by Gen LaGreca
He regretted the act when he noticed Solo staring at him from the hallway, looking alarmed. Was she startled by the anger inside him . . . an anger that surprised him too? She vanished before he could read anything more on her face.
Recovering, he took out his billfold and paid the artist. The men shook hands as Tom escorted his visitor to the foyer and out the door.
The inventor summoned Jerome and arranged for the slave to replace him on the gallery that night as the guard for Solo’s class. Then, weary and despondent, Tom climbed the staircase and retired to his room. He remained there for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER 14
The candles were generating too much heat for what was already becoming a hot, humid day. In shirtsleeves and vest, Tom could feel the sweat forming on his forehead as he sat in the dining room for breakfast the next morning. The crystal candelabra, the fine china, the impeccably polished silverware—all from his mother’s best collection—were part of the setting Jerome had arranged for the service of his chocolate squares. Like many of Greenbriar’s residents, Tom had become addicted to the new food, and a few squares downed with a pot of coffee was now his standard breakfast fare.
Soon the chef entered to serve these items himself. Though he kept late hours tending to his many tasks and newfound business and he delegated work to his assistants, he made a point of serving breakfast himself to Tom, who rose at dawn.
Although Tom allowed him to wear his kitchen clothes in the big house, Jerome arrived in his finer threads, adding to the formality of a meal that Tom viewed as a mere cramming of something into his mouth so that he could get on with his day. Tom observed the chef’s hat on the slave’s head, stressing the stature of the person who made his breakfast and of the dish that was perfuming the air with chocolate.
“Mornin’, Mr. Tom.”
The inventor nodded, watching Jerome pour his coffee with a flourish, then serve the squares with a bow, as if they were a delicacy and Tom a king. The inventor sighed. He decided not to spoil Jerome’s moment by having the candles extinguished; he would endure the heat.
He watched the tapers send curls of smoke into the air for a few lively seconds before they vanished. He thought of Cooper’s life now flickering in its final moments, about to fade into the stillness within hours. The treachery of Cooper, the demise of the senator, and the loss of his invention had drained all joy from Tom’s face and mood.
He pushed the squares away and gulped down his coffee.
“Mr. Tom, are you feelin’ ill?” Jerome’s speech, though not perfect, had improved with six weeks of Solo’s classes.
“I’m fine.”
Jerome looked concerned. “You want somethin’ else? Muffins, biscuits, or waffles?”
“No.”
“I have leftovers. Cold ham or chicken fricassee?”
“I’m not hungry.”
As Jerome refilled Tom’s coffee cup, a house servant, Charles, entered holding a letter.
“Excuse me, Mr. Tom. This came for you.”
Tom noticed the improved speech of another of Solo’s students. Charles also seemed to stand taller than usual, as if straightening out his grammar did the same for his posture.
Tom took the envelope. It was from a standard line of stationery sold in the general store and in widespread use. His name was written on it in block print letters: Mr. Edmunton. Tom glanced at both sides of the envelope, looking for an indication of the writer’s identity. There was none.
“Who sent this, Charles?”
“I don’t know, sir. ’Twas on the table by the front door this mornin’. ’Twasn’t there last night when I put out the lights and gone to my cabin.”
Tom shot a questioning glance at Jerome, who shook his head, indicating he too knew nothing about the matter.
The front door was often left unlocked and the window at the entrance open. Could someone have dropped the envelope off in the night? Curious, Tom thought, as he opened it. He removed a letter that was unsigned, written on the same stock stationery, and with the same block letters, making it impossible to recognize the handwriting.
Holding the letter in one hand and his coffee cup in the other, he read:
THE MAN WHO IS TO BE HANGED IS INNOCENT. THE KNIFE THAT STABBED BARNWELL IS A MILE UP THE TURNOFF TO WATKINS LANDING. LOOK BY THE DEAD OAK IN THE CLEARING AT MANNING CREEK.
Tom leaped from his chair. His coffee cup slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor as he rushed out of the room.
* * * * *
A slave who was hauling a wagon of wood to the big house veered sharply off the road to avoid colliding with a wild figure galloping at blinding speed toward him. The slave was stunned to see that the crazed man was his master. Tom’s horse whinnied its distress as it struggled to make the sharp turn onto the main road at full speed. The dirt stirred by the hooves sprayed Tom’s face and clouded his vision. Trees and fields along his path whizzed by him in one liquid smear. The horse tried to oblige Tom’s urgent need for speed, flying along, its tail straight out, its eyes bulging in high alert.
Tom leaned forward and drove the animal hard on the main plantation road headed north. After riding eight miles, he came to the turnoff for Watkins Landing. He headed northwest on the old Indian trail that led to an abandoned trading post. He jumped over a downed tree on the unkempt path, then another, and then he splashed through mud. Soon he heard the rippling waters of Manning Creek. He meandered off the road through a tangle of vegetation to reach the stream, with branches tearing his shirt and insects biting his hands.
Just as the letter in his pocket described, he came to a clearing and spotted the trunk of a dead oak. The once-living giant had apparently been struck by lightning in a past storm, leaving only a hollow, decaying trunk. Tom dismounted and combed the area by foot. He looked through the fallen dead branches of the tree, the ground cover around it, and the roots exposed and rotting along the bank of the creek. Then he saw a silver object shining in the dull brush.
Tom picked it up carefully. It was a carving knife. Embedded on the handle were two flowery initials, the same ones he had seen on the cutlery and china served at a funeral reception: PB. Caught in the blade were traces of what looked like dried blood and a torn piece of fabric the color of Wiley Barnwell’s robe on the night he was killed.
Indigo Springs was four miles north of the murder scene at the Crossroads. The spot where Tom stood was nine miles northwest of Indigo Springs. That placed him thirteen miles from the Crossroads, or twenty-six miles roundtrip. It was impossible for Cooper to have covered that distance, hauling and hiding the invention for part of it, in the approximately eighty minutes he had on the night of the murder. And it was impossible for Cooper to have come here afterward, because he had remained in custody since that night.
Tom didn’t need to analyze the distances; they were clear to him in the one shocking instant when he had read the letter. Now, holding the knife, he had to face the inescapable conclusion: Cooper could not have put it there.
CHAPTER 15
Sheriff Robert Duran stared at the document on his desk. It was a warrant signed by the governor, and it was his sworn duty to carry it out. His eyes locked on the words to be hanged by the neck until dead.
Out the back window, he saw the setting for the duty he had to perform: the courtyard between his office and the jail. He saw the simple wood platform that had been pulled out of the corner for the day’s event. At the top of its steps were two posts and a crossbar with a noose hanging motionless in the stagnant air.
Out the front window, the sheriff caught sight of a youngster from the town, a boy about ten years old, walking along the street with his father. The man went into the shop next door, and the boy sat on a bench outside to wait for him. The youngster settled himself comfortably and began to read a book he was carrying.
The sheriff noticed how quickly the child became immersed in the book. With his face lowered to the pages and his hair spilling into his eyes, he seemed obl
ivious to passersby and street noises. The sheriff marveled at the boy’s apparent preference for reading rather than shopping with his father. The youth reminded the lawman of himself at that age because as a boy, Robert Duran was an oddity; he loved book learning.
He was about the same age as the boy outside on the day he found his mother crying inconsolably. She was in their small farmhouse, standing before the empty dresser that belonged to his father, who had just left them. His mother had married the man in defiance of her parents’ admonitions, and they, in turn, had disowned her. She and her husband became yeoman farmers who grew cotton on their small acreage, tilling the fields themselves. Thanks to his mother’s scrupulous savings and determination to give her son an education, Robbie was able to buy books and attend school. The boy tried to console his mother in that desperate moment when she wondered aloud how they would manage their farm. As he hugged her and wished desperately that he could make her stop crying, he pledged to leave school to help with the crop. She could count on him. He was strong and could do the work of a man, he told her.
Robbie was spared from his own death sentence—a life of back-breaking drudgery on the family farm—by the man named in the warrant before him. His mother’s brother, Ted Cooper, stepped in to help them begin a new life of comfort on his plantation. Under the protection of his uncle, Robbie completed his basic education and found a calling in the law.
Outside the sheriff’s office, the boy’s father left the shop and returned to the young book enthusiast. The boy stood up and grinned at him. The man patted his son’s head affectionately, and they walked away. Watching their happy exchange, the sheriff recalled his own fond moments with the man he came to regard as his father.
When the man and boy vanished from his sight, the sheriff turned his glance to another object of interest: the whisky bottle on his desk next to the death warrant. He closed his eyes in flat refusal of his need. That would be for later, he told himself. Right now, there would be no relief.
He got up, straightened his tie, and pinned to his vest the badge with the blindfolded lady and her scales.
A small, somber group of witnesses gathered before the scaffold. Some arrived on horseback and hitched their animals to posts in the back of the yard. Others arrived in carriages that they left on the street, then walked the narrow path to the courtyard hidden from public view.
The witnesses included newspaper reporters, planters, shopkeepers, other townspeople, and relatives of the victim and the convict. Greenbriar’s coroner and town doctor, Don Clark, was there to make the final pronouncement on the doomed man after the task was done. Bret Markham was there from the Crossroads Plantation.
Charlotte Barnwell, dressed in black, fanned herself limply, looking drained by the heat and tension of the day. Rachel, standing next to her, wore a dress of muted gray with a white bodice that formed two scallops over her breasts, her neck and shoulders bare. A black lace shawl falling around her arms was a remnant of the mourning attire that she had relaxed in recent weeks.
Nash Nottingham stood next to Rachel. His admiring glance at her soft breasts suggested that she looked alluring to him, even at a hanging.
“Where’s Tom?” he whispered to her.
“Darned if I know. He never came for us this morning, like he said he would.” Rachel’s voice was heated with anger. “He never showed up, on this horrible day!”
Nash took her hand reassuringly. “I’m here for you, dear. And for your mama too.”
* * * * *
A dust cloud swirled around Tom as his horse galloped along the dirt road. The airborne particles stuck to the sweat on both of their bodies, making a single bronze figure out of the man and his horse. They had traveled miles in the blistering heat. Could they go a bit more?
There were multiple tears in Tom’s shirt, making visible bloody streaks on his skin from his duel with the bushes at Manning Creek. His face was flushed from the toxic mix of scorching heat and lack of water. But his condition was not the chief problem.
Just as he took the turnoff to Greenbriar’s main street, his horse stopped its constant whinnied pleas and slowed its pace. The overworked animal was breathing rapidly and sweating uncontrollably, sure signs of heat exhaustion. The animal needed rest and water, but Tom could only give it the whip. The poor creature could no longer oblige; it would rather endure the sting than move another step. The animal suddenly began to tremble, its legs wobbled, and then its belly hit the ground with a thump. The horse seemed in the throes of fatal heatstroke.
Tom slid off the animal and began running. He was at the outer edge of town and not yet near the shops and people. Ahead he could see the town landmark, a clock tower near the jail, with a great bronze bell that rang to signal every hour. Tom ran furiously toward it. From his distance and angle, he couldn’t see the time, but he knew the next hour would be ten o’clock. He raced ahead, wishing desperately that he would not hear the tower bell, because if he did hear it, the event he was trying to stop would begin. Then in mere seconds it would be over.
* * * * *
There was silence in the courtyard when the door to the jail opened. A small group came out and walked toward the scaffold. Sheriff Robert Duran led the procession. Next came Ted Cooper, his head down, his hands tied behind him, a guard on each side. A chaplain in a robe walked behind the doomed man, reading from a Bible and blessing him.
The sheriff looked as grim as the prisoner, realizing that somewhere among the witnesses, his mother would be standing, once again suffering an immense loss—and once again crying. This time he could do nothing about it, except add to her grief. As he walked, he resolved not to look at anyone. At the scaffold, he glanced at the clock tower visible above the yard. Within moments, it would strike ten, the time set for the . . . event.
He mounted the steps to the platform. Cooper and one of the guards followed. The other guard moved to the side of the platform, where he took hold of a lever. The sheriff positioned Cooper’s feet on the trapdoor.
The noose cast a looming shadow on the ground. The prisoner stared at his nephew in indignation and hopelessness. The nephew did not avoid his uncle’s eyes but stared back in sadness, resolve, and quiet agony.
The guard on the platform observed the pair. Knowing their relationship, he stepped forward to reach for the rope and handle the matter for the sheriff. But Duran put a hand on the guard’s arm to stop him and took the rope himself.
With his uncle’s unblinking eyes locked on him, eyes that were hardened in scorn at everything and everyone, the sheriff positioned the noose around the prisoner’s neck and tightened it.
There was another set of eyes that never left the sheriff. The prison guard at the base of the platform waited for Duran’s signal. The guard’s hand gripped the lever that would release the trapdoor. He held the handle in white-knuckled tightness. The sheriff thought he could hear the guard’s teeth grinding.
Duran turned to the prisoner. “Do you have any final words, Mr. Cooper?”
“May Tom Edmunton rot in hell.”
The sheriff picked up a white hood on the platform and raised his arms to place it over Cooper’s head. The prisoner shook his head, emphatically refusing it. Duran stared at Cooper, the hood in his hands, as if wishing the prisoner would change his mind. Cooper shook his head again, and the sheriff tossed the hood aside.
The tower bell began sounding its ten gongs to announce the hour. The sheriff turned to the guard at the lever and was about to nod.
Suddenly, an urgent cry filled the courtyard, drowning out the town’s bell, and a body shot through the crowd like a bullet.
“Stop! Stop! Stop at once!”
A collective gasp came from the group as the shouting man raced toward the scaffold. Panting and about to faint, he faltered. Two men propped him up, and he yelled, pointing at the accused, “He’s innocent! Innocent!”
Disheveled and weak, with no jacket, his vest torn, his shirt streaked with blood, his pants splattered with mud, an
d his face soaked with sweat, he was almost unrecognizable.
The first official to reach him was Dr. Clark. “It’s Tom!” The coroner exclaimed.
The sheriff stared at Tom from the scaffold in utter astonishment.
“My God!” Rachel screamed. Charlotte looked ready to swoon. Nash, their pillar of strength, curled a comforting hand around each woman, and he too looked shocked.
Trying to catch his breath and steady his legs, Tom reached down for the knife tucked in his boot and the letter in his pocket. He gave the items to the coroner, who examined the weapon and read the note.
To the stunned gathering, Tom told his story. He described the anonymous letter found that morning in his home, how it had directed him to a location thirteen miles away from the scene of the crime, how he had followed the instructions and found what in all likelihood was the murder weapon, and how impossible it was for Cooper to have made the round trip from the Crossroads to the knife’s location on the night of the crime, or thereafter while he was in constant custody.
“Sheriff,” Tom concluded, his voice rising as if delivering a proclamation, “since the prisoner could not have delivered that note to my house, nor could he have disposed of the murder weapon at Manning Creek, someone else has to be involved.”
A man in the group handed Tom a canteen of water, and he drank greedily.
“Was any person seen on your property who could have left that note?” the sheriff asked Tom.
“The servants didn’t see anyone, nor did I. The block printing of the words makes it impossible to identify the handwriting.”
A tall man who ran the general store peered over the coroner’s shoulder to inspect the letter. “I sell that paper and ink in my shop. Everybody buys it. Could’ve come from anyone.”