The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  "No."

  "Did he say anything else about the peddler?"

  "He said ... that fellow will have to learn manners or he'll ..."

  "He'll what, Mrs. Carhart?"

  She hesitated.

  "He'll what?" Cornell prodded.

  "He'll ... come … to a bad end."

  "A bad end? Indeed." He turned to the jury with a knowing look, then back to the witness.

  "And how did he say this: a bad end?

  Angrily?"

  "No, no. He was merely remarking."

  "So, you did not take it to mean that Mr. Haviland would bring about a bad end for him?"

  "Objection," Warburton cried sharply.

  "Overruled," Pratt said.

  "That is not what Reverend. Haviland meant at all."

  "Did he say anything else?"

  "No."

  Cornell walked slowly to the prosecution table and back, gathering his thoughts for the next point of attack.

  "Would Mr. Haviland do anything for you, do you think, Mrs. Carhart?" Cornell asked mildly.

  Abigail looked toward Will. He smiled back encouragingly and nodded twice. She remembered the evening of the fire, how he had decided to drop the investigation for fear of harm coming to her.

  "Yes, I would say, within reason," she responded at last.

  Warburton spoke up wearily. "Relevance, your honor?"

  "Presently," Cornell shot back and returned to his questions. "A man in love is universally known to do anything for his love. Adam sampled the apple. The gentlemen of Paulding spread their coats in the road to preserve a lady's kid boots from the mud. Mrs. Carhart, would not any true gentleman avenge an insult to a lady?"

  "It would depend on the gentleman, the lady and the insult." She smiled uneasily.

  "Order," rapped the judge.

  "Is Mr. Haviland gentleman enough to avenge the insult of a mean peddler spitting on his lady's shop window?"

  "He did. He made him apologize."

  "Ah, but beyond that. Let me suggest, Mrs. Carhart, that Mr. Haviland could have encountered Mr. Jenks on Indian Hill Road the day following his insult to you — and to himself. Mr. Haviland almost certainly would have engaged him on the subject, intending perhaps to save him from the 'bad end' he had predicted. The conversation may have started out as an instruction in manners toward a cultured lady such as yourself. But suppose Mr. Jenks, whom we know was out of sorts that day, suppose he took the instruction ill. Suppose he resisted it. Suppose he ridiculed it. Suppose he reviled it, even spitting at Mr. Haviland again. You have told us how agitated Mr. Haviland had gotten with him just the day before. Suppose he got agitated again. Perhaps the peddler tried to push past him. Could not the encounter have ended in blows? Could the peddler not have pulled out the ax he had stolen from Mr. Dusenberry's shed? After all he faced a very large adversary in Mr. Haviland. Perhaps Mr. Haviland tackled him and found himself with the ax in hand — wrenched easily from the smaller Mr. Jenks..."

  Abigail stood in the witness box. "You are suggesting that Reverend Haviland killed the peddler because he spit on my window? That is by far the most ridiculous, far-fetched and insolent bosh I have heard in my life. There is a murderer in Paulding laughing at all of you this very moment, a murderer who killed Zife Jenks, who stood by and let Theodore Hopfner die, who killed the Leatherman and who came very close to killing Reverend Haviland. You should be trying him, not the man who very nearly died trying to save you from him."

  Finally, the rap rap of the gavel broke through her speech and the crowd's murmurs. Abigail reluctantly resumed her seat.

  "There came a time, Mrs. Carhart," Cornell resumed, subdued now, "when Mr. Haviland told you about his suspicions of devil worshiping in the village?"

  "Yes, the night of the fire, just after he had found out."

  "But he had suspicions before?"

  "He, both of us, suspected something unusual in the woods, but he never mentioned devil worship until that night."

  "He discovered that Theodore Hopfner was on his way to meet with devil worshipers the day Mr. Jenks was killed."

  "Yes."

  "And what did Mr. Haviland plan to do with his information on these activities?"

  "He was going to tell the village the next day."

  "Naturally, as a minister he fervently opposes such things."

  "Naturally.

  The devil worshipers probably oppose worship of God as well."

  "Yes."

  "Well, indeed. Now, interestingly, even though he had not mentioned devil worship specifically until the night of the fire, he knew earlier where to look to find some of their paraphernalia, for lack of a better word — the straw figures and the fox head. May I suggest another scenario, gentlemen of the jury. Suppose Mr. Haviland knew of the devil worshipers at the time of the peddler's murder. Could he not have implicated Hopfner to save him from a fate worse than death — being in the grip of the devil?"

  Now both Abigail and Haviland were standing, shouting, pointing. "Absurd," "ridiculous," "deranged" could be heard above the crowd din, punctuated by raps of the gavel.

  * * *

  "Yes, gentlemen, Mr. Haviland is a minister," Cornell was telling the jury in his summation, "but even recent headlines tell us that a collar offers no surety of what is inside a man, what he is capable of. Your guide in this case must be the evidence, and Mr. Haviland's actions. Who were the only two people proven to be in the vicinity when the peddler Zife Jenks was killed? Theodore Hopfner and Willet Haviland. And Mr. Haviland was highly content, proud even, by all accounts, at his role in the conviction and execution of this Hopfner. Until the sudden appearance of the Leatherman and the peddler's order book, that is. And you have heard much testimony on how sorely taken aback he was indeed by this hidden secret thrust suddenly into a most public light and laid at his feet. A shock to anyone? Most assuredly, gentlemen, if one takes it as Mr. Haviland did.

  "But here you must reach into your own worldly experiences," he said, taking captive each juror's eyes to drive home his point. "Would an innocent man react so convulsively? Yes, he concluded that he had made a tragic error, and each one of us would have been greatly perturbed had we been in his place, I dare say. But it was an error, a result of human frailty, and one in which not only Mr. Haviland but all the authorities were culpable. His role was in fact the least — a witness. It took the police and the courts and a jury to weigh this and other evidence and render the verdict. And so I ask again: would an innocent man react so convulsively? Did the rest of the village, the mayor, the constable, the leading citizens, did they mount a public passion play as the defendant here did? And this was a serious matter for them as well. Yet, they did not launch a public crusade in their own name to find the "real killer," as the defendant did, a crusade that led to rumors, innuendo and actual accusations against several prominent people.

  "For Mr. Haviland's motive let us return to the evidence. The Leatherman. What of him? Could he have killed the peddler? The authorities did investigate this possibility, despite the defendant's public complaints about laxity, but without resolution.

  But he surely could have had or uncovered more information on the real killer. Maybe he knew who the killer was? He had found the order book, had he not? And — think about this — he laid it in the hands of Willet Haviland. Not the constable, not Theodore Hopfner's father, not Zife Jenks' widow, but in the hands of Willet Haviland.

  "In itself it proves nothing, but what happened to the Leatherman? You heard testimony that he appeared several more times and spoke privately with Mr. Haviland and Mrs. Carhart, the final time just hours before he was found dead. His statements? Rhetorical, incomprehensible, elliptical to us. But did they mean something more to Mr. Haviland? …"

  Seated at the defense table, hands clasped in front of him, Haviland listened to the oration as Abigail sat in the gallery behind him. He looked over the confused but attentive faces of the jurors — a
haberdasher, two farmers, an insurance agent, a chef, a smith and others like them. They hung on the prosecutor's words. Words. Haviland made his living by playing them like organ notes of striking images, powerful ideas, clever expressions to inspire his listeners, to inspire them to root out evil from their hearts and from the village. In a professional way, he could appreciate the unctuous prosecutor's wrenching and hammering of words to twist and torture the reality, to solder on a bit here and a bit there like Thaddeus Acker in his workshop, to transform one thing into a grotesque copy only vaguely related to the original.

  But looking over those puzzled faces, those upward stares seeking, desperately, someone to make sense of all the contradictions and details they had heard — as some in his congregation had looked up to him — Haviland sensed he was doomed. He sensed, knew, really, that a literate, rational civilization, the pinnacle of the Victorian age, could send an innocent man, even a man dedicated to God, to his death because the authorities endorsed a distorted version of reality that seemed to make sense when judged by everyday conventions and prejudices. Not only would the authorities prevail against a troubled German immigrant's son, but even against the minister of a respected church. Neither had been around long enough to be accepted as insiders.

  "I have admonished you, gentlemen," Cornell was saying now, "to watch the evidence. Well, we come now to as much evidence as any rational man could want. We have arrived at the night of the fire. Mr. Haviland was due to leave the next day, you will recall, still under a cloud of censure from the village for the ills he had unleashed. Villagers did not believe his theories that some one of them had done the killings and was out to get him. It was his last chance to redeem his name at the least if he could not produce proof against any of his many suspects. A fire starts in the middle of the night, meant to burn down the rectory. The pastor heroically escapes, but the exemplary work of the fire department saves the rectory. And what is found in the house where Mr. Haviland resided — alone — since even before the first killing? A missing page from the peddler's diary. The Leatherman's knife. And the missing handle of the very ax that killed the peddler.

  "Mr. Warburton will rightly remind you that anyone could have hidden those things at the rectory, for it is a building used much by the public. I am not saying that these items in themselves prove anything — although the ax handle was found in Mr. Haviland's luggage, which should have burned in the fire. Rather, I say look at the entire pattern here. Whenever there was a murder Willet Haviland was on the scene just before or just after it. His own gun killed the Leatherman and Mrs. Carhart related that afterward he said, 'I killed him, as surely as if I had shot him.' Look at how he reacted to the finding of the order book, how he accused everyone and anyone, it seemed, without the least evidence.

  "What was his motive? I do not have to prove why, gentlemen, just that he did it. But the peddler had insulted Mrs. Carhart and himself, and he had already used violence against him for it. Was there something else? I say we do not know for sure, and you do not have to know. For the other two deaths his motives would be clear if he did kill the peddler — covering up his actions.

  "You must ask if it is rational for a man of God to go about stirring up such meanness, such suspicion, such disharmony. Is it common among our respected clergy? I would submit that it is not. You must then look at when it began — with the public unveiling of the diary — and then you must ask yourselves why. And the answer you derive must be based on the evidence presented here. Thank you, gentlemen."

  The jury looked puzzled no longer. Three or four glared over, scrutinizing the prisoner in his gray suit, smooth good looks — not the looks of a working man — and curly hair. He had sounded convincing and sincere on the stand, but they harbored suspicions about his eloquence, his smooth talk. They did not want to be accused of being duped by slick talk. Spending so much energy on the killing of a peddler who barely spoke English, well, they just could not put themselves in the shoes of such a one. It made them skeptical of his finely phrased answers. And now one of their own, the esteemed Millard Cornell — they had read about him in the newspapers for years and greeted him on the street — had told them why they should be skeptical. They saw things more clearly now. It was so agitating trying to make sense of all the testimony, and he seemed to have brought them through the turbulence to a place where things were ordered and right again, where things made sense. If someone they trusted in the village had done this — the mayor's boy and his friends, Sam Merritt, Dan White or Thaddeus Acker, say — how would Paulding survive? No, Millard Cornell had set forth the answer, the sensible, safe answer.

  "Will, why didn't Mr. Warburton tell the jury what we know about him?" Abigail asked after the defense summation, referring to their suspect. The jury had withdrawn and was deliberating, and Abigail, too, sensed the worst.

  "We still don't know why, and without that all the rest means nothing," Haviland said, leaning over the bar. "We'd just be harming someone without sufficient cause and it would only stir up resentment against me again. People would think I'm accusing a fine Paulding citizen just to save myself."

  "This citizen deserves it."

  "But without proof ..."

  "I have tried, Will. Our observers have all but staked him out, but he acts like a turtle. He sticks his head out and searches for strangers before coming or going. He stays inside his house, inside his carriage and inside at work. He has been skipping church, or sitting behind a pillar."

  "But they have seen him."

  "Yes, and they think they recognize him, but they cannot get close enough for long enough to make sure. It's been a long time since they've seen him. What would really tell, they say, is hearing him speak, but we can never get them close enough. And they cannot stay around all the time. They have jobs."

  "I know. I know you are doing your best. I had hoped he would be lured here, but he did not come once. Still, if worse comes to the worst..."

  "It won't, Will, surely?" she said, though without fervor.

  "I have spoken with the county attorney and told him my suspicions. He seems a reasonable man ..."

  "So did the people in Paulding, and Millard Cornell, and Judge Pratt."

  "Still, he does seem reasonable and has no particular interest in one side or the other since he resides in North Castle. Ah, what is this?"

  The jury was filing in.

  "This cannot be good," Abigail gasped.

  "It will be all right. Really, it will." Why were his hands trembling, then?

  "Oh my God," Abigail said, and resumed her seat behind him. The jurors filed in with heads down to avoid the prisoner's gaze.

  Haviland's heart dropped. He had not been in the ministry this long without learning to read people's actions, or inactions. Had it not been the unasked questions, the lack of interest in certain things, that had first raised his suspicions about the man he suspected, indeed more than suspected, the man he knew had killed the peddler and the Leatherman and who had tried to kill him.

  "Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?" Judge Pratt asked.

  "We have, your honor," the foreman stated.

  "The defendant will please stand."

  Haviland did. The reporters fastened on him, awaiting his reaction, a required portion of a verdict story. A nervous whirring swept the crowd. Sam Merritt moved up a row and took a seat next to Abigail.

  "How do you find the defendant in the murders of Zife Jenks and the Leatherman?" the judge asked solemnly.

  Haviland's heart was racing. He had known intellectually what was coming, but his emotions were only now realizing it. His throat was dry. He felt dizzy, as if the gaslights were floating around the courtroom. The pounding of his pulse in his ears made it hard to hear. He struggled to focus on the lips of the foreman.

  "We find him guilty on all counts." Haviland's legs grew wobbly. Lights flashed in his eyes. He dropped into his seat. His arms flopped to his sides.

  From b
ehind him the courtroom was rent by a sound between a banshee's shriek and a mourner's keening as Abigail collapsed into Merritt's arms. This set off a feverish outburst in the benches. The reporters gaped first here, then there, grasping desperately to soak up the images and sounds. Judge Pratt let the outpouring go on. He knew there was nothing to be done. Spectators, aching with the significance of the occasion, burst into conversations with those around them, for they could restrain their amazement no more.

  It was late afternoon, and the dropping sun cast long shafts of light through the narrow windows. These alternated with shadows, as if all in the room were behind bars, under sentence.

  The judge stood and waved to motion for order. Then he gaveled sharply three times. Gradually, the audience settled in for the next act.

  "Prisoner will rise," he ordered, devoid of courtesy now.

  Warburton goaded Haviland to his feet.

  "Willet Haviland, you have been found guilty of the murders of Zife Jenks and the Leatherman, and by extension the legal murder of another innocent man, Theodore Hopfner. I dare say many here and many more beyond this county still find it hard to grasp the immensity of the treachery hidden by your clerical collar. I pray that all will remember that the stain should not be extended to any of our most esteemed and honorable clergymen here in Westchester County or elsewhere. As for you, the jury has weighed the evidence and found you guilty. I, therefore, sentence you to the penalty of death. I hereby order that you, Willet Haviland, be taken to the courtyard of the White Plains jail one week hence, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and there be hanged by the neck until dead. Take the prisoner away."

  Haviland, recovering slightly from the shock of the verdict, turned quickly to Abigail.

  "You must get him there. You must without fail. It will be our last chance. I love you."

  They took him away. The commotion erupted again in the slanting sun and shadows.

  CHAPTER 32

  Execution morning at the nut and bolt works. After two hours of chuffing, rapping, tinging and banging, the bolt makers, the nut stampers, the annealing forges and the conveyors had gone silent. The workers were preparing to travel to White Plains for the hanging. Thaddeus Acker was freeing them for a few hours to witness the historic occasion, and the festive bustle of the Fourth of July mixed with the uneasiness of a wake on the vast factory floor.