The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  "Dead two to four hours, judging by the state of the blood, body temperature, condition of the body, etcetera," Dr. Millard Hyler was noting briskly for whoever was interested. He was bending over the body.

  "Single gunshot to the temple, large-caliber bullet. Was shot here — purplish blood patches beneath the body, none on top, so body wasn't moved. Oh, dreadfully sorry, Abigail. Didn't notice you there."

  "Think nothing of it, Millard. I'm all right now." In fact, she had moved away from Haviland and toward the body, to get a better look.

  "Self-inflicted, Doc, do you think?" Stillwell asked.

  "Looks that way, but a couple of odd things, Charlie. He was standing when he was shot. Not to say it couldn't happen, but most suicides kneel or sit. Going to blow themselves to bits but they don't want to fall from full height. Think they might get hurt, I guess. I don't pretend to explain them, Charlie. That's just the case. And he's holding the gun. Normally, the fall would knock the gun loose. Not to say it couldn't happen. His fingers are pretty thick. Maybe the gun got stuck on them. But it's out of the ordinary. Reverend, you can perform the rites if you'll keep your touch light. Know it's important to get in a prayer or two before the Lord gets to him, though what He'll do with this fellow I can't figure for the life of me."

  Haviland pulled himself together, knelt at the head and gave the last rites, making a cross with his thumb on the dead man's cool forehead. He thought of Theodore Hopfner's execution as he prayed the same prayers. The eight others on hand paused from their duties or conversations just long enough for the Leatherman's rites, then returned to work. Haviland then turned his interest to the gun.

  "Let's turn him over," Hyler commanded. Two deputy constables jumped to perform the respected coroner's order. The gun slipped out of the Leatherman's hand.

  "Hold just a minute there," Stillwell snapped. "What's that, underneath him?"

  Two pieces of paper. Stillwell scampered over, knelt and read the top one while it was still in place. In 2-inch-high letters was printed: "I killed the peddler." Each word was on a separate line, as in a sign.

  Stillwell coaxed it out from beneath the left arm and handed it to a deputy. Then he looked at the second paper.

  "Some jibberish. I can't make it out," he said.

  "The peddler's order book," Abigail said. She had been peering over his shoulder. "It's one of the missing pages from the peddler's diary."

  "7 Feb. 83 (Paulding)," read the top.

  The entries included:

  A Talbott, 8 King Street —2 pr. silk stockings #4, 50¢, COD.

  J. Sloat, King Street -- blouse, white cotton, medium w/frilled

  neck, $2, pd.

  W.D. Daymon, Adee Street — 1 blue serge pants, 36/30, $1.75,

  COD.

  "This is from the day before he was killed," Abigail said.

  "Is this the only page?"

  "Looks that way," Stillwell said.

  "Well, this may cinch it as a self-inflicted," Dr. Hyler said. "Physical evidence is inconclusive."

  "No, wait," Haviland said. He was crouching over the gun. He had been examining it all the while. They all turned to him.

  "He can't have killed himself. This is my gun, and it was broken."

  "What?" Stillwell blurted out.

  "Lift it up, will you," Haviland asked. Stillwell inserted a stick into the trigger band and displayed it to the crowd: a black-barrelled, dark wood-handled Remington Army Model, a .44-caliber percussion revolver issued during the Civil War.

  "See, here, on the heel, I carved my initials, WH," Haviland explained. Everyone crowded in to get a look. "But the hammer was broken. It had come loose and fallen off. Constable, someone stole this gun from my study, replaced the hammer and ambushed the Leatherman here."

  "The Leatherman himself, he could have done it," Stillwell said, trying to convince himself and the others. "After all, it wouldn't be the first thing he had stolen."

  "Charlie," Abigail chided, "why would he go to the trouble to steal the gun, somehow get a hammer for it and spend that much time fixing it up just to go and shoot himself? It doesn't make sense."

  "He was in the war. Maybe he had one himself. They issued it to lots of us. I have one myself. So does Sam Merritt, and you too, mayor. Now, Reverend, when did you notice the gun missing?"

  "I didn't. I didn't know it was missing. I had put it in a case in my study, in the closet. I don't remember the last time I checked on it. I had it on display until last week, but people gave me presents that seemed more worthy, so I put it away."

  "The gun aside, Reverend," Stillwell said, "everything else here seems to show you were right, right that Hopfner didn't kill the peddler, and that I was right, right to suspect the Leatherman. All the evidence we had, the real evidence, pointed only to him. He found the order book — or he had it — and now he has another page. His whereabouts at the time of the killing are unknown, and here we have the order book page, and a confession that he did it. The coroner will have to hold an inquest, of course, but, Doctor, I think it's safe to say that suicide seems the likely verdict?"

  "Put the whole picture together, and it's leaning that way, I'd say," Hyler said. "We'll have to look around some more, for footprints, hoof prints and the like, but you'd be lucky to find one in this mess of leaves. The Indians may be able to track a man through here, but I dare say we civilized men have lost that capacity."

  "So, Reverend," Acker put in, "it appears we were a bit rash with you, but see it this way: you'll be leaving us in triumph, the case solved, the murderer in his grave, calm and peace restored to Paulding."

  And they all bustled back to their work, cutting off his attempt to disagree.

  "Mr. Acker, where were you this afternoon, if I may ask?" Haviland said as they tramped back through the woods to the village.

  Acker shook his head slowly in disbelief and disgust.

  He ignored the question.

  CHAPTER 26

  Haviland and Abigail sat on her porch absorbed in thought, she in the pine rocker Daniel Carhart had made for her but left incomplete, Haviland in another rocker. Fireflies meandered past, holding off the gathering dusk with their amber flickerings. Haviland was haunted by the wide-eyed face of the Leatherman, then startled when it grew murky and dissolved into another face: Abigail dead, a bullet through her temple, her teasing eyes empty, her mouth agape, blood pooling in her right eye socket. He sat up bolt-straight and shook off the frightful vision, only to have it replaced by the face of Hannah Hopfner, also dead, also shot in the temple, but then abruptly coming to life, and sobbing.

  "I killed him, Abigail, as surely as if I had shot him," Haviland said wearily.

  "No, you mustn't blame yourself. The killer, it was the killer. And I'm as much to blame as you."

  The tall gray-clad cleric knelt at her feet and took her hands, the firm hands of a working woman. He had set out after the war, after the war with so many evils, to do good. He aspired to be a good man, and to help others follow the road to goodness and decency. For he considered aspiring to something higher, something difficult, humanity's greatest glory. He admired artists for creating, for conjuring a new vision, a new perspective of the everyday and fully tugging us toward higher realms. Even Abigail did this in her way. But he lacked the talent, so he had pursued the sphere of morals and theology in a pragmatic, everyday way, striving to use the tea with a congregant, the greeting in a store, the fund-raiser for a good cause as a springboard to more perfect relations between people and between people and their God. Most of the time it was a largely unmeasurable series of small kindnesses and civility begetting other small kindnesses and a general civility. But then comes the rare great opportunity, the uncomfortable but unavoidable moral challenge, when the community needs to be turned sharply, even at the cost of one's popularity. The wrongful death of Theodore Hopfner had been such a challenge. He could not have ignored it, especially given his role in it. There was a moral impera
tive.

  And yet.

  And yet, the same human frailty and feebleness that had betrayed him the first time, betrayed the authorities and him, made the road now far from clear. A second innocent man had died because of him. That is, if he was innocent. How could he be so sure he was right? Could he not have been blinded by his arrogant pride? Surely, the village authorities were more experienced in these things. Why couldn't they be right?

  They could but they weren't.

  He had started out again to do good and had brought about more evil, more death. What was good now? To continue when even the victim's family didn't want it? To risk yet another death? To risk again having the wrong person arrested?

  Abigail squeezed his hands and looked inquiringly.

  It was clearer now, the good he should aspire to. It — she — sat before him.

  "We have to drop it, let it go," he told her. "He'll hurt you. Mrs. Hopfner doesn't want revenge. She just wants it to drop. It won't bring back Zife Jenks"— he forbade Thomas Jenks' face to form in his mind's eye. No good was worth losing Abigail for. Making her happy was the greatest good he could do now.

  "But we're so close," Abigail said, but without her customary fervor. For she too was beset by images: the despairing Mary Van Amringe, the dead Leatherman. And, worst, the fear that if he would kill the Leatherman, a wild creature, the murderer would surely now not stop at killing Will. The murderer was feeling cornered, and there was no telling what he would do in his desperation.

  "Maybe we can return to it someday, when it is less dangerous, but for now ..." Haviland was saying. He added, "I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you, for I love you more than anything."

  "And I you," she responded earnestly.

  They remained silent, still, a few moments, he kneeling, holding her hands, looking into her eyes as she sat in the rocker. A carriage rattled past. The silence crept back and filled the evening again. It yielded a moment to the rustling of the leaves in the humid breeze, then reclaimed its hold.

  Then he looked over at her. She smiled and took his hand, content. The creak of the rocker on the porch, back and forth, back and forth, swatted off the silence and reassured him of her love. Haviland relaxed, sat back.

  They looked past the houses to the white spire of the church. It soared above the village, the last light of dusk illuminating it. In a few minutes it would join the rest of the village enshrouded by the night.

  CHAPTER 27

  Agitated by the events of the day and evening, Haviland could not sleep, even after two hours packing his trunks for Delhi. He pored over everything — Sam Merritt's affair, the Leatherman's death, Hopfner's mother — pacing about the rectory. His musings had taken him up to the attic to check if he had left anything stored there. A flicker of light caught his eye through the window. Atop the hill on which the church sat he could see practically the entire village and its surroundings. The light, flickering, came from Indian Field Road. He could not place it exactly. Curious, he unlocked the church and climbed into the spire by the light of an oil lamp. Through a small opening there he could see more clearly. It was a fire, in the woods south of the Dusenberry farm. It seemed to go on and off, but it was not spreading. He would ride out to investigate. No use waking people for nothing. If it was a fire, he could extinguish it himself or then summon the fire company.

  He took a shovel from the shed, saddled up Preacher and called Pulpit. No answer. He had not seen the dog since arriving home, come to think of it. He called again. Nothing. Taking a lamp along as well as the shovel, he shrugged and trotted off toward the fire in the darkness.

  He rode along Westchester Avenue and past Amelia Theall's, where the lights were off, and up Indian Field Road, the route Zife Jenks had taken the day of his murder and where he had found the mysterious figures in Dan White's shed. The half-moon's light helped him keep to the road. He also listened for the horse's tread on the hard dirt. When it grew soft, he knew Preacher had veered off and set her back on course. He lost the flickering fire until he was almost upon the place where the peddler had been killed, it seemed like years ago now.

  A shriek. The peddler? No, no, he reassured himself.

  Chanting and shrieking in the distance. The shrieks grew frantic. He gripped the shovel tighter, clenched his jaw. His heart raced. Curiosity was struck aside by the beginnings of terror. The voices, for they were voices — men's and at least one woman's — grew louder and more plaintiff as he approached the peddler's death spot. To the left, deep in the woods, he spotted it: a small bonfire with shadows passing before it.

  He had seen the severed fox's head there.

  He tied Preacher to a tree beside the road, wished Pulpit were with him, and crept toward the flames and noise. As he felt his way forward in the blackness the scene grew clearer. The dancing shadows were men, a half-dozen, circling a bonfire, undulating, imploring, then kneeling, now moving around as they chanted or shrieked.

  The men were nude.

  In the midst of the circle, beside the bonfire, was a raised bed, or altar, of fieldstones. On the altar reclined a young woman. She too was nude. Now, one of the men was pouring a red liquid on her head as she extended her arms and shrieked a curse or something like one. At her head stood a pole, bare.

  Haviland blinked and cast about to draw some sense from the scene, as one does from the tumbling, unreal images in dreams. He could not yet identify these ghouls lit by the flames. Slightly numb, he resumed forward in the blackness. The voices were clearer now. They chanted a litany of some sort, led by the man pouring the liquid. In a few steps the words freed themselves from the hoots, sighs and rustles of the woods.

  "Prince of Darkness," the leader intoned sharply.

  "Lend us your power," the others responded raggedly.

  "Warrior for freedom ..."

  "Free your people."

  "Ruler of the night ..."

  "Endow us with your strength."

  "Opponent of the enslaving God ..."

  "Enlist us in your army."

  Now the leader lifted up a small straw dog, a figure like the ones the rector had found in the shed.

  "By this sacrifice we invoke your power and dedicate ourselves to your realm," the leader said. He took up a small ax and sliced the head off the straw dog, then tossed the body into the fire.

  Haviland was able to make out the faces as the men intoned a chant in an unfamiliar tongue and again circled the bonfire. Edward Adee, Jordan Denham, Tom Wetmore and John Van Amringe, the mayor's son. So, this was what the club was about. And there were two older men. Haviland squinted through the darkness. He shook his head in disbelief. Shuffling and gesticulating naked was Ellwood Dusenberry. And the leader came into the light now: Daniel White, the wisecracking owner of the shed in which Haviland was shot at. All stern solemnity now, White had drenched the young woman in a black ooze. She raised her head to join the others in a vituperation. It was Molly, Amelia Theall's maid. What a morsel of gossip Amelia had missed under her own roof.

  Now, the leader produces a wooden cross. He says a few words and holds it in front of him.

  The men take turns spitting on it. The leader turns it upside down, walks slowly to the bonfire and drops it in. They all yelp happily as it catches fire and burns.

  The leader moves to the head of the altar on which Molly lies. He motions and the others encircle her. Haviland can see only their backs. Molly's legs begin to move. A murmur arises from the huddled throng. A moan from Molly: then another. Finally, she gets up from the altar and joins the others in the circle.

  John Van Amringe moves out of sight then returns. A dog yelps. The crowd closes around the altar again. A dog whines.

  "Infernal Lee! Pulpit." Haviland begins to stumble toward the clearing. The leader raises his arms. A knife glints in the red firelight.

  Haviland thrashes through the dense woods, stumbling over low brush, tripping over downed branches, recoiling from low-hanging
twigs.

  Pulpit yaps frantically.

  The knife descends slowly.

  Haviland bursts into the clearing.

  "In God's name, stop," he gasps. He launches the shovel like a javelin. It clangs against Dan White's face, knocks him down and peels away the circle. Haviland trips over a fieldstone and sprawls flat on his face at the edge of the bonfire.

  When he looks up the men have turned around. Their faces and chests are swiped with blood. Haviland groans. Then Pulpit's eager face rushes from their midst and the springer spaniel leaps onto his master and laps his face. Haviland then spots a headless chicken draining into a gold vessel next to the altar.

  Haviland scrambles to his feet.

  "Devil worship. So this is your club, John? Was Theodore Hopfner to be your next sacrifice, then, or a worshiper? That's why he was here that day."

  The men were covering themselves with their arms, leaning over and moving back. Molly folded her arms across her chest and was inching over to the side of the altar.

  "Just havin' a bit o' fun, Reverend, is all," Ellwood Dusenberry explained. "Twarn't no harm in it. Gets borin' round a farm and a little village. We didn't hurt no one. Not yet anyway." He glanced guiltily at Pulpit. "We were just to take a bit o'blood from your hound, there. No harm." The group began to disperse one at a time, gathering clothes at the edge of the clearing and hurriedly stepping into them.

  "I doubt the citizens of Paulding will consider offering sacrifice to Satan a bit of fun in the light of day," Haviland said, hands on hips, as he glared at the fleeing worshipers, all but Molly members of his church.

  After dressing, John Van Amringe approached. "What will you do?" he asked fearfully.

  "I cannot allow devil worship. I will speak to your father and others in the morning. What they do is up to them."

  "I would not tangle with Beelzebub," Daniel White told the minister, with a reedy laugh.

  "We'll see how powerful he is once the sun rises," Haviland said.

  White walked toward the forest. He turned back.