The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

by Sharyn McCrumb

  According to the medical examiner, Janet Underhill had been last. She was found a few feet from an open hall-closet door, lying facedown, shot in the back of the head at almost point-blank range. The killer had found her crouched in the closet, hiding behind the winter coats. He had dragged her out, throwing her facedown on the wooden floor of the hall. Putting his foot (bloodstained shoe print) on her shoulder blade, he had pointed the barrel of the gun at her head

  and fired. Not much of her cranial area was left: It had exited in one crimson swath straight in front of her.

  But this was her son, Spencer kept telling himself. What would make a boy do that to his family? Drug use? Mental illness? There was no record of either. A tox screen on Josh Underhill's blood sample tested negative for drugs. In cold blood, then. What had made him do it? In order to keep that secret, Josh Underhill had gone upstairs, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. He had gone to his own room to do it. That tallied with the suicide's pattern of behavior. In a murder-suicide you almost never found them beside their victim. Spencer pictured the gunman executing his victims in a raging frenzy, lasting ten minutes at most. When the echoes of the last shots fade, there is a great silence, and the killer realizes that his act was irrevocable. More silence; more time passes. Finally, he goes away from the sight of his loved one, and in the privacy of his room, he sits down with the gun between his feet, barrel between his teeth, and reaches down for the trigger.

  Four rooms befouled with blood and brain matter, the incidental selfishness of the madman. Why would Mark and Maggie Underhill want to keep living in that house of death?

  Spencer had spent a futile morning questioning the two surviving siblings, learning very little about them or the relationships in their troubled family. Had there been any problems within the family? A drinking problem? Had

  Josh ever been treated for psychiatric problems? The brother and sister were courteous, but wooden in their replies. Spoken without emotion, their responses might have been comments regarding the deaths in Hamlet. They didn't know what happened, they told him. Perhaps an intruder? No? An accident, then. The sheriff did not even bother to argue with their indifferently proffered theories. The killer was dead; legally, the rest did not matter. It was only the frustration of the enigma that made him pursue it.

  A second aspect of the case was his business, and he dreaded bringing it up to two new orphans, but he had no choice. "What are your plans?" he asked them when the crime-related questioning was out of the way.

  "Plans?" they echoed, politely blank.

  "You're both under eighteen. The law says that you have to have a guardian. You can't stay by yourselves on that remote farm."

  "Why not?" asked Mark Underhill. "I can drive. There's the insurance money for us to live on. We can take care of ourselves."

  "You don't want to live there. With those memories."

  Mark shrugged. "It's an old house. We got used to the idea of people having died there."

  "Besides," said Maggie, "we don't have any close relatives. And we don't want to have to go away. We want to finish school here." She was clenching and unclenching her fists in the folds of her skirt.

  "We know how to cook and use the washing machine," Mark added.

  Spencer sighed impatiently. "It isn't just a question of doing laundry and cooking your own meals. You'd have to see to taxes and house maintenance, and all the rest of the things that adults have to contend with."

  The two dark-haired youngsters looked at each other for a moment. Finally, Maggie spoke. "What about Dad's lawyer?"

  "Dallas Stuart? He can see to the settling of the estate, and probably to the money matters as well, but he's seventy-two. He can't be riding out to Dark Hollow to see if you need anything."

  Mark scowled. "Like we don't have a phone! Okay, Sheriff, appoint us a guardian. Not someone that we have to go and live with but someone who would look in on us every now and then to make sure we were eating all right, and keeping the house in shape."

  "The minister's wife, Mrs. Bruce," said Maggie. "She'd do it for us. She said she'd help us in any way that she could."

  "I'll talk to her about it," said Spencer Arrowood, disliking the suggestion. Still, it made a certain amount of sense. Why should the kids be forced to leave their home and school just because they had no one to come and stay with them?

  "I'm seventeen now," said the boy, sensing the sheriff's weakening. "I'll be eighteen in May. It's just a formality, really. Just a couple of months."

  "I'll talk this over with your lawyer and with Mrs. Bruce," Spencer told them. "It isn't settled yet, but I'll do what I can."

  "Thank you, Sheriff," said Maggie Underhill with a dreamy smile. '7 hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I cannot choose but weep to think they would lay him i' th' cold ground. My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your good counsel . . . Good night!"

  Spencer, recognizing the quotation, gave Mark Underhill a questioning look, but the young man only smiled and shook his head. Delayed shock, he thought. He made a mental note to talk to Laura Bruce about arranging counseling for both of them.

  The Underhills were buried within the iron gates of Oakdale, the cemetery in Hamelin. There were many small cemeteries on the mountainsides in Dark Hollow, but they were all family plots, on land still owned by descendants of the deceased. Mark and Maggie Underhill hadn't wanted to start such a tradition on the farm. They were still strangers to the land and the community, and perhaps they wanted to remove the memories of the tragedy far from their own doorstep.

  They huddled together now at the graveside, a little apart from the other mourners—most curiosity seekers drawn by the notoriety of the case. It was a cloudless autumn day. Buffalo Mountain's maple trees shone like a bloodstain

  against the shadows of the pines on its slopes, but the cemetery grass was still green.

  Spencer Arrowood watched the two surviving Underhills with pity tinged with defensiveness. There wasn't anything he could have done, he told himself, but he felt obliged to come to the funeral. Now that he was in Oakdale, though, he found himself thinking about another graveside service, more than twenty years ago. He had been Mark Underbill's age then. He wondered if he had looked as pale and stupefied. He knew he had felt like that. The whole world had suddenly—randomly, it seemed—needed readjusting, and he had been given no advance notice to get accustomed to the change. He remembered staring at the flag-draped casket and feeling nothing but adolescent selfconsciousness. Surely all these people were staring at him throughout the ceremony, waiting to report his every facial expression. He had resolved to have none, and that effort of will had made him oblivious to the words of the funeral service. He had never been able to remember what was said that day. Only that it seemed to last a long time in the summer heat and that it had ended with taps.

  More than fifty people had turned up for the Underhill burial. Most of them had worn the traditional dark clothes, but because it was cold, they had been forced to add whatever coat they owned over their mourning outfits, so that the assembly was a curious mixture of reds and browns, with an occasional muffler of riotous plaid to break the solemnity. At the edge of the

  crowd he saw Laura Bruce, looking solemnly formal in a dark suit and hat. He almost raised his hand to wave to her, but he decided that it wouldn't show proper respect to the deceased to be glad-handing the mourners at the graveside. After the funeral he would approach her and relay the Underhills' request that she be appointed their nonresident guardian until Mark turned eighteen.

  He noticed that Nora Bonesteel wasn't present. People said that she never did attend a funeral. Probably just visited with the deceased at her home up there on the mountain, he told himself sardonically. He had heard the legends about the old woman of Ashe Mountain without considering them one way or another. It didn't matter to him if she saw ghosts or not; such things had no place in his world of order and law and finding probable cause. His mother had been full of questions
about the Underhill case. Did Nora Bonesteel really foresee the deaths? Had Spencer discussed it with her? (That would be the day.) He hoped none of the supernatural business found its way into the newspaper accounts of the case. The murders were sensational enough without bringing ghost stories into it. He wanted the Underhills to be left in peace.

  The elderly lay preacher who was substituting for Will Bruce had balked at the task of delivering a graveside eulogy in such sensational circumstances, and after a short Sunday meeting, the deacons had decided to ask one of the other Hamelin ministers to officiate. The Rev-

  erend Charles W. Butcher, recently retired from Hamelin's Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, had accepted the task. C. W. Butcher had seen it all in his forty years of ministry. He had buried boys shipped back in body bags from Korea and Vietnam; young people pried from the wreckage of their daddy's car after a joy ride; wives killed by estranged husbands mad with pain and rage. He had seen a world of sorrow, and it had left its mark in the deep lines of his face. He stood now in his good black suit, shiny with age, looking down at the four wooden caskets with an expression of serenity that suggested meditation rather than sorrow. No one in the crowd was crying. Earlier there had been murmurs of indignation that the murderer should be laid to rest side by side with his victims. Some even objected to Joshua Underbill being buried in consecrated ground at all.

  C. W. Butcher turned to face those gathered at the graveside, friends and neighbors he'd known all his life. In Wake County you see the same faces and the same somber outfits at every funeral. Spencer, who went to more funerals than most people, knew that Dr. Butcher always started his eulogies with a verse of Scripture. He wondered which one he would choose this time. Thou shalt not kill?

  With a gentle smile at Mark and Maggie Underbill, C. W. Butcher began. "Jesus said, 'Let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms ..."

  Spencer saw Laura Bruce shiver in the wind. He wondered if she, too, had been thinking of the bloodstained floors of the Underhill house, and how she'd scrubbed them on her hands and knees with water and Clorox until first light. Many rooms.

  "... And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going."

  A snicker that didn't quite get transformed into a cough erupted from deep in the crowd. Someone was thinking, Maybe you all ain't going to the same place.

  C. W. Butcher paused for a moment and gazed out at the crowd, and all was still. "Because these words are in the Bible, few of us stop to think about the writer's experience. Tradition calls St. John the beloved disciple of Jesus. John writes of good times and bad. Jesus laughs at weddings, cries at funerals, and does violence to those who desecrate the Temple." He waited while the phrase "does violence" sank in. They were quiet now.

  "So matter-of-fact does the story seem, we forget that historians believe John did not write it down until 95 a.d. —at least sixty-five years after the death, Resurrection, and ascension of the one we call Lord. Did it take John a lifetime to make sense of a homicide, a homicide set apart from all other homicides? Does anyone ever make sense of a killing?

  "Remember, it was decades before John could record the words he heard his old friend

  say, 'Let not your hearts be troubled . ..' Indeed, we gather today with very troubled hearts, which may remain troubled for a long time to come."

  Mark and Maggie seemed to huddle closer together under the collective stares of the crowd. Their impassive faces studied the ground in front of them, never once straying to take in the sight of the four coffins.

  C. W. Butcher was ready to deliver his message now. People could feel it coming. He gave them a hard look, talking louder now. "There are some in these hills and hollers who will say and are saying, This is God's will' I've always felt ashamed of my colleagues in Christ who would suggest that God somehow wills tragedy, war, death, or destruction. God has not willed the deaths of Paul and Janet Underhill and their sons Joshua and Simon. God is not the author of chaos, but of order. God is not the mother of darkness but of light. God is not the sister or brother of violence, but of peace. So to those of us with troubled hearts, the patron saint of troubled hearts, St. John, calls us to the many rooms of healing our Lord prepares for us in his mansion.

  "Today we are gathered with troubled hearts for two purposes. First, we gather with troubled hearts to bury and say good-bye to our family members and friends. We gather to say good-bye to Paul, Janet, Joshua, and Simon. And second, we gather with troubled hearts to say hello to one another. Just as John came together with his friends and family after Jesus'

  killing to offer and receive encouragement and comfort, so, too, we are gathered to remind Mark and Maggie that they are not alone. Troubled, yes, but not alone. God and the church and the members of this community are with you."

  His stern eyes scanned the crowd, daring them to shirk their duty. Will Bruce's wife looked as if she might cry, but he saw her nod her head in agreement with his words. Someone murmured, "Amen!"

  "It took John a lifetime with friends and family to get over the death of his friend Jesus. So, too, we are all called to do whatever it takes to help Mark and Maggie Underhill know that they are loved."

  Spencer Arrowood thought, They don't look loved. They look about as alone as anybody I've ever seen. With a stab of conscience, he resolved to look in on them every now and again. Because he was the sheriff, C. W. Butcher would expect no less of him. This was his flock, too.

  "We are not called on to untrouble them, or to fix them," C. W. Butcher was saying. "We are called to love them. This is the place our Lord prepares for those whose hearts are troubled. It is not an easy place, but it is a place of love. You, the Church, the Body of Christ, know the way. I bid you follow it."

  The crowd had begun to sing "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," in the faltering voices of a group without a leader. Spencer thought he could discern his mother's lilting alto above the straggling sopranos. It was her favorite hymn.

  She had come simply because the Underhills were fellow church members. He didn't want to talk to her now, though. She could always detect depression in him, but she mistook it for illness. He wasn't up to that conversation just yet.

  After one verse the song trailed away, and after a brief silence, the lay preacher began to intone the final words of the funeral service. Spencer wasn't close enough to make out what he said. He saw Mark Underhill kneel down and pick up a clod of earth to throw down on one of the coffins, and then his view was blocked by a procession of onlookers who were heading for their cars. The wind had picked up a bit, and no one wanted to linger. He searched the crowd for Laura Bruce's navy coat and hurried after her.

  At the sound of her name, she turned, and he saw that she looked as tired as he felt. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her cheekbones seemed more prominent than he remembered. She shivered in the wind, and pulled her coat closer around her, while he felt another pang of guilt about dragging her into the Underhills' tragedy.

  "Hello, Sheriff," she said, summoning up a weak smile. "It was good of you to come today."

  "We usually provide an escort for funerals," he said. "It's not like we have a whole lot of crimes to occupy us otherwise."

  "I suppose not. Even this one involved more paperwork than detection, didn't it?"

  He nodded. "They mostly do. I needed to speak to you so that I can finish up the last bit of paperwork on this one."

  She looked bewildered. "You need to talk to me?"

  "Yes." He saw her shiver again. "Look, you should get out of this wind. Would you like to go to the diner for coffee? If I'm not keeping you from anything else, that is."

  It crossed her mind to wonder what the parishioners would think of a tete-a-tete in the diner with this earnest blond young man, but she scoffed at her own narrow-mindedness. He simply wanted to conduct police business somewhere warmer than
a November cemetery. "I'll meet you there," she told him. "My car's just over the hill."

  The rest of the mourners had left the cemetery. Spencer Arrowood watched the tottering figure in the navy coat until she disappeared from sight, and then he walked back to the graveside where the Underhills' oak coffins waited under the tent for the burial crew. He stood there in silence for a moment, remembering their faces as he'd seen them on that last night, and then he picked a white carnation from one of the standing wreaths. Twisting the flower absently in his fingers for a moment, he took a last look at the four caskets waiting to be lowered into the earth. On his way out of the cemetery he knelt at the grave of his brother— John Calvert Arrowood, killed in Vietnam in 1968—and placed the flower on the flat bronze marker.

  CHAPTER 4

  Shall we gather at the river, Where bright angels' feet have trod

  When Sheriff Spencer Arrowood walked into his office behind the courthouse, Deputy Joe LeDonne and dispatcher Martha Ayers stopped their conversation in mid-sentence and turned to look at him with solemn faces.

  He froze in the doorway, all thought of mid-morning coffee gone from his mind as he waited for the news of whatever disaster was slated to ruin his day. "It's not a wreck, is it?" he asked wearily. He hated wrecks.

  Martha took pity on him and went to pour the coffee herself. "Oh, sit down, Spencer," she told him. "There seems to be peace in the valley, like the old cowboy song says. We haven't had a call all morning. It's just something that we heard on the radio, that's all."

  "All right," said Spencer. "What did you hear on the radio?"