The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  "What about the shooting?"

  "Tangential. If I, we, solve the Jenks case, we will learn who shot at me. Besides, it would be awkward to interrogate people when I was, after all, trespassing."

  "Yes. I know. We'll work on the peddler case, and I'll work on your shooting, a case of my own."

  "You could be in danger. Look what he did to me," the rector said.

  "But I'm from Paulding, and I'm a woman. There's a difference there. Pardon me, but we haven't much use for outsiders here. If they live or die, it's all the same to us," she said, mock seriously.

  "I had hoped I was being accepted into the village," he said, disappointed.

  "No one who wears the collar is ever fully accepted. You make us sinners too uncomfortable," she teased, to disguise that she was stating the truth.

  "You seem to have accepted me, at least as a fellow detective," he said in a jesting tone that ill suited him. "Did I hear correctly at the ballgame? You called me Will."

  "That is your name, isn't it?" she replied tersely.

  "Thank you," he said, resisting an urge to take her hand. "Thank you ... Abigail." There, he'd said it. Now what?

  She whisked her hat onto her head, fiddled with it a moment, then stood to leave.

  "I'm glad you're feeling better. I'll let you know when I've found your shooter." She moved to the door, parasol at her side. She paused in the doorway. "If I hear anything else on the Zife Jenks case, I'll let you know ...Will."

  She whipped the green parasol to her shoulder like a soldier in drill, about-faced and strode off.

  CHAPTER 16

  "Reverend, how pleased I am to see you," the great bass voice rumbled. "I hope you have not been long waiting?" Thaddeus Acker clasped Haviland's hand in a meaty but muscular grip and the industrial's cedarwood scene enfolded the rector. "Cigar? Cigarette?" Acker inquired, presenting boxes of Turkish cigarettes and Virginia's finest cigars. Haviland took a cigarette out of curiosity and a desire to please his solicitous host. The rector had called on Acker at home at 7 in the evening and now sat in a blue velour upholstered mahogany armchair whose color matched the blue in the blue and gold striped wallpaper in Acker's parlor.

  "The work on the church is coming along quite well," Acker remarked after selecting a cigar and taking a blue-and-gold patterned armchair next to his guest. They faced the unlit marble fireplace whose mantel featured an oil painting of the Disbrow " Purdy Nut and Bolt works.

  "The pews will look new after they are sanded and revarnished. The three they have done already look splendid."

  "Yes," the rector concurred. "Mr. Coddington and Mr. Diehl do fine work."

  "Indeed. I had them redo the front doors here last year. Marvelous," he said.

  Haviland was taken aback by Acker's unexpected good mood, in light of their last meeting, but he would take what luck — or the Lord — handed him. But why had Acker ignored his injuries?

  Surely he saw the bandaged hand, the singed hair, the scorched face? Ah, but he must have been briefed by the village leaders.

  "And how is the Temperance Union coming? It has started, I understand," Acker said, stroking his beard while tapping his cigar against a black ashtray on a mahogany table.

  "Not as well as I had hoped," Haviland said. "Our innkeepers have a strong following, even among those who do not themselves drink alcohol. It is a vice like the apple in the Garden of Eden. It seems harmless, and not only harmless. It is attractive, tempting to the eye, the nose and the palate. As in the case of the apple, the warnings against it seem overwrought. One bite, one sip. What harm is there? Adam and Eve found out, and so do many who think their will is stronger than the lure of intoxicating beverages. The people of Paulding will come to their senses in time, Mr. Acker, with the Lord's help and someone to show them the way."

  "Perhaps. I am sure you will try your best," Acker said wanly. "And that reminds me. May I offer you something to drink, apple-ade, ginger beer, lemon beer, a cider? Or something hot, tea or coffee?"

  "Cider would be fine," Haviland said, and smoked contentedly. Acker, cigar in hand, strode to the doorway and pulled a silken cord next to it, then returned. In his dark brown tweed jacket, dark green trousers, white shirt and trademark green bow-tie he looked the country squire masterfully at home. In a few moments, a slight, pallid young woman appeared, a servant's apron over her long black dress and a white cap atop her red hair.

  "Ah, Mary," Acker greeted, his voice enveloping her like the warm tones of a cello. "Reverend Haviland will have a cider and I a tonic."

  "Yes, sir," she whispered in an Irish brogue, curtsied and left. She returned with a tray and set down a cut-crystal beer stein of the cider for Haviland and a crystal goblet of a clear liquid in front of Acker. The rector soon determined that vodka made up a large proportion of the "tonic," but he did not press the issue.

  "Did you see in the Journal this week about the woman — Anna Oliver — who is pastor of a Methodist church in Brooklyn?" Acker asked, resuming the conversation. "She is not ordained, of course, but she preaches from the pulpit and runs the church. Four years she has done it. I wondered what you thought of it, Reverend?"

  "I had noticed the article, Mr. Acker. I must say that I admire her conviction, her faith and her dedication, though it would be out of the question for her to wear the collar."

  "She is quite strict, they say, stricter than many a male pastor. No festivals, sociables, charades, tableaux, anything else of a social rather than religious nature. I dare say you would find her a kindred spirit in your fight against spirits." He tipped his goblet in the rector's direction in the form of a toast, then took a long draft.

  "Strictness is not everything, Mr. Acker. Temperment and credibility, those are key to a strong ministry. It is a rare woman able to command a church full of men."

  "If you'll pardon me, Reverend, it is a rare woman who cannot command any man she chooses. A glimpse of petticoat, a mischievous smile, a touch of the hand and almost any man will do almost anything for almost any woman, in my experience."

  Haviland thought of Abigail and laughed. "You have me there, I think, Mr. Acker. In certain realms the woman reigns, but not in the church."

  "Not yet, but I suspect it is only because they have decided it is not worth their attention, too distant from the practical concerns of everyday."

  "But I notice, Mr. Acker, that you are not under the sway of a woman. Why is that?"

  He smiled and motioned toward the painting. "My machines are my wife and my children. They absorb my complete attention — creating them, correcting them, improving them, very much the thing one does with children. And, of course, my employees. And you?"

  "God keeps me busy," Haviland said.

  "Yet, I hear Mrs. Carhart has taken an interest in your well-being?" Acker smiled benignly, but a pang of fear seized the rector. Then it passed.

  "She is an estimable woman, one for whom I have great respect, as I do for all my congregants," he said, again issuing the official line.

  Acker smiled more broadly and shook his head. "Reverend, there are no secrets in a small village." He raised the goblet. "Good luck to you. She is a woman of spirit, though I think not a particularly spiritual woman."

  Haviland moved to protest, then dropped it. He smiled back weakly, undone by the urbane industrialist's talent for quick intimacy.

  "Well, then, since there are no secrets, as you say, I would very much like to see the rest of the house. I hear it is something to behold," the rector said.

  A look of suspicion crossed Acker's face, then the Santa cheeriness returned. He stood. "This way."

  The three-story, cream-colored house with mansard roof and front porch, built 10 years before to Acker's own design, fit in unobtrusively with its neighbors on Westchester Avenue. Inside, the layout and details showed an ordered, inquisitive mind focused on work. A massive space with several large work tables occupied by tools, camshafts, toggles and other devices in the
works took up the rear of the first floor, a drafting board in their midst and a massive rolltop desk full of notebooks and documents at the end. Sunlight streamed in through a bank of bay windows, but in addition a light fixture hung over each table.

  "You never know when an idea will strike, Reverend," Acker said. "I can work out the inspiration here, undisturbed, while it is still fresh."

  "And the paintings on the walls?" Haviland asked about images of machines, screws and oddly shaped devices.

  "Inventions," Acker said. "Not the usual art, but inspiration for the future."

  The inventor added: "I hope soon to install a telephone. There will be an exchange here within a year. Imagine being able to call someone in New York, even someday Charleston? It is a great age we live in, Reverend. And a great country, our U.S. of A." He seemed wistful, or maybe frustrated that he had failed to invent the telephone.

  The rest of the house was more conventionally Victorian – patterned green or salmon wallpaper, tiled floors picking up the wall color, or plain wood floors with patterned carpets; claw-footed chairs and tables. The paintings celebrated small-town America: a picnic, a Fourth of July parade, a village fair, men in a fishing boat celebrating a catch, and one in a familiar style of the Paulding gazebo with the nut and bolt works in the background.

  "Ah, you see something familiar?" Acker said. "This painting is by Abigail." I won an auction at a church fair a few years ago — a painting to be made by her. We agreed on this. She made a beautiful work, don't you think?"

  "Very well done," the minister said.

  They returned to the parlor and Haviland said: "I could not help but notice there is nothing Polish, and no painting of yourself. You are from Warsaw, you said? With all the immigrants from there these days I would think Polish items are easy to obtain."

  "Ah, Reverend, the merchandise sent from Poland, it is expensive, yet of poor quality. The best of my homeland rests in here." He pointed to his head. "As for myself, I prefer not to impose my image on my visitors, for I often must impose my views on them."

  He laughed and lighted another cigar. Haviland declined a second cigarette.

  After Mary set down another cider for Haviland and a second "tonic" for Acker, the rector returned to the subject of Acker's past.

  "Many Poles are sailing over here now, but when you came you must have been a rarity, about 20 years ago was it?"

  Again the raised eyebrow, the over-long moment of scrutiny by the bearded man. Then the rotund voice. "Even as a young man I loved to work with machines, to tinker as you say. I dreamed of making a fortune — and achieving fame, for I was young — inventing a machine that would do something marvelous, I knew not what. This was at the time of your war. You would not think it a good time to come, but a cousin of mine had come out two years before. He was an adventurous young man, full of high spirits, afraid of nothing. He was bored with our life in Warsaw. With a friend he left and came to the United States.

  "He wrote us the most astonishing letters of his life. He worked for a small dry goods shop in Manhattan and devised the idea of supplying the army. After much persuasion, the army did start buying combs, brushes, shoe-shine kits and other items. My cousin saved some money and soon was himself traveling among the Union armies selling these things. He sent us accounts of the battles. He even saw President Lincoln give a speech once. And for me, he mentioned how the army and the government were desperate for improvements in machinery and production. They wanted shoes, rifles, wagons, cannon, everything made faster and better.

  This I could not ignore. It was a call from fate. I saved my money from the machine shop I was working in and out I came."

  "This was when?"

  "The exact year? Oh, it was so long ago I have trouble remembering."

  "And you settled here in Paulding in 1868?"

  "Yes, I learned about their need at the factory for a machinist, and in a few years I became a partner. But you know the rest, surely."

  "How could anyone in Paulding not? By the way, whatever happened to your cousin, the one who came out before you?"

  "My cousin? Dead, I am sorry to say. A horse reared and kicked him in the head in Ohio about 10 years ago. He was selling farm equipment."

  "And do you have any other family in this country?"

  "This great U.S. of A? No, none. All are in Poland: my parents, three younger brothers."

  "Zife Jenks has two brothers here, along with his wife and four children," Haviland observed, changing the subject slightly.

  "A different era, Reverend. Today, entire families come, to live in squalor. In my day, the few who came, they came to contribute, and to profit from their contribution. Have some of your cider. But why do you bring this up?"

  "My continuing interest in his murder. I have learned of your earlier confrontation with him that day. Why did you not mention this when I talked with you last week?"

  Acker froze in mid-sip. He screwed up his face in puzzlement.

  "But surely the police, you are leaving the matter in their hands, are you not?" he said.

  So, he had talked with the constable or the mayor, or both. On the other hand, maybe everyone in the village had heard.

  "I have been hoping they would take it on," the rector said breezily, "but until they do I shall continue to assist them. I converse with villagers as part of my duties, so why not about this? Now, why did you not mention this dispute? It could help explain some oddities in Mr. Jenks' behavior that morning."

  Acker stood abruptly, moved slowly to the side of the mantlepiece and leaned against it. The table lamps left his face in shadow, as if a headless man had appeared there, cigar in hand.

  After a time, low and measured, a voice emerged. "As I have said, you should leave these matters to the authorities, Reverend. Your inquisition has been so pervasive that anyone you speak with is assumed to be a suspect by the village, including me. While I commend your desire to undo what you consider a wrong, I urge you again to let those better qualified conduct the inquiry. I should like to consider the matter closed."

  Haviland walked to the other side of the mantelpiece and looked into the dusk that was Acker's face. "Surely, you can have no reason to fear a few questions on a matter of such import?"

  "Ah, there we disagree. Is a peddler's death — for which a man has been hanged — a matter of import any more? I think letting the village get on about its affairs without needless distraction is a matter of import." He stepped out into the light again. "I wish you would allow things to settle back to normal." He gestured at the rector's wounded arm and face. "Surely you see now how dangerous your amateur detecting can be."

  "I see only that I am making progress. Someone feels threatened. That is enough to tell me I must press on. And it is the caped vandals and vigilantes who are creating the havoc in Paulding these nights, not a few questions from me. I am leaving them to the authorities, for the moment, but must I keep harassing you on this Jenks matter? You and I have better things to do than to dance around a matter I already know about from Sam Merritt."

  "Sam, eh? Sam had ejected the fellow before I ever set eyes on him. The peddler was interfering with my workers. He entered the factory without permission and was distracting the line. Naturally, I ordered him out."

  "Had you ever seen him before?"

  "In my factory, no. Had I ever seen him? He had been in the village a couple of times before, so I am told, so perhaps I saw him, but I took no notice. Never did I speak with him. There was no need."

  "And you did not mention this earlier because ..."

  "Because you did not ask. You asked about my seeing him at my house. I told you. Now you must know what happened hours before. Am I to read your mind? This is none of your affair anyway, as I have said."

  Haviland ignored this last. "Let me see if I understand. The factory was receiving some boxes?"

  "Parts, for a lathe, I believe."

  "Yes, a lathe." The minister said thi
s uncertainly, but decided it was not significant. "A few of your workers were carrying in the boxes. Zife Jenks, who had been escorted out of Sam Merritt's place, started approaching your workers?"

  "He was standing in their way, showing them shirts or blouses or something. They ignored him, but he persisted. Finally, he followed Joe Lane inside. When I found him, he was by the packing room and two or three people were looking over his merchandise. The barrels were backing up, and we had a shipment to get ready for the schooner. I told him to get out."

  "What did you say, exactly?"

  Acker grew testy. "How am I to remember such a thing? I told him to get out and to not come back. That's all."

  "And then?"

  "And then I followed him outside to make sure he left. And he did. Is that enough?"

  "You did not see any of his argument with Sam Merritt?"

  "How could I? I was not there yet."

  "Yes. I see. Now, let us turn to later in the day, after he had passed by your house."

  "I have told you this before," Acker said frostily across the mantelpiece.

  "Yes, but could you tell me why you were in such a hurry to leave your house that day? It was snowing, yet you left your cutter at home and rode your horse. That was surely quite dangerous."

  "Not for a man used to horses and winter."

  "Why the haste?"

  "I do not know what you are talking about. I simply preferred to go on horseback because of the snow, which was piling up."

  "Amelia Theall said you practically galloped off down the road."

  Acker took two puffs on his cigar. Its sweet smoke had filled the room like incense. He tapped it into an ashtray on the mantel, glanced back at the bolt works painting, then at Haviland.

  "Since her run-in with the stampeding horse some years ago, dear Amelia has found no horse moving at less than a gallop, my dear Reverend. You said yourself the weather was not good for haste."

  "Was there something pressing at the factory?"

  "It was a Wednesday, yes? The payroll may have had to be tended to, or I could have been concerned about the snow interfering with our shipments. I do not remember. Why is it of such interest? Are you accusing me again of killing this Jenks?"