The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  Acker himself appeared in their midst, in a brown jacket and pants, white shirt, green plaid vest and green tie, to signal the dismissal.

  "It is good to witness justice done," he told them. "It encourages us to keep to the narrow path." He added, "Any of you not back by noon sharp will be docked."

  "Will you go?" one worker asked.

  He shook his head and smiled benignly. "I must keep watch over my babies while the baby sitters are away, must I not?" The several dozen workers laughed. They were turning to leave by the delivery door onto Main Street when all froze as if they had seen a ghost.

  Abigail, shrouded in black, trembling and wild-eyed like a madwoman, appeared in the doorway, a coat draped over her right arm. The workers gasped. Acker's eyes narrowed. His lips pursed.

  Her voice emerged as a wail, Ophelia-like.

  "Thaddeus. Thaddeus Acker, you shall take me." She raised her arms over her head and stared vacantly around the factory, searching for him. She dropped the coat and her black wool cloak, revealing a black-silk widow's dress beneath.

  Acker shrank back. He was about 50 feet away.

  A couple of workers, taking pity on Abigail, went to her side and gently pointed in his direction.

  "Pszczoły i trzmiele. What are you doing? She's mad. Let her be," he growled at them, all the while stepping discreetly back toward the door to his office.

  Abigail followed the motioning arms and peered woozily toward the distant bearded, bespectacled figure. He seemed shrunken now from his usual stature, hunched over and shaking his head in refusal.

  "Ah, there you are, my sweet Thaddeus. I have no one now. My boys are both gone. Gone. Daniel. Gone, gone long. Will. Gone too, not so long," she piped in a childlike, dreamy voice. "Gone, gone, gone. But they told me you would take me to the show, dear Tad. Won't you, please? Look, I brought your coat." She stretched out her empty arms. She looked at them, puzzled. She rotated her arms and tilted her head, inspecting them, the black ringlets of her unpinned hair falling onto her right shoulder. "That's funny."

  A dozen workers had broken down and wept at the piteous sight. The others were fighting back tears or wide-eyed, open-mouthed in amazement. Acker's grim look was debilitating into one of panic. His hands trembled. He glanced about seeking an escape. He continued to slide backward.

  Abigail now was looking around, turning and turning, straining to see behind her in the search for the coat. Finally, a worker pointed it out to her on the floor.

  She started to giggle. "A silly game I play. Did I fool you, Tad? Here it is, your coat. I took it from your office. The nice lady wasn't there, so I did. It might be cold at the show. And look, a nice cloak here. Fine material. Good for me. I shall take it. We'll look nice at the show. Here, I'll bring you your coat." She bent to pick up the coat, then dropped to her knees, dizzy. Two men helped her up. She set off on a zigzag path through the crowd, giggling now and then. She had put on the cloak again and stretched the coat across her arms. Stricken workers sprang back as she whirled this way and that.

  Acker, watching her errant progress, accelerated his retreat, but as she moved on more and more eyes scrutinized his reaction to the poor woman. The eyes said she needed the utmost gentleness in this, her tragic hour, and they looked to their beneficent, fatherly proprietor to extend it.

  "Where are you going, my loving Tad? We don't want to be late. Will you buy me cashews there?"

  Several women sobbed uncontrollably in the emptiness of the vast room. A couple of the men were following Abigail in case she fell. She was 10 feet from Acker now, wide eyes, vacant eyes searching in his direction, coat extended before her, a toddler's smile of joy on her face.

  "Sweet Tad, sweet, sweet Tad," she exclaimed.

  Acker, hands and head twitching, looked at her, then at the dozens of his workers, then back at her. The factory, his machines, his inventions, his planning, his foresight, everything here spun in his head.

  Suddenly, her hands were grasping his.

  "Here," Abigail sang out. "I hope it's not dusty."

  "No!" cried his great deep voice. "No! No! No! Go away. Please, go away." He dropped the coat she was handing him, whirled and dashed for the coveted office door. Abigail watched him, puzzled. The workers were stunned into silence. Five steps, eight steps, 12 steps. Finally, the safety of the varnished oak door, with "T. Acker" stenciled in gold. Like a man smothering and desperate for a breath, he hurled open the door. And ran into Amelia Theall and Mayor Van Amringe, ready to go with him and Abigail.

  In a few moments, the four were seated in Acker's carriage, leading the train of wagons, carts and horse riders up Westchester Avenue toward White Plains. "It will be a very good show, darling Tad," Abigail assured him giddily. "You'll see"

  CHAPTER 33

  The hangman waited.

  Abigail Carhart clung. She clung to Thaddeus Acker as they stood — he most reluctantly — at the front of the hundreds of villagers and many, many curious thronging the jail courtyard and peering over the walls from teetering carts outside to see the minister hanged. A dozen reporters stood off to Abigail's left, chatting and jotting an occasional note.

  "Have you ever seen a hanging, Tad?" Abigail asked mischievously, looking up into Acker's worried face. She was facing him and holding him by the arms like a dance partner.

  Acker shook his head dismissively.

  "Oh, I did once. I did not mind it much," she fluted like a child describing a visit to the doctor. "Of course, I didn't know the hangee." She laughed, threw her head back. She ceased abruptly. She pulled herself back to equilibrium and turned around to the gallows platform above her, the structure rising 18 feet like a proscenium, the weights on the left upright, the pulleys guiding the hemp rope over the top of the square. The rope dangled down the middle, a snap at its end. Abigail seemed to have just realized what it all meant.

  Desperate suddenly, she turned back to Acker.

  "Merciful Savior, Thaddeus, you must stop them. Will, they are going to ..." She could not say the word. "... No. you must stop them." She tugged at him, pulled him forward. "Go, tell them it's a mistake. He didn't do it. Really, he didn't. He won't even ask any more questions about it if they let him go, say that to them. He decided, we both decided, the night of the fire, we decided no more questions. We gave up. So tell them ..."

  "You what?" Acker demanded in an angry whisper. He seized Abigail by the arms to calm her so as to avoid becoming a spectacle.

  "Please, they'll listen to you ..."

  "What did you say?" he demanded quietly.

  "You must stop this."

  He shook her hard. "Listen to me. What did you say? You decided not to ask any more questions?"

  Abigail looked into his face, a face distorted by anger. She resumed her plea, trying to pull him closer to the gallows platform 20 feet away. He would not move.

  "Abigail, dear, everything will be all right, you'll see." Amelia Theall, wrist in a cast after being struck by Haviland's cart, had noticed the tugging match and hastened to offer her assistance — and see more firsthand the madwoman's behavior.

  "Would you take her, please?" Acker asked, trying to direct Abigail toward Amelia.

  "No, no. You must help me. Oh, Lord," Abigail cried, and hurled herself into his arms, burying her face in his chest.

  "She really should not be here," Acker whispered to Amelia.

  "I know, but the poor girl might never forgive herself if she were not here for him. She spent the whole day yesterday with him, I hear, but he told her not to come today. There, there, dear Abigail. We're here."

  Steps across the platform: the hangman, Joe Atkinson again, inspected the apparatus one last time, descended the stairs on the right and strode into the jail, followed by two jailors. The crowd shivered. Murmuring swept the courtyard. The reporters edged across the crowd to get a better view of the jail door through which the clergyman would come so they could chronicle his last moments.

&nbs
p; "I must get closer," Abigail announced suddenly, again trying to draw Acker nearer the platform, which was enclosed beneath. Acker, already discomfited at being the custodian of this delirious and raucous woman, stuttered off-balance a few steps forward, then refused to budge a step farther toward the spotlight.

  "How is she doing?" Mayor Van Amringe inquired. He had been waylaid greeting constituents while the others had made their way up front.

  "Not well," Amelia reported eagerly. "But dear Thaddeus is being a rock. How proud I am to have you for a neighbor."

  Acker interrupted his scowling at the tugging woman to smile and nod tersely at Amelia.

  Van Amringe motioned Amelia aside. "A most unfortunate day for all concerned, and I speak of the entire village of Paulding as well when I say that. The public will surely be quick to forget the crimes this man has committed, but the village's name will be ever linked with the execution of a minister of the Lord, no matter how imperfect he was. I have half a mind to make a statement to the press on the matter."

  "Oh, you must, you must," Amelia urged, the silver-haired lady in gray thrilled to be sought out for an opinion, or so she took it. We have been the victims as much as the peddler or that uncouth Leatherman, you are right about that. Once branded with a reputation, forever branded."

  "Yes, the village's future may be at stake. People might shun us if this undeserved bad name took root. I shall seek out the press immediately." He pardoned and excused his way through the throng and engaged several of the writers assembled between the platform and the jail. Amelia could see him now in full peroration, gesturing with his right arm, pointing into the air, punching his right fist into his left palm. Then, a cry, "Here he comes," and the reporters abandoned the mayor in mid-sentence and raced toward the door.

  The heavy oak door with its square window started to open, then bounded almost shut again. It bobbed partway open twice more, as if mustering its strength. Finally, it swung wide and the squat executioner backed out followed by a squad of jailors surrounding Haviland, then the warden, the county attorney and the pastor of St. Anthony's Episcopal Church in Harrison. Atkinson's square face, so serene at Hopfner's obsequies, was riddled with twitching today as he turned and led the little band toward the platform, motioning away the reporters shouting questions at the condemned man.

  Haviland himself was looking over the crowd from above his guards as he shuffled slowly across the courtyard, limping slightly. He wore a plain dark-gray suit of serge, but no clerical collar, and no necktie. He had again been denied permission by authorities already in fear of the shame executing a clergyman would bring. His arms were pinioned behind him. The black face mask covered his curly hair. Around his neck hung the hempen noose, five loops around, a metal ring at the end. He picked apart the crowd, looking toward the front of the platform. A scream went up. He looked toward it and located Abigail, in Acker's arms. He smiled.

  The reporters scribbled furiously: "Condemned man's last smile, for the woman he loves."

  As they pushed through the crowd to the platform, a woman broke through. Hannah Hopfner. Her hands were fists. Her face was anger, striped by tears.

  "You stood there watching," she screeched as the jailors fended her off. "You let him die. I will kill you with my own hands, I will. You Satan!"

  "Justice will be done," he yelled as they pushed her away. "And soon."

  "Such a handsome man," Amelia Theall was remarking to the mayor, back at her side and flustered by his brush-off by the reporters. "You know, it's odd that the peddler's widow isn't here. She seemed so determined to be here last time. Did someone tell her? You know those foreigners don't read the papers."

  "I'm sure she was told," the mayor said. "Maybe once was enough."

  They were on the platform now. Haviland stood at the edge, awaiting instructions. Atkinson gently urged him toward the rope. Haviland suddenly took note of it dangling there, following it up and across the pulleys and down to the weights it attached to on the side. A tremor seized him. His legs grew wobbly, his arms twitched, his eyes grew wide, his mouth opened. "No! No!" he screamed and crumpled to one knee.

  Abigail tugged on Acker again. "Oh, Tad, we must go to him." She pulled with all her force and they tottered forward a few more steps before he refused to move any closer. Finally, she lost her grip on him and stumbled herself toward the platform. "Dear Will, it will be all right. See, we're here." Her reddened eyes caught his. He seemed to take energy from them, for he reasserted control and struggled back to his feet.

  "Condemned man's love lends him strength to face final ordeal," one reporter wrote.

  Abigail noticed the crowd watching her and shrank back toward Acker.

  The Rev. H.C. Bartlett stood with Haviland now. "If you would be so kind as to kneel, Reverend," Bartlett said. The two knelt. The others on the platform removed their hats and folded their hands.

  Bartlett read from the Order for the Burial of the Dead. Haviland echoed him word for word.

  "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body; yet in my flesh shall I see God.

  "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

  Bartlett stood and extended his hands over the kneeling Haviland.

  "O, Almighty God, we humbly commend the soul of this thy servant, our dear brother, into thy hands, most humbly beseeching thee that it may be precious in thy sight, through the merits of Jesus Christ, thine only Son our Lord.

  Amen."

  Bartlett walked to the back of the gallows. Sheriff Stephen Horton appeared.

  "Willet Haviland, you have been condemned to death for the murders of Zife Jenks and the Leatherman. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?"

  Haviland, now standing, nodded and turned to the throng, which surged forward to hear his last words.

  "You, all of you, will hang me here today," he began slowly in his loudest sermon baritone, scanning the jostling crowd. "And yet, there remains among you, in this very courtyard, the man who murdered Zife Jenks, the man who let Theodore Hopfner die though innocent, the man who killed the Leatherman, and the man who set fire to the rectory and tried to kill me. I am the only other person who possesses the evidence, the knowledge of his pattern of evil, to convict him in a court, but I do not have evidence enough to denounce him from this stage today. I could not finish my inquiries. And yet there is time, a few moments still, for justice to be done. I call on that man to come forward and admit his crimes to you, to me, to all of us, so that our little world may be set right again."

  He stared down directly at Thaddeus Acker.

  "Who's he looking at?" the reporters asked each other.

  "Can't tell. Too far away. Could be anyone up front."

  "Couldn't print it anyway. Libelous. Maybe he's just looking at the girlfriend."

  "Yeah, that's it. One last look."

  Acker, Abigail staring up at him, looked back at Haviland impassively.

  Then he smiled. Haviland had told him what he most needed to know — that after the jerk of the hangman's rope he would be safe. So, this is why Abigail had lured him here, with her play acting. It would do her no good.

  Haviland's eyes started wandering. He seemed nonplussed that no one had stepped forward to save him. He stood looking around without focus as the crowd broke into murmurs. Those who had heard his final words passed them along to those who hadn't. "What'd he say?" called those hovering outside the walls to those inside.

  The crowd turned back to the gallows tense with excitement over the historic execution but worried by Haviland's speech. Could he be right? Some of the evidence against him did not seem as strong this crisp sunny day. Too late now. Soon he would be gone, no more sermons to haunt them with. Life would return to normal, or would it? Would it ever? Paulding, the villag
e that hanged a minister.

  Now, Atkinson moved behind and shuffled Haviland back four steps. The hangman rotated the noose so the knot was behind the condemned man's left ear and pulled it tight. He snapped the metal ring onto the hook of the dangling rope. Then he slipped behind Haviland and fiddled for several moments.

  Abigail turned around to watch the preparations. She grew dazed, muttering to herself. She stuttered again toward the platform.

  "I love you, Abigail," Haviland said, just before Atkinson pulled the black mask over his face. Abigail whirled, cried out, "Help me, Tad," and crumpled to the cobblestones.

  Acker was unsure what to do, with all the people looking at him, expecting him to do something. He hovered where he was, watching the figure. She did not move. Finally, he took a step forward, but by then Sam Merritt was at her side along with the mayor. Abigail revived, saw who was with her and shoved them away. She stretched her arms toward Acker. He didn't move.

  Atkinson stood in front of Haviland, making a final check. He adjusted the knot. He walked behind him. He made another adjustment the crowd could not see.

  Sheriff Horton, at the rope anchoring the weights, raised his broad-ax. Atkinson looked once more into the crowd then at the prisoner, then at the county attorney, who nodded.

  The hangman's arm shot into the air. Horton reared and chopped, severing the rope. The weight plunged, the pulleys whirred. Haviland flew five feet up, the rope curled slack a moment, then it sprang back into place, Haviland two feet above the platform, swinging from left to right.

  Atkinson stepped up and steadied the body so it faced forward.

  A scream of vengeance came from Hannah Hopfner at one side of the platform. Abigail had been helped to her feet and looked on avidly as the mayor and Merritt supported her.