The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery

by M. G. Meaney

  A shiver passed through the hanging man, his chest heaved, then he settled down, swaying gently.

  Acker turned to leave. He began to elbow his way through the crowd, but made little progress because everyone was looking on so intently.

  "Excuse me, please. Excuse me," he said to a wall of faces. He started to move people aside as if cutting through brush in the woods. One he prodded to the right, the next to the left, a third he forced to move back so he could step around and escape back to his inventions and his peace.

  Then, a sound seized him and thrust him around. It came from the gallows:

  "Carl Tracewski, 10 years old.

  "Thomas Taussig, 8 years old.

  "Miriam Jenks, 11 years old."

  "Josef Jenks, 9 years old.

  Acker looked about wildly for the source of these names, these nightmarish names, these names from the past.

  From his past.

  The executioner? No. The jailors. No. Reverend Bartlett?

  No. He was drawn closer, despite himself. The litany continued.

  "Mary Urbanski, 5 years old.

  "Stanley Waslewski, 7 years old.

  "Frances Tesch, teacher."

  Acker was at the platform now.

  "Robert Marks, machine-maker.

  "Stafania Ulatowsky, 9 years old."

  Acker could see it now, the black cap puffing out around the mouth as the names emitted, the ghostly names.

  "William Tkaczuk, police officer ..."

  Acker's chest boiled over with confusion, anger, dizziness. His voice rose above the stunned exchanges of the crowd, which half-feared it was witnessing a miracle.

  "What is this?" the deep full voice rumbled. "A trick? Pszczoły i trzmiele. Pszczoły i trzmiele. Die, will you. Die!"

  The litany stopped.

  "Janesch Tischinski, we have found you at last."

  A dozen Polish immigrants led by Elena Jenks surged from beneath the platform, surrounding Acker. He looked in one direction then the other for an escape route. The immigrants and the crowd hemmed him in.

  "Your face you could cover, but your voice, never," Elena Jenks resumed, "even after 20 years. We all remember it. And you and your father's saying, pszczoły i trzmiele. Bees and bumblebees. How could we forget? The voice of the man who set the school fire in Jaroslav, which killed 23 children. None of the Polish were coming to America when you did, when you disappeared after the fire. You thought you were rid of us. But now many come. Zife recognized you that day, didn't he? He called you by that name you put away, Janesch Tischinski, that murderer's name, and so you killed him."

  These remarks were passed to the rest of the crowd in an increasing, uneasy din. Adding to the amazing turn of events was the lowering of the hanged-but-alive reverend and the removal of his noose by solicitous officials. Atkinson had rigged up a fake hanging using a second rope hooked to a vest beneath the minister's shirt. Haviland was standing above the confrontation between the Polish villagers and a seemingly resigned Acker.

  "You hid well from us," Elena Jenks was telling him. "We tried to see you and hear you but you were like a fox holed up in your lair. But now you are found out and we know the truth at last."

  Acker swelled up angrily. Pointing at Haviland, he said: "You, you meddling busybody. How did you figure it out in the end?"

  "It was the fire, the one you tried to kill me with. The manner in which it was set, the device itself, was far too clever to be the work of anyone else. But, of course, by then we had many other clues. The missing horse, naturally, the repair of my revolver in time to shoot the Leatherman — you must have been watching us that day from your office and feared that he had figured something out. The replica of Abigail's rocker and the metal frame for the wicker figures, work by a genius inventor with a factory full of metal pieces. But I could not guess why you would kill a peddler. Finally, I remembered the paintings in your house."

  "My paintings?"

  "Yes. You had said you were from Crackow, far from Jaroslav. Yet, why would someone who had grown up in a city have no paintings set in a city? You had scenes set on farms and small villages, but none in cities. An urbane man like yourself should have appreciated the city, and yet you had no paintings. That gave me the idea that perhaps your past was not what you had said. And the only reason a poor peddler might have incurred your wrath was he knew something you didn't want known or was threatening you in some way. But Zife Jenks became frightened suddenly after confronting you, and so, it seemed something had just turned up.

  "Of course, all this was just speculation without verification of your true identity. After you had me arrested, Abigail sketched you — it was also odd no paintings or photographs existed of you. Mrs. Jenks and the other villagers living in Manhattan thought it could be you. Unfortunately, you eluded every attempt to get them close to you, so we had to resort to this carnival-like diversion."

  "And if I were not the right man?

  "They would have executed me next week."

  "How fortunate for you then, Reverend, that you cornered your prey, with the help of your lady love over there." Abigail stood a few feet away with the grim mayor — mulling the economic consequences to the village — and Amelia Theall, hyperventilating at the stunning turn of events.

  "I owe her my very life," the reverend said fervently.

  "And I mine," Acker spat back.

  "You would have been found out someday, with or without us," Haviland assured him.

  "And for what good?" Acker demanded. "For what good? Do you know, Reverend, that Robert Marks had stolen three of my inventions and was telling everyone they were his. That is the real injustice here, Reverend, the stealing of ideas." His speech seemed long-rehearsed, deeply felt. He held the crowd by the force of his character once again.

  "How many truly original ideas do you suppose you have had in your life, Reverend?"

  Haviland thought a moment, then shrugged. "A half-dozen or a dozen."

  "Truly original, all and totally created by you."

  "Three, four... No, maybe two... To be honest, I can't think of one offhand."

  "I grant you this day as one, surely," Acker said. "However, here you are, an educated man who issues forth ideas as your employment, your very purpose in life, and you claim no creations of your own beyond perhaps the clever figure of speech or incisive metaphor. Consider me, then, a young man in rural Poland, too intent on tinkering with machines and bicycles and tools to take an interest in school, destined to work my entire life for Robert Marks, one of the village's great men — clever, brilliant, or so they all thought.

  "'Janesch, you are lucky he has taken you on,' they told me, all of them. 'He will make something of you, you and your tinkering.' My parents, too, told me. He would put me to work in his machine shop and put an end to my time wasting. This they did not say, but it is what they meant.

  "I soon discovered that he was not the clever man at all. He was a good mechanic, that is all. He could repair other men's work but create nothing of his own. He could appreciate another man's creation. He would marvel at a steam engine or a mechanical press but invent something on his own? Never. The people took his knowledge for creativity when it was just keenness to recognize a good idea.

  "And that is where we came to disagree. For he was called in to repair a bolt-casting machine. I went along with him. At that time, the square bolt heads were hammered in a forge. I thought it was highly inefficient and after several months I devised a primitive version of my machine to hammer the bolt heads with the metal cold, all on the same machine that cut the bolt. In 10,000 years Robert Marks could never have devised such a machine, yet he recognized right away how clever — and potentially lucrative — my machine was. He took a great interest in my idea. He asked me to draw up a detailed plan while I was working, which I naively did.

  "One day, I happened to find a copy of my plan, addressed to a bolt maker in a nearby town, the one whose machine we h
ad repaired. But the plan carried his name, and a letter proposed a joint venture between Marks and the company to manufacture such a machine. Nowhere was I mentioned. I had a temper even then and demanded an explanation for his stealing my idea. I later learned that he had made proposals to other companies based on two of my other, lesser ideas as well.

  'I am not stealing it at all, young Janesch,' he said. "You devised it while working for me, so it is my property now.'

  "I checked with a lawyer my father knew and learned he was right. The great man had tricked me out of perhaps the greatest idea I would ever have. He had tricked me out of wealth, maybe even fame. He had doomed me to a life of tinkering in this little village.

  "I walked out. The plan had not been posted yet. He had gone on a repair job and locked up the shop. I decided to take the plan away from him. He was too dull to ever be able to recreate the machine without it. I would set a small fire that would destroy the plan — he could not accuse me of stealing it then.

  I set a timed device — like the one at your rectory — in some oily rags on his desk. I got in through a back window. The floor was stone and the walls brick, so the fire would burn the desk and perhaps a few nearby things and that would be all. But the idiot had set a vat of varnish beneath the desk and it exploded when the flames hit it. The flames reached the wooden roof and ignited it. I was in the livery when someone noticed the fire. Soon the wind caught hold of it and it spread to the school next door. Any other day and the wind would have been blowing the other way, or not blowing, but it was gusting this day. And the varnish. How could I have known about that? I had meant only to burn the plans and not be found out. That is all. You must believe that. I did not know about the varnish. And the wind ...

  "I helped them try to put it out. I saved one of Jenks' brothers, even. I tried to stop Marks from going back into the building, but he rushed past me — probably to try to save my plans, or someone else's he had stolen. Two others had claimed that he stole their ideas, but no one listened to them, naturally — they were young men like me. Just as Marks went inside, a beam fell and ignited paint. He died of the burns a couple of days later."

  He paused in the crowded, silent courtyard.

  "I did not mean it to happen," he told the dazed faces. Paulding's great man had started a fire that had burned children to death, many of them, it seemed. What would happen to the factory, to the village, to them, they wondered as he picked up the story.

  "In a couple of days, people talking after the funerals started to piece things together, as did the village police. Another worker had seen me argue with Marks and walk out. A shopkeeper remembered my coming out from behind the machine shop an hour before the fire and started asking publicly what I had been doing there. I pointed out that the fire started an hour later, apparently by accident since no one was in the shop. People accepted this at first but still wondered. Four days after, I could not take it anymore. I had not been sleeping myself, appalled and terrified by what I had brought about while trying to stop an injustice" — this wording sounded well-rehearsed — "So I slipped away at night and came to America."

  "What about Zife Jenks?" Haviland prompted.

  "He called me Janesch, the first one in 20 years. He had seen me downtown when he sneaked into my factory. He said nothing then, but he was passing my house when I arrived for lunch.

  "'Janesch Tischinski?' he asked. He looked at me closely. I must have shown how startled I was, even though I denied it. 'It is you, as I thought,' he said, coming closer as I stood by my horse. I went to the back of the house but he followed.

  "I do not know what you are talking about,' I told him. And I gave him my name — Acker.

  'I would know that voice in hell, where you belong,' he insisted. 'Janesch Tischinski.'

  "'Get off my property,' I ordered him.

  "'You are rich man. You will pay dearly for crime now.'

  "'Get out,' I told him." Acker was trembling now, seized anew by the anger and terror of discovery. "I then pulled a gun out of my sleigh.

  "'You will kill again, Janesch? But what is one more to you?'" he taunted me.

  "'Go. Go,' I told him. 'Worry about your family, not the past.' I put the pistol to his temple.

  For the first time I saw fear. Soon he left, but I knew I had to kill him before he left town for home. I rode back and you know the rest."

  "You took Sam's horse?" Haviland reviewed.

  "Yes, Burnside is far stronger, and the snow was thick. I also thought it better for mine to be there and I knew Sam would not be needing his." He looked kindly at a panicked Merritt, then smiled and said, "He was working to finish Mr. Seaman's sleigh." Afterward, I found the order book. Jenks had written my address and names on the latest page. I could not leave that, of course, and it would be dangerous to have it with me. I tore out several pages and placed it in the tree where, most unfortunately, that wild creature found it. I buried the ax handle — I had planned to shoot the peddler but came across Mr. Dusenberry's shed and found the ax there. It would be unlikely to be traced to me, and would be quieter. After your infernal questions would not cease, I placed the ax handle and order book page in the rectory after one of our committee meetings. You were off with Mrs. Carhart at the time."

  "And Theodore Hopfner?" Haviland asked, glancing toward the young man's mother, who was straining to hear the account.

  "An extraordinarily unlucky young man, extraordinarily unlucky to have come across you, Reverend. I regret his death, but what was I to do? It would have been illogical to come forward at that time, and it did seem to bring the Jenks matter to a satisfactory close.

  "Until the Leatherman."

  "Yes," he said, exasperated. "It was not difficult to kill him. I had taken your pistol, Reverend, as you so perceptively concluded, and restored it to operating order. I removed my boots, left my horse in the stream and lay in wait for him behind a tree after chopping at a tree to attract his curiosity."

  "What about my chair? Abigail demanded. "Why did you do it?"

  "I had to get you to cease. You were getting too close. I made the copy and set the box out so someone would find it and deliver it to you. Had you really decided to stop your questions?"

  Abashed, Abigail and Haviland nodded.

  "I couldn't let you hurt Abigail anymore," Haviland confessed.

  "And I didn't want Will killed. I love him," Abigail said.

  "So, there are limits even to your principles, Reverend?"

  "I suppose we should have told you," Haviland quipped.

  The crowd and the jailors started to stir. Acker was losing his hold on them. His time was growing short.

  "I had to save my ideas," he declared. "Your ideas are the only things that truly belong to you. You cannot allow anyone to steal them. Look at what my ideas meant for all of you in Paulding. You have jobs, homes, prosperity. Why? Because of my ideas. There is no telling the value or outcome of an idea."

  "Just as there is no controlling the devastation of a fire, even a small one," Haviland shot back. "A little anger, a lot of death."

  The county attorney stepped forward. "It is time to take Mr. … er ... Acker into custody for the murders of Zife Jenks and the Leatherman. Gentlemen." He nodded to the jailors. They looked to Sheriff Horton, who seconded the nod.

  "I am afraid not," Acker announced. He reached into his dark coat, pulled out a revolver, held it up and fired a shot into the air. The crowd cried out and fell back. The reporters dove for cover but kept their eyes riveted to the scene.

  Acker pointed the gun at Abigail. "Mrs. Carhart, you will join me, please. We'll be leaving now."

  "Don't go, Abigail," Haviland instructed.

  Acker fired a shot at Haviland. The rector uttered a cry of surprise, spun away and crumpled onto the platform. The crowd gasped, but no one else moved.

  "Come now, Abigail. Such a splendid actress should relish another co-starring role in this drama. Come, or your love will find
a bullet in his head."

  She lurched into motion. Arms folded, shoulders stooped, she stepped slowly toward the gun. He reached out with his bare arm, turned her quickly about and pinioned her before him as a shield.

  "If anyone follows, she dies."

  They backed through the crowd, which spun away like blown leaves before them. Men shielded their women as the couple passed through the great cobbled courtyard. On the platform, the jailors felt unobtrusively for their guns. Sheriff Horton raced over the possibilities but found no plan he could try. He took comfort in the fact that they could not get far even if they did get away.

  If only he didn't kill Abigail.

  The doctor had inched his way over to Haviland and had gotten him upright. Blood puddled on the gallows platform. The minister insisted on turning with a groan to watch Acker receding with Abigail as the doctor worked at the wound.

  Her faced weaved about, scared and childlike, in Haviland's dizzy head. He wanted to reproach himself for involving her again in his folly, his arrogant folly, but he could not think. The pain had disorganized him.

  Then they were gone, disappearing through the gigantic gate and past the spectators outside. The human riverbed filled in again, instantly, and a roar of amazed chatter from the crowd burst through the stunned silence in the courtyard.

  "After them," Horton ordered his jailors. But they floundered amid the thick clusters of noisy, gesturing spectators. Haviland tried to stand to go with them, but he collapsed again. More blood poured from his wound.

  By the wall a farmer standing on a cart outside was relating the events to those inside. "He's gettin' her into a carriage, a big fancy one," he announced in a stage whisper, hand cupped to his mouth. "He's shovin' her over and gettin' in next to her. Off they go now, down Main Street there. He's got that brown mare close to a gallop."

  The crowd poured through the gate and into the street, looking after the shiny black, four-seater, open carriage with large red wheels barreling off in the sunlight past the shops.

  Sam Merritt had shoved his way out the gate and was running down the dirt road after the receding carriage. Plentiful horse droppings forced him onto the wooden sidewalk.