The Headsman

by James Neal Harvey

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Ethel, I’m sorry.”

  “Ayuh. There’s a fresh pot of coffee there on the stove. Help yourself. Mugs are in the cupboard.”

  As Jud moved to get himself coffee, Delury stood up. “I’ll be in the other room, Chief.” He picked up his coffee mug and put it into the sink, then left.

  The mugs had cartoon characters on them: the Seven Dwarfs. Jud picked out a Grumpy and filled it with coffee before sitting down across from Ethel Ballard. The surface of the table was covered with red polka-dotted oilcloth and its cheerful color seemed out of place under the circumstances. It was warm in the kitchen and Jud unzipped his jacket and put his cap down on a nearby chair. He looked over at her, trying to gauge her emotional state but not succeeding. It could be that she was actually this tough, but it could also be that she was simply numb from shock. “You have any warning this was coming?”

  “No. You ask me, it was a dumb damn thing to do. We were going to get out of here, you know. Sell the house and move to Jacksonville. Art’s got a cousin lives down there.”

  “Why do you think he did it?”

  She fixed him with a steady gaze. “I don’t know. He didn’t have any troubles. Not big ones, anyway. If he did I would have known about them.”

  “He was pretty upset, wasn’t he, by the Dickens girl’s death?”

  “Oh, yes. We all were. But for Art it was a lot worse.”

  “Why was that?”

  Her small eyes were like bits of blue china. They gleamed as she spoke. “Because he saw the headsman.”

  “You believe that, Ethel?”

  “Believe it? Of course I believe it. He told me about it. Saw him plain as day. So maybe he was afraid. But he didn’t have no reason to be.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Art was harmless, that’s why. Never hurt nobody. Worked all his life in Swanson’s Hardware, let Bill Swanson walk all over him. Just the same way Bill’s father did when he was alive and running the place. They do that to you, you know.”

  “Who does what?”

  “All of ’em. They treat you like dirt. Not just the Swansons, either. The whole crowd that runs this town. It’s like they own it, and the rest of us just work for them. But Art never caused no trouble, not to them or anybody else. Whatever they dished out, he took it.”

  She drank some of her coffee. “One time he went two years without a raise. He knew the store was making money, too, both of them years. But you think he had the guts to tell Bill Swanson he should get a little jump in his lousy salary? Not Art.”

  “Why was he afraid of having seen the headsman?”

  “I don’t know. I told you he didn’t have no reason to be. The headsman, he only kills people who’ve done something bad. Somebody who’s committed a mortal sin.”

  “You think that’s what Marcy did?”

  The blue-china eyes narrowed. “Could be.”

  Jud wondered if the old lady might know something of value. “Did you see much of Marcy?”

  “Enough. Watched her grow up from a baby. She was a nice kid until she got mixed up with that bunch at the high school.”

  “What happened to her after that?”

  “’Bout what you’d expect. She got into dope and sex, staying out all hours of the night. And those parents of hers let her get away with it, too. Let her do just about anything she pleased. It’s what comes of having too much money, thinking you’re better’n everybody else.”

  “She was seeing the Harper boy, did you know that?”

  “’Course I knew it.”

  “Was there anybody else?”

  “Not since last year. Buddy and her, they was together all the time.”

  “You said Art told you about seeing the headsman. What did he tell you about it?”

  She fiddled with the handle of her coffee mug. “Art was up that night. He had a bad back, and a lot of times it kept him awake. Friday night, sometime around one o’clock, he got up and went downstairs. He was gonna read or maybe watch TV in the living room. Before he turned the lights on, he looked out the window and saw him.”

  “What did he see, exactly?”

  “It was clear that night, and there was a moon. Art said he looked down the road toward the Dickens house, and when he did he saw a man come out the front door. There was a light someplace downstairs in the house, and when the man walked past the window Art got a look at him. He said it was a big man, dressed all in black with a hood on his head and carrying an ax. It was the headsman, no doubt about it.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then nothing. The headsman was gone, and Art didn’t see him again after that. Art stayed up until it got light out. Then he come back to bed.”

  “Why didn’t he call the police?”

  A faint smile crossed her face. “Can you picture that? Hello, Officer, I just saw the headsman running around outside. They would’ve said he was ready for the looney bin.”

  She had a point. “Did he tell you what he’d seen?”

  “No, I was still asleep. Later on he did, after Helen Dickens found Marcy’s body. He said he told you, too.”

  Jud was about to explain that he hadn’t taken Art literally that morning, but she already knew that. Saying anything more about it would only make him look more foolish. “After that did he bring it up again?”

  “Oh, yeah. Couple times. He said he wondered who was next.”

  “He tell anybody else?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t think so, but I could be wrong. Art wasn’t a big mouth, though. Wouldn’t be like him to go around blabbing. And like I said, I think he was afraid, even though he didn’t have no reason to be. He was just poor old dumb Art Ballard.” Suddenly the blue eyes filled with tears.

  Jud felt awkward and helpless. There was nothing he could say or do at this point to make her feel any better; only the passage of days and weeks and months would ease the pain, and even then much of it would stay with her. Time heals all wounds. But does it?

  He got up and patted her shoulder. Then he picked up his cap and went back into the living room.

  The ambulance crew had removed the body, but what remained behind was a godawful mess. The floor was covered with blood, and the wall looked as if somebody had heaved a bucket of gore at it. Bits of tissue and hair and other human detritus were stuck to it, and the surface was pocked from birdshot.

  Doc Reinholtz said it was a simple case of suicide; he’d have a report out later that day. And there would be no autopsy; he told the ambulance crew to take Ballard’s corpse to the Garavel funeral home. And that was about it. He left the room, going into the kitchen to offer Ethel Ballard what comfort he could.

  Jud then told Delury to give him a hand, saying they’d do what they could to clean up the room. It was against regulations for cops to be doing that kind of thing, but Jud didn’t give a damn. He didn’t want Ethel Ballard to have to do it, and he didn’t want her to have to tell somebody else to, either. He and Delury found a broom closet in the back hall with a bucket and rags in it, and they worked on the wall and the floor for a good hour. When they finished the marks in the plaster were still there, as were some of the stains on the floor, but altogether it was better than it had been.

  When he left the house Jud thought about his discussion earlier that night with Sally. Did the headsman really exist? To anybody with any sense, that was ridiculous.

  And yet Art Ballard had seen him.

  5

  Jud figured there were two possible sources of information on Braddock’s history. One was the public library, the other was the museum. Both were run by the same man, a one-time Utica college professor named Paul Mulgrave. The reason Mulgrave was able to hold down two jobs at once was that each was a breeze. The library was a small, sleepy operation that discouraged its use by young people in a number of subtle ways, chiefly by not keeping an inventory of items they’d be interested in, such as record albums and videocassettes, which libraries now offere
d routinely. Instead, it catered to older citizens, who found it a pleasant place to pass the time reading and dozing at its long wooden tables. And the museum was open only occasionally. Since both the library and museum depended principally on public financing from the town’s coffers, it wouldn’t do much good to complain about the shortcomings of either one. It was expensive to run such things, you’d be told, and Braddock’s finance committee was not noted for throwing money around.

  Jud parked in front of the library and went inside. It was a one-story red brick building, apparently of the same vintage as the town hall. The librarian at the desk was a thin, gray-haired woman who reminded him of a teacher he’d had as a kid: stern, foreboding and dried up. She peered at him through wire-rimmed glasses as he approached.

  Her voice was appropriately quiet. “May I help you?”

  He took off his cap and opened his jacket. “Afternoon, ma’am. I’d like to see Paul Mulgrave, if he’s around.”

  She looked at the gold badge on his shirt. “I’ll see if Mr. Mulgrave is in. Who shall I say is calling?”

  “My name is MacElroy. I’m the chief of police.”

  Keeping her eyes on him, she lifted a telephone and spoke into it, her voice now even softer. When she put it down she said to Jud, “Mr. Mulgrave will be with you shortly.”

  “Thank you.” Talk about formality. You’d think he was at the White House, trying for a visit with the president. He turned, holding his cap behind him, and looked around.

  There weren’t more than a half-dozen people in the place, as far as he could see. One old guy was nodding off at one of the tables, and now and then he’d bite off the end of a snore and wake himself up. A woman was sitting at the same table, frowning at his antics. It would have been simple enough for her just to get up and move, but probably not as interesting. Instead she sat and glowered at the source of the noise.

  A sign over one of the shelf sections said NEW FICTION. Jud stepped over and looked at the backs of the dust jackets. He thought he recognized a couple of the titles, but he wasn’t sure. Reading was an activity he both enjoyed and constantly promised himself he’d do more of, but somehow he never got around to it. What with his hours, all he seemed to want to do when he was home at night was watch the tube and play his guitar.

  Another librarian came by, carrying an armload of books. This one looked even more spindly than the one at the desk. Jud watched as she put the books onto shelves, wondering why it was necessary to have these two women plus Mulgrave working here. Or not working here. There couldn’t be enough for one person to do, let alone three.

  He heard a footstep behind him and turned to see Paul Mulgrave coming forward with his hand extended and a smile on his broad face. Mulgrave was a tall man with a full head of gray hair and an ample gut that his brown tweed jacket couldn’t quite hide. He spoke in a stage whisper. “Chief MacElroy. Nice to have you here. How can we be of service?”

  Jud shook the hand. “Hello, Paul. There a place we can talk?”

  “Of course. My office. Come this way.”

  He followed Mulgrave to a door on one side of the main room. They went through the door and down a hallway, and now the man spoke in a normal tone. “Don’t think I’ve seen you for a while. You don’t get to the library very often, do you?”

  “No, not often,” Jud said. “Just come in now and then to check on whether you’re hustling pornography.”

  For an instant Mulgrave looked stunned, but then his face relaxed in a wide grin. “We have it all in a special cabinet. Same way the video rentals keep their X-rated tapes.”

  It was a nice counter, he had to admit. There was only one video rental store in Braddock, and Jud had been trying to force the scumbag who ran it to get rid of his porno tapes, but without success. As long as he kept them separated from the rest of the stock and swore that he rented them only to people over eighteen years of age, there was no legal way to stop him from doing business in the stuff.

  And for that matter, what people looked at in the privacy of their homes was their own concern. That was one good thing about the proliferation of VCRs; it had taken the play away from porn moviehouses. Braddock had had one of those, too, but it had closed several years ago after the boom in videotapes had stolen its business.

  Mulgrave led the way into his office. The room was about twice the size of Jud’s shoebox at the BPD, and comfortably furnished with an old mahogany desk and a couple of leather chairs. There were even paintings on the walls. A window looked out on a snowy field with hemlocks scattered across it, and beyond the trees you could see a few houses.

  Mulgrave waved at one of the chairs and took the other one himself. “Now then, what can we do for you?”

  “I’m interested in doing a little research,” Jud said. “On what Braddock was like in the early days when the first settlers were here.”

  “I see. Interested in anything in particular, or just the history of our charming little town in general?”

  “Mostly I want to know things about my own line of work. What kind of police activity went on here then, things like that.”

  The tip of Mulgrave’s nose was darker than the rest of his face. Jud wondered if he was a boozer, and decided he probably was. He was also obviously homosexual, but Jud had always been tolerant of gays—as long as they didn’t try to recruit young boys. “We’ve had a number of people in here asking for books of that kind over the past few days,” Mulgrave said. “Quite an upsurge in interest, you might say.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes. Frankly, I think what they really want to know more about is the legend of the headsman. Could that be what you’re curious about as well?”

  “Could be.”

  “Horrible tragedy, that poor Dickens girl dying that way.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I do hope you’re able to bring that to a satisfactory conclusion, and soon.”

  “So do I.”

  “This business of the headsman. Amazing, isn’t it, the way it fires the imaginations of people here?”

  “Maybe,” Jud said. “But it’s also understandable.”

  “You think somebody decided the legend would make a good modus operandi?”

  Mulgrave’s use of the term exhibited an air of superiority. As if he’d studied a subspecies and learned its language.

  “I haven’t come to any conclusion. I’m just looking at all the possibilities, anything that could give us a direction to follow.”

  “I see. Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to find much here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “To begin with, there is no history of Braddock per se. I suppose no one ever considered the community important enough to devote a book to it. As far as references to it in broader works are concerned, such as histories of the war between the English and the French, there are a few of those. But what volumes we have are out right now. As I said, there’s been a lot of interest. And anyway, as far as I know only one or two of them makes any reference to our famous—or infamous, I should say—headsman, and he’s only mentioned in passing.”

  “And that’s it?”

  Mulgrave looked pleased with himself. “That’s it. But I’ll be happy to round up what we have just as soon as I can. I’ll let you know.”

  “What about the museum?”

  The expression on the narrow features changed slightly, as if the librarian hadn’t expected the question and found it distasteful. “The museum?”

  “You’re the curator, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I am. But I don’t know if anything on the subject might be there. Also the place is rather untidy at the moment. Last year we were expecting the town to give us funds for renovation and updating, but the money never came through. Unfortunately we’d already started the work, so we just had to suspend everything. As a result, a lot of our materials and exhibits are somewhat disorganized. It’s only open a couple of days a week, you know—also due to a lack of funds. And only a part of it
is open to the public.”

  “But you say there might be something there that has to do with the headsman?”

  “I said I don’t know. Tell you what—I’ll drop in some time in the next day or so and see what I can find for you. Not today, though—I’m much too busy.”

  Yeah, Jud thought, you look it. “Wouldn’t take but a few minutes. Why don’t we take a run over there now? My car’s right outside.”

  Mulgrave still hesitated, but then he shrugged. “I suppose we could do that, if it’s that urgent.”

  “It’d save time, as long as I’m here,” Jud said. He stood up. “Better wear a coat. It’s chilly out.”

  6

  The Braddock Museum was housed in what was believed to be the oldest structure in the area. Its main claim to fame was that General Braddock had lived there the winter before he died. It was on the west side of the village, a three-story sprawl with leaded windows and dark siding and a steeply pitched roof. The architecture of the original section clearly derived from a style brought by the early settlers from England, but it was also obvious that a number of additions had been made to it over the years. The result was a polymorphic hulk with chimneys and gables and cupolas and wings that wandered off in various directions. It was, Jud thought, incredibly ugly.

  He parked the cruiser in front of the building and he and Mulgrave walked up the narrow shoveled path to the front entrance. Mulgrave hauled out a heavily laden keyring and fumbled with it until he found a key that unlocked the massive door.

  The interior certainly went with the outside, Jud thought. Even when Mulgrave turned on the lights the place seemed dark and gloomy. It also smelled bad. The odor was one of dampness and decay, of stale air and ancient dust. It was cold in here as well, and they kept their coats on. No central heating, Mulgrave explained. Only a few electric units, which didn’t do much to relieve the chill. He didn’t bother to turn any of them on.

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever been in here,” Jud said.

  “No? Then you must let me give you a little tour.” Mulgrave was wearing a trenchcoat festooned with flaps and buckles and straps. He turned the collar up and thrust his hands deep into the pockets. “This is the oldest part, built somewhere around seven-teen-twenty. At that time the English were at war with the French, who wanted to claim this territory for themselves, and they also had to contend with Indians. The tribes around here were friendly to them at first, but the English were rather duplicitous. They made promises, but since they were making them to half-naked savages they saw no reason to keep them. So the Indians first came to distrust them and then to hate them. They were always at each other’s throats.”