The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  Abigail looked inquisitively, waiting for more. Seeing there would be none, she pronounced: "A worthy effort, particularly at the start. Eloquent yet concise, clearly and earnestly spoken. I could have done with more specifics, on my spirit and my brightness, for instance. I would have enjoyed elaboration of those qualities. Yet, on the whole a pleasing peroration."

  Haviland was fumbling for something to add when he saw the smile replace the schoolmarm's frown. She had been teasing. He noted, however, that she did not criticize the weakest part of his speech, the end. Were her thoughts on that question in disarray, as his were?

  And if he had kissed her, how would she have rated him, he wondered. Would his kiss be like a cherry covered in chocolate or something less? Surely not mint?

  They sat in silence on the sofa before the unlit fireplace. She continued to smile, savoring her performance, which had befuddled the proper minister so.

  Haviland sipped his tea and cast about for something else to discuss.

  "What was it you were sketching when I arrived?" he asked finally.

  "Oh, it was ... nothing in particular."

  "I should very much like to see it," he said, his detective instincts telling him she was hiding something.

  "My dear Reverend, I have forgotten where I left my sketchbook."

  "It is in the sitting room, on a side table. I remember it distinctly." Now he smiled.

  A few moments later she had retrieved it, reluctantly, and placed it in his hands.

  The sketch was of him, from the waist up, looking younger and dressed in a Civil War-era uniform. The expression bespoke compassion.

  She offered no explanation. He needed none.

  He tugged her hand to get her to sit next to him. She had been standing. She sat. He placed her left hand between his hands. They sat still, looking lazily toward the fireplace. After a time, she lowered her head onto his shoulder.

  CHAPTER 19

  "Reverend," Nicholas Enoch said, "the members would prefer that Ed Terhune give the invocation tonight. He filled in as chaplain a couple of meetings last year. You know how it is."

  And so, layman Ed Terhune, the sergeant major, led the prayer to start the weekly Friday evening meeting of Charles Lawrence Post No. 378 of the Grand Army of the Republic, the leading Civil War veterans fraternity in Paulding. And this even though the Reverend Willet Haviland, his blue and gold war decorations pinned to his charcoal gray shirt, stood with the officers at the front of his own church hall, ready to lead the prayer, as he had every week since his arrival. He bowed his head and clasped his hands with the others, blushing red and hot in the heat and humidity that had sapped the village like a fever the past few days. His continuing questions about Zife Jenks' murder, and coincidentally the continuing mischief against immigrants, seemed to have sapped the village's civility toward him as well.

  "Seat's taken," John Wood growled as the rector moved to his accustomed seat in the first row. Every one of the 35 faces stared, awaiting his reaction. Their flint-hard expressions chilled him, even in the smothering heat. Farmers perspiring in blue and green denim, with leathered faces and chapped hands, shopkeepers pudgy and florid, green and red bow ties and freshly starched shirts and collars, Sam Merritt, again in his uniform, one of three so dressed, factory workers in baggy pants, grayish shirts and drab suspenders and caps. Their eyes fixed him, as if in a gun sight. Now, he remembered the look.

  It was the look Union soldiers gave captured rebels during the latter years of the war, after the dreams of heroism had drained away in the hundreds of numbing miles of trudging, trudging through mud and muck and boredom in torrid heat from one nightmarishly frightful slaughter to another. It was that look of seething scorn they resurrected now for him.

  "Taken," barked the man next to a vacant seat in the second row.

  "Reserved, Reverend," needled the man sitting among four vacant seats in the third row. The others laughed. Now that was something a reb would do.

  And so it continued row by row.

  "Took" a farmer scowled.

  "In use," a shopkeeper declared, and placed his bowler on it.

  "Expectin' a crowd," Sam Merritt rasped. "Plenty of folks you can investigate, Reverend."

  That brought a laugh, a hollow, humorless laugh. Their heads turned, their eyes followed him to the back of the room. They were in no hurry to start their meeting, it seemed. They could wait until he left.

  Haviland raised his arm as if to begin a speech. No words came out. What good would they do? They would not listen. Public opinion had turned against him. No lonely sons, grieving parents or high principles would sway them now. He half-bowed to the cold blue eyes, the murky brown eyes, the glinting hazel eyes.

  "I will be on my way then," he announced, fuming at being made a fool of, not only by the veterans but, more important, by the killer of Zife Jenks and Theodore Hopfner. Somewhere, the killer was laughing at him and manipulating the village against him. Haviland executed a military about-face, held his 6 foot 1 inch ramrod straight and strode from the hall and the mocking gas-lamp shadows.

  Outside, he paused. Then he pounded on the church hall's wall. "Infernal Robert E. Lee," he muttered to himself. "I will bring down this murderer and open the village's eyes."

  The next morning, still unsettled but determined, he walked downtown to the village roller-skating rink at the other side of the village green to put in an appearance — and donate some knickknacks — at the fair for the county home for homeless and destitute children in White Plains. On the way, he nodded to Emily Hyler as she emerged from a shop.

  She was flustered at first, then hugged her parcels to her chest, turned up her nose, exhaled huffily and scampered past, ignoring him. A few shops down, Mary Peck spotted him, then hastened across the road with her toddler in tow, narrowly avoiding a passing horse and carriage. He paused to look at the offerings in Robert Wood's hat shop. The door was open. In a moment, the door was rapped shut, the "Open, come in, please," sign reversed to "Closed, come again, please."

  At the rink, Anna Lounsbury, an eager-to-please, high-strung member of his church, looked up from her admission table to find him smiling down at her, holding a box with the knickknacks.

  "Oh, oh ... I ... Oh, my ... Oh, no," she stammered, then fled inside, leaving tickets, money and all on the table. In a moment, the imposing form of Mary Van Amringe, the mayor's wife, filled the doorway. Nicknamed "the socialite," she ran the fair, and any other activity she consented to become involved with. That was the understanding.

  "Reverend, we are pleased to see you," she said primly. "It is such a good cause. But we couldn't think of taking something from you. We won't think of it."

  "I dare say, for the destitute children you should accept from one and all. I would not dream of exempting myself. How can one lead except by example?"

  He placed the 10-cent admission in her hand and strode past.

  In the middle of the rink a semi-circle of 15 tables overflowed with knitted sweaters and blankets, embroidered mottoes — "God Bless This House" and the like — quilts, figurines, homemade cakes and preserves, even four sketches of Main Street by Abigail. Haviland deposited his knickknacks — gifts received while he served in Brooklyn — with another reluctant recipient, then joined 40 or so browsers. He smiled and nodded at a couple. They nodded briskly and turned away. When he stopped at a table, other customers vanished. When he posed a question about a sweater here or a blanket there, the woman behind the table said tersely that she did not know, even though she had just expounded at length to someone else on the fine quality of the wool, the complicated pattern or the flawless knitting or needlework. At length, he reached Amelia Theall's table.

  "Good day, Reverend," was all she said, glancing about. Clearly, she was bursting to say more, but could not.

  "These sketches are beautiful. By Mrs. Carhart, yes?"

  "Yep."

  "I'd like one, but I am unsure which. This with the g
azebo and the harbor is quite nice. But I am taken with this other as well — the gentleman riding in his coach past the shops. It gives a fine sense of Main Street. Which would you suggest?"

  "Up to you, Reverend."

  He bought the gazebo sketch. The gazebo carried a tender memory.

  He bought some preserves from a saleswoman who consented to part with them only after he reminded her that the money would help destitute children. After circulating in a bubble — the space around him clearing of people as he moved — he left.

  Amelia Theall slipped outside. She motioned for him to follow her to the back of the rink, so she would not be spotted conversing with him.

  "Now see what you've done, my dear Reverend. You have everyone up in arms."

  "Who is organizing this?" he asked.

  "The word is about. Mayor Van Amringe, Sam Merritt, those two certainly. Thad Acker may be involved. Jared Wetmore — he's furious about his son being questioned. Some others, too. But everyone's upset. Too many questions, too much nosying about, and all for some peddler, that's what they say."

  "I certainly had no intention of causing any trouble."

  "So the traveling salesman told the expectant farmgirl, Reverend, if you'll pardon the expression."

  "What am I to do, then? I would explain that my intentions ..."

  "Oh, don't give up. They'll tire of it as soon as you stop going around with all your questions. They don't like to be mean, but it's disturbing them. Except that letter Abigail got, that was going too far, I thought. Don't you?"

  "What letter?"

  "What letter? It's all over the village. It tells her to break off with you or they'll shoot her, or something like that. Bluntly put, my dear Reverend. The poor girl, she was quite shaken by it, ashen. She put up a good front, but I could tell. 'Twas nothing to it, I'm sure, but including a hunting knife in the box with it. ...Well, if you want my opinion, that's the part that scared her, not the letter itself. That big old knife, that certainly seemed like someone meant business."

  Haviland stood agape. That explained why she was so jumpy last night. Why hadn't she told him?

  Mary Van Amringe appeared around the corner. She stopped, crossed her arms and glared at Amelia Theall. Mary was shrouded in shadows from the sun shining behind her.

  Amelia tugged up the side of her dress. "And that's final," she told Haviland, then marched off, as if indignant, right past Mary and back toward the fair. Mary's dark figure turned and disappeared.

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  The rector was in Abigail's shop.

  "I didn't want to worry you. It was nothing, just a message from an admirer," she said breezily.

  He had found her tending to packages at her shop. He had taken her hands and scrutinized her face. She had smiled, but it disappeared quickly.

  She was concerned, if not actually afraid. He pulled her over to two chairs in a clearing among the dresses, blouses and corsets and made her sit next to him. She went willingly. No customers were in the store.

  "Tell me about it," he urged, still holding her cool, tense, work-firm hands.

  "It was delivered in the morning with the other mail. But really, it's nothing, just a joke."

  "What a frightful thing. Thank the Lord you are unharmed. Do you have the letter?"

  "Yes, but really it was nothing. No need for you to bother about it."

  "Please."

  Sloping printing in large letters on cheap paper stock, a slash two inches below the top from the knife. The message:

  "Haviland is a traitor. Choose him or Paulding." Then the centerpiece: a large sketch of a smoking six-shooter.

  "Clear enough," the fuming rector pronounced tersely. "Does the writing look familiar? The drawing?"

  "No, but then it was obviously done to disguise. It is of no help in itself, but it shows our investigation is having results. The murderer is trying to scare us off the trail. In fact, it is good news. Now, if we only knew who is upset enough to do such a thing, we'd have this case solved."

  "Unfortunately, a good many people seem to be upset, a good many more than just the murderer, unless the entire village killed the peddler."

  "Yes. I heard about the shunning."

  "Shunning, yes." He had not put a word to it before. A gray, lonely word it was.

  "And now they have threatened you because of me. Well, one thing is certain. You must have nothing more to do with me. Paulding is your home and your life. You must not give up those things because of my ill-handled investigation."

  Now, Abigail took Haviland's hands, large and soft, and looked at him. "It has been a long time since I have been as comfortable with someone as I am with you. You cannot run from me now, or from this fight, or ask me to run from you. I joined you freely. I wanted to make Paulding safe and right again. You cannot ask me to abandon that, any more than you can ask yourself to. Besides, if you leave, I'll nosy about myself and solve the murder without you and admit you not an iota of the credit."

  This was a real smile. He was not smiling, however. He remained angry and pensive, engaged in some interior debate.

  "So, you'll continue then?" she prompted.

  "I would not have you hurt for anything in the world," he said.

  "I'll not be hurt.

  Everyone knows me and I them. This is a silly prank. No one in Paulding would attack Abigail Carhart," she said. "If we press on, we'll have the murderer flushed out in a week or two and it will all be over with.

  It will probably turn out to be someone of no account, anyway."

  Looking at the letter, he said, "This is of quite some account, of quite some grave account."

  "Still, you must continue," she said.

  He pondered. After a few moments, he said, "I'll tell everyone in my sermon tomorrow."

  CHAPTER 20

  Ragged clouds of gunsmoke gray roiled the sky above the spire of St. Paul's Episcopal Church the next morning. They seemed to hem it in, the spire shrinking as if from a cavalry charge, its white worried to an ashen gray. The houses and shops lining the hills below seemed to be streaming away, abandoning the church to its fate, like those sociable observers of early Civil War battles rattling back toward Washington when the savagery burst out.

  Inside, the Reverend Willet Haviland was hemmed in by pew upon pew of stony faces maintaining, but just barely, the decorum of civilization: Sam Merritt in the fourth row on the right; Thaddeus Acker in the second pew on the left, arms folded across his chest, stroking his beard; Mayor Van Amringe and his wife, Mary, and son, in the first pew on the left; Ellwood Dusenberry arriving late and clambering into a back pew on the right. Their Sunday bowlers snapped onto the metal hat holders before them, their long crisp suit jackets, white shirts, silk ties, their pasted-down hair failed to mask their stolid anger. The women in their blue and yellow and brown bodice-dresses, flowery hats and fringed parasols could not dispel the humid, menacing gray that threatened without and within. Their tensed shoulders, set faces and malevolent stares exploded the cheerful finery.

  During the opening prayers, Haviland, vested in green for the Sundays after Pentecost, had to declaim the responses to his own prayers, so tepid was the murmur from the congregation. Aside from the riffling of the Book of Prayer at the page turning, the congregation imposed a stern silence that made his elegant words seem a rube's foolish chatter.

  After the readings from Scripture, it was time for the sermon. Haviland climbed the steps to the pulpit, all eyes awaiting his response to the tensions and drama of the past week. He had been shot at, humiliated, shunned. What would he say? Ill will yielded to curiosity, as if this were all a play and it was time for the protagonist's soliloquy.

  "Jesus was a troublemaker," came a raspy, terse baritone from the figure towering over the congregation so high he seemed cut off, preaching out of the sky. "For whom did he cause trouble? The powerful, the strong, the smug, the ritually moribund, the spiritually dead.


  "To the poor, the sinners, the lepers, the outcast he showed compassion. He showed love. He worked miracles. To the rich, the ruling class, he showed scorn and contempt. Brethren, he was not dismissing them, much as it may seem he was. It was his way of waking them before it was too late.

  "And his sin? His great offense against the authorities? It was not blasphemy. It was not fear of any kingdom or revolution he might lead. He was an itinerant preacher from a tiny village with no money, a few ill-educated followers and an audience composed mainly of society's outcasts. What real harm could he do the priests of the great temple in Jerusalem? Or the vast Roman Empire? So, what was his capital offense?

  "He wanted people to be better than the law and rules said they had to be. We should strive, he said, not for the least we can do to fulfill our obligations, but for the highest embodiment of good. We must strive for the pure principles of justice, mercy and charity."

  The tableau of faces before him were now quizzical, confused by his opening and awaiting its relevance to them.

  "Our village," he continued, emphasizing the first word, "is full of good people. We come to church, for which I am grateful, we look after our neighbors, help the needy, work hard for our families. Many of us fought for our country in the great war. But my brothers and sisters, Paulding has done a great wrong. Zife Jenks lost his life in our village, and I, our leaders and the village as a whole, in our haste and ignorance and human frailty, put to death for that crime a young man who was innocent. His misfortune it was to be greedy, in the wrong place, and an outsider. You were the witnesses to our mistake in this very church two Sundays ago. A man strange to us, yes, an outsider, nevertheless presented us with the truth. And a harsh truth it is.

  "Someone in this community, maybe someone in this church today, battered the life out of Zife Jenks. Then, that person stood by, silent, while we took a second life for his crime. At the arrest, he stood by, silent. At the trial, he stood by, silent. At the gallows, where a mother wept, he stood by again, silent. He stands by, silent still, as four children struggle without their father and two parents mourn their son. His bloody hands clutch our village by the neck and smother it in the stranglehold of evil.