The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  "The bloody foreigners I'm talking about. Russians, Slavs, Turks, Italians, Poles" — he said this last with particular raspy disdain — "they're letting them off the boats every day by the hundreds. Do you want the Lower East Side here? That's what you'll get. You'll walk the streets and you'll be the foreigners. You'll walk into Ivan's grocery or Luigi's bakery or Hildegarde's clothing, and you'll find hordes of them speaking their jibberish to each other and understanding not a word you say when you want to order a dress, or fill a tin of milk or buy two cans of beans."

  The murmurs grew in the crowd. Merritt smiled.

  "Before long, they'll be living next door, serenading you with their Cossack music and that jumping and shouting they call dancing — at all hours."

  He paused again, then drove home his point.

  "Their children will be trying to play with yours. And one day, your son or daughter will bring home Boris or Gerta and announce them as their betrothed."

  Gasps from some.

  Merritt pulled at the right sideburn, blinked hard, coughed and brushed off his overstuffed blue uniform. Then he scanned the crowd again and resumed, his voice growing more hoarse.

  "We have accepted foreigners in the past, some from these very countries. Yes, but those were different: they knew trades, they were able to read and write, well-educated some of them were, and well-off. They brought something to America with them. In our own village we have Mr. Thaddeus Acker, and I am not overstating it when I say he is a mechanical genius. And Mr. Fred Bachmann, our druggist, who has cured more ills and ailments than a whole pack of doctors in other towns.

  "And they learned English," he said to general applause.

  He had omitted Adolphus Bronk, his Polish competitor, from the list of acceptable foreigners.

  "Today, the foreigners getting off the boat are here to take from America, not to give to it. They are too ignorant or lazy or both to earn a living at home, so they come here and expect to support themselves by ... by taking from you and me, that's how.

  "Is this why we fought the Great War? Is this why five boys from this village laid down their lives? Is that why I took a ball in the leg at the Wilderness and one in the scalp at Gettysburg? I say NO. No, no NO!"

  Quieter, he continued: "What to do? Congress must allow in only those who are good for America, the intelligent ones, the talented ones, the wealthy ones. Maybe they'd buy a harness off me or a dress off you, eh, Abby? Let the others be. Let them stay home, out of our way. Fortunately, our own Congressman Ward is on our side, but others are in the clutches of the foreigners or their agents among us. Write to Congress and President Arthur. Tell them what you want them to do.

  "And if they'll not listen, we in Paulding will take action on our own. I am today starting the Paulding For Americans Society. It will do everything in our power to keep undesirable foreigners from our doors. Our message is clear enough: America for Americans, Paulding for Americans. In fact, the message has already been sounded, and will be again and again until the undesirables take heed.

  "Write, join us. Do not be silent. We'll sweep away the vagabonds from our gates." His arms were extended and he glared almost demonically as his final shout rose into the air and drifted away.

  "You should enlist Sam for your temperance society, Reverend. I think he would be very effective, except of course that he takes bourbon with breakfast."

  Abigail Carhart had sidled up to Haviland as the oration ended.

  "Mrs. Carhart, I heard you mentioned. I am pleased to see you," the reverend said, taking her hand and bowing. He was pleased indeed.

  "Have you found the murderer yet?" she asked. "Perhaps Sam would fit better on your list of suspects than on your temperance board?"

  "Just what I hope to learn," the rector said. "Do you know where he was on the day of the murder?"

  "I'm glad, Reverend, that you finally agree that we combine forces in investigating the case. I am already making progress. Carhart and Haviland Detective Agency sounds well, don't you think?

  "Mrs. Carhart, I heard you have been making inquiries. But I am concerned about your safety, and your relations with the village. This is a thorny matter, and some may be offended. And there is a murderer at the heart of this who has already killed the peddler and let Hopfner die. You could be in danger if we corral the killer."

  She waved off his concerns. "I have no fear. I've lived here all my life, know everyone. Besides, once we identify the killer, the constable will apprehend, not us, surely? So, Carhart and Haviland Detectives, it is. Onward we go. Now where was Sam on the day of the murder? Here he comes. Let's ask him."

  She greeted the perspiring speaker as he stepped away from well-wishers near the gazebo.

  "Sam, you mustn't get so agitated. Bad for the digestion." She smiled.

  "Them foreigners are what's bad for the digestion, Abby, my girl. Afternoon, Reverend," he said, his hand trembling as he tipped an Old Judge cigarette from a packet. "Well, what did you think of the speech? Are you a foreigner-lover? Some of your kind are, you know, no offense intended."

  Before the rector could hem and haw, Abigail interrupted: "I think the reverend would like to know if your hatred for foreigners extends to killing peddlers? Isn't that right, Reverend?"

  "Oh, now, I, I wouldn't say that, exactly, no, not quite that way," the usually agile rector stammered. "I am, you see, taking somewhat of an interest in the case."

  "We both are," Abigail added.

  "I'll tell you this, Reverend. You did no one any harm getting rid of that German lad. Bad he was, all bad. One less to trouble us, I say."

  "There's plenty more to follow him, Sam, clever ones, too," Abigail put in, "and before long it'll not be the foreigners but the harness makers who are no longer wanted," she teased.

  "You'll always need a good harness man, Abby, just as they did my father and grandfather before him. as I'm always telling you."

  "I shall be the first to buy one of those horseless carriages I've read about, I think, Sam, but I shall not be the last."

  "They'll always be a need for the horse and the man that harnesses the horse."

  "Just like the thatcher, the weaver and the lamplighter – gone, all gone," she jibed.

  "Ah, get off it now, Abby," he laughed, but uneasily. "Change the subject, why don't you?"

  "All right, Sam. What did you mean up there when you said the message had already been sounded and that it would be clear and emphatic?"

  Merritt grew cautious now. He looked warily up at Haviland, an outsider after all, and one who didn't drink, in fact was campaigning against drink. Something odd about a fellow like that, something untrustworthy.

  "Nothing at all, Abby," he said, glancing from her to Haviland and back. "Just something to, you might say, inspire us all. I meant nothing in particular.

  We'll figure it out when we get going."

  "Come now, Sam," she said lightly, "you meant something there. You're not one to hold back."

  "Really, 'twas nothing in particular, Abby."

  "Sam."

  "All right. I suppose it was that peddler I meant. Not that I would have done him any harm, but, whoever killed him, it seemed like what you might see if these foreigners were to keep pushing their noses into our business here. Skulking about, knocking on doors, getting into who knows what mischief. It seemed a good point for the speech is all."

  Still playful, Abigail said, "Not that the reverend and I are making any accusations whatsoever, you understand, but where were you when Zife Jenks was killed?"

  Merritt, who had been jovial in tone but wary in response before, grew simply wary. He glared at Haviland, then returned his attention to Abigail, who flashed an incongruous smile, tilted her head toward him and curled one of her ringlets around a finger.

  He chased some imaginary dust from his shirt, then said: "Abby, I've killed a man or two, but none recently. At Second Bull Run I shot a rebel captain right through the heart at 2
0 feet, and bayonetted another reb."

  "And the peddler?" Abigail prompted.

  He stopped, saw he could not avoid the question, and became pensive, rubbing his right sideburn, then running his right hand through his shock of black hair. Finally, he hooked his thumbs through the waist of his uniform pants.

  "In my shop, I suppose. It was snowing, wasn't it? Where else would I have been? Yes, that's where I was."

  Haviland put in gently, "Do you happen to remember what you were working on?"

  Merritt realized angrily that the innocent question was a test of his truthfulness.

  "Who are you to go around questioning me?" he said, turning to face the startled rector. "I owe no answer to you. Tend to your church, Reverend. Leave the policing to the constables, why don't you? Your last outing in that line sent a man to the gallows — you say for no reason. And now you're about again accusing good citizens of the village of nothing short of murder, accusing me, who fought for this union in the war, of murder. Don't take your guilty conscience out on the rest of us, Reverend. And for some runty foreigner, yet. Go back to your pulpit, Reverend. If you stir up this village with groundless accusations, you will come to woe."

  He turned back to Abigail and said, less harshly: "And you'd do best to tend to your shop and not associate with a troublemaker, Abby. Watch out what friends you choose. Now, good day."

  He nodded to Abigail, but not to Haviland, then stalked around them and back downtown toward his shop. They turned and watched him for a time in silence, he in his light gray suit, she in a deep blue cotton dress, with a light blue parasol that she now twirled idly on her shoulder.

  "I am deeply sorry for the upsetment this must have caused you," Haviland said, turning to her, concern in his blue eyes.

  "Upsetment? Grumpy Sam Merritt upset me? Never," she said brightly, her black ringlets dancing about her face. "In fact, I think we upset him. Sam has some secret he's hiding. I'll ask around and find it out."

  Haviland still looked concerned. "He may be right. Perhaps you would be better off away from this affair. If the responses so far are any indication, I fear the village could be quite incensed before the murderer is revealed."

  "But we must continue. When I think that someone here" — she pointed her parasol down Main Street — "may have, probably did, do this. ... We must find him, not matter how many of our citizens are inconvenienced. They will understand in the end. If he could kill once, and watch a killing, he could kill again."

  "I will continue to look into it, but you should stay away for your own safety."

  "You will get much further with a villager at your side ... er, scouting about, than you would without. An outsider can only get so far in Paulding before he is resisted. Oh, you may say, "How do?' discuss the weather, collect a piece of gossip or two, and even get an indignant denial if you ask bluntly whether they killed Zife Jenks. But to check their story, you need a villager. You need me. And have no fear of me. I belong here, and I want to see the danger rooted out, and help you out with the likes of Sam Merritt. Even the rebels could not stop him."

  "Nor could they stop me," Haviland said briskly. "The rebs came close during a skirmish outside Petersburg."

  "No. Really? Come over here and tell me about it. I'm tired of standing." They sat on a bench beside the gazebo looking out at the harbor.

  "We were trying to draw out Lee, to force him to move his troops from the eastern end of the siege works. We swung around to the west and attacked what we thought was a weak point. It wasn't. The Confederates suddenly rose up, hundreds of them. Lee had moved them quickly within the lines and placed them in trenches we thought were thinly manned. We charged out of some woods and were practically upon their lines when their men appeared, hordes of ragged gray scarecrows they seemed. But their rifles still worked and they smothered us with shot. All around me men were falling. We gasped in the gunsmoke. Minie balls shrieked past. I was not hit and kept my head down and my legs trudging forward. Some of us made it to their lines and we fought hand to hand with rifle butts, kicks, punches and bayonets. I was slashed in the face and bashed in the knee and went down, but I survived — miraculously — when the rebs suddenly retreated. But I have this scar on the cheek and limp as reminders. After the war ended, I realized that God had saved me and had done so for some purpose. That, and all the horrors of the war, well they turned my thoughts toward the ministry."

  Abigail's face, interested in the beginning, had taken on a stricken look during the well-practiced telling. She struggled to maintain her composure. She shook her head, fussed with her hair, pulled on a ringlet, glanced here and there, and finally looked back at the rector.

  Then Haviland caught the stricken look.

  "What can I have been thinking? This must be intolerably upsetting. He had remembered at last that she had lost her husband of six months outside Petersburg. Haviland had not known him. "You suffered from the war more than I or Sam Merritt."

  "That would make me the strongest of the three of us," she said, trying to return to a teasing tone, but without success.

  "I suppose it would," Haviland agreed over-enthusiastically, breaking out into a smile in hopes of undoing his dreadful self-indulgence. "It would indeed."

  Abigail's green eyes were gazing past him, toward the harbor and a sloop sailing away, their customary mischievousness troubled by eddies of sadness.

  "Tell me about him," Haviland murmured, in touch with her mood now.

  She saw his earnest expression, lingered as if debating whether to let down her guard, then gazed back after the ship.

  "He didn't have to go," she said dreamily after a moment. "He was young, too young, too too young. But he could not stay away, Daniel. All the others would go, and so would he. 'The country needs me,' he said, Daniel did. ''Tis the time of the great struggle. My forebears fought the Revolution, and now it is my time.' Idealistic he was, and a patriot. Maybe more, he was eager for an adventure before settling down to his carpentry and some children and the quiet life of the village.

  "He made me a rocker before he left. of pine from the woods here. He cut the trees down himself. He was strong, with big muscular arms, but he could do fine work with them. On the head of the rocker he carved a rose. My silhouette he was to carve into the middle of it and another of himself. He carved himself, started me but then had to go. They were to leave.

  "'I'll finish up when I return.' That's what he said. 'And I'll make a rocker for me and a house for the two of us, and we'll sit out on the porch in the evenings.'

  "They say he was carrying off a wounded man when it happened, a Vermonter. I had a letter from him after. He got well. Daniel saved his life, he wrote me. He got married after. He has four sons. He wrote from time to time. Last heard from him at Christmas.

  "The rocker I still have, out on the porch. He never finished it. He never finished my silhouette."

  Her eyes followed the sloop still, now vanishing in the distance, its form immersed in the vast bluish-gray-green expanse of the Sound.

  The rector took her hand. She did not resist. She glanced at him, then past him and back to the spot the ship had been. She could not find it. It had gone. She looked at her enfolded hand, then up at the rector.

  "Love is a weakness, Reverend," she said, slipping out her hand and moving back toward her usual flippant tone. "It's like eating the goose and stuffing and potato and cake at Christmas. While you're having it, it's wonderful, but then it's gone and you sit there, bloated and lethargic, interested in doing nothing but sitting and feeling dull."

  He was taken aback at this seeming rebuff of — exactly what? He was not proffering love, but he felt wounded somehow, even though he himself had closed the door to love since an unhappy occurrence during the war.

  Abigail stood. "The gossips will cluck for days if we are seen this way," she said. "Just because you preach against gossiping doesn't mean that people stop doing it."

  "I am well aware of it,
Mrs. Carhart. Amelia Theall has asked me about you already."

  "And what did you tell dear nosy Amelia? You may call me Abigail, by the way — since we'll be detective partners. I was Abby as a girl, but it seems childish for a grown woman."

  "That I had great respect for you," he said, omitting the qualifier that he respected all in his congregation.

  "They will have us engaged inside of a week," Abigail said. "It doesn't take much, and your answer certainly was not much."

  Haviland laughed then recalled Molly's rumor of Abigail's rating beaux's apparel and kisses. "There is little point in trying to maintain a decorum with observations such as that, ..." He was going to call her Abigail, but let his fears run him off it.

  "Stuffy decorum has no place in a village where everyone knows what you eat, what ailments you have, every single one of your eccentricities and every foolish thing you've done since wetting your first diaper. And if we are to truly tangle with a murderer, we must be willing to sacrifice decorum. We will learn nothing if we are not at least as nosy as Amelia."

  "That might be difficult for me."

  "But not for me, and I am better placed to be nosy. In fact, I already know the customers Zife Jenks delivered to on his last day, Reverend."

  "Really? Who were they? And please call me Will."

  She ignored this last. "Hannah Wheatley was first, about 10 at the stove shop." The shop was part-way down Main Street. "She helps out her husband, Tom, so Jenks dropped off her order there. It was a maroon blouse, with frilled sleeves and neck, an inferior cotton. Not something I would carry, but nice enough for the price, I suppose."

  "And then?" Haviland prompted, impatient with the shop talk.

  "Ann Derivan, a pair of kid gloves, or so he told her. They didn't seem like kid to me, but she liked them well enough. They even lasted the winter. She's on Westchester Avenue, two blocks up from Main. Then a black wool shawl for old Lavinia Quintard up on Adee, three pair of stockings for Eliza Odell, also Adee, then three white shirts and a pair of green suspenders for Jim Morford on Bowman Avenue, then a blue wool sweater for Amelia Theall."