined, however, consideration must be given to the problems inherent in Marks' case against Clifford. Marks makes much ado about Clifford's "ghostly" appearance and points to the numerous times that Hawthorne calls him a ghost in the novel. It is the shock of seeing Clifford as a spectre that brought on Jaffrey's demise, Marks asserts. He attributes this shock to the Judge's weariness, the fact that he has not seen Clifford for thirty years and is more than surprised by his appearance, and the "haunted" environment of the parlor. In rebutting Marks' assertion, it is significant to note that Phoebe, the young Pyncheon country cousin, also has her first encounter with Clifford in that very parlor, and Clifford is wearing the same dressing-gown he later wears the day ofJaffrey's last visit. She, however, is not frightened by him, as she indicates in a later conversation with the Judge, who has asked her: "Or, has anything happened to disturb you?—anything remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah's family? An arrival, eh? I thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin. To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle an innocent young girl!" 100Notes "You quite puzzle me, Sir," replied Phoebe, gazing inquiringly at the Judge. "There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike man, whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah's brother. I am afraid (but you, Sir, will know better than I) that he is not quite in his sound senses; but so mild and quiet, he seems to be, that a mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he would play with the baby as if he were only a few years older than itself. He startle me! Oh, no indeed!"5 Thus, one must question whether a young, innocent girl like Phoebe could fail to be startled by Clifford, while a man "hard, imperious, and withal, cold as ice" like the Judge would be literally scared to death. Hawthorne leaves little doubt about the Judge's determination to pursue his course with Clifford. Jaffrey is a "hard, relentless man" with "strength of purpose," "sturdy nerves," and "a heart of iron." His visage turns "inexpressibly fierce and grim" in an early attempt to see Clifford; his smile on that occasion "rendered his aspect not the less, but more frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath or hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose, which annihilated everything but itself" (p. 129). This determination, the Judge's traits, and the fact that he is expecting Clifford's presence in the parlor at any moment indicate that Jaffrey would not be startled by this appearance, should it occur. It is more difficult to picture the child-like Clifford, a lover of beauty, withstanding the shock of witnessing the Judge's expiration...