The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  CHAPTER 30

  When Abigail spied Haviland through the bars, he was still in shock. He sat hunched on the edge of his cot, staring off at the wall, raw, cut hands dangling idly over his knees, long arms and legs bulging out of the too-small, drab brown prison shirt and pants. When the jailer clanked the key in the lock and the door screamed open, his puffy, bruised face turned slowly and he peered into the shadowy corridor with only mild curiosity. When he finally discerned Abigail, he needed a few moments to focus and pull himself out of his fog. He lumbered to his feet but held himself back, not sure how to greet her. She looked almost stern as she scrutinized him. Maybe she believed he had killed the peddler. Maybe she believed he had killed the Leatherman. Maybe she had come to vituperate against him for dividing her from the rest of the village, for inspiring the threats on her life.

  "Oh, Will. Please God, are you all right?" she cried and hurled herself into his arms.

  The great iron door slapped shut behind them.

  "I'm so glad you came," he said as he bade her sit in a wooden chair and resumed his seat on the cot. "It still seems like a dream, like a feverish dream. I think I'll wake up — in my room in the rectory — and you come and we stroll down to the harbor and watch the boats sail. You can't see any boats here."

  "I have Pulpit. He's fine," she informed him. The dog had broken two lamps in racing about her house like a frantic sightseer rushing to take everything in. But unlike a sightseer the springer spaniel was slobbering over her carpets, clothes and kitchenware and insisting on sleeping with her. "Mr. Bronk is looking after Preacher."

  Abigail looked down at her folded hands, unsure what to say next. She had doubted him, she had, after the spectacle of the arrest, after the crowd had gasped, then some had jeered as the rector was led off with her stumbling, stupefied, after him in the silver-gray pre-dawn. So many believed Will was the troublemaker, that he committed the murders. Could she not have been deceived in him? What did she really know of his past except what he had told her? She would not be the first woman whose friends had sized up a man more accurately than she. In a civilized society how could someone be so diabolical as to perform all the foul deeds Will and she suspected? More rational to consider the most obvious suspect the right suspect. Will had been at the peddler's murder scene by his own admission, and only he and she had seen the Leatherman the afternoon of his death, or so it seemed. And he had fainted at Theodore Hopfner's death.

  "What is the village saying?" Will inquired, interrupting.

  "Oh, oh. They're all shocked, I think you could say."

  "Shocked that I was arrested?" he asked hopefully.

  "Some ... a few, yes, some, I would say." Most, in fact, believed he had done it, for why would Constable Stillwell arrest him if he hadn't?

  "They tell me I am to have a swift trial. It is unseemly to have a clergyman in irons, I suppose."

  "It is. Even the New York papers have sent reporters up about the story. I threatened a man from the Tribune with a scissor to get him out of my shop before I came here. And I caught a man from the Herald taking a picture of my rocker. I screamed, and Sam Merritt fired a shot in his direction. He took himself right to the train. Said that we tried to kill him and he'd write it. He'd not have got the chance to leave if Sam fired like he meant it."

  Haviland smiled. "Then if the city papers take up the cause I'll be free momentarily."

  Abigail grew serious. She reached over and gently took his hands. He flinched with the pain, but left them.

  "They mean to hang you, Will. They have gotten Millard Cornell to prosecute, the most brilliant man in the entire county, some say the state. He has never lost a case and covets the notoriety in yours so he can run for governor."

  "But the papers ..."

  "They'd see you hang tomorrow, or sooner."

  "But why?"

  "Do you remember the articles, I think it was two weeks ago, on the trial of that minister in New Hampshire, Mansfield it was?"

  "Yes, a Reverend Griffith. He shot a Reverend Borden for seducing the woman Reverend Griffith loved."

  "Do you remember what page the articles appeared on?"

  "The first page, I recall. But what has that to do with me?"

  "A murdering reverend, especially one hanged for his crimes, is of far more interest to the public than one who turns out to have been arrested by mistake and is acquitted."

  "I see," he said slowly. He withdrew his hands, turned and looked out the small, barred window at a gray sky. When he turned back, fright had replaced hope on his face.

  "Will, we must solve the murders. We must finish what we began."

  "Or surely one of us will be finished," he said.

  Abigail began to sob.

  "Come, sit by me," he coaxed. "It will be all right. God provides. He will surely provide for us." Then he remembered Theodore Hopfner. And the Leatherman. And Zife Jenks.

  Haviland took warmth from Abigail as he soothed her, pulling her over to him, pressing his stiff fingers against her side, sliding his hand along her yellow silk blouse and green muslin skirt. His chest grew tight at the thought of being locked away from her for an afternoon, never mind separated from her forever, deprived of the rose-and-orange fragrance of her perfume, the hint of pine in her hair and the strength of her hands.

  "Whoever started the fire must have killed the peddler and the Leatherman," Abigail asserted after pulling herself together.

  "It could have been one of the devil worshipers," he suggested.

  "Or one of them may have done the killings."

  "How did the fire start?" he asked.

  "A very clever device. It was wooden and mostly burned, but Tom Weeks found some pieces of it and he and Charley Stillwell figured it out. It was a balance with a lit candle on each end and set into a pile of greasy rags in the closet in the meeting room. The candles apparently started out the same size, like a seesaw, but one burned faster than the other and the balance eventually fell all the way back and ignited the rags."

  "So the fire could have been set hours, maybe even days, before."

  "Yes, Will, though probably hours."

  He sat pondering a long time. He also considered the construction of the pair of figures in the small rocking chair. Finally, he announced: "I think we both are sure now who did it, putting this on top of everything else."

  "Yes, but we don't know why."

  "You must find out why, Abigail. Here, let me up a minute. I have to write a letter. You must deliver it personally. Also, you'll need to do some sketching. Can you make a portrait of a murderer, do you think?"

  CHAPTER 31

  "Mrs. Carhart," prosecutor Millard Cornell purred in his resonant baritone, "I understand that you are something more than a congregant to Mr. Haviland. Would you please inform the jury, if it would not be too much trouble?"

  Like an actor, he stepped back from the witness and swept his arm toward the jury box to frame Abigail's lines in the courtroom drama.

  True to plan, the case had come to trial in two months. Abigail, in somber deep blue silk, sat in the oak witness box and looked out over more than 50 Paulding residents who filled oak benches in the stone, Greek Revival White Plains Courthouse. Reporters from nearly a dozen newspapers, magazines and wire services also crowded the courtroom. The long, arched windows gave the look of a church, but religion was minimized. After much debate, criminal court Judge H. Richard Pratt had forbidden the prisoner to wear clerical attire, ruling that it might sway the jury. Haviland sat at the defense table in a light gray suit and white shirt, the closest he could approach his religious clothing. Languid defense lawyer J. David Warburton sat next to him, waiting to calculate the damage of Cornell's questions to Abigail.

  "Answer the question, if you please, Mrs. Carhart," Cornell coaxed gently.

  "We love each other," Abigail blurted out at last, unsure exactly how to put it. The crowd murmured. The reporters scribbled. Judge Pratt, stern, lo
ng-faced, gray-haired with little patience for disorder, rapped his gavel sharply.

  Haviland smiled at Abigail.

  "That is very commendable, Mrs. Carhart. Each and every man here, I've not a doubt, would vouch for the immeasurable value of the love of a fine woman. Now, let us lay the groundwork, as we say, if you will indulge me a moment or two. Mrs. Carhart, how long have you known Mr. Haviland?"

  "Since he arrived, last December, but at first I just knew him as the pastor of the church." She was putting it awkwardly. She was not used to speaking of such things in a public way. They came out differently in court, somehow.

  "Not love at first sight? Is that what you're trying to say?"

  Abigail nodded tersely. It was hard to classify feelings like so many buttons in a sorter.

  "But there came a time when your feelings went beyond those of a minister and spiritual charge. When was that?"

  "It is not so easy to pinpoint ..."

  Cornell eyed her intently, awaiting an answer. So did the jurors, the judge, the reporters with pencils poised for the juicy testimony, Amelia Theall in the second row, Dan White in the fourth and Sam Merritt in the sixth.

  The stylish, black-haired, mustachioed, smooth-mannered prosecutor strode toward the jury box, hooked his thumbs in the vest of his dark blue wool suit, looked over the jurors, then turned and waited some more.

  "He at first had considered me as one of his congregation and treated me with the respect due any of us," she recounted unsteadily. "I teased him, I suppose, as I do most in the village. That is my way, and I'll not interrupt it for anyone." She stared at Cornell, who simply smiled and nodded. "But it was not until after the Leatherman found the order book, the peddler's order book, that we began — gradually — to grow closer. I determined to help Reverend Haviland find out who really killed Zife Jenks. We spent time making inquiries, and we spent time talking, of the past, of the village. We grew to depend on each other more as the killer — or someone — made threats against each of us. How such feelings grow I would be among the last to understand. But we love each other now. That is what matters, and I do not understand what this had to do with the absurd farce being staged here today."

  A rap of the gavel. "Mrs. Carhart, please refrain from inciting the onlookers," Judge Pratt said. "They are incited enough already." He glared at the reporters. They took no notice as they hurried to record Abigail's irreverent remarks for the next day's dailies.

  "Mrs. Carhart," Cornell remarked innocently after a spectators' outburst exhausted itself and petered out, "you put the beginning of your attraction, or at least your interest, in February, but could it not have begun earlier? Could Mr. Haviland have had an interest in you sooner?"

  "I ... I do not know."

  "You noticed no sign, no delighted smile, fumbling, boyish greeting, lingering touch of your hand as you left church, something that perhaps a less worldly woman than yourself might have overlooked?"

  "Worldly or not, I noticed nothing unusual," Abigail said curtly, eliciting titters from the spectators.

  A rap of the gavel.

  "You were with Mr. Haviland immediately after the Leatherman presented him with the peddler's order book. We have heard testimony, from Mr. Dusenberry and others, about his public reaction, but you were with him after the church service. What was his private reaction?"

  Abigail looked at Haviland. He nodded. The prosecutor observed their exchange archly, noting it wordlessly to the jurors.

  "He was much the same as in church, stunned, shocked, distressed, as I dare hope you yourself would be if you realized you had helped put an innocent person to death ..."

  "Just answer the question, please, Mrs. Carhart," Judge Pratt ordered.

  "I have, your honor."

  "Would you say he was extremely upset, anguished, even?" the prosecutor asked.

  "Yes, I suppose."

  "What did he say to you?"

  "He said: "Don't you see what this means? Hopfner was innocent.' And we reviewed the order book and saw the missing pages, and they were from just the day or two before the killing."

  "The missing pages. I am pleased you brought that up, Mrs. Carhart. There were three pages missing from the order book when you saw it?"

  "Yes."

  "You are sure? You looked at the diary personally? You saw the places from which they had been torn?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "Was there ever been a time when Mr. Haviland was alone with the diary?"

  "No. The congregation was in church and outside afterward, and I followed him directly into the parsonage."

  "So, the pages could not have been torn out that day?"

  "No, absolutely not."

  "So, if a page from the diary turned up in the parsonage, it is very likely the killer had to have put it there?"

  "Objection," called Warburton, the defense counsel.

  "Sustained," Judge Pratt said. "Witness is not qualified to answer that question."

  Abigail glowered, seeing where he was headed. He was trying to trip her up to betray Will.

  "Let me return to Mr. Haviland's emotional state that morning. He was extremely distressed, distraught, in a panic almost, would you say?"

  "No I would not. He was upset about the injustice that had been done, as any upright, sensitive man would be." She looked around the courtroom. Many heads bowed to avoid her eyes.

  "How did the congregation react? How did the village react? Did they hold Mr. Haviland responsible?"

  "No, not at all."

  "In fact, most of them were not upset about the matter at all. They considered it perhaps unfortunate, but a perfectly understandable error. Particularly in light of the fact that neither man was from Paulding, most were inclined to forget the whole thing and move on to other matters. Isn't that the case, Mrs. Carhart?"

  "I suppose it was, yes."

  "And yet Mr. Haviland was so startled by the turning up of this diary that he felt compelled to investigate the matter himself, with your assistance. And this even though the village constable, a professional investigator, considered the diary less than conclusive and discouraged you from setting forth on your own."

  Turning to the jury, he said: "The question is: why was Mr. Haviland so taken aback by this discovery? Why was his reaction so much more extreme than that of the village as a whole, or even of the police, who were at least as much to blame? To avenge a foreigner? A peddler? To seek justice for a ne'er-do-well German? For this would he harass some of the most respected citizens of Paulding? Would he spread vicious rumors and lies, accusing them of every evil under the great canopy of the heavens, from assault to nothing short of murder and arson? Why would a man professedly interested in justice undertake such an unjust campaign against the good people of Paulding? I cannot believe that, and surely you gentlemen of the jury cannot believe that. Something more is behind this, and I submit to you that something is the desire to turn the spotlight from himself to someone — anyone — else ..."

  "I object, your honor," Warburton droned.

  "Sustained," Pratt said. "Gentlemen of the jury, please disregard that last statement."

  Cornell shrugged, smiled — he had put the thought in the jury's mind despite the judge's admonition – stuck his left hand in his trouser pocket and shambled back to a seething Abigail. His smile fled.

  "Let me turn to another subject, Mrs. Carhart."

  "You do that."

  "Would you tell the court, please, about your encounter with the peddler the day before his death."

  Abigail drew a sharp breath. She sensed danger.

  "Your honor," Warburton put in, "if I may, what does this line of questioning have to do with the matter at hand?"

  "I will demonstrate its bearing in short order," Cornell proclaimed, tipping his head in the defense attorney's direction.

  "You may proceed," Judge Pratt ruled.

  "Mrs. Carhart?" Cornell prompted.

  "He was s
elling in front of my shop. We both sell — sold — clothes for ladies. He also carried men's items. My shop features goods of the highest quality. Mr. Jenks served a ... less discriminating clientele."

  A few titters from the spectators' rows at her blunt delicacy. A rap of the gavel.

  "But there he was, in front of my shop, trying to steal my customers." Her anger had resurfaced, despite herself. "I simply did what any shopkeeper would. I told him to move along. He did, after a time. But first, he, he spat on my shop window."

  "That must have been disturbing indeed, Mrs. Carhart," the prosecutor cooed. "Fortunately, Mr. Haviland was on hand to wring repentance from the fellow."

  "Yes ..." Abigail confirmed warily.

  "Would you be so kind as to recount it to the jury?"

  Abigail told hesitantly of Haviland's striding after the peddler, hauling him to her doorstep and making him apologize.

  "Did Mr. Haviland do anything else to Mr. Jenks?"

  Abigail held back. She saw a trap, but she could not evade it.

  "Answer the question, please," Judge Pratt ordered.

  "He shook him," Abigail whispered.

  "Louder, if you please," Cornell requested.

  "He shook him," Abigail obliged.

  "He shook Mr. Jenks? In what way?"

  "He ... he took hold of his collar and shook him this way and that."

  "Violently, would you say?"

  "He didn't hurt him, just drove some sense into him."

  "How long was he throttling him?"

  "He was not throttling him."

  "Shaking, then, if you prefer. How long?"

  "I don't know, a few seconds only. He wasn't hurt. He just went off. He even ..." She stopped.

  "He even what, Mrs. Carhart?"

  "Continue," Pratt growled.

  "He kicked dirt at Reverend Haviland from the road."

  "And how did Mr. Haviland react to this?"

  "He was angry ... he started off after him, but the peddler ran away."

  "What did he say then?"

  "He asked again if I were all right."

  "And were you?"

  "Angry is all."

  "And did he say anything about the peddler's insult to him?"