The Last Hanging: A Will Haviland-Abigail Carhart Mystery by M.G. Meaney

Author:M.G. Meaney [Meaney, M.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M.G. Meaney
Published: 2021-05-21T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

"Reverend," Nicholas Enoch said, "the members would prefer that Ed Terhune give the invocation tonight. He filled in as chaplain a couple of meetings last year. You know how it is."

And so, layman Ed Terhune, the sergeant major, led the prayer to start the weekly Friday evening meeting of Charles Lawrence Post No. 378 of the Grand Army of the Republic, the leading Civil War veterans fraternity in Paulding. And this even though the Reverend Willet Haviland, his blue and gold war decorations pinned to his charcoal gray shirt, stood with the officers at the front of his own church hall, ready to lead the prayer, as he had every week since his arrival. He bowed his head and clasped his hands with the others, blushing red and hot in the heat and humidity that had sapped the village like a fever the past few days. His continuing questions about Zife Jenks' murder, and coincidentally the continuing mischief against immigrants, seemed to have sapped the village's civility toward him as well.

"Seat's taken," John Wood growled as the rector moved to his accustomed seat in the first row. Every one of the 35 faces stared, awaiting his reaction. Their flint-hard expressions chilled him, even in the smothering heat. Farmers perspiring in blue and green denim, with leathered faces and chapped hands, shopkeepers pudgy and florid, green and red bow ties and freshly starched shirts and collars, Sam Merritt, again in his uniform, one of three so dressed, factory workers in baggy pants, grayish shirts and drab suspenders and caps. Their eyes fixed him, as if in a gun sight. Now, he remembered the look.

It was the look Union soldiers gave captured rebels during the latter years of the war, after the dreams of heroism had drained away in the hundreds of numbing miles of trudging, trudging through mud and muck and boredom in torrid heat from one nightmarishly frightful slaughter to another. It was that look of seething scorn they resurrected now for him.

"Taken," barked the man next to a vacant seat in the second row.

"Reserved, Reverend," needled the man sitting among four vacant seats in the third row. The others laughed. Now that was something a reb would do.

And so it continued row by row.

"Took" a farmer scowled.

"In use," a shopkeeper declared, and placed his bowler on it.

"Expectin' a crowd," Sam Merritt rasped. "Plenty of folks you can investigate, Reverend."

That brought a laugh, a hollow, humorless laugh. Their heads turned, their eyes followed him to the back of the room. They were in no hurry to start their meeting, it seemed. They could wait until he left.

Haviland raised his arm as if to begin a speech. No words came out. What good would they do? They would not listen. Public opinion had turned against him. No lonely sons, grieving parents or high principles would sway them now. He half-bowed to the cold blue eyes, the murky brown eyes, the glinting hazel eyes.

"I will be on my way then," he

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