Found Drowned

by Norris, Laurie Glenn;

  “How long have you known the Harney family?” Oxley asked.

  “About sixteen years.”

  “What can you tell us about the relationship between Michael William Harney and his daughter Mary?”

  “I didn’t see them together very often. Sometimes in church. Sometimes in Bailey’s store over the years. I found him surly a lot of the time. Mary always minded when she was out in public. She was well behaved. I’ll say that for her parents.”

  “What can you tell us about the relationship between William and Ann Harney?” Justice Carter asked.

  “In her day Ann was a lady. I believe that she came from a good family down Pictou way, but that man of hers just beat her down over the years. The poor thing never had a life with him. If it wasn’t for John Dempsey the whole bunch of them would have starved to death years ago. That man of hers is just no good. I don’t think he’s ever worked hard enough, in a single day, to break the Sabbath. Always losing one job after the other and didn’t do much of anything around the farm.”

  Freda looked at the prisoners for the first time and nodded her head for emphasis.

  “Mrs. Mills, were you at the Harneys’ home the night that Mary disappeared?” Justice Black spoke for the first time.

  “Yes, sir. I was there about midnight. A group of us women, mostly from the church, went over to bring food and to help Ann and Mabel.”

  “How did Mr. and Mrs. Harney act on that night?” Black asked.

  “Poor Ann was beside herself. She had to be forced to go lie down. I didn’t see him. But I heard from other people that he didn’t seem too worried about the whole thing. I heard that said on the night she went missing and in the days after.”

  “Do you think that Mr. and Mrs. Harney killed Mary?” Justice Carter asked.

  “Oh no, not Ann. But I’m positive that he’s done something.”

  “Why would Harney kill his daughter?”

  “I don’t know, but I know he did. He—”

  “What proof do you have?” Justice Hingley interrupted.

  “I have no real proof, just the way he acts, how he is. I’ve heard stories about him. Other people can tell you first-hand. It’s just the way he is. Something about him is sneaky.”

  “Mrs. Mills, you don’t like Mr. Harney, do you?” Hingley asked.

  The witness shook her head. “To be perfectly honest, sir, no I don’t.”

  “Does anyone else have any other questions for this witness?” Oxley asked, looking down the table at his colleagues. “No? All right, thank you, ma’am. You may go.”

  She nodded, rose, and returned to her seat.

  The questioning commenced again with Calvin Bailey, the storekeeper.

  “Harney is as mean a son of a bitch as I ever come across,” Bailey commented halfway through the interview.

  “Have you ever seen Mr. Harney in a violent mood?” Hingley asked.

  “One time last year in my store. He went after Jack Reid for making fun of him. He would have beaten him real bad if I hadn’t been there. As it was he broke his nose and it ain’t been the same since.”

  The next witness walked with a pronounced stoop to the chair.

  “Mr. Dempsey, you are a relative of Michael William Harney?”

  “Yes…yes, sir, I’m his uncle.”

  “And you lived in the same house as Mr. and Mrs. Harney and their children?”

  “I still do, yes.”

  “Do you think that Mr. Harney has anything to do with Mary Harney’s disappearance?” Oxley asked.

  “I don’t know, sir, I just don’t know…I hope not.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s my sister’s only child, and I don’t like to say anything for her sake. But I can say for a fact that he’s lazy and one of them that thinks that the world owes them a living and a coffin thrown in at the end.”

  “Laziness doesn’t make someone a murderer, Mr. Dempsey,” Hingley said.

  “No, sir, it don’t,” John agreed. “In fact, if he is innocent, laziness would likely be the reason why.”

  The crowd snickered. Oxley threw them a stern look and reached for his gavel as he asked the next question. “Where were you when Mary Harney went missing?”

  “Early that morning I brought my sister Mabel here to Oxford to sit with a woman. Mabel’s a midwife. We got to the Browns’ about one o’clock in the afternoon and had dinner with the family. Then I tended to some errands and went to see Bradley Davis about getting some pigs from him next spring. On the way out of town one of my horses threw a shoe. I went to a blacksmith here. What’s his name? Frank Smith, that’s it. Took a while for him to fix the shoe and then I stopped by at the Victoria Hotel there and ate my supper late before starting home. By the time I got back to the house it was about half past nine.”

  “So where was everyone in the house when you got back there?”

  “Ann was upstairs, lying down as she usually was. The two youngest ones were running through the house with nobody minding them. Will was out on the veranda, smoking, when I drove up.”

  “Had the alarm already been raised about Mary when you got home?”

  “No, it hadn’t. By ten o’clock I was really worried. Will came in a few minutes after I had first got home, complaining about how he had to milk the cows ’cause Mary wasn’t around. He went on about that for a while. And he had these four godawful scratches down each side of his face. He said it was Ann gave them to him. They were bad, they kept bleeding and he was carrying a towel around and wiping at them every once in a while.”

  “So no move was made to look for Mary before that time? Doesn’t that seem like a long time after to start looking for her?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “And who finally decided that it was time to go look for the girl?”

  “It was me. Will told the sheriff that it was him but it was me who started the search. I went out around to the back of the house and hollered for her. One thing I can tell you is that we often had to call Mary when she went out on errands.”

  “Why was that, now?”

  “Mary often forgot about the time. She loved being outside. In the last year or so she seemed to spend as much time away from the house as possible. I think that she just didn’t want to be there any more than she had to.”

  “Do you know why that would be?”

  “I think she just wanted to stay clear of him and his mother as much as possible.”

  “By that you mean Mr. Harney and his mother, Mabel Harney?”

  “Yes, my sister Mabel. They were always at the poor soul. Complaining and criticizing.”

  “Is it true that Mary had a beau?”

  “Yes, young Smith there. They used to meet in the evening when she went for the cows. I followed her and it was innocent enough between them.”

  “Did you follow Mary every night she went to bring in the cows?”

  “No, sir, not every night, just twice. Once I seen that Smith was meaning no harm and seemed genuinely fond of her, I left them alone.”

  “And Will Harney knew about these meetings?”

  “I think he must have seen them one night when he was coming home from work or something. He let on that he didn’t know but I’m pretty sure that he did. I’m surprised that he never went after the boy about it. But then Smith beat him in a fair fight one time last year.”

  “What happened when Mary didn’t show up after you called for her?”

  “I went back in the house and told Will that I hadn’t found her. Then I went back out and started down the river calling for her. That was when I noticed that my punt was missing. I figured that she had headed up the river with it. I walked along there for a bit in case she came back. I wasn’t too worried, she mostly took the punt in the afternoons and sometimes in the evening. After about an hour of that I
went back to the house.”

  “So now it would be half past ten or more, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were Mr. and Mrs. Harney doing when you returned home?”

  “Ann came downstairs and I told her Mary wasn’t home yet. She looked like hell, even worse than usual, and she had been crying. I never saw her move around the house so fast as she did that night. She’s been sickly for quite a while, you know. She sat at the kitchen table while Will and I argued back and forth about what to do. He kept saying that she would show up sooner or later. He got mad when I told him about the punt being gone. We talked for about a half hour until Ann jumped up from the table and grabbed a hold of Will, demanding that he go get Mary. He put her off for a while but finally the two of us set out, me in the wagon and him on horseback, each going a different way, up and down the main road, to ask people if they had seen her and if they would help us look for her. Everybody gathered at the house and we split up into groups to start looking.”

  “So that would be around half past eleven by then, Mr. Dempsey?”

  “Yes, at least that, I’d say.”

  Smith Reid was called as the next witness.

  Oxley got right to the point. “Is it true that you were Mary Harney’s beau, Mr. Reid?”

  “I never came right out and asked Mary if I could be. We just fell into a pattern. We only saw each other in the evenings whenever she went to get the cows in. And that wasn’t every night. She wouldn’t let me see her any other time.”

  “Why not?”

  “She said that her father didn’t want her keeping company with any young men. And especially not with me.”

  “Why not you?” Hingley asked.

  “Mr. Harney and the Reids don’t see eye to eye. He beat up my brother Jack a while back. Then me and Harney got into it.”

  “So you and Mary were seeing each other behind her parents’ back?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long was it that you were keeping company?”

  “About eight months, I’d say.”

  “Detective Hutt’s report says that the girl who was found on the beach on the Island was…er…with child,” Carter said.

  Smith reddened.

  “Were you and Mary Harney intimate at any time?”

  “Not in that way, sir. Mary was a lady and I respected her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  A ripple of laughter went through the audience.

  “Yes, sir. I’d swear to it on a stack of bibles.”

  “Perhaps Mary was keeping company with more than just you,” Black suggested.

  “She was a lady,” Smith repeated, red in the face again. “She wasn’t that kind of girl.”

  “Tell us where you were the night that Mary went missing,” Carter said.

  “I didn’t go to meet her that night. I had some lessons to get ready. I’m teaching this year at the Rockley School. And then I was helping Pa with shoeing the horses. I might have been able to prevent this from happening if I had gone. But it’s too late now.”

  Smith wiped an arm across his eyes.

  “Can anyone vouch for you? Swear that you did not meet Mary that night?”

  Hiram Reid stood up.

  “I can swear that he was with me. All the afternoon and evening. We were just finishing up in the barn. It was quite late and John comes running in asking if we had seen Mary that day.”

  “Is there anyone else, besides a family member, who can vouch for you, Mr. Reid?”

  “Not that I know of. But I was with my father at the time when Mary usually went for the cows. If I had been there that night it would have been Harney who’d be missing right now, not her.”

  “When was the last time you saw Mary?” Black asked.

  “The night before she went missing. I had told her I likely couldn’t come the next night due to the shoeing. I said that I would if I could. I wish….”

  Tears welled up in his eyes.

  “That’s all I have for you. Do any of my colleagues have any questions for this young man? No. All right, son, that’s it. Thank you.”

  Smith nodded his head and walked back to his seat beside his father.

  “It’s just past noon,” Oxley observed, looking at his pocket watch on the table top. “I call for a two-hour adjournment. The hearing will commence again at two o’clock.”

  “Four and a half hours and only through four witnesses. This is going to take days,” Oxley told his three companions as they walked towards the American House Hotel for their dinner. He hoped some food would help ease his headache.

  The men had just seated themselves and ordered their steaks when they were approached by a man who doffed his hat and wished them a good day.

  “Robert White from the Chignecto Post. Would it be possible to get a quote or two from you gentlemen on how things are going?”

  “No, it would not,” barked Hingley. “As a newspaper man, you should know better. We can’t make a statement to the press with a hearing in progress. Leave us alone, and go do your muckraking somewheres else. I’ve got a good mind to speak to your employer about this.” Hingley turned back to the table and lit a cigar.

  Carter shook his head and took a drink of water. “I’m sure there’s a lot of individuals over at the hall who would be happy to give you their opinion on this. Leave us to eat our dinner in peace.”

  White, still smiling, tipped his hat again and made his way to the other side of the room. He ordered the oyster stew, watched the justices, and took notes.

  ***

  Twenty-eight witnesses were questioned during the four-day hearing. Most were adamant that Will had done something to Mary. Many simply came out and proclaimed that he had indeed killed the girl. All agreed that her disappearance was the result of foul play. Mabel Harney was the only witness who spoke in Will’s defence.

  Justice Oxley, in the afternoon on the last day of the hearing, turned to Will Harney and asked if he wanted to make a statement. He nodded.

  “Go ahead, then.”

  “Me and the wife never killed—”

  Ryan stepped forward, grabbed Will under his left arm, and pulled him to his feet.

  Will began again. “Like I said all along, me and the wife never killed nobody, your honours, especially not Mary. Truth be known, she was the wife’s favourite child, Ma always said so. We had to treat her a little rough sometimes in front of the two little ones so as not to make them jealous. We never killed her. We sent her out that night like we always did to get the cows and she just never come back. Simple as that. The wife has been heartbroken ever since. Can’t talk any sense into her. She’s soft, you know. Ain’t nobody like her going to kill nobody, especially her own kid. And me, Judge, you don’t have to worry about me. I run off at the mouth a bit by times, but I’ve never done no one any real harm. I just try to provide for my family, that’s all. It’s been hard on me. Things haven’t gone like I thought they would years ago. Being a family man got in my way lots of times. Ann and me, we’re planning to move on now, maybe go to the States and start again, maybe out west. We’ll go away and never come—”

  “Mr. Harney, where were you on the night that Mary disappeared?” Oxley interrupted.

  “I was home, your Honour. After supper I was sitting in the kitchen reading the paper and yelled to Mary to go get the cows for milking. She walked down the stairs from her room, passed me, not speaking, belligerent as usual, and all dressed up in her best clothes, and out the door for the fields. Like I said before, that was the last time I saw her. I swear to God I never hurt Mary. I had nothing against her. She got on my nerves from time to time but that was it. I’m telling you straight, I didn’t touch a hair on that girl’s head.”

  Will sat down. Ann, with her head bowed, was crying silently. Justice Black rose from his seat, took a blue spotted
handkerchief out of his pocket, shook it, and walked over to Ann.

  “Mrs. Harney, is there anything you would like to say now?” Oxley asked.

  Ann started to rise from her chair.

  Oxley put his hand out. “You may remain seated, ma’am.”

  “Will never touched Mary. She lied when she told me that. I should have sent her to her Aunt Beatrice’s like she wanted.”

  Ann started to cry again.

  “Eamonn, get Mrs. Harney a glass of water.”

  The clerk laid down his pen and moved towards the pitcher at the centre of the table. Beatrice rose from her chair and, taking the water from him, nodded her thanks.

  “Just take your time, ma’am, there’s no hurry whatsoever.”

  Ann gulped the water greedily and used the blue handkerchief to blow her nose. Beatrice kept one arm around her.

  “I’m so sorry, may God forgive me. I am not a fit mother. I was never fit.” She gulped again. “I just hope that God will forgive me.”

  “Why do you ask for forgiveness?”

  Ann hung her head and slumped back. Beatrice placed a shawl around her sister. While the crowd murmured in sympathy, Justice Oxley brought them to attention with a loud bang of his gavel.

  “All right, this ends the examination part of the hearing. We’re adjourned and will meet back here as soon as a decision has been made.”

  The audience began to rise.

  “Well, gentlemen, what are your thoughts?” Oxley asked as he moved his chair closer to the table. It was six-thirty and the four justices were just settling down to supper back at the hotel. They had the dining room to themselves to discuss the hearing and come to a decision.

  ***

  Two hours later, the justices, with Eamonn Walsh trailing behind, filed back into the Odd Fellows Hall. Little boys, stationed as lookouts on the streets, either ran into buildings or let out loud whistles. People all over Oxford poured out of homes, stores, hotels, and Russell’s Tavern and hurried to the hall. It took a while to get everyone settled back into their places. Lanterns were set up throughout the building, and since it was such a warm evening some of the windows were left open. Many resumed their positions on the ladders outside. Every chair was taken and bodies crowded three deep around the perimeter of the room.