The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  The Jenks and Hopfner families soon joined the crowd emptying the courtyard to return to their farms and shops and factories.

  One group remained, however, clustered before the platform.

  A man and woman bent over a third man. When the final tremor had convulsed Hopfner, Reverend Haviland had grown ashen, swayed slightly, then more and more. His hat slipped from his hand, his walking stick toppled, then he fainted backward into Abigail Carhart's arms.

  CHAPTER 2

  "Pulpit, bad dog. Down off Mrs. Carhart," Reverend Haviland commanded the black and white springer spaniel in response to a startled cry from Abigail that drew smiles from several on the St. Paul's Episcopal Church green before the Sunday service. It was the first since the execution.

  "Reverend, your creature has muddied my dress. How am I to concentrate on your sermon now?" she said, only half-joking, as she wiped at the paw prints.

  "I am truly sorry. The dog is too friendly and I think he has taken a liking to you. As for the sermon …"

  "So long as you are not preaching against one of the vices that add spice to the humdrum here, like gossiping. Stealing, coveting, idolatry, those I could hear denounced for hours, Reverend, since they have nothing to do with me. But as for the lesser vices, I say leave them at home, where they belong, and not in the pulpit. No, not you, dog.

  "In fact, shouldn't you be backstage now, as you usually are, to heighten the drama of your entrance?"

  "Right you are, Mrs. Carhart, but today I feel as one with my congregation, with the entire village, in fact. The warm sun has returned after the rains of last week. The church perched atop this hill joins those striving in the shops and houses and factories down toward the harbor. The great white spire directs their — our — hopes and aspirations."

  "I'm happy the improving weather has restored your spirits enough to accept the accolades of a grateful village both before and after the service," she teased.

  The pastor laughed, but he blushed. He had reasoned away his execution day doubts and concluded that Theodore Hopfner was in fact guilty and now embraced his status as a village hero. The bells atop the white wooden village church peeled, and he excused himself, threaded his way through more well-wishers and disappeared inside.

  When the bell rang to start the Holy Communion service, it had recalled in him a joy in his priesthood, a harmony between minister and flock that had dissolved in the tuneless events that led to his departure from Brooklyn. In fact, he sounded exultant, not at all penitential, in leading the congregation in petitioning God for mercy and guidance while reciting the 10 Commandments.

  As he bounded up the four steps to the pulpit for the sermon, he saw himself as the intermediary between the villagers and God and his role perfectly symbolized in his being raised above them —rather, lofted above by them — in the oak pulpit draped in a green silk banner emblazoned with a gold cross.

  He smiled broadly at the 250 worshippers and addressed them effusively as "My dear brothers and sisters" for the first time since his arrival six months earlier.

  His large hands gripped the pulpit. His usual expression of inquisitive interest, blue eyes wide, right eyebrow raised, head tilted slightly, lips pursed, transformed as he scanned the church intently to draw in everyone. A shaft of sunlight illuminated his long, rugged face, ruddy cheeks, and light brown hair.

  "We are one in the Spirit," he proclaimed in his warm, sonorous baritone. "These words of St. Paul are especially true for us in Paulding given the tragic, yet reassuring events of the past week. They speak to us not only in the theological sense but in the civic sense as well. We as a congregation manifest the workings of the Spirit, but we as a community manifest those same workings. We have different gifts. We may not work miracles or declaim prophecies or speak in tongues, but we do teach our children to read and write..." — glancing in the direction of energetic schoolteacher Esther Lyon, who covered her face bashfully with a white-gloved hand — "We feed our families," — he extended his hand toward dour farmer Ellwood Dusenberry and cheerful grocer Andrew Morford.

  "We manufacture goods vital to many industries" — bowing in the direction of Thaddeus Acker, bespectacled, bearded owner of the bolt and nut works and employer of many in the congregation. "We provide medicine and carriages and clothing" — glancing at this last toward the back of the church at Abigail, who hurriedly lowered something into her lap and smiled up at him.

  "We labor together, the banker, the tailor, the teacher, the harness-maker, the coal seller, the iceman, the peddler, even the minister, to provide for our families and for each other."

  He paused and looked out at the women in their long, bright colored dresses, small hats covering pinned-up hair, lace parasols resting at their sides and the men in their dark baggy suits, white stiff-collared shirts, bow ties and long sideburns, their hats clipped to hat-holders before them in the oak pews. The foundation of the two-and-a-half-square-mile village of 3,200 along Long Island Sound north of New York City. Blue, red and green squares of stained-glass light checkerboarded the faces. A horse neighed outside.

  "I have come to feel fully part of this community during the past week. The usual role of the minister is to tend to the spiritual rather than temporal needs of his congregation. But the Lord has seen fit to use me to protect the community — you sitting before me today and those who are elsewhere — from that which erodes the very foundations of community — the criminal.

  "The good community must aspire to be just, just in every way. It must root out the evildoer, no matter if he be an outsider or a prominent citizen. It must avenge wrongs against all in its midst, be they the owners of mansions, or," lowering his voice for dramatic impact, "lowly peddlers.

  "This Paulding has done, this we have done together this past week. The price was high, but the price of Zife Jenks' life was high as well, the never-ending price to his widow and four children. And it would have cost us dearly as well had we failed to do him justice. With a murderer in its midst a community can never achieve peace, can never attain contentment, no matter how many its good works.

  "I mentioned that the minister has a role in a community. His role is to turn its eyes to God and to help it root out evil. In the community from which I came, my fulfillment of that role placed me in conflict with the community, a community that had taken its eyes off God, a community that, instead of expelling the evil expelled the minister so it could pursue its evil paths unhindered.

  "Yet, here I have pursued the same goals and find myself in most satisfying unity with you, my fellow villagers. Today, I feel one with you."

  Pew upon pew of smiles returned his exultation. He lingered to savor the moment. Reluctantly, he turned to descend.

  The back door groaned open. A shaft of sunlight forged a glaring golden tunnel half-way down the center aisle, as if another world had pierced the dusky coolness. A giant figure strode down the tunnel, lit from behind, its shadow darting across the pews. Haviland, startled, turned back around in the pulpit. The congregation turned away from the minister to examine the golden intruder. Abigail Carhart stood to glimpse it.

  The door squealed shut. The sunlight vanished. There remained a man, rather, half-man, half-lion. He loomed 6 foot 5 inches, a mane of wild black and gray hair framed his face, a foot-long beard drizzled from his chin. His brow was chiseled with wrinkles, gouges and scars. His pulpy nose was red and raw. A ragged patchwork of soiled strips and squares of leather formed a tunic over breeches. Crude leather and rope sandals covered his feet. He smelled of earth, sweat and filth.

  But his frenzied, savage appearance was belied by his eyes. Crystal aquamarine they were, so bright and mesmerizing they seemed lit by a flame within. They had subdued Haviland, grasped him and enslaved his attention.

  Haviland had never seen him before, but others in the church knew him, or knew of him.

  The Leatherman.

  He was a semi-legendary nomad in Westchester County, his name invoked to
frighten naughty children, the subject of endless debate and speculation. He had gone mad in the Civil War, it was said, and lived in the forests and caves of the county. That was all that was known for certain. No one knew his name.

  He raised his right arm. In his hand was a small black object. He declaimed rawly:

  "Oh ye overmastered by your pride, oh ye so content in your smug righteousness, look what you have wrought. A boy, a mere boy your prim consciences have hanged by the neck this week to satiate fat-bellied justice. And why not? Did not God's minister himself catch the killer in the act? Well, nearly, and that served as well.

  "But sleep ye not sound this night, nor the next nor the one after. Look ye upon this and know the frailty of men."

  He stalked toward the pulpit, eyes still locked with Haviland's. As if in a trance, the minister descended and approached the altar rail. The Leatherman met him there and pressed the black object into his hands.

  "I found this today inside a tree trunk on the south side of Peningo Brook, halfway between the village and Indian Hill Road. Read, and repent your rashness."

  Then he was gone.

  It was a black order book. Haviland, still at the altar rail, paged through it. Slowly at first he struggled to decipher the handwritten names, phrases and numbers, then faster and faster, almost in panic, as he began to grasp the import of the book. The congregation watched him, disquieted still by the intrusion.

  Haviland reached the end of the written pages. He pored over the last one, as if striving to take possession not only of the words but of the very thoughts of the writer. He gave up reluctantly. He looked up and out beyond the congregation. His face grew ashen. His hands began to tremble.

  "God forgive me," he rasped. "Theodore Hopfner was innocent."

  CHAPTER 3

  "This was Zife Jenks' order book," Reverend Willet Haviland was explaining to Abigail Carhart in his parlor. He had stumbled through the rest of the service and walked straight out of the church and into the parsonage next door, not even pausing to remove his green vestments. She had followed to make sure he was all right.

  "But it was more than just a listing of what he sold to whom. Look here at the back. It lists the names and addresses of all his customers, by village, their sizes, favorite colors and materials, even their children's names and ages, everything that a good salesman needs to know."

  "Amazing details," Abigail said, "considering Jenks was new in the village. He'd been through maybe three or four times."

  "Yes, and so, he would not have given it away or hidden it on his own."

  "But he could have dropped it, or lost it while walking along the brook," Abigail pointed out.

  "But look at the dates of these last orders. He was killed on February 8th. Here are entries on January 30th, February 2nd and here" — flipping a page — "February 5th. There are two pages per date most of the time. And look here. After February 5th, three pages were ripped out. That means he probably had filled in orders for February 7th and maybe a few for the very day he died."

  "He still could have dropped it, or placed it in the tree for some reason," said Abigail, sitting in a wing chair as Haviland paced the room, occasionally stopping and bending over to point out something in the book.

  "But he did not walk that way on the day he died. The testimony at the trial traced his movements from the moment he got off the train from Manhattan. He was never near the brook, and it's a good mile or mile and a half from Main Street to where the book was found. The only explanation can be that the killer took the order book because of something in it — maybe his or her name — ripped out the pages and tossed it into the tree to dispose of it.

  "And that means that that poor young Hopfner was telling the truth all this time, and nobody believed him, because they believed me instead — the minister instead of the troublemaker." He dropped into a chair across from Abigail and lowered his head into his hands.

  Abigail, unsure what to do — ordinarily a minister dispensed rather than required solace — began paging through the peddler's book, which Haviland had left in her hands.

  It was a 4-inch-by-7-inch leather-bound diary with lined pages but the dates handwritten.

  The last entry before the ripped-out pages read:

  5 Feb. '83 (Paulding)

  S. Tompkins, Hillside Ave. — swtr, Hstings, brown, med., $2.50. Pd.

  H. Abendrof, Hillside Ave. — 1 brwn serge pnts, 36-29, $1.75

  1 grey serge pnts, $1.75

  $3.50 pd.

  A. Carpentor, Rye Rd — 1 pr. gloves, kid, white, $1.00, pd.

  H. Coe, Ridge — 2 pr. ovcalls, brn denim, 34-29, $1.00 pd.

  Cheviot pnts, grey.

  He had apparently sold a sweater made by the Hastings Company or in its style to Sarah Tompkins, two pairs of pants to Henry Abendroth, gloves to Ann Eliza Carpenter and overalls to William Coe and perhaps jotted down a future order or interest in coarse Cheviot Wool pants for him since there was no indication of payment. He had misspelled three of the names, not unexpected from an immigrant. He also used the European style for dates, Abigail observed. His prices were certainly less than hers for the women's merchandise, but who knew the quality? She would have to show Sarah Tompkins some sweaters from Hastings on her next visit to the shop.

  The entries started with Nov. 28, 1882, and had taken up about 80 pages of the 120-page diary. The first months' orders came from other villages, then he'd added Paulding customers in his final days. The order book listed streets, customer names and personal information:

  Indian Hill Rd

  Mary White, 7 1/8; med; 7; hsbnd: Daniel; chdrn; Thomas, 20 Feb. 78, Daniel, 19 Mar. '79, Amelia, 15 Sept. 81, Elizabeth, 12 Nov. 82. Red, blue, green. Yellow, pink.

  The entry for Mary White seemed to include her hat, blouse or sweater and glove sizes, her husband's name, names and dates of birth of her children and lists of colors Mary liked and didn't like. Abigail had not realized Mary hated yellow; she would remember that. It made sense given her sallow complexion.

  The reverend had composed himself after a fashion and was scrutinizing her, Abigail realized.

  "It certainly would be useful, not something to toss cavalierly into a tree trunk," she noted, wondering how she might dispatch the reverend for a few moments so she could examine entries for her other customers. "But the evidence against Theodore Hopfner was very strong. Did they not find blood on his gloves and boots, and articles from Jenks' pack in his pockets? Did he not admit to picking up the ax? He was there. You saw him not 300 yards away."

  "Yes, yes," Haviland said testily, "but Theodore did not have that, that book. Someone took that book and tossed it into the tree trunk."

  "But not necessarily on the day he was killed. The ledger only goes up to February 5th."

  "But the pages after that are ripped out."

  "There may have been nothing on them."

  "Then why rip them out? The killer's name may have been listed. Oh, I have been a fool. Jenks had been dead for some time. His body was cold. That came out — oh, Mrs. Carhart, I am so sorry. I must be offending you with these gruesome matters."

  "Not at all, Reverend. After the reports of the war ..." She paused as if striving to return the demons of that conflict to a locked place. "Nothing will ever offend my sensibilities again."

  Then, regaining her flip manner, she said, "For I have none left. Besides, I met Jenks only once and, as you know, it was a most unpleasant encounter."

  "Yes, but I have come to regret my part in it," he said.

  "You did what any man, any cultured man, would have."

  The day before the killing, Abigail had seen a small crowd gathering a couple of doors from her shop. Unable to resist something perhaps of interest, she investigated. She came upon three women — all good customers of hers — two men and the peddler Jenks showing them goods from his pack. Inferior goods — shirts and trousers and sweaters — they seemed to her eye.

  "He
re I was, a taxpaying shopkeeper, an employer of three Paulding women, a vendor of high quality ladies apparel for decades, if you count my father who opened the shop, and this vagabond not 10 paces from my doorway trying to steal my customers. Well, Reverend, as you recall, I beseeched him in no uncertain terms to move along or to invest in a shop of his own."

  "And he did move along."

  "After taking the time to complete a sale, he did."

  "Ah, yes, but then the incident turned unfortunate."

  "Yes. After his 'clients' had departed, suitably embarrassed, I returned to my shop as he packed up. He could carry an astonishing number of items in that pack on his back. Then, he passed by my shop, glanced in, then hesitated. He turned, came up to the window and spat on my name. This small, weasily tramp spat on my name. Then he scurried off."

  "Infernal Robert E. Lee," Haviland muttered angrily – his alternative to exclamations invoking the Almighty — "I happened to be passing and witnessed his rude and uncalled for behavior, so I caught him up and set him at your doorstep."

  "And made him apologize, which he did most reluctantly. He didn't even remove his cap. But I appreciated your intervention, Reverend, and the throttling you gave him before freeing him. A glowing ember of chivalry, for which I remain grateful."

  "Still," Abigail added, noticing his lack of ardor for her case in light of subsequent events and remembering that she was here to console him, "his death surely was horrible and his killer should be brought to light, if he has not been already. Surely, there is an explanation for the ledger's appearance. We shouldn't presume we know all the possibilities. We are simply not wise enough to discover the explanation."

  "No, no, the explanation is simple enough," Haviland said despairingly. "Mr. Jenks' killer discarded it there, and it could not have been Theodore Hopfner. It was at least a mile and a half away, a blizzard was raging and he had no horse."