The Headsman (22 page)

And for that matter, what people looked at in the privacy of their homes was their own concern. That was one good thing about the proliferation of VCRs; it had taken the play away from porn moviehouses. Braddock had had one of those, too, but it had closed several years ago after the boom in videotapes had stolen its business.

Mulgrave led the way into his office. The room was about twice the size of Jud’s shoebox at the BPD, and comfortably furnished with an old mahogany desk and a couple of leather chairs. There were even paintings on the walls. A window looked out on a snowy field with hemlocks scattered across it, and beyond the trees you could see a few houses.

Mulgrave waved at one of the chairs and took the other one himself. “Now then, what can we do for you?”

“I’m interested in doing a little research,” Jud said. “On what Braddock was like in the early days when the first settlers were here.”

“I see. Interested in anything in particular, or just the history of our charming little town in general?”

“Mostly I want to know things about my own line of work. What kind of police activity went on here then, things like that.”

The tip of Mulgrave’s nose was darker than the rest of his face. Jud wondered if he was a boozer, and decided he probably was. He was also obviously homosexual, but Jud had always been tolerant of gays—as long as they didn’t try to recruit young boys. “We’ve had a number of people in here asking for books of that kind over the past few days,” Mulgrave said. “Quite an upsurge in interest, you might say.”

“That so?”

“Yes. Frankly, I think what they really want to know more about is the legend of the headsman. Could that be what you’re curious about as well?”

“Could be.”

“Horrible tragedy, that poor Dickens girl dying that way.”

“Yes, it was.”

“I do hope you’re able to bring that to a satisfactory conclusion, and soon.”

“So do I.”

“This business of the headsman. Amazing, isn’t it, the way it fires the imaginations of people here?”

“Maybe,” Jud said. “But it’s also understandable.”

“You think somebody decided the legend would make a good
modus operandi
?”

Mulgrave’s use of the term exhibited an air of superiority. As if he’d studied a subspecies and learned its language.

“I haven’t come to any conclusion. I’m just looking at all the possibilities, anything that could give us a direction to follow.”

“I see. Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to find much here.”

“Why is that?”

“To begin with, there is no history of Braddock per se. I suppose no one ever considered the community important enough to devote a book to it. As far as references to it in broader works are concerned, such as histories of the war between the English and the French, there are a few of those. But what volumes we have are out right now. As I said, there’s been a lot of interest. And anyway, as far as I know only one or two of them makes any reference to our famous—or infamous, I should say—headsman, and he’s only mentioned in passing.”

“And that’s it?”

Mulgrave looked pleased with himself. “That’s it. But I’ll be happy to round up what we have just as soon as I can. I’ll let you know.”

“What about the museum?”

The expression on the narrow features changed slightly, as if the librarian hadn’t expected the question and found it distasteful. “The museum?”

“You’re the curator, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course I am. But I don’t know if anything on the subject might be there. Also the place is rather untidy at the moment. Last year we were expecting the town to give us funds for renovation and updating, but the money never came through. Unfortunately we’d already started the work, so we just had to suspend everything. As a result, a lot of our materials and exhibits are somewhat disorganized. It’s only open a couple of days a week, you know—also due to a lack of funds. And only a part of it is open to the public.”

“But you say there might be something there that has to do with the headsman?”

“I said I don’t know. Tell you what—I’ll drop in some time in the next day or so and see what I can find for you. Not today, though—I’m much too busy.”

Yeah, Jud thought, you look it. “Wouldn’t take but a few minutes. Why don’t we take a run over there now? My car’s right outside.”

Mulgrave still hesitated, but then he shrugged. “I suppose we could do that, if it’s that urgent.”

“It’d save time, as long as I’m here,” Jud said. He stood up. “Better wear a coat. It’s chilly out.”

6

The Braddock Museum was housed in what was believed to be the oldest structure in the area. Its main claim to fame was that General Braddock had lived there the winter before he died. It was on the west side of the village, a three-story sprawl with leaded windows and dark siding and a steeply pitched roof. The architecture of the original section clearly derived from a style brought by the early settlers from England, but it was also obvious that a number of additions had been made to it over the years. The result was a polymorphic hulk with chimneys and gables and cupolas and wings that wandered off in various directions. It was, Jud thought, incredibly ugly.

He parked the cruiser in front of the building and he and Mulgrave walked up the narrow shoveled path to the front entrance. Mulgrave hauled out a heavily laden keyring and fumbled with it until he found a key that unlocked the massive door.

The interior certainly went with the outside, Jud thought. Even when Mulgrave turned on the lights the place seemed dark and gloomy. It also smelled bad. The odor was one of dampness and decay, of stale air and ancient dust. It was cold in here as well, and they kept their coats on. No central heating, Mulgrave explained. Only a few electric units, which didn’t do much to relieve the chill. He didn’t bother to turn any of them on.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been in here,” Jud said.

“No? Then you must let me give you a little tour.” Mulgrave was wearing a trenchcoat festooned with flaps and buckles and straps. He turned the collar up and thrust his hands deep into the pockets. “This is the oldest part, built somewhere around seven-teen-twenty. At that time the English were at war with the French, who wanted to claim this territory for themselves, and they also had to contend with Indians. The tribes around here were friendly to them at first, but the English were rather duplicitous. They made promises, but since they were making them to half-naked savages they saw no reason to keep them. So the Indians first came to distrust them and then to hate them. They were always at each other’s throats.”

“Which tribes, do you know?”

“Onandaga, mostly. But there were Siwanoys in the area as well. Anyway, that’s why the walls are so thick. Double-thick, actually, with a layer of stones and dried mud between the wooden outside and inside walls. Quite unusual method of construction at that time. Most colonial homes had no insulation, you see, which is why they were so drafty. But because the British commander lived here for a time it was well fortified, and that also insulated it.”

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” Jud said.

Mulgrave smiled. “Not worth it to try to warm the place up since we’ll only be here a short time. On days when it’s open we use the heater and several of the fireplaces. Makes it quite cozy. The walls also work well the other way in the summertime. They keep it cool. This is the drawing room we’re in now. Some of the furniture is actually original. That chair, for example, and several of the tables.”

Jud glanced at his surroundings. The area looked less comfortable than a dentist’s waiting room, and not nearly as friendly. The walls had been painted dark green, and a number of portraits hung on them. The men in the pictures wore their hair long, tied behind their necks, and they reminded Jud of hippies he’d seen in the sixties. The furniture was stiff and ungainly and there were only a few small rugs on the old wide-board floors. The most interesting feature of the room was the fireplace, which was a good eight feet across.

Mulgrave led him into another room. “This was the main dining room. The table’s original, and it could seat fourteen. There’s a smaller dining room off the kitchen, less formal.”

“That for the servants?”

“No, that one was used mostly as a breakfast room. The staff ate in the kitchen. Those end chairs you see are called bowbacks, and they’re rather rare. To bend the wood that way the cabinet-makers had to soak it in water and then heat it, and the process took quite a while. The kitchen’s this way—let me show you.”

The fireplace in here was even bigger than the ones in the living and dining rooms. Iron pots were hanging inside it.

“They did all their cooking in here,” Mulgrave said. “After the British were gone, the place was run as an inn. Travelers from Pennsylvania or New Jersey and other places occasionally passed through the village on horseback or by coach, and they’d stop over here for a meal and a night’s lodging. Sometime in the nineteenth century that fireplace was covered up, boarded over. Then a huge iron woodstove was set right in front of it, with a chimney pipe running into the old flue. When we restored the place we pulled out the stove and sold it to a dealer in Binghamton. It was a shame to lose it, but it wasn’t authentic, you see.”

“Yeah, I do see.” What he also saw was that Mulgrave intended to keep him wandering around in here until his balls froze and he wouldn’t be able to think of anything but getting out and going someplace that was warm.

“There’s another interesting room over this way,” Mulgrave said. “It’s less formal than the drawing room, and it’s believed the general’s wife used it to do crewel and write letters in.”

Jud could see his breath in the icy air. “That’s fine, Paul, and I appreciate your showing me around, but what I really want to see is anything that had to do with the headsman. I’ve heard you have some pictures, or drawings, or whatever. Is that true?”

“Pictures? We may have a few things. I’m really not sure. If we did, they’d be in one of the storage rooms. As I told you, we were starting some renovation when the town decided it would be too expensive. So a lot of things are upside down. Might take a long time to find anything.”

“That’s okay,” Jud said. “Let’s have a look.”

“Yes. Well. If you’ll follow me, please.”

They went down a hallway to a door leading to a steep staircase barely wide enough to admit a man. They made their way up to the second floor, and Mulgrave stepped along another hallway, stopping before a locked door. He got the keyring out again, and as he was fumbling with the lock it occurred to Jud that it would be easy to get lost in this building. The tiny windows were spaced far apart and set with old-fashioned glass so thick and blurred you could hardly see through them. Combined with the narrow passages and the dim light that made it doubly hard to get your bearings. You could drift from one room to another and not know where the hell you were.

Mulgrave finally got the lock undone and pushed the door open. He touched a wall switch and an electrified sconce cast a pale glow into the gloom. From what Jud could see, the room was filled with haphazardly stacked boxes of various sizes and piles of framed pictures leaning against the walls.

“If there’s anything,” Mulgrave said, “it might be in here.”

Jud inched his way past a stack of boxes. “Great. Let’s see what we can find.”

“Very well.”

It was obvious that Mulgrave was annoyed by the chief’s insistence, but at this point Jud didn’t give a shit. He was cold and running out of patience with this fatuous asshole. Courtesy was all well and good, but if the guy didn’t get it on pretty soon Jud would shake him up. He bent over the pictures in the nearest pile and began pulling them away from the wall one at a time.

All of them were paintings or drawings, no photographs. And all seemed to be quite old. They showed a jumble of subjects, done in media ranging from ink to watercolors. Mostly what they depicted were village scenes: people riding in carriages or strolling on the street, a church, children ice-skating, a woman with a basket of flowers, a pony drawing a cart. There were also still-life renderings of fruit and game and floral arrangements.

But there was nothing remotely like what he was looking for. He went through three of the piles, looking at more pictures of early times than he’d ever hoped to see, while Mulgrave went through still others. But when he finished, all Jud had to show for his efforts were fingers that had become red and stiff from the cold. He looked over at Mulgrave. “This all there is?”

“I’m afraid so. The problem is that nothing is organized properly, as you see. We’re going to set up a computerized system, and that’ll be a big help. But of course, all those things take time and money. Doesn’t do to be discouraged, though. I’m sure the finance committee will come around eventually.”

“What’s in the boxes?”

“Mostly things that have been donated,” Mulgrave said. “Household items, clothing, things of that sort.”

“Mind if I look inside some of them?”

“Not a bit. You’re welcome to see anything that interests you.”

Jud turned to the nearest carton and opened it. Inside was an assortment of junk that somebody most likely had finally gotten around to cleaning out of an attic. They’d probably debated whether to consign this stuff to the museum or the town dump and decided on the museum. There were bowls and cups and a couple of cracked plates, some moldy books, a shawl, a rolling pin, a grater, a doll with frizzy yellow hair and one eye missing, other odds and ends.

Mulgrave was watching him. “Lot of history in these boxes. Every one of them tells you a story of a family, often spanning several generations. A lot of it’s worthless, of course, but once in a while we come across a gem. Last year we got a wonderful coin collection, really quite valuable. We had a numismatist from New York look at it, and he said it could bring thousands at an auction. Not that we’d ever sell it, of course. But sorting all this out is really a tremendous amount of work.”

I’m sure it is, Jud thought. But it’ll keep you and whoever else you’ll have working on it busy for years. You can fuss and fiddle and screw around and go to meetings of the Braddock Historical Society, and between this and that library you can stay occupied until it’s retirement time.