by M. G. Meaney
Abigail and the rector, who was scrutinizing the selection of fall grays, were visiting him the morning after the concert because his shop was two doors down from Sam Merritt's. James Lyon, the florist, had mentioned after the concert that Seaman had been annoyed with Merritt the day of the murder because Merritt was repairing his cutter but the place was locked up in early afternoon.
"Ah, Reverend, I see you have an eye out for the fall," Seaman remarked after the undertaker left. "Very fine selection. You know a fine fabric and a cut for your build, I can see that. You do wear clothes well, though not mine. I've said that since you arrived. I do clerical attire, most certainly. Why, Reverend Storm buys everything here, hat to sock." Seaman was a small, balding, mustachioed man in his 50s, with a measuring tape draped around his neck, spectacles perched at the tip of his nose. He fluttered about, watching for a glance, a hand gesture, a tone of voice to reveal his customer's desire, even before the customer realized it. A hunching of the shoulders when shown a bright plaid: dash for a conservative black or brown. A glance across the shop at the red, yellow or bright green bow ties: stow away the blacks and browns, pull out the tweeds and plaids. A shuffling of the feet, head down, hands in pockets while being shown suit fabrics: take him to the inexpensive off-the-rack suits displayed in the back, behind a post. The shopper, maybe a farmer or farmhand, didn't have money for the tailor-made items and didn't want to risk smearing or tearing the fabrics.
When Haviland walked away from the rack and fabric samples and Abigail joined him at the front counter, Seaman knew they were not there to buy. Just as well, he supposed, although he could have shipped the suit to Delhi. Abigail had probably discouraged him from buying here anyway. She was so critical of everything to do with clothing.
"We were told," Abigail began, "that you had some dealings with Sam Merritt the day the peddler Zife Jenks was killed."
Seaman lay down some pins he had in hand and looked from Abigail up to Haviland. "Ah, that's what this is about, is it? Well, you're in trouble enough, I'd say, Reverend, and we're not supposed to be talking to you. Now, if you'll be so kind, I have to let out a vest. He moved across the polished-wood floor toward the oak door with the bell on top.
His visitors stood their ground.
Seaman, hand on doorknob, waited for them to yield.
They looked at him impassively.
He glanced out the window, then back at the couple, then out the window again.
"It's the mayor," he announced excitedly. "He'll be coming to pick up a jacket I repaired. Oh, you must go. He might never come in again if he finds you here. There, he's going into Miller's. You can leave before he finishes."
"After you tell us about that day," Abigail informed him.
"No," he insisted. "Now go, please." They stood idly, the wide floorboards creaking beneath them.
The little man glanced back and forth again, looking as if he were about to cry.
"Quickly, then," he said, rushing back to the counter. "And then you'll leave?"
They nodded.
"All right, then. I had heard about the snow coming. The harness was cut on my sleigh and one of the rails was bent. I left it in with Sam two days before the big storm. He promised me he would have it ready the next day, but he didn't. He blustered some excuse. You know Sam. But he vowed on his father's grave it would be ready by the next morning, which turned out to be the day of the storm."
He glanced out the window and while speaking he clinked the pins back into a container, collected papers and neatened up the counter.
"First thing, I stopped by," Seaman continued. "He hadn't even started on the rail, and the harness was all strewn about. I was angry, and he could tell. He apologized, made a couple of jokes about driving me home himself if need be and said that it would be ready by 1 o'clock.
"You remember the day. By 1 the snow was up above our knees, but I had some work to finish, so about 1:15 I closed up, put on my coat, scarf, boots, hat, gloves, everything, and trudged over there. My horse was hitched in front and she was practically buried. The doors were closed. I rapped on them. No answer. I rapped again. Nothing. The snow is blowing into my face. I put my ear to the door. No sound. I go next door to Joe Hemphill. He says he saw Sam earlier and didn't see him leave. Joe seems upset that I'm dripping snow onto his floor, so I go outside again, knock solidly again, three times, but nothing. Finally, I swat the snow off the horse and she and I walk home through the storm, furious, of course.
"The next day: 'Sam, where in God's creation were you?' Pardon me, Reverend. Sam says: 'Right here. You must've been knocking like a schoolgirl for me not to hear you. Your cutter's all set to go, just like I promised.' But you know something funny? He wouldn't look me in the eye when he was talking. He was fiddling with the harness of the cutter, even though it was all repaired."
"You think he was lying, then?" Haviland asked.
"I don't know what to think, Reverend, except that the mayor must be about finished buying those flowers, and he'll go elsewhere for his fall suit if he finds you here." The tailor peered past the hats, suits and neckties and out the window.
"How do you know that?" Haviland asked.
"Everyone knows it. He's one of the ones behind the shunning, thinks you're making factions here. oh, no, here he comes. You must go out the back way. Hurry, hurry, please, Abigail please, for my sake, go." He was herding them past the fabric samples, the kid gloves, the canes, the off-the-rack laborers' overalls.
They saw themselves walking by in a mirror followed by a jittery figure making pushing motions after them. The front door bell tinkled. Seaman in a convulsion, threw himself past them, whipped open the back door, whirled and leaped back toward the front counter.
"Ah, Mr. Mayor, my favorite customer, I am most pleased ..." Haviland and Abigail heard before the door clicked shut again.
They found themselves standing on the bank about 10 steps from the river. It flowed out of the woods to their left, past them downtown and then into Paulding Harbor. Isolated from the growing maelstrom of the village, the couple stood and savored the tranquil meandering of the river. The brownish-gray water sluiced past some boulders, slapped at the banks here and there as if exchanging greetings, sipped some blackish ooze out of two pipes from the nut and bolt works and curled off into the distance, leaving behind the fragrance of damp morning hay scented with machine oil.
Haviland took Abigail's warm hand after a time and they watched and listened to the water.
"I was engaged once," he announced huskily after a time.
She turned to him, surprised, but said nothing.
"Emily her name was. It was as the war was starting. She was intelligent, graceful but impetuous, bored with our town, intent on seeing the world. When I told her I had joined the army, she suggested we run away to France the next day instead. I teased her about her flightiness and left for the war. We would be married when I returned, it was understood. But Emily would not be deterred by a little war. I received a letter from her when I was in Virginia. The mud was so bad horses were falling over dead trying to pull the caissons through it. Emily announced that she was engaged to George Teasdale, who paid his way out of serving, and they were leaving for France the following day. I never heard from her again.
"When I got home, I learned that she never did get to France. She and Teasdale wound up in Chicago instead. He went to work selling advertising for a newspaper there. She gave parties." Haviland had been looking at the water. He turned now to Abigail.
"I love you," he said.
"And I you."
They kissed as the water flapped by as if gossiping.
"Sweet as a cherry in chocolate," she murmured
* * *
"So, Sam, I hear you disappeared during the early afternoon the day the peddler was killed. Care to discuss it?"
Abigail hovered over Merritt as he sewed a harness. His handlebar mustache slanted higher on his right than his left, and a ciga
rette dippped from his mouth, lending him and out-of-kilter air as he sat in a leather apron at the back of his barn-like shop.
"I'd not care to discuss it, and I was here that entire day," he muttered in a haze of smoke. "I'm not one to go strolling about in a blizzard." He drew deeply on the cigarette and like a slumbering volcano issued a slow spume of smoke. He was trying to keep his temper; he had known Abigail her whole life. "Will you be following your gentleman friend up to Delhi and leaving us here without the benefit of your humor and tact?"
"Such a man as yourself would appreciate a straightforward question, I should think, Sam. Now, if you were working away here in this beautiful, soon-to-be-obsolete establishment" — she motioned toward the half-dozen buggies and farm wagons parked at odd angles about the place — "why would David Seaman say he couldn't get in here with a picklock about 1:15?"
"You'll sooner be replaced by the Montgomery catalogue than they'll stop needing horses, Abby. And why do I care what David Seaman says?" He went on sewing.
"Because what he says makes you the possible killer of Zife Jenks," Abigail stated crisply. She folded her arms and fixed him in her view.
Abruptly, Merritt tossed aside the leather harness, stood, sending his chair clattering backward, grasped Abigail by the shoulders and pulled her to him so his face practically touched hers.
"Get on out of this, Abigail. Get on out of it now," he rasped tensely, smearing her smooth dress with his rough, grimy fingers and suffusing her in his acrid smoking breath. "I'll not have you or your clergyman or anyone say one more word about this. You've known me your whole life, Abigail. Come to your senses, girl." She shook off his grip but could not pull herself away from his face wide-eyed with fury. "I didn't kill the bloody peddler. And God forgive the one that suggests it from now on forward, for he — or she — can count on trouble."
"So, then, why are you lying about being here that day when you were not?" she inquired, hoping to take advantage of his emotional state.
"I was here, I said," he shrieked in exasperation.
"But David Seaman said the door was locked."
"It was locked, to keep the wind from blowing it open and covering me in snow." He walked away, toward one of the carriages in for repairs.
"But he knocked, hard," she shouted after him.
"I didn't hear him," he shouted back.
"Why not?"
"Woman, are you mad? I was hammering, maybe."
"He heard no hammering. He put his ear to the door."
"It was snowing like blazes and windy. He couldn't hear."
"He could hear fine, he said. He didn't hear you. Why didn't you hear him? Nine or 10 times he pounded on the door."
"Well, I didn't hear him, and Abigail I'm losing my temper so you had better ..." He stopped and looked toward the door. The echoes of a soft rapping reverberated around the old barn. A loud thumping followed. Both could be heard clearly, even while Merritt had been speaking. He opened the front door. A carpet of sunlight unrolled across the floor and walls, with a shadow in the middle.
Haviland strolled in.
"No problem hearing me, I see," he observed. "I certainly had no trouble following your threats, Mr. Merritt."
A look of panic intruded on Merritt's face. He had been trapped. A moment later the anger erupted again. He glared from Haviland to Abigail, then back, like an animal confined in a corner.
Then, he hurled himself into a pile of tools and came up with a sledgehammer. He struggled to hoist it; his legs felt leaden, his arms limp. But he finally did. He emitted an unearthly shriek and stalked toward Abigail. She hoisted her green dress and hastened toward the rector. He waved her past, keeping an eye on Merritt, then quickly followed her outside and closed the thin wooden door behind them.
They could hear Merritt grunting and cursing inside. Finally, a crackle of wood; he had set down the hammer.
* * *
"There's no doubt Sam is lying," Abigail was saying. "He wasn't in the shop when Zife Jenks was killed, but whether he killed him is another story."
"Do you think he didn't?" Haviland asked.
"He's right, you know, in the sense that I have known him my whole life. Yes, he hates foreigners. Yes, he has a ferocious temper, but somehow I still can't see him doing something like that. He has pummeled people, especially when he was younger, but that's different. Besides, there's a rumor about that I think might explain his doings that day."
"What is it?"
"Oh, I wouldn't want to be a gossip-monger, Reverend. You've preached against that vice once or twice, among many vices. I will look into it myself and report back."
"Why not simply ask Mr. Merritt?"
"How little you understand men — and women — Will."
She placed her hand in his. They were sitting on the hill at the edge of the woods, the woods where the killer had begun his trip to kill Zife Jenks. Haviland had removed his gray jacket and spread it out for her to sit on. He sat next to her. In front of them was the nut and bolt works' side entrance, the one to Thaddeus Acker's office. Two horses and wagons were hitched outside it — Acker's coach and Merritt's buggy. On their left the river emerged from the woods. Main Street ended on the right, at the base of this hill. Oily smoke from the factory mixed with the pine scent of the woods.
"Sam Merritt and Thad Acker lead my list at the moment," Haviland said after a time. "No one saw either during the period when the murder happened. You and I both talked to workers in the factory. And yet, what about Johnny Van Amringe and friends? They were nearby and had harassed Zife Jenks minutes before he died. And they were up to something with those figures in Dan White's shed. And Mr. Dusenberry? He was also close by, had a motive, which is more than we can really say for Sam Merritt or, particularly, Thad Acker."
"And if it were Thad," Abigail put in, "you'd think he would had killed the peddler with a bolt propeller, flying hammer or something inventive? Or at the least a gun. A bloody ax seems too pre-industrial for the likes of Thad."
"You have a point," Haviland agreed. "He would have plotted it meticulously, you would think."
"We must rule out old Ellwood," Abigail said. "I was talking with Doc Hyland and he mentioned that Ellwood's rheumatism acts up in damp and cold weather. He can barely lift his arms. And to batter away at the poor peddler he would have had to lift his arms, and often."
"And the doctor told you this, about his patient?" Haviland said, surprised at the breach of privacy.
"Ah, Reverend" — she now used this formal title when he was behaving like a naive outsider — "this is a small village. Everyone knows everything about everyone, although it is surprising how long it's taking to learn who the killer is."
A branch snapped in the woods behind them, then another, this one closer. Something big was approaching. They turned, then stood. Haviland was squatting to pick up his jacket when a figured appeared.
The Leatherman.
"If you used your eyes the peddler's killer would be swinging now by the neck, and your poor, tortured soul" — he said this mockingly to Haviland — "would be calmed and your popularity, your vain popularity, restored."
The huge bearded figure loomed over them. His raw red nose and patchwork tunic and breeches stood between them and Main Street.
"What do you know?" Haviland demanded. It was the Leatherman, after all, who had incited this troublesome inquiry with the peddler's order book.
"More than you, apparently; how to find the killer, apparently, but not how to win the hearts of pretty ladies while doing so, apparently."
"What should we be seeing?" Abigail asked. "Help us."
"The means. He who has reason to kill but not the means" — he suddenly stripped a leaf from an overhanging tree and tossed it toward a sparrow about 30 feet away; the leaf fell harmlessly four feet from him — "he cannot kill. But find the one with the means to kill and sooner or later the reason will come forth, like Lazarus from the grave." He picked up
a stone, produced a slingshot from his back pocket, aimed and fired.
The sparrow fell from the tree, dead.
When Haviland and Abigail turned back, the Leatherman was gone.
Unsettled, they looked around, then heard branches snapping within the woods. They settled themselves on the mossy hill again and pondered.
Abigail spoke up. "The means would be the horse."
"Naturally," Haviland agreed, "but there's no way to determine if the horses were missing, if one of them was. No one can see them back here, except Mr. Acker, and he says he was in his machine shop, not his office."
Even as he spoke Abigail was getting up and stepping gingerly down the hill toward the horses.
"If I had to ride through the woods in a snowstorm to kill a man, then ride back without being caught, I'd take Burnside," she announced as he joined her. Burnside was Sam Merritt's horse, a huge, light brown 3-year-old stallion he had obtained from an old Army friend out west. He loved to go galloping out into the countryside on Sundays. Acker's horse, Bolter, was a city horse, a small 3-year-old filly more at home pulling a coach than leaping stone walls and crossing rocky streams.
"Wait here a minute, Will. I have an idea." Abigail disappeared onto Main Street. In two minutes she returned, approached Bolter, unhooked a bucket she had been feeding from, dumped it on the ground beneath the horse and tossed the bucket behind the braying animal.
"What are you doing?" Haviland asked as they stood in front of the horses.
"You'll see."
In a few moments, a young boy came from the river side of the factory carrying a bucket of water and some feed.