by M. G. Meaney
The minister was pacing again, seeming now to examine the gold fleur-de-lis pattern on the olive-green wallpaper, then the cluster of portraits of the previous rectors, dating back to the 1750s, and an oil painting of Paulding with the church atop a hill and the village clustered peacefully below. He took a religious tract bound in russet leather from one of the bookcases flanking the chestnut mantelpiece, then returned it. He ran his hand through his curly hair and turned around to face Abigail. He seemed about to cry. No, he mustn't. She could not deal with that.
"It will be just like Brooklyn," he finally blurted out hoarsely. "Infernal Lee."
His misadventures in Brooklyn, never fully explained, had been the subject of much gossip among the congregation. Something to do with breweries was all Abigail knew. She saw a chance now to penetrate the mystery.
"Brooklyn?" she asked in, she hoped, an interested but sincere tone.
"It is something I prefer to forget, though the fault is theirs. But this" — gesturing toward the order book in Abigail's lap — "makes me dread that the same thing may happen here."
"And what was it happened there?" she asked.
"Alcohol is one of the greatest evils of mankind," he began.
She would not rank it quite as high as, say, coarse, cheap materials like serge and slobbering, overly friendly dogs like Pulpit, but she nodded politely.
"The temperance movement could save men, and women, from the destruction of drink. The drunkard fails at work, loses his job, then his wife and children. He – or she – ends up on the street and the family evicted as its piteous legacy."
She nodded again, politely, though she deemed one sermon a Sunday more than sufficient.
"A more worthy crusade a new rector could not desire, especially in a workingman's church in Brooklyn. And so I undertook it. However, not everyone saw the uprightness of the cause, and in fact that choice of crusade doomed me to lasting, indefatigable opposition among parts of the congregation."
"And why was that, Reverend?"
"Because many of the parishioners worked for the Rheingold beer brewery four blocks away. One of the owners counted himself among our congregation as well."
Abigail managed to control her laughter, but just barely, as she looked at the naively well-meaning minister standing crestfallen by the mantel. "You set yourself a formidable task," she observed. "You might as well have crusaded against nuts and bolts in Paulding as beer in Brooklyn."
"I did not shrink from it, though, nor did they shrink from opposing me at every turn, even as far as noisily walking out during my sermons and stacking cases of beer at my door. But I carried on. I organized a Women's Temperance League, and one day last November I led them in a march on the brewery itself. We carried signs pointing out the evils of drink and urging passers-by to take the pledge. The Brooklyn Eagle wrote it up. That was the final and unforgiveable offense in their eyes — interfering with their commerce. The brewery owner was soon in touch with the church vestry and my bishop. Six weeks later, I was here, dispatched by the forces of commerce and alcohol. I am continuing to fight them here, but ..."
"But what has this to do with the Hopfner case? Did you not help solve the killing?"
"Or so I thought, but now it appears I was deceived. ..."
"As were the constables and judge and jury," she pointed out.
"And people will never forgive me for being part of the unjust execution of that poor young man. It will be the same thing."
She was unsure how to tell him that the villagers, though shocked that someone was killed in their village, felt little passion about the murder, or the murderer, because both were outsiders. That would sound insensitive, but it was simply a matter of not knowing the people involved and not being in danger themselves since the killer had been found.
"You should give us the benefit of the doubt before making a judgment on that question. We are an understanding village, not like Brooklyn," she told him.
"I hope you are right, but I fear relations can never be the same after my blunder, which cost a young man's life — and means that a murderer may be living among us."
"Oh, surely not," Abigail said.
"But the order book. It means that whoever killed the peddler Jenks returned by the banks of the brook eastward, toward the village. And he may have come from the village beforehand."
Now it was Abigail's turn to be discomfited. She rose and placed the order book on the great chestnut desk, to be rid of it.
"What will you do?" she asked.
"I will see Constable Stillwell tomorrow and turn over the book. He will, of course, have to reopen the investigation."
He walked over to Abigail.
"I am so grateful for your help today. I can never repay you. I am sorry you had to see me like this."
"It was nothing," she said, happy to be of assistance, however marginal, and gleeful for the tidbits of gossip.
As she picked up her things to leave, he said: "By the way, I noticed you involved in something in church today. What were you concealing when I looked at you?"
"Nothing. nothing at all." she stammered, blushing.
He was examining the large object protruding from her handbag.
"You caught me, Reverend," she admitted. She opened the bag and took out a sketchpad.
She had been sketching him during his sermon.
The drawing showed him with arm extended, eyes raised, mouth open during his moment of triumph.
* * *
After Abigail left, Haviland sat at a small desk. He took a pen in his right hand and drummed it on his left, slowly, then quicker and quicker. Finally, he slammed the desk twice with the left hand and hurled the pen across the parlor like a dart. It struck the village painting and cracked the glass shielding the peaceful scene into ragged slivers.
CHAPTER 4
Constable Charles Stillwell stood, hands on hips, glancing at the disorderly, leonine figure straddling a chair before him, but Stillwell at 5-foot-6 even standing could not hope to intimidate the Leatherman sitting. Nevertheless, the constable tried.
"You maintain that you found this order book of Zife Jenks in a hollow tree. Why were you searching the tree?"
"Fate, Destiny, perhaps God himself if there is one brought this to light to illustrate to all your egregious errors, to proffer a chance to start anew on the path to justice. He did not wait to dispatch you to the fires of Hell, haunted for all eternity by the face of Theodore Hopfner. He gave you a chance for redemption. And what do you do, you oaf? You interrogate me about minutia while a murderer walks your streets, pats your children on the head, helps your women with their groceries.
"What do you think, Reverend?" the Leatherman said, turning to Haviland. "Is this the way to catch a killer? Ah, but what do you know of catching killers?"
Haviland stood by the window in the cluttered 12-by-12 office in the police station, a storefront with a raised oak front desk in the lobby and two offices and two iron-barred holding cells in back. Stillwell had invited the minister to attend. When shown the order book, Stillwell first dismissed it. The occasional theft and breaking up fights at the Toll Gate Inn were his department's usual fare, not solving murders. Still, he could not admit the possibility that he had bungled the Jenks case so badly as to hang the wrong man. For the order book he suggested all the explanations that Abigail had. Haviland pressed, however, and Stillwell's first action, to Haviland's shock, had been to haul in the Leatherman and try to intimidate or trick him into admitting the murder.
"We can make do well without the lectures," said Stillwell, a florid, gregarious sort out of his element in interrogation. "Just tell me about the tree."
"Tell me first if an innocent man hangs a shorter time on the gallows-tree than a guilty one. Tell me that. You should know."
"All right then. Tell me this: Were you in or near Paulding on February 8th, the day of the murder? Where were you?" The constable continued to glare at him.
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br /> "Would that you had been on Indian Hill Road, or" — to Haviland — "that you, sir, had not. For then would the hangman have choked no innocent." He gurgled a death rattle. Then the Leatherman raised himself, slowly, menacingly, the chair creaking as if in fear. Like a small bully confronted by a stern parent, Stillwell retreated a step from the looming figure.
Haviland inserted himself between them.
"Your point is well-taken," the minister said. "No one feels more terrible over this tragic error, but the constable is just doing what you suggested: beginning anew. But we need your help."
"To put my neck in the noose."
"No," Haviland insisted. Stillwell said nothing.
"Did you tell Hopfner, too, that you were only interested in justice? You were, yes, as the cat is interested in the bird, as the frog is interested in the fly — to kill and eat to fatten your pride."
"We — I — made a grievous error," Haviland confessed.
"Not necessarily," Stillwell hedged.
"And you would make another if your eyes deceived you again. The city man comes upon a tree fallen in the forest and sees firewood, but as he chops it the copperhead that nests there impales the ignorant one with his fangs. For the city man sees but does not comprehend what he sees. Yet, you say that this time you will see aright, you cannot fail."
"We will make certain this time we are right, if you will but help," Haviland said.
The Leatherman's pungent smell of sweat, mud and, strangely, pickle overpowered the palid sweetness of Stillwell's lime aftershave and Haviland's piney cologne.
"The forces of the seraphim themselves would not sway you from your blinders before, and you already stand prepared to gallop over me in your ignorance, like cave dwellers fumbling about in the darkness."
"And yet, you have given us a candle to light the way out of the darkness, but you refuse to show us how to use it," Haviland responded. "Why did you bother? To laugh at me? To mock us all?"
"To tame your pride."
"To help solve this murder. That's why. Or else you are as responsible as we for leaving the murderer loose, even more so. You found the diary. We must start with that and learn everything we can, so we know where to go from there. How did you find it?"
The man of patchwork leather hovered over the constable, then relaxed. He walked over to the window Haviland had just vacated.
Finally, he said:
"Tools. I was storing tools in the tree."
"What?" asked the amazed constable.
"For my work."
"What work is that?" Haviland asked.
"Keeping nature verdant."
"Verdant?"
"Verdant, fruitful. I prune wild grape vines and berry bushes in the woods. I fertilize them, I nurture them. Then, they nurture me." He pointed toward his mouth. "How ignorant are the so-called civilized of the ways of nature."
"And these tools," Stillwell asked, "Where did you get them?"
The Leatherman turned and looked out the window, placing his hands on the panes and spreading his legs, like an animal desperate to escape a cage.
"The tools?" Stillwell repeated.
The pulpy nose, straggly beard, carved brow and limpid eyes whirled around.
"Where do you get things? From someone else. So I," he said in a sarcastic staccato.
"Such as whom?" demanded Stillwell, doggedly.
"Better men than you who no longer had use for a trowel, a spade, a pruner, a bucket."
"Better men around here?"
"Here? Paulding, White Plains, Bedford, Yorktown, it is all the same to me — rocky ridges, rivers, woods, home to all the beasts except for 'civilized' man. He must massacre forests to make fields, filthy the streams for toilets and foul the air with smoke and soot. He cuts houses, shops and churches into the vast forests like jagged gashes and rips in a great green quilt. I do not use your maps with your artificial lines, nor do I bother with names. So, I do not know."
Stillwell took his opening. "If you do not use maps, how can you be sure where you found the diary? Was it really where you showed my men today? Or could it have been some other tree by some other stream?"
"I know one tree from another, one stream from another. Each has its personality, as each of you does." He sneered.
Deciding he would get nothing more on this line, Stillwell returned to his other question.
"Where were you the day Zife Jenks was killed, the day of the great snowstorm?" the constable asked, anticipating that a nature-oriented clue might avert another lecture.
"What does it matter where I was? It matters where the killer is." The Leatherman was now pacing edgily back and forth by the window, like a caged lion.
"Where were you?"
"I do not remember. I do not keep a diary to count up my lucre."
Haviland noticed the apparent slight to Jenks. "Did you kill Zife Jenks?" Stillwel1 asked, finally reaching the object of his questions.
The Leatherman shook his head in disgust.
"If this is what the people of Paulding have to protect them ... Are you done with me?"
Stillwell nodded.
A window grated open. Haviland and Stillwell felt a surge of cool air in the musty room. The Leatherman had bounded through the window and away.
Stillwell went behind the gouged oak desk, sat in a wobbly chair, took out a notebook and began to write.
Haviland watched for a few moments, then sat in the chair the Leatherman had straddled early in the — Haviland had to admit — interrogation, another person taken into the hands of the authorities because of him, another person suspected of murder because of him, this one almost certainly innocent.
"Surely, you do not think he did it?" Haviland asked at last.
"I'll tell you what I think, Reverend," Stillwell said, looking up from his note-making. Ellwood Dusenberry's farm is just up the road from where Jenks was killed. He's got a little shed out close to the road there, and he had things filched from time to time before — and after — the killing. Now, he thinks the peddler was responsible for some of it, but I think that individual there" — he nodded toward the open window — "could just as easily have been the man. He didn't have those tools around today or we would have checked with Ellwood, but we'll keep after him. And if he took the tools, he could have been around when Jenks was killed, too."
But why would he have killed Jenks? He had no reason."
"Does a creature like that need a reason? Dressed in rags, filthy, smelly, touched in the head — you heard him talk — does a man like that need a reason? Maybe Jenks wouldn't give him some scraps for his spring suit."
"But dressed like that out in the middle of a blizzard? Pardon me, Constable, but even you must admit it sounds farfetched."
"A point well-made, Reverend, but even given that, what if he's wrong about where he found the order book, or is concealing the real location — perhaps to cover up stealing from Dusenberry? There's plenty of woods near where Jenks was killed, across the road even. Say he found it there. That would tie in perfectly well with Hopfner being the one to do it. Or someone else could have found it in those woods and hidden it in the tree where that beast says he found it."
"But why?"
"A friend of Hopfner's maybe, knowing what it would mean. It would have made the case against him that much more damning. Or maybe someone whose name was on the missing pages — if something really was written on them, which I don't think necessarily true."
"Surely, the Leatherman would not have turned in the diary if he had killed Mr. Jenks?" Haviland said.
"Reverend, in that fellow we are not dealing with a run-of-the-mill man like me or yourself. You heard him. He's more animal than man, disordered by the war. He likes to snip at our orderly life here, to throw things out of kilter. That alone would be enough for him. He's like wild vine twining around a privet hedge. But Reverent, this village craves its orderly life, and we'll not let creatures like him kick t
he cart out of its well-worn path for no better reason than this." He held up the order book.
Haviland leaned forward and entreated: "But what if he is telling the truth and the killer hid it there? That would mean clearly that Hopfner could not have killed Jenks, and that the killer probably was returning to the village afterward. It would mean the killer was someone from Paulding, not an outsider."
"Speculation, Reverend, based on a far from conclusive piece of evidence. Remember, you yourself found Hopfner near the scene, with blood on his gloves and boots and with things from the peddler's pack. And no explanation of why he was there. You could not ask for a stronger case unless you had seen him bludgeon the fellow. A man has hanged for the crime, and we've had no trouble since. I see no point in raising questions that would serve only to undermine the village's confidence in its police — and clergy. Why make people nervous if there's no need?"
"So, what will you do?"
"We will check for the Leatherman's tools for certain. Who knows, maybe we can put an end to those thefts from Ellwood's shed? But beyond that? I don't see any further inquiry unless something else turns up." He placed the order book into the bottom drawer in the desk and slammed it shut.
CHAPTER 5
The vacant-eyed 3-year-old toddled drunkenly toward Abigail and Haviland in the drab tenement apartment, an expectant look on his face and oatmeal glued all over his outstretched little hands.
"My good raincoat!" Abigail exclaimed as she stepped behind the minister.
"Tatus? Tatus?" said the blond, oval-faced boy as he careened off the light brown wall.
"No, now, stay back," Abigail cautioned. "Stay. Stay."
He headed straight for her in the entryway, but at the last moment he veered off and wrapped his arms around Haviland's light gray trousers.
"Tatus!" exclaimed the boy.
Then, reconsidering, "Tatus?"
"Don't mind. He thinks you are... someone else," Elena Jenks explained as Haviland squatted to chat with the boy. "His eyes, he does not see well." Abigail was rustling in her handbag for a handkerchief to offer Haviland, but he was telling the lad he liked oatmeal too.