A Stranger in the Kingdom

by Howard Frank Mosher

  “No,” Reverend Andrews said.

  “No? Pliny’s suicide didn’t push him over the brink?”

  “No.”

  “Then what did?”

  “Pliny’s murder.”

  “Pliny’s murder?”

  “Pliny never committed suicide,” Reverend Andrews said quietly. “He was murdered.”

  My father thumped his hand down on the parsonage desk. “Mister Baby Johnson!”

  Reverend Andrews shook his head. “I’ve always felt that Pliny Templeton did not and never would and never could commit suicide. The man was committed to life, Charles. Every word in this book affirms that premise. It’s true that he introduced the use of a piano in the Academy. It’s true that your grandfather and the session objected to that piano and to the singing and to his proposal to introduce dancing lessons as well. It’s true that the session met and that the United Presbyterians, led by Pliny, voted to withdraw from the church. But it is not true that Pliny Templeton borrowed your grandfather’s horse pistol and committed suicide with it.”

  “How do you know?” My father’s voice was strained, but excited.

  “Because of this.” From his inside jacket pocket Reverend Andrews took out a folded piece of paper. “I know because of this document, which Elijah Kinneson did not find when he went through my desk on the afternoon of August sixth last summer for the simple reason that it wasn’t there.”

  “What is that?” Dad said.

  “The court committal of your grandfather to the Waterbury State Lunatic Asylum.”

  My father shook his head. “I’ve looked for that document over in the courthouse a dozen times, Walt. That can’t be authentic. The court-ordered committal was washed away in the Flood of ’27, along with ninety-nine percent of the other pre-1927 county legal documents.”

  “I didn’t find this in the courthouse,” Reverend Andrews said. “This is an exact copy of the lost committal papers, which I found in the records room of the Vermont State Hospital, formerly the state lunatic asylum, earlier this afternoon. Read it, Charles. And read the statement, in your grandfather’s handwriting, that’s attached.”

  By now Charlie was standing up, and so were Nat and I. But my father moved a little ways apart from us and, characteristically, he read the papers without expression. He handed them back to Reverend Andrews. Then he nodded.

  “I should have guessed,” he said. “It was under my nose the whole time. I should have figured it out.”

  “Figured what out?” Charlie said. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “I shall tell you what. This document is nothing more or less than the last window into that sealed globe I’ve been talking about. It explains everything. Why Elijah killed the girl to frame Reverend Andrews, why he was so adamant that Reverend Andrews not look further into Mad Charlie’s committal. Everything! Because these committal papers include the signed confession of my grandfather, Mad Charlie Kinneson, written at Waterbury State Lunatic Asylum a week before his death in the fall of 1903.”

  “Confession for what?”

  “For the murder of Pliny Templeton,” my father said, and he took the papers back again and read:

  “‘I, Charles Kinneson, to clear my conscience, do hereby swear upon my immortal soul that on August fourth, in the Year of Our Lord 1900, I entered the study of my beloved friend Pliny Templeton and shot him twice in the back of the head with my pistol whilst he sat writing at his desk, murdering him in cold blood. And with my own hand I hereby clear him from the charge of committing suicide or any other crime against himself or God or mankind.’”

  “But why?” Charlie said. “This is incredible, I don’t believe it. So Mad Charlie and Pliny Templeton quarreled? So what? People quarrel all the time. You mean to tell me that my great-grandfather shot his best friend dead in this room fifty years ago because of a disagreement over a piano?”

  “It was fifty-two years ago,” my father said. “And it wasn’t over a piano. What was really at stake was the survival of a religion. And not just a religion, either, but a way of life as encompassing as Quakerism or Islam or what have you. Because that’s exactly what Reformed Presbyterianism was. A way of life. Music was the least of the devil’s work as far as your ancestors were concerned. They couldn’t vote, they couldn’t take an oath to hold office, they couldn’t formally enlist in any army—which is why your great-great-great-grandfather had to resort to piracy to fight the British during the Revolution and why James I fought along the Canadian border with the Fenians and Mad Charlie fought with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry but never enlisted in the Union Army, despite his hatred of slavery. When Pliny and his faction voted to secede from the church and affiliate themselves with United Presbyterianism, your great-grandfather’s entire way of life was threatened. Reformed Presbyterianism was the main reason his grandfather had come here in the first place, remember. And I’ll tell you something else, mister. What Reformed Presbyterianism, for all its strictures, really represented to Charles I and James I and most of all to Mad Charlie, was personal independence—independence from the British, from the Americans, from the rest of Vermont, including the legislature. And that independence is a legacy you and I and every Kinneson have inherited and pride ourselves on practicing to this day. So of course Mad Charlie, who knew all this and was crazy besides, couldn’t just stand by and watch everything he believed in, and everything his father and his father’s father believed in, just disintegrate.”

  “So he shot his best friend?” Charlie said. “He murdered his friend in cold blood? Just the way he gunned down Satan Smithfield in the pulpit of the church? And with the same horse pistol, no less?”

  “Yes,” Reverend Andrews said. “He felt he had to kill Pliny for all the reasons your father’s just enumerated. But afterwards, the rational part of his mind couldn’t accept what he’d done. He was faced with the consequences of an impossible choice. It wasn’t really like the Smithfield episode at all.”

  “My God!” Charlie said. “And Elijah knew this? Elijah knew that Mad Charlie shot Pliny Templeton?”

  “I’m sure he did,” Reverend Andrews said. “That accounts for his determination that I cease my inquiries into the matter, he was afraid I’d discover the truth and change his father’s reputation to that of murderer.”

  “It accounts for everything,” Dad said. “But when did you first suspect all of this?”

  Reverend Andrews smiled. “Have you ever taken a good close look at the skull of Pliny’s skeleton?”

  My father shrugged. “Not in years. Why?”

  “Because there are two holes in the back of it. At first glance, it looks like one large hole, but if you look closely—I checked with Dr. Harrison, and he agreed with me—it’s obvious that he was shot twice. Now, in a weak moment a man who’s disturbed enough might shoot himself in the back of the head once, even an affirmative, positive man like Pliny Templeton. But not twice. Elijah must have figured that out too. Also it’s very possible that your grandfather, Mad Charlie, told the truth to Replacement Mari before he died, and she told Elijah. At any rate, I’m positive that Elijah knew about the murder, and not only did he know, he was willing to go to any lengths to keep me or anyone else from finding out about it. He thought I might figure out what happened from the account your father wrote in the newspaper, Charles, which is why he wanted those articles back. But Elijah overlooked one thing. He overlooked your grandfather’s records at the state hospital.”

  “And these records never came to light before?” Charlie said. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Why should they have? Somebody just stuck this in his file with the court committal and left it there.”

  “How did you get access to the hospital documents?”

  Reverend Andrews grinned. “Ask and ye shall receive. I just asked the hospital superintendent. He didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t see them. After all, Mad Charlie died fifty years ago.”

  “And now?” Dad said. “What do you int
end to do with the information?”

  “I’ve already done it,” Reverend Andrews said. “I’ve passed it on to you. What do you intend to do with it?”

  “Print it. All of it. In the Monitor.”

  “Tell the truth and shame the devil, eh?” Reverend Andrews said, chuckling. “Well, you always said, Charles, that up here in God’s Kingdom the past is still as much a part of the present as ever. All this tends to bear that statement out, I fancy.”

  The minister looked at Nat. “How are you coming on your room, old man? Have you got it about hoed out?”

  “I’m ready,” Nat said.

  “What about your funny books, Nat?” I asked. “There must still be four or five big boxes of them up there.”

  “You hang onto them for me, Kinneson. There’s some good reading up there and you could use even such a small corrupting influence in your life.”

  We stood awkwardly together on the porch, while Reverend Andrews made one final check of the house. It was snowing now.

  The minister came back outside and locked the door and handed the keys to my father. Turning away from the wind, he lit a cigarette, as he had done on that night I’d first met him in the April sugar snow. He shook hands with me and with my father and Charlie.

  “Charles the Younger,” he said, “I thank you. I thank you and your father for your help and for your friendship. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you folks. I’d be languishing in state’s prison, no doubt.”

  “Hell, I can’t imagine you languishing for long anywhere, Reverend,” Charlie said. But just the same, I could tell that my brother was moved.

  “And again, Charles,” Reverend Andrews said to my father, “thank you once again. I’ll never forget how you stood by me.”

  “I shouldn’t think you’d soon forget anything about this place, Walter. I’m sorry for what happened here. But I want you to know one thing. For all its shortcomings, the Kingdom’s a better place for the time you and your son spent here.”

  Reverend Andrews did not reply. He put his arm around Nat, and they walked out to the car together.

  “Now, you wait,” my father said. “You wait just a minute.”

  He took something bulky out from under his overcoat. He handed it through the passenger window to Nat, and I saw then that it was Pliny’s History.

  “I can’t—” Reverend Andrews started to say.

  “Oh yes you can,” my father said. “This belongs to you, my friend.”

  Reverend Andrews looked at my father. He leaned across the seat and grinned, and flicked Dad that marvelous two-fingered salute. “Oh, one thing, Charles. If you see Julia Hefner, tell her I made it a point to leave the parsonage as clean as I found it.”

  Then the car was moving. It eased out of the driveway and past the vacant lot. The red brake lights of the canvas-covered trailer flicked on as it approached the hotel, and it was out of sight in the snowstorm.

  “He’ll land on his feet,” my brother said. “As I said once before, there goes one tough hombre. As a matter of fact—”

  But whatever else my brother might have been going to say was drowned out by a siren blast. Flashing blue lights appeared in the snow, a long dark vehicle pulled into the dooryard, a long figure unfolded itself from the driver’s side, and Mason White’s high voice piped out, “What the H is going on here? Oh, is that you, editor? Charlie? Just checking up, boys.”

  “You don’t mean you’re still sheriff?” Charlie said.

  “Still sheriff?” Mason said. “Why, haven’t you heard the news, Charlie K? I and you, we both won our respective races hands-down.”

  He reached out his long arm and grabbed my brother’s hand and began to pump it.

  “It looks, Brother Charlie, like I and you are going to be working hand-in-glove to bring law and order to the Kingdom for the next two years at least. Congratulations!”

  Even today Kingdom County is isolated enough from the rest of Vermont so that an out-of-state license plate in the village is something of an event. So with my mind still on the story I was banging out for Production Night deadline, I watched with curiosity as the car with white and blue tags cruised slowly into town between the United Church and the south end of the green, swung north, and slowed almost to a full stop in front of the courthouse.

  Whoever it was seemed to be looking for something, probably directions. But on this cold gray afternoon in late October there was no one on the street to ask. The car eased over the disused Boston and Montreal tracks, passed between the Common Hotel and the statue of Ethan Allen taking Fort Ticonderoga on the far north end of the green, turned south along the three-story brick shopping block. Directly across from the Monitor, it nosed diagonally in against the west side of the green. And there, for perhaps thirty seconds, the driver sat stock-still with his back to me, staring over at the courthouse.

  Then his door opened and a ghost got out and came straight across the street toward my office.

  Even thirty-six years ago, when I had last seen him, I had not really believed in ghosts, and I certainly did not believe in them now. But for just a split second, I didn’t see how the man coming toward me with that same ironical and amused expression I remembered so well could be anything else.

  Then he was close enough for me to recognize. He was discernibly taller than his father, and rangier, though I was so astonished by his presence after all these years that not until he actually came into the office did I notice that he was carrying a good-sized box under one arm.

  “So, Kinneson. You’ve followed in your father’s footsteps, eh?”

  “Editor, reporter, ad manager, janitor,” I said. “Not to mention school board member, Little League coach, church trustee—I’m running out of fingers.”

  We shook hands across my desk and he set the box down beside my typewriter and sat down. “Married? Kids?”

  “Two boys.”

  “Charles and James. Right?”

  “Half right. Charles and Lucien. After their grandfathers.”

  He nodded, and turned to look out the window with the words KINGDOM COUNTY MONITOR written across it in faded black letters. “I don’t know just what I expected. Boutiques, maybe. Gift shops selling maple syrup. This hasn’t changed at all.”

  I smiled. “It’s changed. A lot’s changed.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I print the paper on offset now. I have for ten years. And the elm trees. Remember the big elms out there on the green? They’re all gone, along with half the farms and nearly all the old-timers.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t suppose I’d notice their absence. You never did manage to get me interested in your woods and fish and local characters, did you, Kinneson? Lord knows you tried. But I was your inveterate city kid if there ever was one. And I have to confess, I like them all a hell of a lot better in your books, anyway. I was lost up here in these hills. Totally lost.”

  I smiled at his reference to my story collections, pleased that he’d read them, amused by his way of letting me know.

  “You were interested in the ghost,” I said.

  “The ghost?”

  “Sure. The footsteps on the parsonage porch. Remember? I was thirteen that summer, you were what, sixteen? We had that crazy plan to wait up and—”

  He held up his hand. “I remember. I remember.”

  He told me that he’d been divorced for several years and had a daughter in college in Toronto. He said he was in sales, something having to do with educational computers. He was on a trip to the Maritimes and on the spur of the moment he’d gotten off the Trans-Canada Highway, thirty miles to the north, to have a quick look at the Common. Yet even then I did not believe that he’d come back entirely on impulse. There was more than mere passing curiosity to this visit, though I had no idea what until he asked me to open the package he’d set on my desk.

  Whatever it was, was inside one of those big cardboard express mailers, the kind that fold out into a box. For its size, it was weighty. As
I lifted it out and pulled away the tissue paper it was wrapped in, I caught a whiff of the unmistakable scent of very old leather and paper, and then, by God, there it was in my hands, still in good condition after nearly a century, all eleven hundred and fifty-five pages of it, with the title and author’s name standing out bright and sharp in tall gilt letters on the leather cover:

  THE ECCLESIASTICAL, NATURAL,

  SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL

  HISTORY OF

  KINGDOM COUNTY

  1781—1900

  by

  PLINY TEMPLETON, A B., M.A.

  “It’s yours, Kinneson. I don’t know how many times I’ve started to mail it to you, including just yesterday, but then I thought, what the hell, maybe I’ll just deliver the thing. Anyway, it belongs to you now. Do with it as you please. I’m delighted to have it off my hands.”

  I looked at the book and up at him and back at the book again. I wanted to thank him, but all I could do was gaze at Pliny Templeton’s book, as memory after memory swept over me from a time now gone as irrevocably as the magnificent New England elms on the green across the street.

  “So, how about your hotshot big brother, Kinneson? Did he wind up marrying the good-looking schoolteacher? The judge’s daughter with the unusual name and the temper?”

  “He did. And never lost a case as county prosecutor. But the funny thing is, Zack Barrows went back into private practice, and they continued to face each other in court off and on for three or four years. Later, Charlie ran for attorney general, and he won that election, too.”

  “It changed all of us,” I said. “But yes, Charlie especially. Dad used to say before the Affair that my brother was going to hell in a handbasket. But Mom was fond of saying that there’s no great loss without some small gain. Charlie’s transformation must have been the small gain. He’s a federal judge in Burlington, believe it or not.”