The Miser of Cherry Hill

by Scott Mackay

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Deputy Putsey, told to check the hat shop routinely for Jensen’s arrival, came to me later that day to tell me that the Civil War veteran’s family, if not the actual veteran himself, had returned.

  When there was a lull in my patients, I put on my galoshes and walked around the corner to the shop.

  Inside, the store now had a bereft look, with less than a third of the shelves now occupied by hats or hat accessories. A few red and green ribbons had been tacked carelessly here and there for Christmas decoration, but they only succeeded in making the place look even more cheerless.

  Tilda Jensen and her servant girl, Sally Snell, were behind the counter.

  They both gave me cold looks.

  I mustered all my southern charm, approached mistress and servant, and doffed my derby.

  ‘Morning, ladies. Merry Christmas.’

  Mrs Jensen remained glacial. ‘Can I help you, doctor?’ She glanced sourly at my derby. ‘You don’t look as if you need a hat.’

  Such a reception could be interpreted in only one way – she knew about my intrusion and search. I dispensed with pleasantries, took out my badge, and placed it on the mahogany sales counter.

  ‘I’ve come to ask you where your husband is. I understand he didn’t return with you.’ I glanced to the back. I couldn’t help wondering if Jensen had hidden himself back there. ‘Is he still in Elmira?’

  Mrs Jensen’s nostrils dilated and she raised her chin. ‘No.’

  ‘Then where is he?’

  Her lips stiffened and her face quivered. ‘I don’t think I’ll tell you.’ She craned forward like a snapper about to bite. ‘And I’ll ask you to kindly leave the shop now, Dr Deacon. If you’re not going to buy a hat, I see no reason why you should stay. Unless of course you have another order from Judge Norris.’

  I stared at her. I could see this was taking a lot out of the poor woman, to stand up to me like this. I wondered if she knew anything about Hattie Whitmore. ‘Is he running, Mrs Jensen?’

  This apparently shocked her. ‘The man’s a war hero, Dr Deacon. He doesn’t run.’

  ‘I’m going to have to take into evidence every one of his rifles. We must determine if any of them were used in the murder of Ephraim Purcell.’

  She grew even more agitated. ‘The rifles are gone, Dr Deacon. We had to sell them to make ends meet.’

  ‘And to whom did you sell them?’

  ‘To a dealer in Elmira.’

  ‘So first he runs, and now he destroys the evidence. Mrs Jensen, I don’t know what he’s told you, but if you aid and abet him, and he turns out to be guilty, you’ll be going to prison too.’

  ‘Is this the way you treat innocent mothers in Tennessee, doctor?’

  ‘If you talk to Mr Jensen, I urge you to reason with him.’ I nodded toward Sally. ‘I’m sure Miss Snell told you about the flask?’

  A hint of outrage came to her eyes. ‘The one Mr Purcell cheated away from my Isaac?’ She was getting more and more riled. ‘The one the president himself gave to my husband to honour his heroic actions during the Civil War? The same heroic actions that saved Ephraim’s life?’

  I tried to get her back on track. ‘Mrs Jensen, a man has been murdered.’

  ‘And why is Mr Purcell’s death such a bad thing? Have you seen the way his workers live, whole families crammed into a single room in Hoopertown? And do you understand what he has done to us, and also to the poor blacksmith across the canal? So is it truly a great tragedy that such a monster is dead?’ She motioned around the shop. ‘Look around you, Dr Deacon. We’re being forced from our home. Ephraim has crushed my husband, not because he needed to, but simply because he wanted to. Is that the kind of man who should live? I’m sorry, but if you could please leave. I think our business is finished.’

  Later on, I said to Stanley, ‘I have more than a hunch he’s gone to Hattie Whitmore’s in Manhattan. Only Manhattan’s an awfully big place, and there was no return address on those letters.’

  Stanley drummed his long fingers on his desk for several moments. ‘Seems to me Herschel Purcell lives in Manhattan. Weren’t you telling me he knows this here Ben Whitmore, Hattie’s brother, and that they all used to chum around together?’

  I stared at my friend. ‘Thank you, Stanley.’

  I met the professor in the Oak Room at the Welland Street Club at five o’clock that afternoon for a quick eggnog and rum. The Christmas tree was up, and hollyhock boughs decorated the mantel.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I still see Hattie from time to time. As I think I mentioned, Ben’s done his best to give her a home, but he’s not the richest man. She lives in a modest apartment on Hester Street. She devotes herself to doing charitable work with various orphanages and other philanthropic organizations.’

  ‘So she lives on Hester Street? You wouldn’t by any chance have her exact address, would you?’

  He peered over the rim of his eggnog glass. Some of the concoction had found a home on his Franz Josef-style mustache. ‘Doctor, I believe you have an agenda.’

  I told him in strictest confidence about the letters and why I thought I might find Jensen with Hattie.

  Once I was done, I concluded by saying, ‘So you see, Professor Purcell, it’s my belief that he might have gone to stay with Hattie Whitmore, as it appears, based on her correspondence with him, that they never entirely ended their affair.’

  ‘I see, doctor. Well, then. I have Hattie’s address in my address book. Tell you what. Why don’t we pop by the mansion right now and I’ll get it for you?’

  TWENTY-SIX

  My son, Jeremiah, arrived on the nine o’clock train the next day.

  I watched him descend from the first-class car, and was surprised by how tall he had gotten, even in just one semester. My heart expanded with joy. He spotted me and strode toward me, his brown hair the same shade as Emily’s, his face a masculine version of his mother’s. I realized yet again how much I missed my late wife, and how I longed for her, especially at Christmas, and believed that Olive might not be too far wrong after all, that my affections belonged, and always would belong, to Emily.

  ‘Pa!’ called Jeremiah.

  He hurried past the Pullman cars and soon came to me.

  While I was a tall man, over six feet, my son was even taller. When he had been a boy, I would scoop him up and hold him close. Now I was lost. Was he a man or still a boy? How should I behave toward him?

  ‘Jeremiah, home at last!’ I held out my hand for a handshake.

  He looked at it. And then he smiled as if he thought I was an old fool. He came forward and embraced me. ‘We’re living in the twentieth century, pa.’

  There’s no greater pleasure a man can enjoy than his son taking him in his arms and embracing him. I felt I had truly ascended to heaven.

  Jeremiah pulled away and looked around the platform as the locomotive steamed at the front. ‘Where’s Miss Wade? I thought she’d be with you. I’m mighty eager to meet her.’

  The joy I took in our reunion was now diminished. ‘Alas, Jerry, Miss Wade and I seem to have had a falling out.’

  He could not hide his disappointment. ‘By your letters, I was sure you were going to tell me you were engaged by this time.’

  I sighed. ‘I might have all the doctor-schooling in the world, son, but that doesn’t mean I’ve figured out women yet.’

  Jeremiah was delighted with Henny.

  He took me aside once the introductions were complete and said, ‘You fixing to marry Miss Gregsby instead, pa? Is that what happened to you and Miss Wade?’

  ‘I have no matrimonial designs on Miss Gregsby at the present time, son, much as she seems to believe to the contrary.’

  He nodded. ‘Then that’s just dandy. Because I’m thinking I’m going to need a wife soon. She’s twenty-three. I’m nearly fifteen. That’s not too big an age difference. She should be thinking of marrying up soon, before she loses her chance.’

  I stared, aghast, again wonder
ing if he was a man or a boy. ‘Jerry, you have your studies to think of.’

  But he remained smitten with her, and followed her around like a compass following the north pole for the rest of the day.

  That afternoon, I had a serendipitous patient, the unmarried sister of Isaac Jensen, Miss Belva Jensen. She was a stout spinster a few years older than Isaac, and though she usually saw me for her bunions, she was here today regarding abdominal complaints. She was entirely without modesty in first shedding her outer garment and then her corset. After listening to the dispirited rumblings of her intestinal tract for close to a minute, I lifted my head.

  ‘I think you should dispense with your corset for the next little while, Miss Jensen. Those old-fashioned whalebone stays might be the source of your present discomfort. As well, I’ll prescribe essence of Jamaican ginger, ten drops in the morning, and ten in the evening.’

  While I was writing this script, and she was doing up the buttons of her shirtwaist – no easy task now that she was without her corset – I noticed that her hands were trembling.

  I lifted my pen. ‘Have you had that tremor long, Miss Jensen?’

  ‘Oh, yes, doctor, years. It’s nothing to worry about. It doesn’t trouble me at all except when I’m trying to darn socks or lift a cup of tea.’

  Once I was finished writing her script, I made a note of her new disorder in her chart. I then paused. My eyes narrowed. I stared at her hands as she continued to button her shirtwaist.

  I decided I would have to enter the tremor not only into Miss Jensen’s chart, but also into the Ephraim Purcell case file.

  Later that day, I put on my boots, hat, and scarf, and walked over to the Corn Mercantile Building. Although Deputies Mulroy and Donal had assured me they had by this time spoken to all Corn Mercantile and Grand Hotel employees, I thought a re-canvass couldn’t hurt.

  They were doing a brisk business in live turkeys – everybody was buying their Christmas bird – and the place was filled with their squawking and stink.

  I saw our local butcher, Earl Hadley, haggling with Merle Slack over some turkeys in the commercial dealers’ section. Merle Slack was one of the junior yard hands, and I decided he was as good a man as any to start with. I looked around for Erwin Fletcher, Mrs Swinford’s brother, and was glad to see he was nowhere about.

  I bought my own live turkey, a fourteen-pounder who disapproved robustly when she was transferred from her cage, tied by her wings and legs, and stuffed into a burlap bag.

  I then waited for Slack and Hadley to conclude their business.

  By and by, they were finished.

  I went over to the yard hand.

  ‘A Merry Christmas to you, sir,’ I called.

  Slack looked up from his work. ‘Doc. Howdy.’ He glanced at my sack. ‘You found yourself a nice one?’

  The bird was still struggling. ‘I wouldn’t number niceness as her chief personality trait, Mr Slack, but she’s certainly going to be tasty.’

  He was a young man of twenty, wore a red thermal undershirt, denim overalls, and big rubber boots. Short in stature and freckled in face, he had riotous uncombed bundles of blond hair protruding from under his brown tweed cap, and a crooked set of teeth.

  ‘Anything else I can help you with, doc?’ he asked. ‘The girls have made some top-notch mince-meat pie. I had a piece. It can’t be beat. Five cents a slice.’

  I grinned. ‘I may avail myself of that, Mr Slack. But before I do, could I have a word with you about the Purcell murder case? The sheriff has deputized me to look into it.’

  His Christmas cheer faded. ‘So I heard.’ After a moment’s thought, he said, ‘I never had a problem with Mr Purcell. People call him an old miser, but he was always tipping me nickels and dimes. A miser’s supposed to be stingy with his money, and Mr Purcell was never stingy with me.’

  ‘Were you working on the night he was killed?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘And did you hear the shot?’

  ‘Shots, doc. There were two.’

  I nodded – Slack was of the two-shot school, then. ‘And where were you when you heard the shots?’

  ‘Right over yonder, at the foot of them there bleachers.’

  ‘So near the window?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And do you have any idea where the shots came from?’

  He squinted as he thought about this. ‘A lot of people say the back alley between the Grand and the Corn Mercantile. But to be honest, sir, they sounded to me as if they came from an upstairs window somewhere. Or maybe the hotel roof.’

  Here at last was a witness account that supported the pronounced angle of the gunshot wound. ‘Didn’t one of the deputies come to talk to you about this? I had them canvass the whole neighborhood. I thought they had spoken to every employee here.’

  ‘Not me. Just to some of the other fellows. I was in Florida visiting my cousins. I left the day after the murder and didn’t get back till last week.’

  Hah! Here’s where persistence in a criminal investigation paid off.

  ‘So you’re certain at least one of the shots came from an elevated position?’

  He thought some more, squinting up at the rafters. ‘I would have to say both of them came from high ground, sir.’

  I cocked my brow. ‘Both from the vicinity of the Grand?’

  ‘No, sir. One shot came from across the street. From the drugstore, if I had to guess.’

  The drugstore? I paused for a long time after this. Mrs Swinford had been over at Wiley’s Drugstore at the time, practicing Christmas Carols, according to her son. ‘Do you recall Mr Swinford and his son sitting up on the bleachers at the time of the shooting?’

  ‘Mr Swinford was there. He was bidding on hogs. Clarence was gone, though. There was a bit of a ruckus, you see.’

  ‘A ruckus?’

  ‘Mr Purcell came by and started bothering Mrs Swinford. She got so upset she left. Clarence followed her a few minutes later.’

  ‘How come none of the other workers told my deputies this? All I got from my men was that they had nothing to report.’

  ‘Guess because the rest of the hands were in the stable. It’s just me and Mr Fletcher out front on auction night. And the auctioneer, he don’t know nobody. He’s from Batavia.’

  My mind shot over the Swinford family’s tragic history with Purcell. And now Clarence hadn’t been sitting in the bleachers after all, even though his uncle, Erwin Fletcher, had told me otherwise.

  Later on, I discussed these new revelations with Stanley at the Sheriff’s Office.

  ‘Clarence worked at the hotel for a while. Eugene Lapinance had him doing the books. He had an office in a back room. I’m sure he had the key to the back door. Stairs back there lead all the way to the roof. I know that. I checked it myself earlier in the investigation. And if not the Grand, then maybe he could have gone over to the Wileys. The way Merle Slack tells it, Clarence left the Corn Mercantile before the rifle-fire started. Purcell came in and harassed his ma shortly before that. Whether Clarence went to the roof of the Grand Hotel or to an upstairs window above the drugstore, it all has to be looked into.’

  Stanley grinned. ‘I can see why I make you deputy so much.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The next day, after a morning of patients, I had lunch with Henny and Jeremiah.

  I found it unexpectedly upsetting, sitting with them like that at the kitchen table, eating leftover pork roast and pea soup. It nearly felt like a family. The eager look in Henny’s eyes unsettled me. Her over-exerted smiles and too-quick laugh spoke of a woman drowning in grief, desperate to latch on to any flotsam and jetsam passing by. In this case, I was the flotsam and Jeremiah perhaps the jetsam. How miserable it was that I wanted Olive Wade to be sitting in that chair instead of Miss Gregsby.

  By the end of lunch I was out of sorts. I decided the only way to improve – or at least distract – my mood was to close the surgery for the rest of the afternoon and throw myself whole-heartedly int
o the Ephraim Purcell murder case.

  I got up abruptly and left without a word.

  I felt my son and Henny staring after me.

  After a moment, I heard Henny follow me into the corridor. ‘Clyde?’

  I turned, and realized I was starting to feel unfairly cantankerous toward her. ‘I shall be closing the surgery for the afternoon, Henny. There have been some new developments in the Ephraim Purcell murder case, and I will be employed in my capacity as sheriff’s deputy for the rest of the day. I’m sure you and Jeremiah can find ways to amuse yourselves.’

  Her eyes, brown and large, remained unwavering. ‘You’re distressed.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You say that like a man hanging by thumbscrews.’

  For several seconds I didn’t respond. Then I took the easiest dodge. ‘It’s just that at this time of the year, I miss Emily so dearly.’

  Her face softened. I saw in her eyes a reflection of my own grief, only keener, the wound fresher, the hurt still bewildering, not smoothed by time to a chronic ache, the way mine was. She put her hands on my forearms, stood on her tiptoes and, much to my alarm, kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘We will have a Merry Christmas, Clyde. I know we will.’ She glanced back to Jeremiah, then turned to me and kissed me again. ‘Go on, now. Work on your case. And cheer up. I’ll be making a special supper tonight. And then perhaps we can sit by the fire together.’

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her no.

  After all, I was a doctor, and commanded by Hippocrates to do no harm.