A Stranger in the Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher

This, at least, was good news. But the following evening, the evening before Claire’s funeral, my father came home from work furious. Not only had Zack Barrows excluded Charlie from a secret hearing to be held the next day in front of Judge Allen to determine whether there was enough evidence to bring charges in the murder case—a hearing at which Charlie’s own client, Resolvèd, had been subpoenaed to testify—but Reverend Andrews had just minutes ago told Dad that he hadn’t been able to prevail upon the church cemetery committee to allocate a space for Claire except in the so-called pauper’s corner—under the cedar trees where Satan Smithfield and other outcasts were buried.

  The funeral was held at two o’clock the following afternoon—the same day the inquest convened at the courthouse. Neither Dad nor Charlie had been able to find out exactly what (if any) “evidence,” besides the Seagram’s bottles, Zack and Mason might have discovered in the quarry, and at two o’clock a dozen cars were still parked along the common across the street from the courthouse.

  I had dreaded Claire’s funeral terribly, in part because I’d been tapped as a pallbearer. Worse yet, there was a large crowd of curiosity-seekers, most of whom had probably never even said hello to Claire on the street when she was alive. With Julia Hefner tied up at the courthouse in her capacity as clerk and stenographer, my mother had been recruited to play the organ; Dad and Athena and Charlie and I slid into the Kinneson pew just as Reverend Andrews started the service.

  He began by speaking about Claire’s unusual childhood in Quebec, her ambition to become a movie star, and her marvelous talent as a mime. To this day I do not know precisely what Reverend Andrews’ metaphysical convictions were. But I recall his saying in Claire’s funeral sermon that no human being ever dies without leaving a spiritual gift behind—a legacy not measurable in money or property, but infinitely more meaningful. Claire’s gift, he said, was her courageous faith in a providential future, to which she herself had now passed. And her presence in the village left us with an example of how providence gives each one of us many opportunities to exercise our Christian and human obligation of charity—however far short we are all bound to fall of that obligation.

  When Reverend Andrews finished his last prayer consigning Claire’s soul to an immortal eternity, which to this day I do not know for certain he himself literally believed in, and my mother began the funeral processional on the organ, Dad and Charlie and George Quinn and I remained seated until everyone else had left. Just as we picked up the coffin (so light that it hardly seemed to contain a body), Elijah began tolling the funeral knell on the Revere church bell my great-great-great-grandfather, Charles I, had brought over the mountains to Kingdom County by oxcart one hundred and fifty years ago.

  “Easy does it, gentlemen,” George whispered as we headed out the door and down the church steps. “Watch your footing now.”

  The old fuddy-duddy acted as though he’d been drinking too much of his own castor oil, but of necessity I did watch my footing and so didn’t see the two men coming toward us from the courthouse until they were halfway across the baseball diamond.

  It was Sheriff White and his deputy, Pine Benson.

  For a moment, as the bell continued to toll, I thought they were going to intercept us and prevent us from sliding the coffin into Mason’s hearse. But as we eased the box along the silent rollers and into the hearse—“Watch your fingers, gentlemen, let’s not have any pinched fingers today!”—Pine and Mason passed us without so much as a glance in our direction.

  They strode through the crowd to the top of the church steps, where Reverend Andrews was standing in his funeral robes. Mason said something to him that I couldn’t make out over the reverberations of the bell.

  “What the—” my father started to say.

  Reverend Andrews was jerking his hands away from Sheriff White. To my astonishment Mason pulled out his gun.

  The coffin safely in the hearse, my father sprinted toward the church, but Mason and Pine were already on their way down the steps with the handcuffed minister between them, and the shocked crowd of people were in an uproar on the same lawn where nearly a hundred years ago their ancestors had watched, shocked and outraged, as my great-grandfather Mad Charlie Kinneson had ridden out of the church with the corpse of Satan Smithfield slung over his saddle and thundered furiously across the same green and into the same courthouse toward which Mason and Pine were now hustling the protesting minister.

  Then the three men were through the courthouse door, with Charlie right behind them, and Reverend Andrews was not seen again until the inquest adjourned at six o’clock that night, this time with his hands cuffed behind his back and Charlie at his side, to be led downstairs to jail.

  “What in hell is going on here, Farlow?” my father demanded when the bailiff appeared a minute later.

  “Good news and bad, editor. Which do you want first?”

  I thought that my father was going to muckle onto Farlow Blake on the spot. “Just tell me what’s happening here, damn it. I don’t care how you tell it, just tell it.”

  Farlow nodded sagely. “Then I’ll give you the bad news first, and save the good for last. The bad news, I’m sorry to report, is that the inquest has just handed down their decision to indict our friend the reverend for first-degree murder!”

  My father looked at the bailiff as if he didn’t understand him.

  Farlow leaned toward him. “I don’t know if I should tell you this yet, editor, but strictly off the record, it was the preacher’s revolver that Zack and Mason dredged up out of the granite quarry yesterday. Doc H identified it as the probable murder weapon in front of Judge A this afternoon.

  “And that’s not all the good physician said,” Farlow continued. “He also testified that the LaRiviere girl was at least a month pregnant when she was found.”

  “Mister Baby Johnson!” my father said. “What in the name of Ethan Allen and the First Continental Congress is the good news?”

  Farlow Blake leaned closer to my father. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” he said. “But the good news at this point would appear to be that the reverend’s asked Charlie to defend him, and Brother Charlie’s agreed.”

  15

  “Every bit of the evidence is circumstantial, James.”

  “That’s true, Jimmy. But circumstantial evidence is just as admissible in court as any other legitimate evidence.”

  In the background, over the windowsill radio in Charlie’s office, Mel Allen was waxing rhapsodic over the routine trouncing being administered to our Red Sox by the Yankees, who were coasting toward yet another easy pennant.

  It was evening, several days after the traumatic arrest of Reverend Andrews on the church steps. The minister was being held in the Memphremagog city jail, ten miles to the north, both in order to spare him the humiliation of being incarcerated in the village where he had lived and preached and because Judge Allen wasn’t entirely sure that it was safe for him to remain in Kingdom Common. And once again, Dad and Charlie were trying to make sense of the whole mess.

  “So the girl was pregnant, James. What does that prove? Nothing. I can think of any one of a dozen different explanations for that, beginning with Resolvèd himself or somebody connected with that traveling strip show, or somebody back in Quebec. Maybe that’s why she left Quebec, for God’s sake. That stepfather might have raped her.”

  “I’ve got a question,” I said. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Of course you can ask a question,” my father said, though once he and Charlie got going hot and heavy, getting a word in edgewise was no simple matter.

  “Does Nat know about his father? Being arrested and all?”

  Charlie nodded. “Nat knows the gist of it, buddy. He knows Claire’s dead, which he took pretty hard, and that his father’s in jail, which he’s taking even harder. He doesn’t know all the details. They let Reverend Andrews call him from jail. He told Nat as little as he could, and ordered him to stay put at his grandmother’s.”

 
“How Zack Barrows, as incompetent as he is, can believe that Walt Andrews killed that girl, is beyond me,” Charlie said.

  “Look, James,” my father said. “I’m not saying Zack Barrows is terribly prejudiced himself—but Mason White’s an outright bigot. With White at Barrows’ elbow night and day to spur him on, Barrows will believe anything and do anything to win his big case and get reelected. Of the two, White’s by far the more dangerous. The more I see of that pair, the more convinced I am that appearances notwithstanding, Barrows is at least as much White’s flunky as vice versa.”

  Charlie sighed. “Look, Jimmy, I don’t for one minute think that Walt Andrews murdered that girl, and I very much doubt he slept with her and got her pregnant, all the rumors notwithstanding. I asked him both questions point-blank—I had to before we could decide on an innocent plea—and he denied doing either, and I believe him. But I’m pretty sure that the only way we’re going to get a jury to believe him is to find out who actually did kill her and then framed him into the bargain.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m still at square one on that.”

  “Then let’s go back to square one, James. Let’s make another list of all the possible suspects.”

  Charlie sighed again, but reached for a fresh yellow legal pad and tore off a sheet. At the top he wrote Resolvèd’s name.

  “Resolvèd Kinneson,” he said. “Resolvèd had a motive. He was furious with the LaRiviere kid for running away from him and with Walt Andrews for harboring her, not to mention shooting off part of his trigger finger. But the girl wasn’t killed with Resolvèd’s shotgun and Resolvèd was in jail at the time of the murder. Unless he escaped or was temporarily released, which seems most unlikely, and then sneaked into the parsonage and got Walt Andrews’ revolver, he couldn’t possibly have committed the murder. Besides, I still don’t think that Resolvèd would do such a thing.”

  “Of course he’d do it, James,” Dad said. “But I must say I don’t think he did, either. So that leaves us with whom?”

  “Frenchy LaMott?” I ventured. “Frenchy’s used to carrying a revolver. He told me he’d like to get Claire alone.”

  My brother shook his head. “It wasn’t done with Frenchy’s little .22, buddy. This is light years beyond Frenchy LaMott. Way out of his league. If Reverend Andrews was framed, and we have to assume that that’s the case, whoever did it made it look as though Andrews shot the girl, threw her into the pit intending for her body to sink and never be found, and then chucked the gun in after her.”

  “Then why wouldn’t he notice that there wasn’t any splash?” Dad said.

  “He would have, of course. That’s a point I intend to emphasize. But I’ll need more than that to prove Walt Andrews was framed.

  “Bumper Stevens?” Charlie said, writing down the auctioneer’s name. “I’ve always suspected that he and that warped pygmy Titman White know a hell of a lot more about ornery Ordney Gilson’s untimely end than they ever admitted. But again, what’s the motive? Stevens has hated Andrews ever since that cockfight episode. But enough to kill the girl in order to frame him? I can’t believe that.”

  “Well, Stevens ought to remain a suspect, in our minds at least, James,” my father said.

  “I suppose so,” Charlie said. “But not a very strong one. Here’s one for you: Cousin Elijah. He certainly disliked Reverend Andrews. And he had access to the parsonage, to boot.”

  My father snorted. “Elijah never broke so much as a jaywalking law in his life. He’d have dearly loved to see Walt Andrews struck dead in the street by lightning and the girl, too, but you don’t commit murder and then frame somebody for replacing you in the pulpit. There’s no plausible motive.”

  “I guess not,” Charlie said. “Much as I’d like to think so. Then how about Mason White? He hated Walt Andrews with a passion.”

  My father shook his head. “White’s a weasel. He’s the worst sort of small-town opportunist. I can’t believe he’d murder an innocent little girl just to frame an enemy, though.”

  “That’s just the trouble with a case like this one. It’s hard enough to believe that anyone would do such a thing for any reason. But somebody did, so we can’t really rule out anyone at this point, however farfetched they might seem.”

  “I suppose your brother’s right about that, James. But if Mason had a hand in this, which I still can’t believe, he’d do a more convincing job of framing the minister. Who could possibly believe for a minute that an intelligent man like Andrews, and an ex-soldier to boot, would throw the murder weapon in the quarry right by the body, where it was bound to be found?”

  “A jury, that’s who,” Charlie said. “Unfortunately, unless we can come up with a more convincing candidate, I’m afraid that a jury might very well believe that he panicked and that’s just what happened.”

  “So why did you take the case?”

  “Why not? Besides the fact that this is already the biggest challenge of my career, I don’t think for a minute that the guy’s guilty, and one way or another I intend to prove it. You can bet on it. As I told Athena the other day, it’s about time I defended somebody who’s actually innocent. I’ll tell you one thing though. There’s no way in all this world that our minister friend is going to get a fair trial in Kingdom County. Bright and early tomorrow morning I’m going to beard old Uncle Forrest in his chambers and demand a change of venue. After what’s happened this summer, the only way this trial’s going to be held here in ‘God’s Kingdom’ will be over my dead body.”

  “Good luck to you,” my father said. “But if I know Forrest Allen, and after fifty-some years I think I do, he’s going—what’s that? Oh, brother! Mister Baby Johnson!”

  “. . . going, going, gone!” the euphoric Voice of the New York Yankees hollered over the static. “The kid from Oklahoma has just hit his third home run of the game, making it New York twelve, Boston—”

  Snap! Dad reached out his long arm and off went the radio. Mickey Mantle’s third home ran of the game, as far as my frustrated father was concerned, was the final straw.

  “Who is this man Mantle, anyway?” Dad said as he and I headed out to the gool a few minutes later. “Ted’s gone, Joe’s gone—the game’s being taken over by parvenus and upstarts, James.”

  But at that point, I don’t think it would have mattered much to any of us if the Sox had staged a comeback and gone on to win their first World Championship since 1918.

  The next morning I went over to the post office to pick up the mail for my father and discovered a letter for me, postmarked in Montreal. It said:

  What in the bloody hell is going on down there? Claire murdered? And my father thrown in jail? I can’t believe it Nothing makes sense. But I do know one thing, I’d like to see Kingdom County, Vermont, disappear from the face of the bloody earth.

  Dad called from his cozy little cell and told me of his pleasant accommodations, then he made it perfectly clear that I was not under any circumstances to set foot in Vermont without his express permission, which, by the way, he was not offering. Now I wish I’d never come back to Montreal.

  Listen, Kinneson, I know I wasn’t always the friend you hoped I’d be but we both know I’m just not a small-town person and never will be. You’re a good chap, and I hope you still think well enough of me to do me a favor. I need to know—I have to know—just what’s happened down there. Are your fascist sheriff and prosecutor actually accusing him of being connected with Claire’s murder? And how was she murdered? Dad said something about being shot at the quarry and “other complications,” but he wouldn’t go into it. You have to write to me in care of the address on this envelope and fill me in. Or better yet call at the number I’ve enclosed. If you don’t, I’m bloody well going to come back, orders or no orders, and find out for myself.

  Please write or call immediately.

  N. Andrews

  P.S Don’t breath a word about this letter to anyone. Act on your own for once.

  I must have thought abo
ut Nat’s letter fifty times that morning. I wanted in the worst way to show it to someone—if not Dad, then to Charlie or Mom. But Nat had asked me not to and challenged me to act on my own, besides. So late that afternoon, while Mom was out in the garden picking sweet corn for supper, I called him from the farmhouse, and told him the entire truth, how I’d found Claire’s body in the quarry, how the gun was discovered, the autopsy results, and how Nat’s father had been arrested on the church steps after the funeral.

  Two or three times during my recitation I nearly broke down, and finally, when I got to the part about his father’s arrest, I did break down. To make matters worse, Nat began swearing and yelling into the phone. He was furious, angry with me, mainly, for not letting him know all this as soon as it happened, calling me a bloody fine friend and yelling that he was coming down on the very next train to straighten things out.

  Then he was crying, too, which, thank heavens, is when Mom came in with her apron full of sweet corn and gently took the phone away from me and talked to Nat for a long time, while I went out on the porch and sat on the stoop and just cried my eyes out like a little kid. Looking back on that dreadful day in that dreadful summer so many years ago, I truly believe that Ruth Kinneson was the only person in Kingdom County who could have persuaded Nat to remain in Montreal. Somehow she made him understand that coming back would only make matters harder for his dad.

  “I don’t think it was a mistake to call your friend, Jimmy,” she said afterward, sitting down on the stoop and putting her arm around me. “Nat had to know the truth sooner or later, and you were just being a good friend. No harm’s been done. I promised Nat that if there’s anything he can do to help, we’ll be in touch with him right away. In the meantime, you’re doing just fine. We’re all doing just fine. What’s more, I’m sure your brother will get Reverend Andrews out of all this trouble.”